And so, segregation and stagnancy prosper to a far greater degree than does her town. Such realities squash all prospects for outside investment or internal growth, but, she said, no one is willing to do what’s necessary to change things. One woman from Mississippi told me that in her town the public school is 99% African-American, while virtually every white child goes to private school. I don’t think anyone with a knowledge of history can come here for the first time without a sense of curiosity, if not unease. The only interpretive sign I saw went to pains to point out that “since then the city has worked to build a more progressive community.” We would hope so.Īt least two people in the group I am working with this week had previously declared they would never come to Mississippi. The town clearly has an uncomfortable relationship with its past–it is the site of one of the largest white-engineered riots of the Civil Rights era. The phone booth even has a working phone in it. Just down the sidewalk from the oracle of Oxford is an authentic phone booth–maybe old enough that Faulkner used it, had he occasion to make a phone call from downtown Oxford (I doubt it). The mandatory Confederate soldier atop a pedestal sits outside the courthouse, and William Faulkner sits on a bench not far away, looking no worse for the wear after his encounter with the bumper of my father-in-law’s Model A in 1957 at UVA in Charlottesville (yes, he hit Faulkner in a crosswalk, then remedied it by giving Faulkner a ride around town in the Model A). The state flag, which incorporates the Confederate battle flag, flies outside the courthouse, but was notably absent elsewhere (I didn’t see the state flag anywhere on the way down from Memphis.).
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