Read an excerpt of the forthcoming book below, and add it to your fall antiracist reading list.
Pretty Mississippi: A Troubled Brothers Soliloquy
Where and When:Ruleville, Mississippi.
Out back at the Little home.
Credit: Little, brown and company
Roly, years later, a grown man, is seated in a rocking chair.
Hes just finished reading a newspaper.
Folds the tattered sheets, sets them in his lap.
His tone is weary.
When Mississippis ma and pa named their baby, they called her Magnolia.
She was a beautiful sight.
Magnolia later became the official state flower, and the whole place was known as the Magnolia State.
So pretty, that place.
Pretty Mississippi got a nickname, too.
Along with being named the Magnolia State, it came to be called the Hospitality State.
Thats right, Hospitality.
But see, uh-huh, the Magnolia State, she was, at times, a terrible hostess.
Depending on who came to visit, Miss Hospitality forgot to put out her welcome mat.
Still had a lot of charm, though.
The kind of charm you only finds in Pretty Mississippi.
Speaking of pretty, the Magnolia State could sure turn some heads.
This ugly bird came to add its darkness to Magnolias land.
Jim Crow was his name.
Didnt take long for Jim to lay down his iron-feathered laws.
Colored people here, white people there, and aint no mixing.
We gets less, worse, half, none.
Negroes are separate and no kind of equal.
Jim, he called us inferior.
Called us names not worth repeating.
Thats right, Jim told us go ‘round back to beg at the alley door.
Thats right, Jim insisted we sit in the last seats on the bus.
Jim let us know our children didnt dare go to school with their children.
That gate was a locked riddle to this hate-riddled place.
Jim Crow put a name to the shadow he was casting over Pretty Mississippi.
In time, that pitch-black winged thing had turned Pretty Mississippi into something ugly.
Mississippi became a pretty nightmare.
Her gardenias and fluffy cotton clouds were laced with hate.
These hot-hued pom-poms on a stem were accused of being flower-pests.
But how can blooms so bright, so determined, be weeds?
To endure what it means to be blossoms who are just as pretty, but treated as separate-and-not-equal.
Even though ugly segregation had flown into Pretty Mississippi, there was so much to love.
Mississippi has every reason to brag about her catfish, oysters, and cornbread.
The Magnolia State is good at singing the praises of her homegrown music, the delta blues.
Uh-huh, the delta blues is gut-bucket tunes that can fill up seats at a honky-tonk or jook joint.
But that sad music grew out of sharecropper struggle.
Why do you think we sing it so much?
Instead of saying we was poor, deprivation forced us to admit we was po.
What your tour guide wont show you is the Mississippi Deltas evil side.
Sometimes I think Jim Crow himself was hatched from an egg formed in the Mississippi Deltas bedeviled soil.
An egg fried in racist grease and topped with home-cooked cruelty.
A month back, August 1955, Pretty Mississippi got her name in the Negro newspapers.
His body was floating and bloated in the Tallahatchie River.
The childs crime was making eyes at a white woman.
Hooded men wanted to teach him a lesson.
For us colored people, Mississippi is no kind of pretty.
But that child is not a forgotten flower.
Emmetts memory lives on, brightly.
The recollection of that childs legacy is as resilient as a dandelions determination.
Yes, uh-huh, thats the state of this states Hospitality.
The sweet scent of Magnolias blooms rise in the air, while fertile hatred lingers everywhere.
Thats the pretty nightmare that churns in Mississippi.
Thats the way a state can be two ways at once pretty and vile.
Delicate flowers whose pretty petals give a shot to hide whats underneath the deltas muddy land.
Thats the mixed-up state of this state.
Theres more, too.
Mamie Tills son wasnt the only one.
Our Negro newspaper is filled with stories about ropes around throats.
About slipknots, cinched.
About colored boys gone missing.
About husbands and fathers and brothers wrongly accused.
About little girls last seen whirling in tall southern grasses, singing ditty-songs with Magnolias mockingbirds.
Most evenings, I look forward to reading my Negro newspaper.
I like to roll around in all them words and sentences.
I like to let the power of reading roll around in me.
But the Negro newspapers stories sure bring home some foul truths.
Its headlines remind me that sometimes theres a curse in knowing how to read.
Used to be, I would read the Negro newspaper in bed before falling asleep.
Used to be, I could turn those rattly pages, then turn onto my pillow.
But I learned a hard lesson from doing that.
I started dreaming about those unspeakable acts.
In my pretty nightmares, the beauty and ugly dripped together under the light of a misty Mississippi moon.
How many mornings have I tried to throw off those strange dreams?
How many nights have I laid awake, hoping the pretty nightmares would go away?
At the same time, I love my Magnolia States cherry-bark trees.
And night frogs that sing.
And autumn mornings piecrust skies, rolling out as far as forever.
And red carpet roses.
But for all its pretty, I cant ever escape Mississippis state of mind that stays in my mind.
You see, pretty nightmares are stubborn.
Their stains wont come out, even in the light of day.
Scrub all you want.
When youre colored and living in Mississippi, oppression is dyed deep in your being.
