The Mississipi Predicament Read online



  The Mississippi Predicament

  Copyright 2013 Carter Greene

  Prologue

  My name is Julian Lockhale. I was born and raised in the small town of Bigton, Mississippi. It was a few miles outside of Jackson, and it was a bit backwards. If you’ve ever read To Kill a Mockingbird, you get the picture. Day to day living was uneventful for the most part; safe, quiet, friendly - everything was fine and dandy - unless race was involved. When I said it was backwards, I mean really backwards. The first black people I ever knew to move here on purpose were Anthony and his dad. Anthony became a really good friend to me and is still my friend today. What follows is the transcript of my interview with Anthony on March 12, 2014, nearly 5 years after joining the Bigton community.

  Julian: So Anthony, tell me about you before you came to Bigton and how life was then.

  Anthony: My name is Anthony. I am originally from Syracuse, New York, where I lived with my father after my mother’s passing when I was 6. My father is a tall, warm-hearted man who worked as an editor at the Syracuse Post for as long as I can remember. Dad believed that happy, well-adjusted, successful people could trace that all back to their education, so I went to the high school of Arts in the Syracuse suburbs. I was known as the “Drama Queen” of the school not only for my stellar work in the theater but also because I was rather emotional, and a tad of a crybaby. Looking back, I would describe myself as shorter-than-average, slightly nerdy, non-athletic - wait, don’t those two go hand-in-hand? *Chuckles* I was a good student. I took it for granted that I was accepted in my community; it was just a normal life. I was happy.

  Julian: Then what happened?

  Anthony: Then my father got a call for a big job in Jackson, Mississippi, that they wanted my father as the Editor of the Clarion Ledger, the biggest newspaper in Mississippi. Of course my dad immediately took the job and we moved on the last day of 10th grade and were on our way to the south.

  Julian: Here, just speak into the mic and speak as if you were telling us one of your elaborate stories. I will only stop you if there is something that is a bit unclear to me. Okay?

  Anthony: Well, alright. I guess I can do that. It has been a while since I thought about this stuff so I might forget some parts.

  Julian: I will fill in any important parts but you have a good memory. I will write down everything you say. Okay now go….

 

 

  Chapter 1

  I still remember days where life wasn’t like it is today. Where the air tasted different and the birds were merrier. Where I could still smile on my commute to my school. Where people would smile at me when I walked by and said hello. Where I didn’t move to Bigton. Where this small town in Mississippi was just a town that I didn’t know about instead of the town that I reside in today. The first of September. The second day of school at Bigton high. I am dreading every minute up until I walk through those doors and receive the same harsh treatment that I received yesterday. The racism and discrimination of solely being myself. For carrying the heritage that makes me that this town despises with a hatful passion with more fury than that of which awaits the damned in hell. That is the life that has awaited me since that day. The day I moved to Bigton, Mississippi.

  When we got to Mississippi, my dad finally decided to tell me that we were not going to live in Jackson, but we were going to live in a small town 20 miles outside of Jackson. It seemed fine enough since I have lived in a suburb for my whole life. It seemed like a good idea at first, a new experience and life in another part of the country that I loved so much.

  It was the first of August and I had just finished putting my room together, it is a very spacious room, it was about twice as big as my old room. And the house was at least twice the size as the one in Syracuse. Then I heard a knock on my bedroom door.

  “Hey, son. You finished up your room?” Dad said to me. I can still remember his giant body filling up my doorway. His warm aura is still making my body warm to this day.

  “Yup, just finishing up the last few books on my shelf and then we can go drive into town like you said,” I answered as I stood up.

  “Good, good. Actually, son, I already went to town and got the groceries we needed for the next few weeks. You can just hang out here if you want. If you want to come downstairs, you can join me in a game of 2k.”

  “Actually, I was going to finish my summer homework since school starts a bit earlier in this state, if that’s OK with you…” I trailed off.

  “Oh, I almost forgot about that. You work on that, and I’ll have dinner ready at about 6 o’clock tonight. We are having tomato soup,” my dad said as he dismissed himself from the room and ran downstairs.

  The feeling I get when I feel my father wants me to be more like him grows every day. My father was captain of the basketball team all throughout high school, while I haven’t even tried out yet. I know he is going to try and make me this year, but I won’t make it. I haven’t played basketball since I was little and I’m only 5’5”. I will stick to drama and good grades, even if that isn’t what my father wants.

  ~~~

  As I walked outside to the warm, summer breeze of a late summer's dusk, I felt a pain coming from inside my house. My father had been different. I thought that maybe it was the town. My father had been the only one going into town since we got here, and he had been more and more resentful to go get groceries, but still insisted I didn’t go. It all made sense to me the next day.

  ~~~

  The next day, I insisted to my father that I go into town with him and run some errands. It took half an hour and all of my acting skills to convince him to let me go beyond our front yard. Eventually, we were in our truck cruising down the small town’s main street with all the shops, stores, etc. There was even a Gamestop, which my father was most excited about.

  “I want you to stay in the car while I go into the post office, I have to deliver my first checks to my employees!” Father said with the first smile I had seen in a while.

  As he went in, I started to look outside at Main Street to see how the people were. It was not even close to culturally diverse, it might even have started to go backwards. Everybody looked like the stereotypical white southerner. I don’t think I saw one black person or partly colored person. Everybody seemed normal and happy. I couldn’t wait to see how the people were at school. I was very naive at that time, still blissfully ignorant of the pains that were coming to me.

 

  Chapter 2

  The alarm clock in my room blared its usual annoying medley of squawking and beeping, but it didn’t bother me so much that morning. It was the first day of school and too many other emotions were competing for my attention. I did my usual routine and went downstairs to eat my breakfast. A bowl of dry cocoa puffs and some 2% milk poured in my favorite oversized bowl. I ate it in 3 minutes flat.

  Back in my room, I laid out my clothes before getting back under my blanket. I had about 15 good minutes before my dad yelled at me for oversleeping. I showered, dressed, and grabbed my bag – pre-packed the night before, of course. Before I left, I grabbed about 70 pencils, and headed off to my new school.

  Bigton High is on the southern outskirts of the tiny town, placing it several more miles away from the more “modern” city of Jackson. Farther down south, farther from society. I walked onto campus, which was much different than any New York State campus. All the buildings were one story but there was at least 20 of them scattered and connected by narrow, two person sidewalks, it was like a whole mini town in itself. There was a full-length football field, a baseball field on the other side of the campus, and outdoor exercise equipment. I walke
d onto the campus, but I stuck out like a giraffe in short grass trying to hide. I was unable to find a single person of color, everybody looked the same, and I am not even being racist but if I took a photo you would think they are all related.

  I walked onto the school campus and everybody started to avoid me, which was a first considering I’m friendly and usually smell nice. I walked to the principal's office to get my schedule because they didn’t mail it to me like everybody else. Made sense to me, since we registered for school late this summer.

  “So you the new kid in these parts, eh boy?” the principal said, as he stayed in his nice leather chair behind his redwood desk, still reading his paper. He was an old man, in his 50’s or 60’s. There was something about him. I wasn’t sure if it was the way he spoke or they way he looked at me but it just gave me a chill down my spine.

  “H-He-hello, sir…” Was all that I could muster, like my voice was shorter than I ever was.

  “Speak up son, tell me your name so I can get you your schedule!” He said as his voice echoed through the room.

  “A-Anthony Cedar...” I said with all my might, but it still came out as a simple little squeak.

  He raised an eyebrow and looked at me as if I disrespected his family heritage or something, before I realized I forgot to say “ Sir!”

  That is when he proceeded to turn around and go to his filing cabinet, he took out a clean white piece of paper with minimal amount of words and numbers. It was in the finest font I’d ever seen. I brought it here if you want to put it in the book.

  Period 1: Biology (8:00 - 9:00) room #: 101

  Period 2: American History (9:05 - 10:05) room #: 109

  Period 3: Physical education (10:10 - 11:10) room #: gym

  Period 4: lunch (11:15 - 12) room #: CAF.

  Period 5: Calculus (12:05 - 1:10 room #: 115

  Period 6 : Drama (1:15 - 2:05) room #: AUD

  Period 7: English Literature (2:10 - 3:10) room #: 104

  I looked at him and then the paper again, then him then the paper. Once more at the paper and THAT is when I asked …“Is this it?”

  “Well what more did ya expect, boy? It is a full schedule, class numbers and times. You need a GPS with it as well, Yankee?” He spoke those words to me with a steady increase in his volume.

  “No, sir! Thank you, sir! Pleasure to meet you, sir!” I said with a very shaky tone in my tone as I jogged out of his office. I thought to myself, “That was the scariest adult I had ever seen!”

  ~~~

  I made my way to the oversized cafeteria where most students waited before going to first period. There were at least 200 students present, and it was louder than a stampede of enraged elephants with whistles taped onto their trunks. Yet again, I looked around at all these kids, and I only saw stereotypical southern white boys and girls. It had started to annoy me how undiverse this school was. In my old school there was no clear majority, only a percent of every race and ethnicity.

  As I stepped into the cafeteria, I was stopped by a collective stare. It was like an invisible barrier of racism that I had never felt. I stood there in the doorway. It felt like an eon of intense hatred, but in reality it was only like 10 seconds of stares and whispers between friends before I walked out quickly.

  I was genuinely sick to my stomach. I was very confused and was pondering this as I ran to a bathroom stall and locked it. I never felt like such an outcast before and couldn’t figure out the reason for such an occurrence.

  And then it hit me. I was able to figure it all out. My dad’s depression every time he went into town. I am an African American. It did not feel like the awkward brush offs of the popular kids or the different friend groups back in New York. Trust me, I am no stranger to being an outcast. I mean, I was a short, nerdy, black kid in the suburbs of Syracuse. But this pure hatred for me was unreal. It scared me.

 

 

  Chapter 3

  Shock. Adrenaline. Dizziness. Nausea. All I remember after that was thinking to myself to go to the Nurse’s office before I passed out. When I drifted back to the real world, I was in the nurse’s office. Looking up to the clock I realized that I had lost about 20 minutes from sleep, and first period was about to start. I had to make my way there. Thank God I made it there, if I didn’t I probably would have been abused by some brutes. I had to get to class, but before I got up. The door opened.

  “Well I thought I would never see the day! I am no longer the only “brown-skin” to walk the halls of Bigton High!”

  I was looking at a short, Indian man (like from India, not Native American) who looked more out of place in this school than I did. This was the school nurse.

  Julian: He always was a very nice old man, the way he was with the students.

  Anthony: He became a great personal advisor for my first few weeks of school.

  He said with a kind voice, “What is your name? Oh, where are my manners, my name is Omar Omatebakoolipuri. You can just call me Dr. O. I am from New Delhi in India.”

  Shaking his hand, feeling his firm grasp, I said with a shakily smile, “My name is Anthony, sir, it is a pleasure to meet you.”

  “I will write you a pass to your next class Anthony. Come to me, I am also the guidance counselor for this school. I am pretty sure you will need to come to me often here. Good luck on your first day.” He handed me a little piece of paper to get me to my next class untroubled.

  I walked out of his office still a little light headed as I stepped out in the long empty hallway. As suspected, my first period class was on the very end of the hallway, about a fourth of a mile. I got to room 101. I looked at the big, thick oak door that blocked my path. I turned the gold painted doorknob and stepped into the class.

  The stench of this classroom definitely reeked of dead plants and animals that defines biology, or the study of life. I haven’t really been a fan of the sciences, especially the sciences that involve me touching dead things or things that are explosive, so not a fan of chemistry or biology. I walked in to face the same stares, stares that seemed to ask why an outsider like me would even think it was ok to come into their hometown and disrespect them.

  “Mr. Cedar would you please take your seat.” The teachers voice didn’t even begin to process through my mind. I remember thinking that the pigments in my skin were only a few shades darker.

  “Mr. Cedar would you please take your seat.” The voice sounded faint, but I could feel his presence.

  It wasn’t even like they were really pale; they all had tans from the sunny southern summer, and I am relatively light skinned - since my mother was white.

  “MR. CEDAR WOULD YOU PLEASE! TAKE! YOUR! SEAT!” My brain came back to reality, and there was a little man yelling at me. Mr. Helmsley, was now in my face yelling at me.

  “I am going to ask you one more time before I send you to the Principal’s office. There’s an empty seat in the back right corner of the room, next to Brutus over there. Get your supplies out. Not only do you come late into my class, but you blatantly ignore me!! This is no way to start our school year, Mr. Cedar.”

  This frightening little teacher was bright red in anger. Even me at my height, I still had to look down to see him.

  Julian: He was really that short? I do remember him being very small, but short to you is SHORT!!!! Continue.

  Anthony: Yes. This bright red little man was yelling up to me to sit down in his smelly biology class.

  Scowling, he pointed to my seat in the far corner of the room where the light above flickered every now and then.

  ~~~

  It was a standard “first day of school” class. We all in
troduced ourselves and were given our syllabi. There seemed to be an emphasis on dissecting creatures and plants. Mr. Helmsley always spoke with a devilish smile every time he mentioned cutting open something, which gave me shivers every time. I kept getting the feeling of someone looking at me.