I thought I had taken a snap of the Sumner Drug Store. Apparently, I was a sad-ass photo-documentarian. So for graphic relief, please enjoy this photo of the dog who first assailed and then greeted me at Robert Johnson's gravesite on Money Road, a few miles outside of Greenwood, Mississippi.
Tallahatchie County is basically a food desert. Let’s say you’re traveling and you want a can of mixed nuts to nibble on, something halfway healthy. In the small towns and rural areas of the Mississippi Delta you can’t find a can of mixed nuts to save your life. So, I was relegated to buying the little one- or two-ounce pouch numbers they sell in convenience stores. Anyway, I was visiting Sumner, one of the county seats, home to the courthouse where the animals who killed and mutilated Emmett Till were found not guilty by a jury of their all-white peers. My last time in town I had visited the Till Memory Project. I’d gotten a tour, plus a lot of wisdom from a fellow named Benjamin Saulsberry. Benjamin’s well-versed in the local history, especially as it pertains to racial issues. And what the fuck doesn’t in Tallahatchie County – hell, America.
Anyway, back to nuts. I wandered into an establishment called the Sumner Drug Store, working there were a pharmacy technician, probably in her thirties, and an older woman who seemed to manage the place. She was one of those aggressively gregarious types. Pleasant enough, but a little off-putting to an introvert. What was striking about her was the interaction she had with a customer, a black woman. I guess Sumner Drug Store is one of those multi-purpose local businesses where people can pay utility bills and such while they shop for Tylenol or pick up scrips. This white woman was friendly toward the black woman, but in this totally paternalistic way characteristic to the “polite” South - dripping with preemptory and patronizing tone – “why, I’ve known you – how long? – about all your life, I’ve never known you to be late on any bill.” Sorry, but this wasn’t the sort of history I was in town to investigate. I kept my mouth shut but I had to bite my tongue to keep from saying something to this white lady. Our friendly merchant was also using the unavailability of items like hand sanitizer and toilet paper, in the midst of the Coronavirus pandemic, to offer a critique of socialism. “This is like socialism; can’t get nothing you want.”
You never know what dosage of American wypipo bullshit you’re in for when you wander into a drug store in Sumner, Mississippi.
I drove by the Emmett Till Memory Project. It was late afternoon on a rainy Friday and things looked dark. I wanted to say hi to Benjamin but felt a little shy about knocking around the courthouse searching for him, especially given that I had no idea if he was about. The things I discussed with Benjamin stick with me, though. The central tenet of the Memory Project is that “reconciliation begins with telling the truth.” Simple enough, but it blew me away. It crystallizes so much. Sumner was, in the early part of this century, a town where everyone stepped around each other, politely for the most part, but tight-lipped. Forty-five years before the year 2000, a terrible miscarriage of justice had taken place on the heels of a gruesome, barbaric murder, a murder that compressed all the delusions and sins of the white South into a convenient, if horrifying, ball.
As I interpret things, a conversation began in Sumner because an underlying racial tension was simply untenable. If Sumner once represented everything repulsive about white racism, it became an experiment in discussion and reconciliation. Frankly, this is my attempt to understand things that are hard to understand. If in the process I help any of you process our bitter history this will not have been a waste of time. And it is bitter history. The New York Times undertook a major study of the story of race in America in 2019 entitled “The 1619 Project” – 1619 marking the first purchase of human beings of African origin to be used as labor in Virginia. Hatred and hardship have been visited upon various ethnic groups in the United States. And for the purpose of this discussion, we’re omitting the obvious horror of the Native Peoples Holocaust in America. All that said, there is something about chattel slavery, the social mentalities and morés it both fostered and built, that makes it unique in our history. And this singularity has cast a shadow upon American life, every aspect – yet America remains in denial. More on this as we move along.
SOUNDTRACK:
Lightin' Hopkins may not be from Mississippi.
But he can darn sure sing the blues in my
Dirty Lil Honda.
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