Set off from NOLA with the audio book of ‘A Confederacy of Dunces”. Things changed visually when we crossed into the State of Mississippi. I was immediately conflicted visiting Mississippi for the first time, fully expecting the worst. My memories of the movie Mississippi Burning are vivid.
We stopped for first charge in McCoy, Miss, where the first thing I saw was this church. Inside the dirty smelly ‘Waffle House’ in McComb on this misty Sunday, where we ate while waiting for the 35 minute supercharge, I chatted with a local parishioner.
I asked him about the ‘Pray for Israel’ sign on the church. “Why are we praying for Israel” I asked. He looked bemused. A minute passed. I thought I could hear the cogs turning. “Because the Terrorists are attacking them.”
Deep into Mississippi the feeling got worse. Crosses everywhere. Often, three crosses appear on the side of the road. Highly visible. I googled “Why are there three crosses all along the road in Mississippi?”
As usual google had the answer. It starts with crazed German Christian Bernard Coffindaffer. Bernard decided to spend millions erecting crosses across America. After God spoke to him.
After divorcing, Bernard underwent a profound religious conversion. Despite finding personal salvation, in 1970 he suffered a mental and physical breakdown and found himself hospitalized in the care of psychiatrists.
In 1976, he married June Woodrum, a psychiatric nurse. In 1982, Coffindaffer underwent open-heart surgery. While napping in 1984, he received a vision of the spirit of God. God said “Thou Shalt erect crosses, first in West Virginia, then in all 50 states.” Bernard promptly sold his business interests, several million dollars worth, and founded Cast Thy Bread, Inc., a nonprofit organization whose mission was to erect prefabricated crosses over the countryside.
At their peak, almost 1,900 of the cross clusters were found in West Virginia, other states, and abroad.
Then Bernard died but his message did not. Crosses Across America took up Bernard’s mission.
Crosses Across America based in Vicksburg, Mississippi, is a nonprofit organization whose mission is to preserve, maintain, and construct Roadside Crosses across America. Originated by the late Rev. Bernard Coffindaffer, new clusters of crosses every 50 miles along the highways and byways of North America are to be built by our organization.
Boy are these crosses sinister in Mississippi. They remind me of the Christian Ku Klux Klan, whose presence seems to be everywhere on this drive.
"The Holy Spirit instructed, blessed, dealt with me and told me how to go about installing these Crosses. It was an experience you have once in a lifetime." Bernard Coffindaffer
As we drove we listened to Bob Dylan’s song about Emmett Till. We decided to divert by a hundred miles to stop in Drew. The town where it happened in 1955. Willie Louis was the witness. But Dylan brought the story to a world audience, including me as a young boy in South Africa where I heard about Emmett Till and cried the first time I heard the song.
Was interesting to revisit the story all these years later, driving to the place where it happened, wondering, how could such behavior exist.
What deviance would drive any group of people to behave in this way.
Listening again, Dylan’s lyric remains as movingly brilliant as I remember. This song was playing as we entered the town of Drew, where Emmett Till was made an example of by the White Christian folk.
"Twas down in Mississippi no so long ago, When a young boy from Chicago town stepped through a Southern door. This boy's dreadful tragedy I can still remember well, The color of his skin was black and his name was Emmett Till.
Some men they dragged him to a barn and there they beat him up. They said they had a reason, but I can't remember what. They tortured him and did some evil things too evil to repeat. There was screaming sounds inside the barn, there was laughing sounds out on the street.
Then they rolled his body down a gulf amidst a bloody red rain And they threw him in the waters wide to cease his screaming pain. The reason that they killed him there, and I'm sure it ain't no lie, Was just for the fun of killin' him and to watch him slowly die.
And then to stop the United States of yelling for a trial, Two brothers they confessed that they had killed poor Emmett Till. But on the jury there were men who helped the brothers commit this awful crime, And so this trial was a mockery, but nobody seemed to mind.
I saw the morning papers but I could not bear to see The smiling brothers walkin' down the courthouse stairs. For the jury found them innocent and the brothers they went free, While Emmett's body floats the foam of a Jim Crow southern sea.
If you can't speak out against this kind of thing, a crime that's so unjust, Your eyes are filled with dead men's dirt, your mind is filled with dust. Your arms and legs they must be in shackles and chains, and your blood it must refuse to flow, For you let this human race fall down so God-awful low!
This song is just a reminder to remind your fellow man That this kind of thing still lives today in that ghost-robed Ku Klux Klan. But if all of us folks that thinks alike, if we gave all we could give, We could make this great land of ours a greater place to live.
There is no monument of where any of this happened in Drew. The people seem as poor as anywhere I have ever seen poor frightened people before.
We walked around the town in a light drizzle. A policewoman peered through the door of the Police room as we passed. Then scurried back inside when we looked over. If a place could ever be called depressing, Drew is it. Not yet able to deal with what happened there in 1955.
We did not see one White face in our 55 minute visit walking around Drew. Looking for the grocery store that 14 year old Emmett Till walked into looking to buy some gum.
The chamber of commerce doesn’t look inviting. (That’s it in the Pic below.) The barn where those good christian men did what they did to Emmett till to “send a message to those N((*&rs” is just up the road from this church. (Pic below.) But we didn’t go there. Its private land.
They still celebrate the death penalty there. The method of execution is lethal injection. Executions take place in the execution chamber, built in 2002, adjacent to the gas chamber, which is no longer in use, but has not yet been disassembled.
In the spring of 1961, Freedom Riders went to the American South to work for desegregation of public facilities serving interstate transportation, as segregation of such facilities and buses had been declared unconstitutional. Violence engulfed the Riders in Alabama, and the federal government intervened.
Finally the governors of Alabama and Mississippi agreed to protect the riders, in exchange for being allowed to arrest them. The Governor of Mississippi, Ross Barnett, did not permit violence against the protesters, but arrested the riders when they reached Jackson, Mississippi. By the end of June, 163 Freedom Riders had been convicted in Jackson and many were jailed in Parchman.
Leaving Mississippi we stopped to see the River where they dumped Emmett Tills body. It is incredibly lovely is a tragic beauty way. ‘What is the matter with these people’ was a constant thought as we looked at all this natural beauty and wondered why they chose Christian racist hate instead of simply choosing more than the abomination they represent for their mental illness belief.
And then we couldn’t get out of Mississippi quickly enough.
Their racist Christian History is just too much. We both felt drained seeing how little progress they appear to have made to straighten up and fly right as human beings.
We crossed into Tennessee. I felt better after seeing this road sign. Going to Graceland. Memphis Tennessee.
Right after checking into Hotel, we walked about 200 yards to Beale Street.
‘WC Handy Won’t you look down over me’. I was walking in Memphis. Walking with my feet ten feet off of Beale. (Not really high though. Don’t smoke weed, but I get the song lyric.)
Was so happy to visit this lively hub of live music. Loved the crazy authentic energy of Beale Street walking through a cloud of cannabis smoke with smiling cops on every corner looking like they were keeping the peace on a participatory level.
And I got to visit the statue for W.C Handy, immortalized in this song that was something of a life highlight.
Walking to Beale Street we noticed flags at half staff. Why, we wondered.
My first thought was, they are finally acknowledging the death of 20,000 children.
I googled it.
President Biden will order all flags to half-staff on May 5, 2024 to honor the 89 firefighters who died in 2023. His official proclamation for National Firefighters Memorial Day will be here as soon as it is avialble. (This typo is on their page.)
“I have often said that God made man, and then made firefighters. Their extraordinary courage embodies the best of America — with every call they answer, they put their lives on the line to keep the rest of us safe. It is more than what they do; it is who they are. This weekend, we honor the brave service of every fallen hero who has made the ultimate sacrifice for our communities.”
I wonder how many will see this cheap political distraction for what it is. If Biden believes God made firefighters so remarkable they deserve a National day of Honor, why don’t they deserve $26 billion for their pension fund.
Actual recognition rather than gaslighting words.
Surely that would mean more to every firefighter than a ‘day of honor’ that leaves Nurses and doctors and teachers and Crisis Aid workers and serving military all looking undervalued. Why didn’t God make them as special as firefighters? No Biden half staff flags for them. No money either. Not one cent from the billions Biden sends for Israel’s genocide go to any one of our own ‘heroic’ Americans.
Biden has the means to send $26 billion to Israel for bombing pregnant women and babies in tents. But not one cent to help firefighters in the USA. Nor any one of the other vital services heroic Americans fulfill on a daily basis.
Biden’s catastrophic brand of Nazi Zionist leadership by gaslighting Christian Americans is in a terminal spiral of decline. “Don’t look over there, look over here. What about those brave firefighters.”
Heroic Americans dying to protect and feed starving children in an horrific genocide not seen since the last Nazi leaders starved and killed millions are not worth a mention. Just kill all journalists, ban al Jazeera and rave about God and the flag and Thank God the brave firefighters get a national day. What patriotic American wouldn’t love that? Biden doing a great job. What genocide? Pray for Israel.
Thank God Biden is experienced. Thank God firefighters don’t need monetary recognition more than Israel’s genocide does. Thank God Americans still love Biden’s ‘money for Israel, flags for America’, fiscal policy. I doubt Biden could keep his job without Gods baby-killing guidance. God and the smart American voters who love them both.
What a cheap gaslighting liar Biden is.
And then after a long day over three states, a fabulous meal in our Hotel ruminating over an amazing 16 hour day, where we visited historical landmarks of American culture. Where Emmett Till was killed so dreadfully by Christians. Through Jackson, the democrat hub of a darkly republican Christian racist state, where on this same day, May 5th 2024, racist christian American Zionists attacked protestors with race hate; including monkey chants at Black protestors of genocide. Proving how little ever changes in this heartland of racist religious extremism of the worst American kind.
And then the joy of Memphis. And Beale Street. Seeing W.C. Handy’s statue and hearing the Lobby piano player doing jazzy versions of Elvis songs. “I can’t help falling in love with you”.
That’s how I feel about America when I focus on the good that exists and name and shame the bad. Of which the abundance is evident on this day where Biden has ordered all flags at half mast. For the firefighters. Because God said - bless those firefighters. Lets thank them for being the best of the best of us.
Don’t look over there. Look over here. I’m Half Staffing flags for them. They don’t need 26 billion dollars funding benefit when they know its much more important sending that money to my Zionist friends. Just tell them ‘God thanks them for their service’ while we send blackshirt Nazi goons to crack the heads of those pesky student protestors. They’ll buy that for sure. No one will notice a single thing. God bless those firemen. Half Staff flags works every time. God Bless America. God Bless the President. He’s experienced. Just like Trump.
