The narrative has developed that 74% of the people who went to the polls in November supported medical marijuana legalization. But in reality, the convoluted process enacted by legislators used to place an alternative to a citizen-sponsored initiative on the ballot makes it difficult to gauge the precise level of support for medical marijuana.
Still, that narrative led to the creation of the “We are the 74” group and Facebook page referencing the 74% of voters who presumably voted in favor of legalizing medical marijuana. “We are the 74” is the rallying cry of a large number of people who want the Legislature to approve medical marijuana — sooner rather than later — after the Mississippi Supreme Court struck down the medical marijuana initiative approved overwhelmingly by voters.
It is inaccurate to say that 74% of people who went to the polls in November favored the legalization of medical marijuana. It would be true to say that the November vote indicates a strong majority favored medical marijuana legalization.
Granted, in the grand scheme, it makes little difference whether medical marijuana support at the polls in November was at 65%, 75% or some other overwhelming number. Still, it is important to provide accurate information and the context of that support.
The 74% is the percentage of people who voted for the citizen-sponsored Initiative 65, which legalized medical marijuana, compared to the 26% who voted for the legislative alternative. Both legalized medical marijuana, though the legislative alternative did so with many more restrictions than did the citizen-sponsored initiative. But based on that outcome, 100% of voters supported legalizing medical marijuana in some manner. But to argue that 100% of people voted in favor of medical marijuana also would be a false narrative.
What is important to remember is that Mississippians are faced with two questions when the Legislature opts to place on the ballot an alternative — competing proposal — to a citizen-sponsored initiative. Some argue that the Legislature intentionally developed the convoluted, two-question process to enact a citizen-sponsored initiative to make it more difficult to pass any proposal opposed by the Legislature.
Under that convoluted process, the first question gives voters two options: to support either the citizen-sponsored initiative or the legislative alternative, while the second option is to oppose both.
If opposition to both receives more votes than the support for either the citizen-sponsored initiative or the legislative alternative, then that is the ballgame. Both are defeated. But this past November, 816,107 (68.5%) voted in favor of the citizen-sponsored initiative or the legislative alternative, while 374,931 (31.5%) voted against both, according to official results from the Mississippi Secretary of State.
Perhaps it could be argued, based on the first question, that almost 69% favored the legalization of medical marijuana, not 74%. But it could be argued that number is not correct either. After all, there theoretically could have been voters who opposed both the citizen-sponsored initiative and the legislative alternative, but supported the concept of medical marijuana. If that was the case, and if they took the question literally, they would have voted no on the first question.
And incidentally, to further complicate a complicated process, people who vote against both on the first question can still vote for either the legislative alternative or the citizen-sponsored initiative on the second question.
Of course, this all came up after the Supreme Court in late May in a landmark and controversial 6-3 decision struck down the medical marijuana initiative approved by voters in November and while doing so struck down the entire initiative process. The court ruled the initiative process invalid because language in the Constitution requires signatures to place an issue on the ballot be gathered equally from five congressional districts. The problem, the Court ruled, is that the state has had only four districts since the 2000 Census.
Supporters of medical marijuana, upset with the court ruling, rallied around the “We are the 74” mantra. There is nothing wrong with that. It makes the point that a large percentage of Mississippians support the legalization of medical marijuana and are now asking the Legislature to enact what was taken away from them by the Supreme Court.
It might be 74% who support medical marijuana. It might be a little less. It might be a little more.
It is just hard to ascertain from the November election. Perhaps it would be a public service if legislators would simplify a convoluted ballot process as they work in the coming months to revive the initiative process struck down by the Supreme Court.
For much of their life, Kyle Simpson, a Perry County resident who identifies as non-binary or as someone who identifies neither as female or male, has felt invisible.
“I have always been punished for who I am,” said Simpson, who is an aspiring counseling psychologist. “I have spent my life with people telling me that I’m the problem.”
Like Simpson, many people are feeling unaffirmed in Mississippi, where 3.5% of its population identifies as LGBTQ+. Several LGBTQ+ Mississippians responded to Mississippi Today’s NextGen survey and shared their experiences.
Many of the LGBTQ+ residents who spoke with Mississippi Today said they feel connected to Mississippi, but they all expressed a desire for affirmation in the state that sometimes fails to recognize them. Acknowledging their existence, several of them shared, is key to building a more accepting community.
While each respondent’s perspectives varied, several overarching themes emerged: feeling tension between upbringings and finding acceptance in the state, wanting to stay in the state but feeling a lack of community or a lack of resources, and struggling to reckon with harmful policies championed by some of the state’s elected officials.
Simpson acknowledged these problems are not unique to Mississippi but tie into America’s complex history of disenfranchising marginalized groups.
“Change is threatening, but people have to know the truth of the South even though it is a beautiful paradise with great people,” Simpson said, alluding to the long history of the South’s leaders, in particular, passing policies that marginalize certain groups.
Several of the survey’s respondents mentioned policies championed by some of the state’s most powerful elected officials like House Bill 1523 passed in 2016, which is often referred to as the most sweeping anti-gay legislation in the country.
“People feel if they allow other marginalized people to feel valued then they worry their own experiences will be invalidated,” Simpson said. “I don’t want to be treated like a trans person. I’m Kyle Simpson first.”
Derrick Dupuy, a 22-year-old Millsaps College graduate, was early into his fellowship at the Meridian Freedom Summer Project — a program for sixth through twelfth graders designed to foster academic, leadership and professional successes — when he was asked by a young student when he knew that he liked boys.
Dupuy, who teaches arts-integrated Black history with an emphasis on civil rights and Afro-religions, opened up a dialogue that day to be “real” about his sexuality as a gay Black man.
“Masculinity is all about choice, and that’s not something that has been afforded to the Black man or to the Black community,” Dupuy shared.
Growing up in New Orleans, Dupuy recalled “being bullied for being gay.” But Dupuy’s experience, unlike white LGBTQ+ members, highlights a common aspect that people of color face: increased homophobia and stigmatization.
While Dupuy recalled homophobic and racist experiences at Millsaps College prior to coming out, he said he is ultimately proud of his decision to publicly acknowledge his identity. Dupuy reiterated that affirmation for LGBTQ+ Mississippians begins with people “looking in the mirror” to break the cycle of judgment and fear.
“That’s the beautiful part of being LGBTQ+ is that we’re multidimensional and when we’re given space to flourish, we flourish,” Dupuy said.
Melanie Walsh, a Mississippi State University researcher who also works with the LGBTQ Fund of Mississippi, has sat on the organization’s grants review committee for two years and has studied the extent of Mississippi’s resources that support organizations aiding LGBTQ+ people.
A lead researcher on the LGBTQ Fund’s statewide needs assessment, Walsh’s research drew in 500 survey participants, conducted focus groups in seven regions of Mississippi, and identified 28 LGBTQ+ organizations in the state.
Walsh knows that even with some resources in the state, LGBTQ+ life in the South can be an isolating experience.
“I think for a lot of youth, it’s hard to see role models in this community,” Walsh said. “There’s a lot of us out there, but the visibility isn’t there.”
While Walsh listed social media and Gay-Straight Alliances as ways for LGBTQ+ Mississippians to connect, she emphasized that safety is a vital factor.
“We always want to make sure safety comes first,” Walsh said. “Being somewhat visible if it’s safe.”
Walsh and several others detailed to Mississippi Today the emotional labor of coming out to oneself and to others.
“When I told my mom, I was actually crying,” Sebastian Prisock, an 18-year-old Madison Central graduate, shared as he referred to his coming out as a trans man in the seventh grade.
Backed by a supportive mother, Prisock had the opportunity to “openly talk about those things” in his community growing up; however, he attested to experiences that made him feel targeted in school.
“My counselor had seen me literally holding hands with my girlfriend even though there were tons of people doing other things than holding hands. A week later, she called me in and said we can’t be doing that,” Prisock said.
Prisock’s experience echoed the difference in treatment regarding LGBTQ+ members and heteronormative or straight members, though he said his teachers still respected him “if they were not completely accepting”.
Starting hormone therapy in February of this year, Prisock realized that awareness of LGBTQ+ resources — particularly hormone therapy — in Mississippi is scarce.
“Even when people make the smallest bit of change, people will always push back some. But if policies change, then people change,” Prisock said.
Adam Connor, a University of Mississippi graduate, learned through an experience of not being able to come out on his own terms that it is important to initiate the narrative on his identity.
“I think that’s a part of why I’m so open today,” Connor said. “I’d rather just tell people things first than have them hear some convoluted story. I just want to be the provider of that piece of information.”
Those “convoluted stories” Connor referred to are micro-aggressions and indirect discrimination against a marginalized group in the workplace, like when he is asked outright “if he is gay” or more subtly asked if he is dating anyone.
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Connor recognized that genuine support can derive from such questions; however, he reiterated that only further misunderstanding is created about LGBTQ+ identities.
“They’ll ask and they’ll be supportive of it like, ‘Oh, that’s so great. I love gay people. I need a new gay bestie and then we can go shopping and do all the stereotypical stuff together,’” Connor said.
When same-sex marriage became legalized in Mississippi in 2014, Connor revealed a common stressor for non-marginalized groups: the fear of having their rights stripped away.
“That whole gay marriage debate was messy, and my viewpoints on marriage are messy,” Connor said. “Because of it, I grew up not expecting being able to exercise this right.”
Although not always acknowledged or heard in Mississippi, many LGBTQ+ Mississippians shared a fondness for the state they live in. But they also recognize the challenges of building community here while expressing hope that they would be more broadly accepted in the future.
“It is disrupting the status quo, but it is a necessary disruption,” Walsh said. “It is absolutely imperative that we’re acknowledging our identities.”
The rapid rise of Delta variant cases and virus outbreaks combined with the state’s low vaccination rate led the Mississippi Department of Health to release a slew of new COVID-related guidelines on Friday.
The new recommendations, which will stay in place through July 26, are:
All Mississippi residents ages 65 and older, as well as anyone with a chronic underlying medical condition, should avoid all indoor mass gatherings regardless of their vaccination status.
All unvaccinated Mississippians wear a mask when indoors in public settings.
All Mississippians 12 years of age and older get vaccinated.
State Health Officer, Dr. Thomas Dobbs, said that these recommendations were decided on because Mississippians collectively have not done what it takes to protect us all, and MSDH wants to give the most vulnerable individuals the best guidance so they can survive the Delta surge the state is facing.
“At this pace, and given the sort of external dynamics that are in play here, we’re going to remain vulnerable for a long time,” Dobbs said. “I don’t think that we’re going to have some miraculous increase in our vaccination rate over the next few weeks, so people are going to die needlessly. And so when we look at who our most vulnerable people are, it’s going to be the people 65 and older, or who have chronic medical issues.”
While MSDH has made these new recommendations, they are just that. Mississippi has had next to no COVID-related restrictions at the state level since Gov. Tate Reeves repealed most of them in March.
The Delta strain is currently circulating much more quickly than other variants in Mississippi. Over the past two weeks, the number of Delta cases in Mississippi has increased more than fivefold, up from 29 to 137.
Delta is now also the dominant variant across the United States. Nationally, the average number of new cases has started to trend upwards due to localized Delta outbreaks in places, like Mississippi, that have low vaccination rates. The Mississippi State Department of Health reported 427 new COVID-19 cases on Wednesday, the most for any one day since March 13.
The Delta variant has considerably increased the already high risks posed by the virus to unvaccinated people. Between June 3 and July 1, 95% of all COVID infections in Mississippi were among the unvaccinated. During that period, the same group also accounted for 90% of hospitalizations and 89% of deaths.
The vaccines are nearly as effective against the Delta variant as the original strain, greatly minimizing the chance of infection and nearly eliminating the risks of developing a serious illness. Studies suggest, however, that being fully vaccinated is the only adequate protection against the Delta variant, as a single shot of either of the two-dose mRNA vaccines provides only weak protection against infection. The Delta variant, first identified in India, is believed to be about 60% more contagious than the Alpha variant and up to twice as contagious as the original strain of COVID-19.
On Thursday, Pfizer announced that it will seek emergency FDA authorization for a third booster shot that better protects against the Delta variant. Dobbs is already recommending that immunocompromised Mississippians get tested to check their antibody levels after getting vaccinated, and ask their doctors about getting a third dose if their immune system did not respond strongly to the first two doses.
State Epidemiologist Paul Byers added that the decision to receive a third dose right now will be on an individual basis and based on the physician/patient relationship.
“As far as an overall booster recommendation for a specific group, or for the total population, I think we are still not at that point yet,” Byers said. “That’s not a guarantee that we won’t be at a booster point down the road, but I think that the vaccines that we have right now are still showing effective long-term immunity.”
Despite the wide availability of vaccines and the risks posed by variants, Mississippi continues to rank last in the nation in the share of its population that has been vaccinated. With over 2 million shots administered, only 31% of Mississippians have been fully vaccinated.
TUTWILER — It’s been a 32-year journey for Mary Willis Mackey, Quilt Director of the Tutwiler Quilters. Mackey’s passion for quilting began in 1989, a year after Sister Maureen Delaney of the Sister of the Holy Name Order started the quilting program for women in the community to get out of the house, come together and make money.
It was a way for friends to get together and share stories, laughter, and of course, stitching. Once she started, Mackey caught the bug. She studied patterns and how to lay them out, working with cardboard cut-outs as her patch shapes before ever taking scissors to actual material. She taught herself how to use a sewing machine too.
“It’s a lost art and I want to keep it going,” said Mackey, who is passing the tradition down to her granddaughter. “She just came to me one day and said, ‘Grandma, I want to make a quilt.’ And that was it. She took right to it.”
“I love it. I really do,” said Mary Willis Mackey, Quilt Director of the Tutwiler Quilters. “One day, I hope to travel around the state and teach all who want to learn how to quilt.”
“It takes patience, but it’s a lot of fun,” said Mary Willis Mackey, Tutwiler Quilt Director, as she touches up a few stitches on a music-themed quilt at the Tutwiler Community Education Center.
“I studied what I could. Taught myself on the side about patterns, and how to use a sewing machine. I have to admit, I’m addicted to quilting. I love it,” said Mary Willis Mackey, Quilt Director of the Tutwiler Quilters.
“I want to keep this tradition alive,” Mary Willis Mackey, Quilt Director of the Tutwiler Quilters.
“I love it. I really do,” said Mary Willis Mackey, Quilt Director of the Tutwiler Quilters, meticulously snipping loose threads from a quilt. “I want to keep the tradition alive.”
“It’s a dying art. I want to teach as many people as I can,” said Mary Willis Mackey, Quilt Director of the Tutwiler Quilters.
Many towns and cities in the Delta claim they are the birthplace of the Blues. For Tutwiler, local legend tells of W. C. Handy waiting on a train to Memphis, when he heard a man playing “the strangest music he ever heard,” on a slide guitar.
Local legend tells of W. C. Handy waiting on a train in Tutwiler to Memphis, when he heard a man playing, “Where the Southern Cross the Dog,” on a slide guitar. The song is a reference to the Yazoo and Mississippi Valley Railroad, called the Yellow Dog by locals, that crossed paths with the Southern Railway. And therein lies Tutwiler’s claim as the birthplace of the Blues.
Backing of a music-themed quilt.
Potholders created by the Tutwiler Quilters.
Mackey can be found every Saturday morning at the Ruby Armstrong Brown Resource Center in Jonestown passing down her knowledge to a quilting class of nearly 80 ladies.
“They’re really enthusiastic to learn,” said Mackey. “We usually run on past the time class is supposed to end because no one wants to stop. They all want to see that quilt take shape.”
Today, the Tutwiler Quilters program serves as a way for people, women especially, to learn a quilting style specific to the Delta and create art that they can use to support themselves.
“It takes patience though, and a lot of love,” said Mackey. “And I love it. I absolutely do. The learning is in the head, but you do it from the heart,” she said, while storing away all manner of quilting materials donated by a woman who traveled with a friend from Iowa.
“One day, what I’d really like to do is get me a little bus or van, and travel around to communities all over the state and teach people how to quilt. Keep a long tradition going, Plus, it really is a whole lot of fun,” Mackey said.
Curtis Wilkie, the 81-year-old Mississippi native and veteran journalist who recently released his new book “When Evil Lived in Laurel: The White Knights and the Murder of Vernon Dahmer,” will be a featured guest at the Mississippi Book Festival on Aug. 21.
Adam Ganucheau: Not that he needs an introduction for anyone here, but I do want to read just a short one just to get us primed for this conversation. Curtis Wilkie, a native of Pike County, Mississippi, covered many civil rights happenings in Mississippi during the 1960s. Later as a correspondent for the Boston Globe, he continued to cover the later days of the movement, and many of the continued civil rights stories in Mississippi and across the South over the next few decades.
In 2007 he came back home to Oxford, where he served as professor of journalism and fellow at the Overby Center for Journalism and Politics for several years before his retirement just last year. He’s the author of several books, including “The Road to Camelot: Inside JFK’s Five-Year Campaign”, “The Fall of the House of Zeus” and “Dixie: A Personal Odyssey Through Events That Shaped the Modern South.”
And today, of course, we’re here to talk about Curtis’s newest book, “When Evil Lived in Laurel: The White Knights and the Murder of Vernon Dahmer.” Curtis, it’s an honor for me to be talking with you about your latest book, about your latest work. Thank you so much for being here with us.
Curtis Wilkie: Adam, thank you. It’s always fun to be with you guys.
Ganucheau: Curtis, I want to ask you to sort of tell us a little bit about the book, but I want to prompt you with the first words in the book that you wrote. It’s a quote attributed to Edmund Burke: “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.”
As the title of this book suggests, this is a story about a very good man in Vernon Dahmer, and of course the events leading up to and the fallout after his tragic murder. The book is about another very good man in Tom Landrum, and one very evil man in Sam Bowers.
Curtis, tell us just a little bit more about these three sort of main characters in the book, and a little bit about their stories.
Wilkie: Thank you, Adam… Vernon Dahmer was probably better known in south Mississippi at the time that he was active. I was a young reporter in the Delta and I can’t remember whether I had heard of him before his death. I certainly became aware of him following the murder. It was just another one of these awful things that went on in the south and in Mississippi in the sixties. He’s basically an unsung hero. I think he deserves a greater reputation than he has nationally because of the work he did and it cost him his life to do it. I covered the final trial of Sam Bowers when he was convicted in 1998, and during that, I spent some time with the Dahmer family, particularly with his wife Ella Dahmer and Vernon Dahmer Jr. And they just had such grace through all of this. And so I always appreciated their help back when I was in Hattiesburg, covering the trial of Bowers. Bowers was truly an evil guy. He was the imperial wizard of the White Knights and they were the worst of the worst of the klan.
Bowers lived in Laurel, he was not from Laurel originally, but he was a Mississippian with all sorts of distorted ideas about race and religion. He actually developed a crazy philosophy called Christian militancy, that basically authorized murder and terror, according to his perverted view of life, you know, it was perfectly acceptable. So he was one particularly bad, bad guy.
The third person who’s a major figure in the book is a man named Tom Landrum who was, you know, he was at the time a 33-year youth court counselor in Jones County. And he was approached by a friend of his who was a local FBI agent who asked him if he’d be willing to join the White Knights in order to report on their activities.
And Tom was so troubled by what was going on in his home community that he agreed to do that. And he did for four years, filed any number of literally hundreds of reports, all of that was eventually made available to me. And you know, that forms the basic raw materials for the book that I was able to flesh out with all sorts of valuable FBI documents that are available at the University of Southern Mississippi library. But in the course of writing it, Adam, I always like to have an epigraph at start up a book, pick up something that is wise and hope relevant to the book.
And at some point I came to that Burke quote, which I had always liked. It’s a famous quote. I thought it was just so very applicable here that, you know, you had a situation that involved certainly evil, but it also involved some very good people and two good men, who would have been Vernon Dahmer and Tom Landrum. So that’s that’s how I approached it. It’s kind of a battle of good versus evil. You’ve got almost pure good, and you’ve got pure evil.
Ganucheau: You know, the book is compelling. The many stories that you’ve just laid out for us and, of course the book itself, I think, is really important right now. Curtis, as I was reading the book, I was thinking a lot about this moment that we find ourselves in America… I thought a lot about last summer, the murder of George Floyd and how that inspired sort of this national reckoning on racism that many people have suggested has not been matched since the 1960s when, of course, this story is set.
I haven’t talked to you about this, but I assume you were either in the throws of finishing the writing and reporting of this book, or at least in the editing process last summer. What did that moment mean to you? And as readers now, as we are going through this work of yours, as we’re sort of learning more about the story of Tom Landrum and Vernon Dahmer and what happens in the late 60s in Laurel, what do you think we should take from it? And what did you personally take from sort of telling this story in a moment such as this?
Wilkie: Well, I suddenly realized that I started on this project in 2018, probably two years before all these other events that crystallized and these movements that are going on today. And before I had finished, I realized how relevant this story is to our current time — that it has a strong consciousness about race and race relations.
And suddenly once again, we’re seeing efforts being made by elected public officials to suppress the vote, especially of Black people, people they anticipate, are going to vote a particular way. And it seems to fly in the face of democracy just as the suppression that went on, you know, in the bad old days. You know, it didn’t start in 1960, it started with Jim Crow and all of the periods after Reconstruction. So it’d been going on in this state for 70 or 80 years until, the 1960s… Vernon Dahmer dedicated his life to, and it cost him his life.
Ganucheau: Sure. You know, getting back to the story a little bit, I am very intrigued by how this story sort of came to you. For you as the author, walk us through that. I think it’s incredibly compelling. I think it gives some insight into the writing process and the creative process that you’ve been through the last few years with this project. I do think that the genesis of it is compelling. Tell us just a little bit about how this came to you.
Wilkie: Yeah, sure. It’s not part of the narrative of the story. The story basically takes place from 1965 until 1969. I was approached in 2018, kind of secretively through a couple of middlemen, if you will, between the Landrum family and me. The Landrum family was searching for someone to write about Tom Landrum and what he had done. Tom was still living at the time, he had been identified in a book that was privately published and not a whole lot of people read it, but the book did identify Tom Landrum as a member of the klan. And he was troubled by that because his role had been secret for all of these years and he didn’t want that to be part of his legacy. He had not even told his children about this. So, his wife who had typed up all of his notes and journals that were sent to the FBI, she had very wisely saved carbon copies of them. And they had saved this material. And so they were able to draw up on this.
They just had this incredible, account, if you will, of Tom’s experiences at klan meetings. He talks about quarrels and disagreement among the klansmen, their plots to target people, or home burnings. He knew almost from the outset that Vernon Dahmer was going to be targeted, but he didn’t know when.
I think certainly the FBI was aware that Dahmer was a prime target, but no one knew. Of course when the White Knights finally decided to strike, they did it very suddenly and spontaneously and just a handful of members actually took part in the raid and the others didn’t even know about it, and there was some resentment among them, we learned from Landrum’s journals.
In some cases, the sentiment among the various klansman was deep resentment. Some had not been told about it. Others were so troubled that they had gone so far as to commit murders and drop out of the klan. The Landrum papers were invaluable to me until finally, I was taken down to the Landrum family home right outside of Laurel and met with the family. They were kind of vetting me and I was, you know, receptive to whatever they might have to offer. And then once I guess they trusted me, they shared with me these incredible journals. And once I took a look at it, I said to myself, oh my God, you know, you’ve got another book on your hands.
Ganucheau: That’s an incredible story. As a journalist that’s the stuff you dream about.
Wilkie: Yeah, so you always like to have something presented to you on a platter, it’s not always that easy. But it involved a great deal of other research. And unfortunately, you know, there’s not a lot of people still living who lived through that period.
I’m old enough to remember it myself. But so many of the people who were involved in the story are no longer living, not only the Klansman but some of the good people who tried to bring about justice. You know, the one person who’s pretty well-known in Mississippi, who is still living, is Judge Charles Pickering, who was a county prosecuting attorney in Jones County at the time. Judge Pickering was very helpful to me in this research.
Ganucheau: As a journalist, you know, the Landrum papers I know were sort of, the key part of your storytelling and your reporting and writing process, but besides just the Landrum papers, what else went into this? I seem to recall FBI files, you had to pore over many interviews. I mean, what all goes into writing a book like this that’s sort of so journalistically focused.
Wilkie: It helps to have some familiarity with the story and idea because, you know, I lived in Mississippi and was a young journalist in the 60s. But more importantly for my own personal background was, you know, the fact that I covered the final trial of Sam Bowers and had met with the Dahmer family and, you know, I spent been a lot of time on that story.
I had written several stories leading up to the trial and then covered every minute of the trial and its aftermath, which, the trial itself lasted at least a week as I recall. In fact, I wrote a book 20 years ago called Dixie, and it was my intention when I started writing that book that the book would open with the trial of (Byron) De La Beckwith, who had murdered Medgar Evers, and it took more than 30 years to finally convict him, but that was done in 1994 in Jackson. So that was going to be the beginning of that book, and it was going to end with the trial and conviction of Sam Bowers.
And as I was writing that book, my friend Willie Morris, who had been such an inspiration to me, died. And that just seemed to finally close the closest circle on what I was trying to write about. So, the Bowers trial became the next to last chapter in my book, Dixie. So I knew a bit about the story and, you know, the evil Sam Bowers. I had to one brief encounter with him.
It was jury selection and judge let the reporters come into his chamber while the various lawyers were selecting the members of the jury. And we all sat around this big long table. And as we sat down, I realized I’m sitting next to the imperial wizard himself. And I notice he’s got on Mickey Mouse pins, two of them, on each lapel.
And, at first I said, “Excuse me, Mr. Bowers. What’s with the Mickey Mouse?” And he looked at me and he put his finger to his lips and shook his head as if to say, “I’m not talking to you.” And it was a silence he maintained for the whole trial. He never opened his mouth during the trial.
So I never got a chance to talk to him. I did talk some to his very inept lawyer, Travis Buckley, who was a klansman himself. And some of the key figures in the book were witnesses at that trial including Billy Roy Pitts, who went on the raid and he testified against Bowers.
It was really Bowers’ chief lieutenant testified on behalf of Bowers, so I had seen these characters in action, too. So all of that, that helped immensely.
Ganucheau: Sure. Curtis I know I talked to you many times about it. I’ve read accounts, you know, Dixie has plenty of this in it. You were good friends with a lot of these, you know, civil rights activists. Some of the most influential people who were fighting for voting rights in the 60s in Mississippi. Of course Aaron Henry being a close friend and mentor of yours.
Wilkie: Yeah, absolutely.
Ganucheau: Did you have a chance to meet Vernon Dahmer?
Wilkie: No, I never did. Unfortunately I didn’t, but you know, Vernon Dahmer and Aaron Henry struck me as being very, very similar. Vernon Dahmer would have been a little bit older, but they were both NAACP and the movement was not a monolithic, you know, there were rival organizations, just like there were rival klan groups. And both Vernon Dahmer and Aaron Henry were very willing to work with the young turks in the movement to sometimes more scornful about the NAACP. You know, particularly people from SNCC, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, and both Vernon Dahmer and Aaron Henry welcomed these young people to help them.
And they tried to help the young people and Vernon Dahmer even had a couple of SNCC people living on his land for a while, while they were engaged in voter registration activity in Forrest County.
Ganucheau: Another thing that I’m kind of curious about that came to me as I was reading this, is you just talked a lot about sort of your personal experience as a journalist at the time of the Dahmer murder. But I wondered, you know, being in Clarksdale at the time, this tumultuous time certainly for race relations in Mississippi, did you have any run-ins yourself with the klan, and did that help you as you were writing this book?
Wilkie: Happily, not really in Clarksdale. The Citizens Council, essentially, represented, the strategists for the segregationists, and they felt that the klan was counterproductive. And so they tried to tamp down any kind of violence. We had plenty of suppression that went on there, and the Clarksdale police force was pretty terrible at the time. But my one brush with the klan at that time was taken place in the summer of ’64.
The first arrests made under the Civil Rights Act were made in Greenwood. There was a Black guy who tried to cross a klan picket line at the local theater to attend the theater, which he was now legally able to do because of the passage of the Civil Rights Act, and he was beaten up. And so the FBI quickly came in and arrested three people from Greenwood and brought them to Clarksdale, which was the federal jail for that part of the Delta.
And there I am, at my office at the Clarksdale newspaper and I get called up by the Associated Press. And they say, “Curtis, you know, if you get a picture of these guys, you know, you get our fee of $10” or something. Which was big money at the time. So I picked up the newspaper camera and went to the jail where ordinarily, I would have known everybody there from the sheriff to the jailer and the deputies and whatever.
I walked in that jail, and I didn’t recognize anyone. The jail had suddenly been taken over by the klan from Greenwood, and Greenwood was a tough town and that’s where (Byron) De La Beckwith came from. And I was not exactly a profile in courage, I have to admit. I was immediately asked in brusque tones, “What do you want, boy?”
And I said, “Well, from the Press Register and I was wondering if Mr. Bell might want his picture taken.” That was the name of one of the guys who had been arrested. And they said, “Mr. Bell don’t want no picture took.” And I knew right away, you know, who they were and what they were up to. And I said, “Thank you very much.” And I got the hell out of there.
So, you know, that was my one direct encounter with the klan during that period. Although, you know, we certainly had plenty of trouble into Delta, but in and around Clarksdale there were no murders, so far as I know, no bombings or burnings. But you know, a great deal of official suppression, plus demonstrations from the civil rights people, a lot of activity, but it didn’t get as bad as it did in parts of south Mississippi, including my home county Pike County where they had it bad.
They became known as the church burning capital of the world. Something like 25 black churches that were either burned or bombed because they had voting registration activity in those churches.
Ganucheau: Sure. You know, one thing that came through in this book — this sort of inside, you know, behind the scenes, look at the workings of the klan at the time showed just kind of how inept and unintelligent these people were. You know, I know there were plenty of tragedies, most of all the Dahmer murder being one of those main ones, but it came through, Curtis, that just they were really bad at the things that they wanted to accomplish.
Wilkie: I guess that’s a good thing. You know, if there’s anything that distinguishes this book from so many other good books had been written about this period, it’s that… I hope it did it justice in kind of describing in great detail, the actual meetings and the actual people in it and their crazy characteristics and their incredible stupidity and foolishness. They botched one mission after another. These were not a bunch of rocket scientists at work here. They were largely a bunch of bumblers. They even botched the raid on the Dahmer home and store, though, of course, they achieved their purpose of killing him. But in the process they left behind all sorts of evidence that could easily be traced to them. One character, Billy Roy Pitts, loved cowboy movies so he had styled himself a quick draw pistol, a holster, and he put his pistol in it.
And during all the excitement at the Dahmers, it fell out and he left it behind. Another character who was in the car with Billy Roy Pitts, his name was Lightning Smith. They were in two cars, four people in each car, one car burned a grocery down. The other one burned the Dahmer home down. The car that burned the store down is pulling out and, you know, they’re the only two cars down there. Lightning Smith in the other car thinks it must be to police. So he shoots out the tires of the other car and they have to abandon the other car and know suddenly you’ve got eight weighty, you know, not particularly small klansman, all crowded into one car, trying to flee the scene of the crime. And if it were not such a tragedy, it’d be, you know, great comedy.
Amtrak has gained some access to the freight-owned tracks it needs to begin a Gulf Coast passenger route. But whether Amtrak’s desired Jan. 1 start date will go on as planned is still unclear.
Despite an ongoing battle through a federal transportation board, freight operators have given Amtrak limited access to their properties on the Gulf Coast. The agreement, outlined in letters given to the board, allows Amtrak workers on freight-owned property to survey and prepare for the possible Gulf Coast route.
But the parties are still far from agreeing to operate a passenger service that connects Mobile to New Orleans with four Mississippi stops. Amtrak filed a petition with the U.S. Surface Transportation Board in March, asking the board to step in after years of failed negotiations over the route.
This week, Amtrak again pushed the board to speed up its decision making so it can begin the route in 2022.
“Amtrak respectfully renews its request for expedited treatment of its application,” Amtrak wrote in a filing dated July 6.
In that filing, Amtrak gave the board an update about the access agreement. Amtrak also included copies of correspondence between itself and freight operator CSX Transportation.
Per the agreement, Amtrak now can access CSX property and personnel to survey what’s needed to add a layover track in Mobile and repair stations in Bay St. Louis, Gulfport, Biloxi, Pascagoula and Mobile.
In its response to Amtrak, CSX still emphasized another study is needed about whether the route can handle the mix of passenger and freight traffic.
The necessity for more studies is one of many disputes between Amtrak and the freight companies that the transportation board will have to tackle in its decision. But when that decision may come is unknown.
A spokesman for the Surface Transportation Board said it does not comment on timeframes for decisions.
As of July 8, the transportation board had 65 separate filings from stakeholders, public officials and the railways to sift through.
As public health experts have warned for weeks, the Delta variant of COVID-19 is now the dominant strain circulating in Mississippi, causing a spike in cases and hospitalizations.
Delta is now also the dominant variant across the United States. Nationally, the average number of new cases has started to trend upwards due to localized Delta outbreaks in places, like Mississippi, that have low vaccination rates.
With 678 confirmed cases, the Alpha variant, which originated in the United Kingdom, still represents over 75% of all variant infections in Mississippi, but the Delta variant is now circulating much faster. Over the past two weeks the number of Delta cases has increased more than fivefold, up from 29 to 137.
State Health Officer Dr. Thomas Dobbs has repeatedly stressed that Mississippians have the choice of getting vaccinated or contracting COVID-19, and that in every scenario a vaccinated person is going to have a better outcome than if they had declined the shot.
The Delta variant has considerably increased the already high risks posed by the virus to unvaccinated people. The variant, first identified in India, is believed to be about 60 percent more contagious than the Alpha variant and up to twice as contagious as the original strain of COVID-19.
The vaccines are nearly as effective against the Delta variant as the original strain, greatly minimizing the chance of infection and nearly eliminating the risks of developing a serious illness. Studies suggest, however, that being fully vaccinated is the only adequate protection against the Delta variant, as a single shot of either of the two-dose mRNA vaccines provides only weak protection against infection.
Scientists have put forth an explanation for the overall decrease in efficacy of the vaccines against the variant. According to a new study published on Thursday in Nature, evolutions in the Delta variant’s spike proteins make it more difficult for antibodies to attach themselves and fight the virus.
Still, the data collected on COVID-19 infections and deaths over the last few months has made the benefits offered by vaccination irrefutable. The Associated Press has reported that nearly all new COVID deaths in the U.S. are among the unvaccinated. Of the more than 18,000 COVID-19 deaths that occurred in May, only around 150, or 0.8% were from fully vaccinated people.
Due to the surge of Delta infections across the globe, the World Health Organization recently repeated its longstanding recommendation that everyone, vaccinated or not, wear masks to limit the spread of infections.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has not changed its advice that fully vaccinated Americans can forgo masks in most situations. Current CDC guidance states that in general “you do not need to wear a mask in outdoor settings” if you’re fully vaccinated. In areas with high numbers of COVID-19 cases, it is recommended you wear a mask in crowded outdoor settings, or other environments where you will come into close contact with others who are not fully vaccinated.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s leading expert on infectious diseases, said in a Meet The Press appearance on July 4 that he would still wear a mask in Mississippi even though he’s fully vaccinated.
“You might want to go the extra step and say that when I’m in that area, where there’s a considerable degree of viral circulation, I might want to go the extra mile to ensure that I get the extra added layer of protection, even though the vaccines themselves are highly effective,” Fauci said.
Despite the wide availability of vaccines and the risks posed by variants, Mississippi continues to rank last in the nation in the share of its population that has been vaccinated.
With over 2 million shots administered, only 31% of Mississippians have been fully vaccinated. People are simply declining to get their shots, and this is keeping Mississippi in last place.
