How White Flight Destroyed the Mississippi Delta (Blame Whitey)

The Atlantic ^ | January 6, 2014 | Alan Huffman

[C19fan]

In the Mississippi Delta town of Tchula, there’s a fading columned mansion that once belonged to Sara Virginia Jones, the daughter of a local plantation dynasty. Its walls were lined with nearly 400 works by artists as prominent as Paul Cezanne, Marc Chagall, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Salvador Dali, and Andy Warhol.

Then, in the 1990s, the house changed hands. Today, it is filled with framed photos of the current owner—Tchula’s controversial first black mayor, Eddie Carthan, who was in office from 1977 to 1981—posing with U.S. presidents Carter, Clinton, and Obama and the Nation of Islam’s Louis Farrakhan.

[Osage Orange]

Ditto

[VerySadAmerican]

Sadly, lots of white kids start acting and speaking black.

[VerySadAmerican]

The truth is Sherman had it right. They’re not capable of caring for themselves. It’s the big pink, or white, elephant in the room.

Even Andrew You on SNL when said “Light skinned blacks are smarter than dark skinned blacks.”

[VerySadAmerican]

You just pointed out that “black flight” added to the downfall.

[VerySadAmerican]

2000 White 55% Black 40%
2010 White 47% Black 47%

That could be from blacks having more kids than whites.

[logitech]

It is truly sad. These people won’t farm the land, build a house or open a business. No wonder they live in poverty.

[aposiopetic]

Yep, those single-family homes will ruin any community. / sarc

[Dead Corpse]

So, Adult Culture builds things, Thug Culture destroys them.

Got it.

[razorback-bert]

I grew up in a very small town in Washington County, there are maybe 2 or 3 of my classmates still living there. It was a wonderful place to grow up. Last trip there, left heart sick at what it had become.

[GOPJ]

Having experienced “white flight” twice while growing up I know that it’s more about black kids assaulting white kids and the parents’ desire to protect their kids than about mere racism. The blacks started to move in. Assaults and beatings made it dangerous for white kids to go places. What are parents to do?

You're right. The author of this piece doesn't understand most white people lost money on their homes when they were forced to flee crime and violence. They also lost the communities and neighbors they grew up with... it's a high price to pay. Hope the black dude living in the old white person's mansion enjoys it...

[Wallace T.]

In a sense, the Northern migration was an important reason for the civil rights movement. Earning better income in the Industrial cities, often at union scale, blacks now had more income to fund the NAACP, and similar groups. They had voting rights in the North and developed political leverage they lost after Reconstruction failed. With allies among Northern whites, they developed enough clout to impel Eisenhower to be the first President since Grant 80 years earlier to enforce integration orders. They also had enough influence to ensure the passage of Federal civil rights laws in the 1960s that amounted to a second Reconstruction. This time, Southern whites backed down for the most part, something their forbears did not 90 years earlier.

[Wallace T.]

In a sense, the Northern migration was an important reason for the civil rights movement. Earning better income in the Industrial cities, often at union scale, blacks now had more income to fund the NAACP, and similar groups. They had voting rights in the North and developed political leverage they lost after Reconstruction failed. With allies among Northern whites, they developed enough clout to impel Eisenhower to be the first President since Grant 80 years earlier to enforce integration orders. They also had enough influence to ensure the passage of Federal civil rights laws in the 1960s that amounted to a second Reconstruction. This time, Southern whites backed down for the most part, something their forbears did not 90 years earlier.

[Wallace T.]

In a sense, the Northern migration was an important reason for the civil rights movement. Earning better income in the Industrial cities, often at union scale, blacks now had more income to fund the NAACP, and similar groups. They had voting rights in the North and developed political leverage they lost after Reconstruction failed. With allies among Northern whites, they developed enough clout to impel Eisenhower to be the first President since Grant 80 years earlier to enforce integration orders. They also had enough influence to ensure the passage of Federal civil rights laws in the 1960s that amounted to a second Reconstruction. This time, Southern whites backed down for the most part, something their forbears did not 90 years earlier.

[wardaddy]

I had a Tchula Africa experience last summer

My wife flipped out.....she’s never been in deep Delta on a summer Friday nite...except eating at Lillos or Does

We had eaten at Luscos and were headed down 49 to Tchula then Lexington and down 55 to Jackson....my ancestral home...Prep/Ole Miss...the stereotypical thingie

Anyhow we come into Tchula around 930...early for Friday nite

There are only a couple of gas stations nowadays on the Cruger/Sidon side

We see 100s of black....Mississippi blue black fairly pure tropical African black...we all know the vernacular but I ain’t saying it here

Its damn dark....were in my Silverado crew cab....TN plates...Ted Cruz sticker...I made two years ago

Anyhow...there is a black man lying in middle of 49...)looking dead...tribes surrounding him lying there...southbound lane

My 14 year old boy who’s built like Clay Matthews and looks 17 and I run over thinking he’s been hit

Hit yeah....by a bottle of Heaven Hill that is.....snockered

Us and a couple of stocky black boys...again avoiding the natural colloquial... helped us get him over by the store and propped him up by the door

Now we are the only woods anywhere in a sea of 2-300 blacks out juking

But...this is the Delta and in Greenville I would been worried...in Tchula in that circumstance I felt OK...cautious but OK

Back in the 70s at duck camp at The Brake at Sidon I would never dreamed of hostility from country black folk

Anyhow we get our gas and some excellent fried chicken and catfish for later...being the pigs we are when in deep south and got back to the truck

My tiny wife was apoplectic....terrified

Was I careless

44 was in the truck....

Anyhow.....many things drove whites out.....mechanization and agri business and kids often just want out

Lease the land out and keep hunting rights or a camp house

The worm has turned...pity...its a unique place...I love it...its impacted me..

[Ditter]

Your post just reminded me of something similar. We were driving back from Nashville to Houston, maybe it was Greenville. We stopped at a cafe late at night for a bite and got turned around and took the wrong street to get back to the highway. Turned the corner and we were in the middle of a crowd of blacks all over the street who were looking at us like “what are you doing here whitey?” I don't know if it was a party or a fight but were were out of our element and I was scared. I was driving and I didn't slow down and they moved out of our way but I was really glad to get away from that scene.

[WKB]

http://www.newsms.fm/casting-call-mississippi-based-movie-free-state-jones/

[wardaddy]

Oh lord

After all those silly Buick commercials why am I not surprised

Bynums account is EXTREMELY..politically correct....and I grew up with some Moffats who passed white

Many of the Jones county mixed race moved to Creola Alabama after the war

Non southern Freepers will swoon though just like they did The Help

Will they ever run out of material with which to best Dixie or worship Blacks

Newt will be given the John Brown gloss over

And young folks will see him as hero forever

More brainwshing as a tool...150 years later

[wardaddy]

Greenville was OK 30-40 years ago

I was at the airbase briefly as a toddler in 50s

And it was majority white.

All gone now

I bet the Hodding Carter clan is all gone

They were big civil rights lefties

I grew up with their kids and step kids

[wardaddy]

Wow is all I can say.

[Pelham]

Good post. My dad sometimes mentioned that blue black thing. Not what you often see outside the deep south.