Bilbo has been dead 60 years and has no white contemporary in Mississippi I know.
My dad did business with Charlie in (we’re all Charlies..lol) Fayette.....a very rural mossy oak river bottom and loess bluffs county....you expect Uncle Remus and Stephen Foster and Margaret Mitchell to come strolling down a deeply rutted red clay road any second...lol
it was heavy plantation farming pre Civil War and is maybe the blackest county in the state which is why Charlie chose it for theatre of operations in the late 60s.
my memories of Charlie are that of an early teen and he was maybe 50 or so...he’s got to be mid 80s now
Charlie was really cool....there is a jet black guy who is larger than life and been in some movies where he is appropriately a Mississippi black tough guy....really deep voice...anyhow Charlie is like that. Sharp and tough negotiator but funny and likable as hell......very nice to me....would take a keen interest in chatting me up in his office.....he is the kind of guy you like yukking it up with ..... very very keen....much keener than Medgar who was a naive idealist.
Charlie invites corruption allegations which to be fair are probably not wholly untrue.
he is not above race baiting for votes but is not a true believer and is not really GOP or Dem per se but believes in folks standing up for themselves and absolutely loathes blacks being patronized by guilty white liberals
and most important to me....he understands whites and expects the same candor from us and appreciates where he and I both came from without browbeating with the modern sensibilities big stick....he knows they did not murder his brother because they hated his black skin or thought him subhuman despite the rhetoric of the time at times but because they feared him politically and he has charted his course from that perspective....a realist
he’s a helluva guy.....a mix of good and bad but he was taught right and is nobody’s fool
there are a lot of older blacks down here (MS) like Charlie...would that there are more but the victim card is just as alluring to them as the guilt card is to weak peckerwoods.
Pickering will do fine...charlie is old and probably doesn’t want it anyhow
(my dad built and operated public utilities)
That’s a good description of His Honor, I’ve read similar accounts of him. If Haley is to appoint an interim appointee for a few months, it’d be a nice little short-term gig for Mayor Evers. He might be thrilled to pieces and get to give a speech or two. Something nice, y’know, for somebody who has seen and been through a hell of a lot. ;-)
I like Charlie, too...a lot.
I would rather spend my time in the Charlie Evers Airport,
but that’s not to be.