I arrived in Mississippi on Friday, driving two hours south of Memphis to Delta State University in Cleveland, Mississippi. I came to TFA’s Institute early, for Justice Journey. I had no idea what Justice Journey was, but I felt like I knew nothing about Mississippi, and I was eager for the chance to learn more.
Justice Journey made me consider how many people have told me that Mississippi will be so different from what I’m used to, and the number of people who treated me like I was an idiot or a martyr when I told them I was doing TFA here.
I’ve learned the most about the Civil Rights Movement. In Michigan, at least, the Civil Rights Movement is taught as a few big events – the Montgomery Bus Boycott, the March on Washington and a few big leaders – Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King. In Justice Journey, I learned about civil rights leaders I had never heard of – Fannie Lou Hamer, Medgar Evars and James Meredith.
I’ve been surprised by how similar Mississippi looks, when compared to Michigan. Rural Mississippi looks nearly the same as rural Michigan. In Michigan, the crops I drive past are corn and soybeans, but in Mississippi, they grow rice and cotton, in addition to corn and soybeans. Downtown Cleveland looks like a small vacation town up north, like Traverse City or Petoskey. In Jackson, we drove down a main road that was near the freeway and had a lot of chain stores, and it looked exactly like 28th Street in Grand Rapids.
The biggest change between Mississippi and Michigan is the food. I feel like it was an extreme change between the food around me in Michigan and the food in Mississippi. In Michigan, my housemates were very health-conscious when it came to food, making kale chips and becoming vegetarians, and someone was boiling ginger in water because it was supposed to deter colds. In Mississippi, I have eaten fried food every day, and meat at every meal. I’m told that we were specifically focusing on soul food during Justice Journey, so I’m thinking that there will be less fried food throughout the summer, but it was still a big change.
I expected to see confederate flags regularly, and in a variety of contexts. However, the vast majority of confederate flags that I’ve seen were in a museum exhibit, showing photographs of the riots that ensued when James Meredith enrolled at University of Mississippi. Many schools refuse to fly the state flag, because it has a confederate flag on it, and I’ve only seen the state flag once, outside a courthouse.
I’m surprised by how sad the end of Justice Journey is making me – I’ve loved the opportunity to explore Mississippi and get to know it as a place that has a rich cultural heritage, rather than a laundry list of problems. Coming here, I was planning on serving for two years and leaving, moving home and seeking certification in Michigan if I wanted to continue teaching. Now, this seems like a place where I could establish myself in the long term and be part of a community and a movement.