Week 1
Beyond casework which I am limited in discussing, this week involved a satisfying bit of state-hopping. There was a week-long commemoration of the 50th anniversary of Freedom Summer in Jackson, Mississippi, consisting of a number of seminars, presentations and lunches involving the original contingent of civil rights activists who risked their lives for their cause.
It was a good few hours drive south to the Louisiana coast, then north-east across the border.
Socio-economic indicators were abound, even right next to our campus
My colleague took us along Highland Road en route, which bore a few relics of its past...
You could still make out what I guessed was old field boundaries and irrigation ditches next to the lodgings.
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We arrived in Jackson in the midst of the Freedom Summer events. Our first stop was a photography and artwork exhibition at the Mississippi Museum of Art.
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Not just any old photography, but breathtaking heat of the moment snapshots of the political and racial turmoil of the 1960s, as well as work by the renown portraiture artist Norman Rockwell.
My personal favourite was an award winning series taken by Matt Herron in 1965, of a five year old boy named Anthony Quinn refusing to let go of his American flag despite the attempts of an officer twice his size to take it off him.
I actually attended a Baptist Church sermon today in McComb, and to my surprise one of the reflection speakers was Anthony himself.
He said he didn't really appreciate the gravitas of what he was protesting at the time. His mum had simply told him not to let anyone take the flag off him; he was far more scared of what she would do rather than whatever armed officers could....
The centrepiece of the Rockwell exhibit was his work 'Murder in Mississippi'; a depiction of the last moments of Andrew Goodman, James Chaney and Michael Schwerner in 1964 (on the right below).
The shadows of the perpetrators allude to what was proven at trial to be the collusion of local police authorities with Klansmen. As the depiction is from the imagination of Rockwell, the picture on the left was the inspiration for his composition. It shows Chaplain Louis Padillo defying sniper fire to give the last rites to a dying solder in Venezeula in 1962.
An individual I had the pleasure of talking to was Hezekiah Watkins. He was 13 years old when he joined the mass movement of activists in the South; the youngest of the lot. His group staged a sit-in at a Greyhound bus station, refusing to budge from the 'whites only' section, and he was arrested for breach of the peace.
I asked him if he lied to his parents about where he was going. 'Yup'.
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I had the extreme pleasure of walking through Tougaloo College campus. The College was founded by New York based Christian missionaries in 1869 for the education of freed slaves, and bore a very proud heritage. The sleepy willow trees sighed over the rolling lawns, and th...I'll just show you some pictures.
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So everyone has their heroes. Whether it's Danny Glover...
Socio-economic indicators were abound, even right next to our campus
My colleague took us along Highland Road en route, which bore a few relics of its past...
You could still make out what I guessed was old field boundaries and irrigation ditches next to the lodgings.
-------
We arrived in Jackson in the midst of the Freedom Summer events. Our first stop was a photography and artwork exhibition at the Mississippi Museum of Art.
Not just any old photography, but breathtaking heat of the moment snapshots of the political and racial turmoil of the 1960s, as well as work by the renown portraiture artist Norman Rockwell.
My personal favourite was an award winning series taken by Matt Herron in 1965, of a five year old boy named Anthony Quinn refusing to let go of his American flag despite the attempts of an officer twice his size to take it off him.
I actually attended a Baptist Church sermon today in McComb, and to my surprise one of the reflection speakers was Anthony himself.
He said he didn't really appreciate the gravitas of what he was protesting at the time. His mum had simply told him not to let anyone take the flag off him; he was far more scared of what she would do rather than whatever armed officers could....
The centrepiece of the Rockwell exhibit was his work 'Murder in Mississippi'; a depiction of the last moments of Andrew Goodman, James Chaney and Michael Schwerner in 1964 (on the right below).
The shadows of the perpetrators allude to what was proven at trial to be the collusion of local police authorities with Klansmen. As the depiction is from the imagination of Rockwell, the picture on the left was the inspiration for his composition. It shows Chaplain Louis Padillo defying sniper fire to give the last rites to a dying solder in Venezeula in 1962.
An individual I had the pleasure of talking to was Hezekiah Watkins. He was 13 years old when he joined the mass movement of activists in the South; the youngest of the lot. His group staged a sit-in at a Greyhound bus station, refusing to budge from the 'whites only' section, and he was arrested for breach of the peace.
I asked him if he lied to his parents about where he was going. 'Yup'.
-------
I had the extreme pleasure of walking through Tougaloo College campus. The College was founded by New York based Christian missionaries in 1869 for the education of freed slaves, and bore a very proud heritage. The sleepy willow trees sighed over the rolling lawns, and th...I'll just show you some pictures.
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So everyone has their heroes. Whether it's Danny Glover...
...or maybe something more nuanced....like for example Robin Williams' character in Good Will Hunting; the world-weary mentor who tames the vulnerable but brilliant undiscovered prodigy played by Matt Damon. Rumour has it that Damon's history teacher at Cambridge Rindge and Latin, Larry Aaronson, was his inspiration for the mentor.
Larry and I had a Whataburger together. He was working at the start of the year on one of my cases with a couple of fantastic High School students who laid a lot of the groundwork. The world really is short of good history teachers. I enjoyed a vibrant 15 minute crash course in the history of the South, as well as a sobering discussion about the Boston bombers; the younger of the brothers was Larry's neighbour and he knew him well.
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By today (29th) the commemorations had drawn to a close. We were kindly driven cross-state back to Baton Rouge by our Program Director, stopping on the way for the sermon I mentioned above, which was held in Society Hill Baptist Church. The Church had been bombed during the 1964 Freedom Movement...
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By today (29th) the commemorations had drawn to a close. We were kindly driven cross-state back to Baton Rouge by our Program Director, stopping on the way for the sermon I mentioned above, which was held in Society Hill Baptist Church. The Church had been bombed during the 1964 Freedom Movement...
And rebuilt thereafter...
And so, I sit once again in my well air conditioned Baton Rouge student apartment. The next potential trip is Houston, Texas, where I may get to visit family members surrounding one of my cases...
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