The railroad station in 2008. I took this photograph
on a return visit to Canton, Mississippi. The
"colored" waiting room where I sat in 1964 was no
longer there.
on a return visit to Canton, Mississippi. The
"colored" waiting room where I sat in 1964 was no
longer there.
Mississippi ain’t one of my favorite states. I’ll tell you that! Mississippi and I don’t get along. There are a number of people, who live in Mississippi, who I just love like crazy. I could tell you about them, man, but that is not the purpose of this blog.
by Charlie Leck
“This is not politics! This is human rights!” Ellen DeGeneres
Mississippi has
passed, and the governor of that state has signed, a stupid bill (Religious
Liberty Bill) that allows people with religious objections to deny LGBT people
marriage, adoption and foster care services. And that ain’t all (as a
Mississippian might easily say)! Residents may also refuse to sell such person
any property or services.
This utterly
stupid bill will allow churches, religious charities and any private businesses
to decline services to people if doing so violates their religious beliefs on
marriage and gender.
It’s time to
write-off any future travel to Mississippi! It’s time for businesses to rise up
and tell Mississippi that this law may cost millions and millions of dollars
and many, many jobs for its residents. Mississipians don’t get it: Many
corporations are dependent on their good relationships with the gay and lesbian
communities.
Mississippi and
I have never gotten along. I arrived there for the first time in my life on a
Monday morning in 1964 – actually on June 22 – at about 8 o’clock in the
morning! The famous old train, The City
of New Orleans, dropped me and a few traveling partners off at the railroad
station in the city of Canton. As we traveled through the dark night on that
train, a number of KKK fellows stopped three young men on a back road between
Philadelphia (MS) and Meridian. Those young men (only slightly more than boys)
were murdered by the KKK and their bodies were secretly buried where the
ungodly organization thought they’d never be found.
But you know
this old story of Mississippi Burning!
Don’t you?
I spent some
awful days down there in that unwelcoming, inhospitable and damned horrible
state! (But I’ve written about all of this here before and I needn’t repeat
that! If you want to read my Mississippi Blogs, written in 2007, you can begin
at… http://chasblogs.blogspot.com/2007/12/remembering-sixties.html
I’ve been back
to Mississippi a couple of times since that 1964 visit and I don’t like the
state a bit more than I did on my first visit.
It’s just that
I’m not surprised that Mississippi would pass such a law. It’s the damned
strangest state in the nation anyhow, so why wouldn’t it do something like
this?
Let’s hope
sensible corporations will put the pressure on Mississippi to repeal this law
and get rid of it for good.
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If you read my blog regularly, why not become a follower? All you have to do is click in the upper right hand corner and establish a simple means of communication. Then you'll be informed every time a new blog is posted here. If all that's confusing, here's Google's explanation of how to do it! If you don’t want to post comments on the blog, but would like to communicate with me about it, send me an email if you’d like.
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