Miss. has much to be proud of on anniversary of civil rights speech, Hurricane Katrina

*First appeared in the August 29, 2013, edition of the Laurel Chronicle

As I considered the subject matter for this week’s column, a couple of things struck me as particularly relevant. Fifty years ago this week, Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., delivered his famous “I Have a Dream” speech to a crowd of some 200,000 demonstrators in Washington, D.C. on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial.

I also realized that Mississippi has another anniversary August 29, the date on which Hurricane Katrina wreaked “utter devastation” on the Mississippi Gulf Coast eight years ago. Like so many Mississippians, I remember Katrina - and the mind-numbing aftermath - like it was yesterday.

As my mind wandered, I began to find parallels between the two anniversaries.

In August 1963, our nation was in the midst of a freedom movement to make good on Rev. King's “promissory note,” that proverbial check from the United States to citizens of all races for justice and equality. The speech was especially relevant to Mississippi, which was at that time under the leadership of an outspoken segregationist governor (Gov. Ross Barnett).

As a friend of mine noted, we tend to vaguely recall the “I have a dream” portion of the speech but overlook (or simply don’t know) that in his remarks, Rev. King cited our beloved state - the one with two humpbacks and twice as many crooked letters - as a hotbed of racial injustice...and opportunity.

“I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice,” declared an authoritative Rev. King in his historic remarks.

What Rev. King - the man whose being is synonymous with the civil rights movement - saw in Mississippi was a place where hatred existed, but so did a great opportunity for healing.

Rev. King’s remarks were not “an end, but a beginning” of a sea change in public policy and opinion. His comments, coupled with the courage of others who fought for civil rights in the years prior, changed hearts and minds…though not immediately. A year after the speech, three civil rights workers (James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner) were slain in Neshoba County. Countless others were beaten, threatened, and even killed on their journey for justice. Yet progress prevailed at its slow, steady pace.

A 1963 Mississippi is not reflective of a 2013 Mississippi, a state which will celebrate the groundbreaking of the Mississippi Civil Rights Museum in late October; a state which welcomed Freedom Riders in 2011 to celebrate the 50th anniversary of their equality rides with events across the state and a formal apology from former Gov. Haley Barbour; a state which has the highest number of African-American elected officials in the nation. We are a state shaped by our past, but not defined by it.

And so it is on this eighth anniversary of Katrina that Mississippians of all races have again shown the world we are not defined by circumstances. Hurricane Katrina devastated homes and families; it destroyed infrastructure and fundamentally changed life as we knew it, particularly along our Gulf Coast. It did not, however, weaken the resolve of our people.

This mega-storm – the largest natural disaster in American history – struck Mississippi, a state rife with poverty and a shameful history of racism. Some thought that of all the states, we were the least prepared to handle such a disaster.

But like Rev. King’s speech, Katrina cast a spotlight on Mississippi. And, like fifty years ago, we had a choice: We could live up to their low expectations or seize this opportunity to change the way the world viewed the Hospitality State.

Mississippians banded together and made our choice. Blacks and whites, rich and poor, rural and suburban; none of these things mattered. Neighbors helped neighbors, regardless of race or economic status. Hospitality was extended between families whose antecedents fifty years ago might have refused to share restrooms. Our shared history made us a strong people – strong enough to recover from the devastating impacts of Katrina.

One could argue that our shared struggles uniquely prepared us to deal with Hurricane Katrina, in that we as a state are accustomed to overcoming seemingly impossible odds. The storm that fundamentally changed Mississippi, fundamentally changed the way the world views us…in the same way our progress in race relations has changed the way we view ourselves.

William Faulkner’s often quoted as saying “to understand the world, you must first understand a place like Mississippi.” Rev. King understood Mississippi as a place of great trouble but of equally great opportunity, and he was right. Today, I couldn’t be prouder that the state I call home has, in the face of great adversity, seized opportunities to create a place where we have come to realize that our destiny is tied up with others; that our freedom is inextricably bound to the freedom of others; and that, as the Rev. King said, “we cannot walk alone.”