The day we learned about Deep Dixie and Snow

The snow situation in Atlanta, and its ramifications, seemed surreal, I am sure, to most non-Southerners.  But, if you've been in Deep Dixie in the winter, you really weren't that surprised.

In December, 1961, rare snow began to fall one afternoon in Mississippi.  I finished up my day's classes at Tougaloo and Eldri, who worked in the school's business office, joined me for our journey of several miles into Jackson where we were then living until a place on campus became available.  I drove out of the college gate, turned left and, like everyone did, ignored the traditional stop notice at the railroad tracks --- a big red-lettered sign, "MISSISSIPPI LAW - STOP" -- and entered a stretch of paved road which, in due course, morphed into State Street in Jackson.  At that point, there was a little over one inch of snow on the road.

Eldri and I, of course, were not strangers to snow.  We'd grown up with it.  I'd seen huge snows at Flagstaff, some of which blocked the Santa Fe from getting up the mountain into town.  We certainly weren't concerned with an inch or two or three.

But very quickly after we entered the paved road, I saw a Spectacle.  There was a little hill directly ahead of us and a growing jam-up of vehicles spreading rapidly on it.  Even more extraordinary, was that some vehicles ahead of us were proceeding like lemmings into the jam-up.  Sociologically interesting as this was, I turned into a filling station and reversed our course back to the college.

As we neared Tougaloo, the radio boomed a pronouncement by Governor Ross R. Barnett.  ( He -- described less than a year later by the Kennedy administration as "the living symbol of lawlessness" during the Ole Miss desegregation crisis -- was no wimp.)  In a few words, "Ole Ross" closed down the entire state of Mississippi.

We stayed the night at Tougaloo.  Later, colleagues of ours, John and Helen Zunes and little Stephen, moved off campus and we moved into their place.

H


HUNTER GRAY [HUNTER BEAR/JOHN R SALTER JR] Mi'kmaq / 
St. Francis Abenaki / St. Regis Mohawk 
Member, National Writers Union AFL-CIO

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