Mississippi History Quotes & Sayings

And so I'm stupid for thinking they might be useful. Because of something Johanna Mason said while she was oiling her breasts for wrestling. — Suzanne Collins

The issue of equal rights for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender individuals has vexed politicians for decades. I have my own cloudy history with the issue, having supported a law in Mississippi that made it illegal for LGBT couples to adopt children. I believed at the time this was a principled position based on my faith. — Ronnie Musgrove

On the breast of that huge Mississippi of falsehood called History, a foam-bell more or less is no consequence. — Matthew Arnold

A thousand times, when the train slowed or stopped, I thought of jumping off. I wanted to die in a ditch. I wanted to disappear. I wanted a different history and geography. In rhythm with the wheels I said I want I want I want I want I stayed on the train. — Lewis Nordan

At this point the judge took over the questioning. "Didn't lynchings happen in Mississippi?" he asked. Yes, admitted the rating committee member, but it was all so long ago, why dwell on it now? "It is a history book, isn't it?" asked the judge. — James W. Loewen

The first sentence of every novel should be: Trust me, this will take time but there is order here, very faint, very human. Meander if you want to get to town. — Michael Ondaatje

After all, a right that can't be exercised is not very useful to anyone. — Jessica Valenti

No matter how true I believe what I am writing to be, if the reader cannot also participate in that truth, then I have failed. — Madeleine L'Engle

Very few writers understand the complex history and maddening social order of the Mississippi Delta. For Steve Yarbrough, though, it's home turf. He is wickedly observant, funny, cynical, evocative, and he possesses a gift that cannot be taught: he can tell a story. — John Grisham

Thinking about our schooling in different decades and parts of the country, all three of us in that kitchen discover that we were taught more about ancient Greece and Rome than about the history of the land we live on. We learned about the pyramid builders of Egypt but not the pyramid builders of the Mississippi River. — Gloria Steinem

Safe from the Neighbors is a novel of unusual richness and depth, one that's as wise about the small shocks within a marriage as it is about the troubled history of Mississippi. Steve Yarbrough is a formidably talented novelist, shuttling between the past and present with a grace that feels effortless. — Tom Perrotta

Between 1882 and 1968, more black people were lynched in MIssissippi than in any other state. — Ta-Nehisi Coates

Stella Suberman's Suggestions for Further Reading
The Peddler's Grandson: Growing Up Jewish in Mississippi, by Edward Cohen
The Provincials: A Personal History of Jews in the South, by Eli N. Evans
Insecure Prosperity, by Ewa Morawska
The Slow Way Back, by Judy Goldman — Stella Suberman

She, as no other ever could, reached every corner of his heart. His joy, and his salvation. — J.D. Robb

Remember ... this year has already seen more billion-dollar weather-related disasters than any year in US history. Last year was the warmest ever recorded on planet Earth. Arctic sea ice is near all-time record lows. Record floods from Pakistan to Queensland to the Mississippi basin; record drought from the steppes of Russia to the plains of Texas ... This is what climate change looks like in its early stages. — Bill McKibben

Knocking on doors wasn't working. We had to try something else. Remember the kids whose natural curiosity brought them into our little office on the corner? We set up a Freedom School that was fashioned after the SNCC Freedom Schools in Mississippi and other places. — Junius Williams

If economic progress means that we become anonymous cogs in some great machine, then progress is an empty promise. — Charles Handy

We are now in a position to understand the anti-Semite. He is a man who is afraid. Not of the Jews, to be sure, but of himself, of his own consciousness, of his liberty, of his instincts, of his responsibilities, of solitariness, of change, of society, and of the world of everything except the Jews. — Jean-Paul Sartre

Although there are those who wish to ban my books because I have used language that is painful, I have chosen to use the language that was spoken during the period, for I refuse to whitewash history. The language was painful and life was painful for many African Americans, including my family.
I remember the pain. — Mildred D. Taylor

The violence that we had in the 60's was limited. The next time it will be unlimited because the violence in the 60's was a struggle for human dignity and for human rights. The next struggle will be a struggle for survival and it will not just be limited to Black people or Black against white, but it will be the poor people, the masses of the people of the country, struggling for the right to live or the right to survive. — Robert F. Williams

When she finally found her way onto the Trace, the sun was rising and, with it, her spirits.
The Natchez Trace Parkway, a two lane road slated, when finished to run from Nashville, Tennessee, to Natchez, Mississippi, had been the brainchild of the Ladies' Garden Clubs in the South. Besides preserving a unique part of the nations past, ... the Trace would not be based on spectacular scenery but would conserve the natural and agricultural history of Mississippi. — Nevada Barr

In talking about the [Emmett Till murder trial], you have to repeat the atmosphere. This is Mississippi in 1955, with a long history of intimidation of witnesses and fear on the part of blacks to testify, in racial situations in particular. For someone like Mose Wright and others to testify against white defendants in a situation like this was historic. — Charles Diggs

Our survival depends on the healing power of love, intimacy and relationships. As individuals. As communities. As a country. As a culture. Perhaps even as a species. — Dean Ornish

In the 1920s, Jim Crow Mississippi was, in all facets of society, a kleptocracy. — Ta-Nehisi Coates

In a little while they were kissing. In a little while longer, they made their slow sweet love.
The iron bed sounded like a pine forest in an ice storm, like a switch track in a Memphis trainyard, like the sweet electrical thunder of habitual love and the tragical history of the constant heart. Auntee finished first, and then Uncle soon after, and their lips were touching lightly as they did.
The rain was still falling and the scritch owl was still asleep and the dragonflies were hidden like jewels somewhere in deep brown wet grasses, nobody knew where.
Uncle rolled away from his wife and held onto her hand, never let it go, old friend, old partner, passionate wife. — Lewis Nordan

In the Spring of 1962, a white postal worker from Baltimore, William Moore, decided to use his ten-day vacation to showcase his passion for Civil Rights. Moore planned a "Freedom Walk" from Chattanooga, Tennessee, across Alabama, to Jackson, Mississippi, where he would confront Governor Ross Barnett about the injustice of racial segregation. Moore, who had a history of psychiatric illness, entered Alabama wearing signs that read MISSISSIPPI OR BUST, END SEGREGATION IN AMERICA, and EQUAL RIGHTS FOR ALL MEN. The much-publicized march ended tragically, when Moore's body was found on a roadside near Gadsen, Alabama - he had been shot to death. — Jeffrey K. Smith

Like running trying to live a good life has to hurt a little bit, or we're not running hard enough, not really trying. — June Jordan

About the Author Donna Tartt was born in Greenwood, Mississippi, and is a graduate of Bennington College. She is the author of the novels The Secret History and The Little Friend, which have been translated into thirty languages. — Anonymous

I have to trust that there is a force greater than me that also knows and sees this, and breathes with it and knows that it's part of a grander plan, and all the good things people do matter. — Caroline Myss

There's a lot of power in putting it out in the universe. It's telling your subconscious mind, 'This is what's gonna happen.' — Reba McEntire

Living in Montgomery, I've been antagonized by the emergence of a narrative about our history that I believe is quite false and misleading, and actually dangerous. And the narrative that emerges when you spend time in the South - places likes Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi, Louisiana - is that we have always been a noble, wonderful, glorious region of the country, with wonderful, noble, glorious people doing wonderful, noble, glorious things. And there's great pride in the Alabamians of the nineteenth century. — Bryan Stevenson

I've seen the needle
And the damage done
A little part of it in everyone
But every junkie's
Like a settin' sun. — Neil Young

It's easy to forget history or give it a cliff notes. The cliff notes of history. But mainly, so much of what happens in 'Eyes on the Prize' happened in Jackson, Mississippi. Jackson, Mississippi isn't really known for any other touchstone to the movement, other than Medgar Evers being killed. There were sit-ins and riots and atrocities. — Tate Taylor

If 125 crore people work together; India will move forward 125 crore steps. — Narendra Modi

If we want to understand the actions of a man in the early 1860's, put yourself back there in his shoes. As a young man he began piloting steamboats on the Mississippi, a job he loved and wanted to do the rest of his life, he said. The Civil War ended traffic on the River and his job. He wrote about it in A History of A Campaign That Failed. He said: "I joined the Confederacy, served for two weeks, deserted, and the Confederacy fell." His attachment to the Southern ideal of slavery does not appear very sturdy. — Hal Holbrook

History - a vast Mississippi of falsehoods — Matthew Arnold