Monday, June 4, 2001

Each day, "Mississippi Journey" profiles someone the students met on their tour. Harvey Johnson, a Democrat, is the first African-American mayor in Jackson, Miss. He is running for re-election Tuesday for his second, four-year term against an African-American Republican who changed parties three months ago. The state recently had a referendum about the state flag which contains the Confederate "stars and bars" symbol. The vote was 2-to-1 in favor for the old flag. Johnson spoke with The Post-Standard staff writer Teri Weaver.

I guess when you're looking at me, you're looking at progress. Because, during the civil rights movement there was a time there was no notion that an African-American could ever be mayor of the capital city of Mississippi. It probably would have resulted in a lot of laughter in the room, from blacks or whites.

We have more black elected officials in Mississippi than any other state, although the population of our state is less than 3 million. So, we've come a long way in Mississippi. But we still have a long way to go.

The delta part of the state is where I grew up, in Vicksburg. I grew up in the '60s in the height of the civil rights movement. I can remember very vividly growing up in a segregated world. Clearly separate, not equal, but separate.

When we went down to downtown, there was a five-and-dime, and there was a water fountain. And most of the kids who went downtown would stop to have a cool drink of water. The white water fountain was actually a water cooler. And the colored water fountain was simply a ceramic fixture to the wall that water came straight out of the system. And I can remember one day deciding I was going to take a sip out of the white water fountain. And I did. And I was amazed the water was cool. Whites had different water than blacks. That was a very subtle message: you are a second-class citizen. You don't deserve cold water.

That's what growing up was like. It was sometimes a very painful situation. But let me also say, it was also a very pleasant situation. The things that are happening now to young people simply were not happening to us. Jim Crow laws have been done away with, but now there's crack. Now there's handgun violence. Now there's teen-age parenthood.

There are things that are visiting this generation that are just as dangerous as Jim Crow laws and segregation, though we're not treating as such. Cause we feel that the struggle is over. The struggle is never over. We have to make our minds up that we can overcome whatever struggles there are, whether you're growing up in the 21st century or you're growing up in segregated Mississippi.

I remember even as an adult here in Jackson, 10 or 15 years ago, going to a white community to play tennis in a league. I was stopped by a police officer who asked me what was I doing in the neighborhood. A professional black person with tennis gear. "Why are you here?"

People point to the recent vote on the flag as an indication that we as a state have not yet moved away from some of the vestiges of the past. What I tell people is if we had voted back in 1963 or '62 to do away with Jim Crow laws in Mississippi, we would still have those laws. But the efforts for that type of change came from community-level organizations. They were concerned with justices, and the Congress and the president involved themselves in some of the battle. And so, we're going to have to prevail upon our leaders to step forward and fight to make sure that this symbol that is offensive to a great many people is in fact changed.