By Joe Atkins
Contributing Columnist
VICKSBURG -- The Rev. H.D. Dennis is a man in love. He loves his wife Margaret so much he transformed her little grocery store into a red, white and blue palace -- complete with tower, pillars, archways and steeples -- that has become a Mississippi landmark.
He loves his God so much that he can't stop talking about it. Every visit to Margaret's Grocery on Highway One just north of here includes a free, non-stop, down-home, sanctified, holiness sermon. He loves his country -- he served it in uniform in World War II -- and he loves people, black folks like himself and white folks, too.
"People are like a bouquet of flowers," he says, "like a bouquet you'd give to your wife, all different colors."
Dennis, a man whom Margaret and everyone else simply calls "Preacher", is one of those country philosophers Mississippi abounds in, someone we ought to be listening to these days as we still wrangle with the issues of race, class differences, poverty, the sins of the past, human relations in general.
An all--star panel of experts appointed by President Clinton -- including former Mississippi Gov. William Winter and noted historian John Hope Franklin -- spent two days in Oxford recently listening to teachers, businessmen, high school students and social activists talk about race relations.
At the same time, in Jackson, officials were unveiling the long secret files of the state Sovereigty Commission, the taxpayer funded spy agency that devoted the 21 years of its existence to the preservation of white domination in Mississippi.
The juxtaposition of these events prompted the New York Times to opine the following Sunday in an article headlined "Pride and Prejudice: The South's History Rises, Again and Again: Hard as it tries -- and it tries more earnestly with each passing day -- the South never quite pulls free of the most repellent aspects of its history."
Is this true? Are we really doomed by our past?
Certainly a lack of vision hobbles us at times. Many whites want blacks simply to smile with understanding at every wave of the Confederate flag or stirring rendition of "Dixie". Many blacks self--righteously accuse all whites of prejudice while excusing it in themselves.
The burden of history is a legacy that binds Mississippi and the South more than any other region of the nation with the much older countries of Central and Eastern Europe, countries that today are also unveiling long -- secret documents of state -- sanctioned spy agencies and debating how to rectify a dark past of injustice.
But the past is with Mississippi in a much more visceral way than simply dusty stacks of Sovereignty Commission files.
Travel north of Margaret's Grocery into the Mississippi Delta and you'll see. The poverty of woebegotten Delta towns like Tchula, Mound Bayou and Jonestown, as black as roadside villages in Uganda or the Congo, are badges of shame in Mississippi.
There's simply no excuse for it.
Just like there's no excuse for the fact that one out of every three children in Mississippi lives in poverty, that school teachers' salaries here are still $10,000 below the national average, that the top 20 percent of families here have incomes 13 times larger than the poorest 20 percent.
For the first time since the beginning of the Civil War, Mississippi has some money to spend. The tobacco settlement netted more than $170 million in its first payment alone with another $10 million expected in first-- year interest. Gambling revenues will top $123 million this fiscal year. Meanwhile, U.S. Sens. Trent Lott and Thad Cochran are continuing an age--old pork barrel tradition that brings in millions of federal dollars.
What's missing here is a systemic, long--range, compassionate, visionary approach to Mississippi's problems.
The best Gov. Kirk Fordice and many other political leaders can come up with are an income tax cut for the wealthy, tax incentives to businesses and a charge to churches to take care of the poor.
Yet, some hints of vision are out there. Lt. Gov. Ronnie Musgrove has said "poor children in Mississippi deserve to be our highest priority." Former Gov. Bill Allain last week talked about the threatened "moral fiber" of our state in its dependence on unstable gambling revenues.
Vision comes with a clear eyed look at the past and a compassionate sense of the present.
Who knows, maybe Mississippi's tormented past could provide just the right kind of rich soil to produce new life, a new beginning, a new future.
Mississippians like "Preacher" Dennis are enough to make you believe it possible.
It was something that crossed my mind as I drove away from Margaret's Grocery and saw the wizened old soldier standing at attention in front of his red, white and blue palace, saluting me and all the other passersby.
Joe Atkins is an associate professor of Journalism at Ole Miss.