Medgar Wiley Evers was assassinated by a white man from the Mississippi delta on June twelfth, nineteen sixty-three. Four days later and less than five miles away, I was born. Four years and ten months later, Martin Luther King Junior would receive the same in Memphis, a three hours drive north of me. That's the world I was born into.
Of my father's many frustrations with me (in his mind, the worst) was that I could calmly absorb any amount of energy or abuse, or effort to change my mind or change my course of action without any reaction or change on my part. I was immutable. I never put on a big drama or shouted, "It's MY LIFE, Daddy!" I simply would quietly not change my course, no matter how hard he pushed me in another direction. I got this, of course, from him.
I was born into a world afire. Afire because my home had a large population of people whose fathers and grandfathers had been field slaves and because the population of people who looked like me was determined to keep these seeds of slaves separated from the political and social power their numbers would otherwise grant them. Closer to home, there was a fire in my personal world because my uncle left the world as I was coming in, and much of what he was then fell on my father.
Not yet forty, Daddy was appointed to the Board of Directors of Millsaps college and then chairman of the board before I could walk properly. Daddy's rise came not from charisma or ambition or wealth but because he put his body and his life into the jaws and gears of our society and pulled with all his might. Even when he had no idea what he was doing, he would pull with all his might, and somehow things would move. There was a cost to what he was doing, but he bore it so I, and my brothers, and my baby sister would have a home, a Mississippi that was better than what we were born into. Eventually, it would take his life, but on this, he was Immutable.
As the Methodist church became United in Mississippi, it was decidedly not united on one thing. Some of us believed Christ obligated us to accept these progeny of our father's slaves as brothers, and love them and foster them as a matter of our christ-calling, on this they became Immutable. Others thought this an abomination. A destruction of the armature of the society we lived in, and a threat to our very existence, on this they were immutable.
Millsaps College was, and is now a Methodist organization. Many of our students would become methodist ministers. Many of our professors, even those not teaching religion, were also methodist ministers, including men who daddy spent his childhood with.
As the American world and the American South began to consider a change in how they treated their children of African descent, forces in Mississippi began to push back with all their might against this change, even to the point of murder, of several murders, even murders of people I would now describe as children, even though they were remarkably brave and involved in a very adult adventure.
At Millsaps, there was a feeling growing among some of our faculty to push in the other direction, that they were called by Christ to push back in the other direction. In this, they found kinship with another Christian College, an organization of the Disciples of Christ created to serve and elevate Mississippi's black children, Tougaloo College. Their symbol of the Star and our symbol of the Maple Leaf became entwined in an effort to make a basal change in Mississippi, a change many would do anything to prevent.
Daddy's opinion of the Civil Rights Movement was built around his exposure to Ivan Allen. Allen was the Mayor of Atlanta, even more importantly, he was a stationer, a purveyor of office and school supplies, like my father, and that's how they met. Since the end of the war, Allen had a simple proposal: Atlanta had too many negros for the city to prosper so long as we held our foot on their necks. For him, this wasn't a matter of radical or even Christian thought, it was simply a matter of business. There's no way for Atlanta to prosper if seventy percent of the city did their best to keep thirty percent as poor and as powerless as they possibly could. That'd be like trying to run your car with two of the six cylinders welded to the engine block. This was the course my Uncle Boyd, and my Father took. They weren't radicals. They weren't even particularly interested in Mississippi-African culture beyond their cooking, but they were interested in elevating the opportunities and activities of Mississippi, and there was no way to do that if we kept our foot on the necks of a third of our citizens.
There were people at Millsaps who were much more passionate and active on these issues, and as the sixties opened and Kennedy and Johnson began to open new opportunities, some of Millsaps faculty and several of our students began to move with energy in that direction, and they did it where they could be seen, and they did it knowing there were those who would see and know and say "That Millsaps Professor was in amongst 'em! He's agin us!"
I was a child when all this began. A small child at first, but I grew. A small child but an extraordinarily observant child, and I grew, and I watched. Daddy was not one for broad or loud statements of political purpose, but he was determined. At his office on South Street in downtown Jackson, the first person you saw when you entered the building was a black woman Daddy hired as receptionist. There were plenty of white women who could be our receptionist; by the time I was old enough to work, they all were white, but Daddy was making a point. A point he would never articulate but a point nobody could miss. A black woman answered our phone. When angry men would call my father at work with a mind to force him to force these Millsaps professors to change their ways, a black woman would answer the phone. "I'm sorry, but Mr. Campbell isn't in right now. Can I take a message?" She was immutable.
At home, both when we lived on Northside Drive, and when we lived on Honeysuckle lane, our house phone was in the kitchen. This was fairly common in most homes. It was separated by a door from the breakfast room where were ate most of our meals, one of the few places where I'd get to see my father in the early days of his career. The world would pull him to other places, but he made every effort to eat with us, when he was in town, but until I got old enough to work with him, that was often the only time I had with him.
Most people, in my part of the world and in my generation, had dinner between six and seven o'clock. Most people in my generation and in my part of the world never used the telephone in those hours. It was rude. Men who were very angry with Millsaps, and believing they could force my father to change things if they spoke to him strongly enough, but couldn't reach him at the office, didn't care about being rude. They would call during dinner hours and continue to call until someone answered.
In most homes, children were encouraged to answer the telephone because it taught them to be courteous and well-spoken. Because of my stammer, it would be several years before I became well-spoken, but that's not why I wasn't encouraged to answer the phone. Sometimes the people on the other end had no concern that I was a child. They had an angry message to deliver, and if I was the one they had to deliver it to, so be it. I would tell you what they said, but my Aunt reads these, and it makes her sore when I use those words.
When the phone rang during mealtime, a look passed between my mother and father. Mother's chair was closest to the kitchen door. I sat to her left, my sister to her right. Mother would answer the phone. "Hello?" If it was family or a friend, her face would light up, and she'd have her conversation, usually with women who were also feeding their family but had news that couldn't wait, usually her sister or her niece. If it was a salesman, she'd just say, "we're not interested." and go back to dinner. Sometimes, though. Sometimes she'd hold the phone out and say "Jim," and everybody's face would change.
When daddy took a call during dinner, it wasn't a good thing. If they were saying to him what they sometimes said when I answered the phone, it wasn't a good thing at all. He never betrayed what was said. If it was angry or cruel, or just stupid, he would calmly say, "thank you for your call" and hang up. Sometimes though, sometimes the call wasn't somebody he could just dismiss. Sometimes the call was from somebody who was important to our business or somebody who was important to our state, and Daddy had to listen closely to what they had to say, even if he had no intention of doing what they were trying to make him do. He was immutable despite incredible pressure to change him, but he was polite.
Tonight I put on a tie and shaved my head so I could attend a celebration in honor of Martin Luther King Junior at Millsaps college. An event put on, appropriately in tandem with Tougaloo college. Soon, it will be sixty years from the day Medar Evers was shot, then sixty years from the day I was born. Millsaps celebrates by making the Medgar and Myrlie Evers Institute part of the Millsaps Family and giving them space in the John Stone house a few steps away. Young people from Millsaps and Tougaloo stood and spoke and sang on the very spot where I performed or administered many plays and performances in a new structure for a new century.
Even though it's been sixty years, I'd like to be able to say the issues Medgar Evers gave his life for were no longer a concern in Mississippi, but they are. I'd like to say that the issues that made people angry at my father and angry at Millsaps were no longer a concern, but they are. The only faculty members left from those early days in the sixties are T.W. Lewis and Charles Sallis. They weren't there last night, but they were on my mind.
I cannot tell you what the future will bring. Millsaps and Jackson, and Mississippi are all struggling right now. We're fighting for our lives, not because it's our lives so much as it's the lives of those who will come after us. There's a secret that I know, that I was taught as a child. I am old. Millsaps is old. They are. We are. I am, and will continue to be immutable. We remain because if we don't, others will suffer.
