Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
I drove out South Lamar Street towards Rowan Oak, having first made the square, follow-
ing the tourist lady's instructions as best I could, but I couldn't for the life of me find it. To
tellyouthetruth,thisdidn'tdisturbmeawholelotbecauseIknewitwasclosedandinany
caseIhavenevermanagedtoreadaWilliamFaulknernovelbeyondaboutpage3(roughly
halfway through the first sentence), so I wasn't terribly interested in what his house looked
like. At any rate, in driving around I came across the campus of the University of Missis-
sippi and that was much more interesting. It was a handsome campus, full of fine build-
ings that looked like banks and courthouses. Long shadows fell across the lawns. Young
people, all looking as healthy and as wholesome as a bottle of milk, walked along with
topics tucked under their arms or sat at tables doing homework. At one table, a black stu-
dent sat with white people. Things had clearly changed. It so happened that twenty-five
yearsagototheveryweektherehadbeenariotonthiscampuswhenayoungblacknamed
James Meredith, escorted by 500 federal marshals, enrolled as a student at Ole Miss. The
people of Oxford were so inflamed at the thought of having to share their campus with
a Niggra boy that they wounded thirty of the marshals and killed two journalists. Many
of the parents of these serene-looking students must have been among the rioters, hurling
bricks and setting cars alight. Could that kind of hate have been extinguished in just one
generation? It hardly seemed possible. But then it was impossible to imagine these tranquil
students ever rioting over a matter of race. Come to that, it was impossible to imagine such
awell-scrubbed,straight-arrowgroupofyoungpeopleriotingoveranythingexceptperhaps
the number of chocolate chips in the dining hall cookies.
I decided on an impulse to drive on to Tupelo, Elvis Presley's hometown, thirty-five miles
totheeast.Itwasapleasantdrive,withthesunlowandtheairwarm.Blackwoodspressed
in on the road from both sides. Here and there in clearings there were shacks, usually with
large numbers of black youngsters in the yard, passing footballs or riding bikes. Occasion-
allytherewerealsonicerhouses-whitepeople'shouses-withbigstationwagonsstandingin
the driveways and a basketball hoop over the garage and large, well-mowed lawns. Often
these houses were remarkably close-sometimes right next door-to a shack. You would nev-
erseethatintheNorth.ItstruckmeasnotablyironicthatSouthernerscoulddespiseblacks
so bitterly and yet live comfortably alongside them, while in the North people by and large
did not mind blacks, even respected them as humans and wished them every success, just
so long as they didn't have to mingle with them too freely.
By the time I reached Tupelo it was dark. Tupelo was a bigger place than I had expected,
but by now I was coming to expect things to be not like I expected them to be, if you see
what I mean. It had a long, bright strip of shopping malls, motels and gas stations. Hungry
and weary, I saw for the first time the virtue of these strips. Here it all was, laid out for
you-a glittering array of establishments offering every possible human convenience, clean,
