Could Natchez be the next Charlottesville?

After a week of reflecting on the horrible events in Charlottesville, Va., two conflicting thoughts bubble up — that another Charlottesville could easily happen here and that it should never happen here.

Clearly as a diverse community, race can — and does — frequently pop up in dividing our community on issues.

Like Charlottesville, Natchez is an old Southern city steeped in history, history that includes ties to the Confederacy.

The movement to remove all vestiges of the Confederacy from the South seems unfathomable to me, but not because ripping down a few statues is difficult.

The monuments hold no deep meaning to me, but ripping them down — particularly by citizens without authority — reminds me of the destruction of ancient structures by ISIS.

Although the majority of my ancestors who fought for the Confederacy were poor and likely owned no slaves, their cause was morally wrong and through the will of God, they lost.

Yet, signs and symbols of their time in our history remain — everywhere, in these parts.

Removing all signs of our racist past is difficult to imagine because anyone with a real, working knowledge of the South understands the DNA of hate runs much, much deeper than some steel, bronze or stone sculpture.

If America were truly intent on ridding the world of all traces of our racist past, then major segments of our town would have to be razed.

All of the antebellum houses that make our city famous and draw tourists to Natchez would need to go, along with a statue or two.

Those houses were funded on the backs of slaves and the hands of enslaved workers labored to build many of them as well.

King’s Tavern, the oldest tavern building standing in the Mississippi Territory, would have to go. It would have certainly catered to a racist crowd.

Most of Natchez’s old school buildings would need to go as well.

Even many buildings that seem rather innocuous would need to go if we were truly intent on erasing every ounce of potentially racist reminders.

The Malt Shop on the end of Martin Luther King Junior Street to this day has two walk-up windows — back in Mississippi’s segregationist period one window was for whites, the other for blacks.

In fact, Martin Luther King Jr.’s very fame was due to his having to battle racism, so the street name should be changed too.

Of course, all of this is ludicrous. We do not need to make all of these changes; at best we need to place explanations on statues that were purchased by groups that had racist intentions decades ago.

The hatred fueling problems in Charlottesville was not concerned with statues of our past as much as it focused on racial division of today and tomorrow.

America needs to excise that cancer on our society. Period. America has no room for hate.

But for Mississippi, I hope and pray our leaders will be present and forward thinkers.

Our state is among the poorest and least educated in the country.  Mississippi — and Natchez — has far too many problems to spend much time dwelling on the past.

Let’s focus on fully funding education, promoting healthy living, recruiting industry and bolstering our economy.

Rather than worrying over long dead men and their sculpted images why not spend our collective energy working on helping living, flesh and blood people instead?
Kevin Cooper is publisher of The Natchez Democrat. He can be reached at 601-445-3539 or kevin.cooper@natchezdemocrat.com.