Mississippi prepares for Post-Roe world

Abortion rights supporters gathered in Jackson, the state's capital, to protest the Supreme Court's decision that is expected to overturn Roe v. Wade

(An abortion rights supporter held a placard at a rally in Smith Park in Jackson, Mississippi, on Friday. Event organizers planned to play music and speak until the news from the Supreme Court came down regarding its decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the case that will likely overturn Roe v. Wade)

As the U.S. Supreme Court ends its term, the nation waits with bated breath to hear what it already knows as a result of a leaked opinion months ago. Roe v. Wade will be overturned. 

In Jackson, Mississippi, both sides of the debate shouted their arguments at Smith Park, which is at the heart of the community. The city has the only abortion clinic in the state. Jackson Women’s Health Organization is one of the parties in the impending decision. 

The rally started with a rendition of Sojourner Truth’s famous “Ain’t I a woman?” speech, which this time was read by Michelle Colon, who is the leader of ​​Sisters Helping Every Woman Rise and Organize, a reproductive rights group based in Jackson. 

“I am a proud abortion freedom fighter,” Colon said. “I don’t care what the Supreme Court says. Abortion is healthcare. Abortion saves lives. Abortion is sacred. Abortion is love. Abortion is self-care. And my absolute favorite…abortion is liberation.” 

Her microphone was dialed loud enough to hear her over the antiabortion man with a bullhorn whose backdrop was white men holding placards of fetuses and linking abortion to murder. 

Abortion costs here are borne harder by the women than in virtually any other part of the country. In Hinds County, where Jackson is located, 44 percent of its population live more than 200 percent below the poverty line. Its uninsured rate is twice that of the wealthiest ones in America. Still, most White people here are galvanized more by the abortion issue than by a concern for their economic wellbeing. 

Mississippians have spoken about abortion since the days of William Faulkner, who some scholars claimed procured an abortion for a woman he impregnated. Faulkner also wrote about the topic in As I Lay Dying, with Dewey Dell's character concerned chiefly about whether she can get an abortion. She ends up being forced to have sex with a pharmacist whom she sought an abortifacient from. In a later work, The Wild Palms, one of Faulkner’s characters dies from a botched abortion. The author is the state’s most famous writer. 

As Mississippi activists begin to plan campaigns in a post-Roe world, it behooves them to word their political pitches with the language that prevails in the area. Any successful message is shaped by the customs and manners of the place it’s made. It’s unlikely that the rhetoric currently in vogue in New York–with its rejection of the word women in reference to those who menstruate–would take hold here. That’s also true of areas like western Pennsylvania and Texas, where the regional expressions tend to be more colorful. 

The insensibility of some leaders in realizing that the discomfort with one topic combined with that of the other has made it difficult to make progress on either issue. And the ideological inflexibility of people comfortably writing on their computers at home or on their iPhones from liberal bastions has made it incredibly challenging for people who are the most threatened by the prospect of criminal abortion. Those are my thoughts, but it’s easy to sense among people who are in these areas that are socially conservative and have to craft public rhetoric that appeals to voters who speak along conventional lines. 

Colon, whom I spoke to at a coffee shop the day before, said they should tackle questions about gender identity to make people more comfortable with the concept. But she doesn’t shy away from using women and girls in a more traditional sense when attempting to persuade others to support feminist objectives. 

“Women and girls have been in this fight a long time,” Colon said. “Sometimes a lot longer than others have been in the fight. I’m not taking away from their contributions. But for me and anybody else, to deny that and not say women and girls is totally disrespectful. That’s something I never will do. I will always honor the people who came before me.” 

Jackson itself is not what New York or Los Angeles stereotyping would have you believe. It’s not just a bunch of rednecks who’ve never seen the pages of a great book. And it’s not as if alternative lifestyles don’t fly here. I got ice cream from a polite youth with blue hair and a nose ring working at Brent’s Drugs, which has been a soda fountain in Jackson, Mississippi, since 1946. It’s been a gathering spot for high school sweethearts since then. The soda fountain and bar stools still remain. The waitress didn’t seem out of place. It’s in the Fondren neighborhood of the community. That’s the most bohemian area. 

But it was nearby–at a place that was spitting image–where one of the most iconic civil rights era photos was taken. Three miles away is a marker at where Woolworth’s Lunch Counter once stood. It was there that a black woman and two white people had milkshakes dumped on their heads for staging a sit-in to desegregate. 

That history still haunts Mississippi, as it does most of the South. 

Cecile Richards, the one-time president of Planned Parenthood Federation of America and now the leader of Supermajority, wrote an editorial for the New York Times in which she said it would take unprecedented activism to turn the tide in the abortion debate. 

Derenda Hancock, a clinic escort at Jackson Women’s Health Organization, said it may be too late now to make a difference in the state. 

“There’s no possibility in the world,” Hancock said of whether they could build a successful movement for abortion rights there. 

(Derenda Hancock, a clinic escort at Jackson Women’s Health Organization, spoke on Thursday about the apathy she saw within the reproductive rights movement in the past few decades that she felt led to the current moment in which the country will lose the constitutional right to an abortion)

Half the state doesn’t know that the case is even happening because their poverty forces them to work multiple jobs, which means they have no time to keep abreast of the news. The clinic staff told their patients about the case and the Supreme Court’s consideration of it. 

“What went wrong was the big repro organizations got complacent,” Hancock said. “I mean in the late 80s and early 90s, they were still fighting. They were in the streets, where we needed to be all along. And they got comfortable in 1994 when the FACE Act went into effect. Haha. Like it’s ever enforced.” 

The Freedom to Access Clinic Entrances Act protects abortion clinics from antiabortion protestors obstructing access and intimidating patients. It was signed into law by President Bill Clinton following intense lobbying after the murder of Dr. David Gunn, who performed abortions in Florida among other places. 

The people she sees on the sidewalk are often the same people who push for legislation in the state.  

While traveling there from my home in Pittsburgh, I stopped in Memphis and saw the Lorraine Motel–the site of Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination that now serves as the location of the National Civil Rights Museum. Part of the exhibition focuses on the activism and movement within Mississippi, which has historically been the most challenging for liberals to make progress in of any state in the union. I also visited the Mississippi Civil Rights Museum in Jackson. Both were instructive on how to build a successful grassroots movement in this part of the country.

Any successful grassroots activist has to study previous efforts to build political support for something–including those that have succeeded and those that failed. Both museums had exhibits dedicated to Mississippi Freedom Fighters, who battled for equality in the state in the 1950s and 1960s. Mississippi was the most hostile to Black people of any state in the South. It had the most lynchings, with 539 reported between 1882 and 1964. 

By 1963, people of all ages had flooded into the state to reach people in all parts of the state–Itta Bena, Greenwood, Natchez and Clarksdale among the locations. They had makeshift offices in houses, churches and empty storefronts. Local college students had “pray-ins” at white churches.  

In that final year tallied, activists in the state launched the Mississippi Summer Project. The time was known as Freedom Summer. The Council of Federation Organization (COFO), which coordinated many civil rights groups, started the campaign. Leaders, locals and 1,000 volunteers canvassed the entire state, often in parts that were deeply hostile toward their concerns. They organized voter registration drives, freedom schools, community centers and legal and medical aid programs.

Because they were frequently attacked by police and other white people, COFO added the option of Freedom Days, which served as multi-day events for voter registration. It also attracted more media.

As happens today with repro rights activists, many of the volunteers who had come from cities like New York or Los Angeles sought to take over the campaign from locals who knew the area better and were more effective organizers. Much of it had to do with the discrepancy between educational levels. Those who came from urban centers had far more of it. Despite their time in the classroom, they knew less about how to effect change within southern towns in Mississippi and elsewhere. Harvard volunteer Paul Cowan said many had a “Jesus complex” where they viewed themselves as saviors and only saw black people through the lens of oppression. 

Colon said she and other local leaders are not allowing that to happen. 

“People in (other) towns want to say, ‘Oh, you all should do this,’” Colon said.’ “I don't need you to tell me what I should do. I live here. I'm vested here. I've been here. I'm saying this is our backyard. Don't tell people what they should be doing.”