9 minute read
The Congressman
The Congressman Bennie Thompson worries that, “Mississippi, left unchecked, will begin to turn back all the hands of political progress.”
By Debra Whitley
he first-grader never had school
Tlunches because his school had no cafeteria. He never checked out a book because his school had no library. And he never had a chance to play ball at school with his friends because Bolton Colored School had no gym or playground.
But, the white school, Bolton Elementary, did. And even at 6 years old, Bennie Thompson noticed the difference.
Walking past the city school, the young boy saw all the things he and his friends were denied. The cafeteria. The library. The gym. Even the baseball field.
Today, the path that Bennie Thompson walks offers a much different view. Mississippi’s veteran U.S. representative has traded the sidewalks of Bolton for the halls of Congress, where he’s been a frequent advocate of education and equality. “I think when you deny a child an adequate and appropriate education you are denying the next generation the
“My whole public opportunity to be the best they can school career, I never be,” Thompson said. had a new textbook.” Starting right out of college, Thompson has spent 45 years — BENNIE THOMPSON in public service. In Bolton, he served as an alderman, then as mayor before being elected to the Hinds County Board of Supervisors in 1980. And for more than two decades, he’s been a U.S. representative, serving a sprawling district that runs 300 miles from Tunica to Jackson. His 11 consecutive terms have made him the longest-serving AfricanAmerican elected official in Mississippi. There’s a reason for that. “He’s very constituent-oriented and he spends a lot of time in this district. I think he’s back here every weekend and he goes to a lot of events,” said Tim Kalich, editor of The Greenwood Commonwealth. None of this would have been possible had it not been for the federal Voting Rights Act of 1965. “The Voting Rights Acts provided direction and a comfort for that process of elections to take place without fear of threats or intimidation,” said the 66-yearold Thompson. “It was because people did not fear economic reprisals and other things attributed to running for public office that they decided to do so.”
Before 1965, segregationist policies — such as literacy tests and poll taxes — prevented many blacks from registering to vote.
And those who tried faced intimidation and outright violence. Their jobs were threatened. They were evicted from their homes. If they made it to the polling place, they might be insulted by white clerks.
Although they were technically free, blacks in Mississippi remained slaves to the electoral system for more than a century. Eventually, however, the political landscape would change.
By far, the most significant change occurred in 1965 — a change that for once was enforced by the federal government. Local volunteers helped out by watching for violations of the Voting Rights Act and made sure blacks were registered. One of those workers was a young college student — Bennie Thompson.
As an undergraduate at Tougaloo College in Jackson, Thompson got interested in voting rights when he met civil rights leaders such as Martin Luther King, Jr., comedian Dick Gregory and entertainer Harry Belafonte.
“Tougaloo was the only college campus in the state of Mississippi,” Thompson recalled, “where they were allowed to speak. If you were in a state school, it was against the law to even have that kind of meeting.”
One day, one of Thompson’s professors assigned him to help the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, a major force in the civil rights struggle, with black voter registration in Ruleville. The goal was to support Fannie Lou Hamer in her pursuit of a congressional seat. Thompson and his classmates fanned out across the community, registering blacks to vote.
“When I came back home, I was telling my mama about this wonderful experience that I was having helping those less-fortunate people in the Delta,” Thompson said.
His mother told him that elections like that
U.S. Rep. Bennie Thompson outside Ground Zero Blues Club in Clarksdale. For two decades, he has represented a sprawling district that runs 300 miles from Tunica to Jackson. PHOTO BY IGNACIO MURILLO
Doris Lee says Thompson’s office is quick to act on constituent requests. PHOTO BY JARED BURLESON had never taken place in his own hometown.
“I said, ‘What?’ There I am, 150 miles from home and the town that I live in was actually doing the same thing.”
Infuriated, Thompson — with the help of the NAACP, Delta Ministry and Hinds County Action for Progress — created a voter registration drive for the first-ever municipal election in Bolton. “It was that exposure of seeing what people had to contend with in trying to register that really got me focused on living conditions and economic conditions in this area,” he said.
Bennie Thompson was born in Bolton in 1948. Growing up in a black neighborhood, he regularly saw the substantial differences between the black and white communities.
For one, the water lines in black communities were significantly smaller.
“I knew when the neighbors were running bath water because the water pressure for our house would be so low,” he remembers.
White neighborhoods had
sidewalks and fire hydrants. Black neighborhoods had neither.
When Thompson was old enough for high school, he had to travel 52 miles roundtrip from Bolton to Utica to attend Hinds County Agricultural High School because he was not allowed to go to Raymond High, Clinton High or even Utica High — all much closer, but still segregated.
“My whole public school career, I never had a new textbook.”
Thompson and his classmates were always given old, worn textbooks from the white schools.
“While that’s not as traumatic as a lynching or beating, nonetheless, the long term impact of what you create by operating a system like that, it will take generations to overcome it,” he said.
In 1968, Thompson ran his first political race, for alderman, and won. He lost his high school teaching job in Franklin County as a result. “The superintendent called me in and he said his teachers didn’t get involved in politics. ‘His teachers.’ As if I was his property.” Thompson went on to become mayor of Bolton. In 1975, he joined a successful lawsuit to increase funding for Mississippi’s historically black universities. “It was a landmark case on the issue of equal funding and education,” said Bob Boyd of Greenville, a former member of the District of Columbia Board of Education. “There had been some similar suits filed at the K-12 level, but this was nationwide, and it was the most permanent one affecting higher education.” In 1993, he captured 55 percent of the vote in a special election and replaced Mike Espy as Mississippi’s 2nd Congressional District representative. Since then, he has served on several committees, including Agriculture, Budget and Small Business. In 2000, he wrote legislation that created the
National Center for Minority Health and Health Care Disparities. He became the first Democratic chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee in 2006.
Thompson is occasionally accused of being obsessed with race and not representing white constituents. But he says he represents everyone and is determined to help those who need help in perhaps the poorest congressional district in America. “Every opportunity I get to pass legislation that does away with any vestige of trying to separate us, I do,” he said.
Recently, Thompson helped secure $2.3 million in federal funds to restore the Taborian Hospital in Mound Bayou. The hospital, financed by the Knights and Daughters of Tabor, was the first medical institution in the South with an entirely black staff and equipment owned by a black hospital. “We don’t get enough efforts to preserve African-American history in the Delta, it just fades away,” he said. “But the efforts for the Taborian Hospital are to make sure that the history of the how and why gets preserved.”
The Taborian Urgent Care Center will provide health-care services to those in Mound Bayou and surrounding areas. Formerly, some poor people in the area had to travel more than 100 miles to Jackson to receive care.
Thompson and Tougaloo graduate Derrick Johnson also have created the Mississippi Leadership Institute, a ninemonth program that teaches 25 candidates problem-solving skills so they can develop into leaders and fix local issues.
The program — whose first graduating class boasted the mayor of Meridian, the president of the Jackson City Council and the vice president of the Columbus City Council —encourages participants to stay in the state and try to make it better.
Thompson is also a swift provider of constituent service. He has seven congressional district offices that try to make sure residents get the help they need.
Recently a staffer helped Doris Lee, program director of Our House, Inc., a family wellness center in Greenville that provides counseling and support for victims of domestic violence and sexual assault prevention.
Lee came to the office on behalf of a mother and her five young children who had been evicted. The mother came to her and Lee went straight to the congressman’s office where she sat down with a staffer.
“We got to her office around 10 a.m. and did not leave until about 4 or 4:30,” Lee said. ”She made call after call.”
When Lee and the mother left, her housing had been reinstated. Lee attributed the quick results and compassion of the staffer to Thompson.
“She knows she’s working for Bennie Thompson. She knows the heart of the congressman.”
– BENNIE THOMPSON
It’s also not unusual to see Thompson in Bolton. His Sundays are spent attending Asbury United Methodist — the church he’s been a member of all his life.
Thompson loves his hometown and the people who live in it. “I know the guy who makes coffee at 7 o’clock in the morning and I know the guy who drinks beer at 7 o’clock in the evening because I know my people.”
Although Thompson believes the Voting Rights Act of 1965 brought dramatic change to Mississippi’s political landscape, he said there is still much to be done because “Mississippi left unchecked will begin to turn back all the hands of political progress in this state.”
“My daddy died in 1964,” Thompson said. “My daddy never voted in his whole life. He lived here in this town, and I think for somebody who never voted a day in his life whose son has now represented (it) in Washington for 20 years means we’ve come a long way.” Designed by Jessi Hotakainen
PHOTO BY CADY HERRING
