Dumas: ‘It’s OK to come home, Dad.’ Mississippi joins 21st century in changing its flag

My father, Lionel, was born and raised in Vicksburg in the Delta area of Mississippi. His family joined the great migration and wound up in Chicago in the ‘30s. He never went back to Mississippi.

“Why not, Dad? ” I asked, “they even have a Black mayor, now.”

“It doesn’t matter,“ he said, “Nothing has really changed down there.” He wouldn’t even visit when the city named a street after his uncle, the bluesman Willie Dixon.

I went to Mississippi to work with the Freedom Project in 1964. I didn’t go to Vicksburg. We still had family living there. My civil rights activities could have endangered them. I became project director in Leland. It was also in the Delta. Less than a hundred miles from “home.”

In the later part of his life, Dad shared the story. I believe he was concerned that his oldest son would be able to pass on the truth about his life. He told me that his grandmother, Daisy Dixon, operated a sandwich shop near the Old Warren County Court house, which stood grandly on top of the highest hill in Vicksburg. It was where Confederate President Jefferson Davis began his political career.

When Dad was 8 he used to hang around her shop to make deliveries for his grandma. Times were difficult during the Depression. He had a little side business – reselling newspapers to the white businessmen in the neighborhood. His partner in the newspaper business was a young boy named Elijah Johnson, Eli. One day at the end of March in 1931, the boys were near the courthouse selling papers. Around lunch time Grandma Dixon asked Dad to make a delivery.

“The order was two cheese sandwiches and two soda pops. I’ll never forget.”

Dad was busy selling papers at the time. Eli said he would make the run.

“The tables could have been turned. If I hadn’t been selling those papers, I would have made the delivery.”

Eli knocked on the back door of the nearby house to make the delivery. A buck-naked white lady opened the door. She was obviously not expecting Eli. Both he and the woman panicked. She started to scream. Eli tried to quiet her. He dropped the sandwiches and Cokes. The glass bottles shattered. In the confusion, the woman stepped on the broken glass. She started to bleed and screamed even louder. Neighbors opened their doors and were stunned by the scene – a naked, bleeding white woman seemingly being mishandled by a Black boy. Eli started to run, back to the restaurant. The crowd, which was becoming a mob, pursued him, screaming.

“I saw him as he passed the courthouse,” Dad said, “I’ve never seen a person so terrified. And I have served in three wars. I started to chase after Eli but my grandmother stopped me.”

He said she and all of the Black folks either took shelter or walked slowly toward their houses. The mob, swelled to over a hundred people, were in a frenzy. The elders had been here before. They knew you don’t attack an enraged lynch mob. They might turn on any and everybody that’s Black. This was only 10 years after the Tulsa Massacre. They caught Eli. Cutting pieces off his body for souvenirs, they hung him from a tree in the courthouse yard.

“The hanging tree, they called it. He hung there for over three days. His Momma got permission to cut her boy down so she could bury him. Later, the white woman actually told the truth. She was trying to surprise her husband who was coming home for lunch.”

Dad said there were two images about that day that haunt him, the mutilated body of his friend Elijah and the Confederate battle flag that flew from the top of the courthouse.

“Those Confederates were traitors. As long as their flag is flying from the tallest pole in town, things ain’t going to be right.”

One of our bright lights of the Penn State faculty, Professor AnneMarie Mingo, used to live just outside town, driving around she often passed a house that displayed a Confederate flag. For a Southern bred woman, it was disturbing. AnneMarie moved into the Borough. She no longer has to commute pass that hateful reminder of our people’s oppression and our country’s shame. But, the rest of us do.

The State of Mississippi announced that it is removing the Confederate symbol from its flag. They are the last state to do so. They decided to join the 21st century instead of maintaining their allegiance to the decadent 19th. My Dad joined the ancestors in 1997. He would be consoled by the fact that two horrifying images of his childhood had been finally buried.

Rest in peace, Elijah Johnson.

It’s OK to come home, Dad.