The recent death of retired Millsaps College professor Charles Sallis silenced a truthful voice in this state’s ongoing struggles over race and how that subject has been taught to Mississippi public school students.
In “Mississippi Conflict & Change,” Sallis and his co-editor, Tougaloo College professor James Loewen, produced a book that spoke candidly about the state’s torrid racial past and brought new awareness on such issues to school children they’d never heard of or been taught.
The 1974 volume, written for the teaching of ninth-grade students, presented for the first time on a wide scale the many contributions of Black citizens to Mississippi life, but also their harsh treatment by white landlords and officials and their lack of opportunities for education attainment.
In an early chapter, covering a four-year period before the Civil War erupted, the authors wrote: “Mississippi everyday life revolved mainly around ‘King Cotton.’ Most whites worked on small farms or in the small towns; most blacks were slaves on large plantations … Slaves maintained what dignity and family life they could within such a system; so did poor whites.