Two li'l darkies
Lyin' in bed
One was sick
An' the other most dead.
Went fo' de doctor
Doctor he said,
"Feed dem babies on shortnin' bread"
Shortnin' Bread (traditional)
______
Lord why was I born in Mississippi,
when it's so hard to get ahead
Why was I born in Mississippi,
when it's so hard to get ahead
Every black child born in Mississippi
you know the poor child is born dead
When he came into the world
the doctor spank him, the black baby cry
When he came into the world
the doctor spank him, the black baby cry
Everybody thought he had a life
and that's why the black baby died
He will never speak his language
the poor baby will never speak his mind
Lord he will never speak his language
the poor baby will never speak his mind
The poor child will never know his mind
why in the world he's so poor
Lord why was I born in Mississippi
when it's so hard to get ahead
Lord why was I born in Mississippi
when it's so hard to get ahead
Every black child born in Mississippi
you know the poor child was born dead
JB Lenoir
David Seaton's News Links
On a personal note: when I was a very small boy, at the end of the 1940s and the beginning of the 50s, my family spent a lot of time in Biloxi Mississippi, which at that time was a charming place and not the tacky nightmare it has since become. All of that was blown away by Katrina I understand, but I'm sure it will be even worse when reconstructed.
Anyway, neighboring Keesler air force base was a tiny thing in that period and there were no casinos and all that goes with them either, just warm breezes off the Gulf of Mexico, Forrest Gumpy shrimp and oyster boats and soft-voiced people, young and old, white and black, that loved small children... nothing like Chicago.
Nearly every Friday we drove over to New Orleans to spend the weekend, and in those days, before expressways, that entailed a leisurely drive though the Mississippi Delta, the area described in article below. That is where I saw the terrible after effects of slavery for the first time. And there I saw the decedents of the Slaves in their true historical context, not huddled around oil drum braziers on the freezing winter corners of Chicago's South Side... like creatures from another planet.
This was just before the mechanization of cotton which finally took place when the black people of Mississippi were allowed to vote, and thus before the black diaspora to the ghettos of the north that followed it. Those were the days before America's poor were sent to live in mobile homes and trailers and the black people of the Delta lived in amazingly rundown, unpainted, weatherbeaten shacks and dressed in rags... you could have been in Haiti, Salvador de Bahia, Jamaica, Cuba or Trinidad: anywhere where forcibly transported Africans were abandoned to their fate and stranded like rusting cars on blocks or busted washing machines rotting in the grass. Machines that no longer serve. The immense cruelty of slavery was impressed on me long before I was eight years old.
On lifelong reading and observation I came to the conclusion that African slavery and its aftermath form a pan-American nation and that Mississippi has more in common with the Dominican Republic than with Iowa and more in common with Haiti than Vermont. So I don't compare Cuba, for example, with Sweden, France, Lichtenstein or Canada. I compare it with Jamaica, Brazil and... Mississippi.
The article from the New York Times is about infant mortality among the poor blacks of the Mississippi Delta. In some counties in Mississippi it is as high as 20 deaths per thousand births, which is a little better than Albania, but not as good as Panama with 17 per 1000. The US average infant mortality rate for blacks in 2003 was 14 per 1000. The US global average is 6.50.... "Afro" Cuba, as black as Mississipi, has 6.33 per 1000! DS
On a personal note: when I was a very small boy, at the end of the 1940s and the beginning of the 50s, my family spent a lot of time in Biloxi Mississippi, which at that time was a charming place and not the tacky nightmare it has since become. All of that was blown away by Katrina I understand, but I'm sure it will be even worse when reconstructed.
Anyway, neighboring Keesler air force base was a tiny thing in that period and there were no casinos and all that goes with them either, just warm breezes off the Gulf of Mexico, Forrest Gumpy shrimp and oyster boats and soft-voiced people, young and old, white and black, that loved small children... nothing like Chicago.
Nearly every Friday we drove over to New Orleans to spend the weekend, and in those days, before expressways, that entailed a leisurely drive though the Mississippi Delta, the area described in article below. That is where I saw the terrible after effects of slavery for the first time. And there I saw the decedents of the Slaves in their true historical context, not huddled around oil drum braziers on the freezing winter corners of Chicago's South Side... like creatures from another planet.
This was just before the mechanization of cotton which finally took place when the black people of Mississippi were allowed to vote, and thus before the black diaspora to the ghettos of the north that followed it. Those were the days before America's poor were sent to live in mobile homes and trailers and the black people of the Delta lived in amazingly rundown, unpainted, weatherbeaten shacks and dressed in rags... you could have been in Haiti, Salvador de Bahia, Jamaica, Cuba or Trinidad: anywhere where forcibly transported Africans were abandoned to their fate and stranded like rusting cars on blocks or busted washing machines rotting in the grass. Machines that no longer serve. The immense cruelty of slavery was impressed on me long before I was eight years old.
On lifelong reading and observation I came to the conclusion that African slavery and its aftermath form a pan-American nation and that Mississippi has more in common with the Dominican Republic than with Iowa and more in common with Haiti than Vermont. So I don't compare Cuba, for example, with Sweden, France, Lichtenstein or Canada. I compare it with Jamaica, Brazil and... Mississippi.
The article from the New York Times is about infant mortality among the poor blacks of the Mississippi Delta. In some counties in Mississippi it is as high as 20 deaths per thousand births, which is a little better than Albania, but not as good as Panama with 17 per 1000. The US average infant mortality rate for blacks in 2003 was 14 per 1000. The US global average is 6.50.... "Afro" Cuba, as black as Mississipi, has 6.33 per 1000! DS
In Turnabout, Infant Deaths Climb in South - New York Times
Abstract: For decades, Mississippi and neighboring states with large black populations and expanses of enduring poverty made steady progress in reducing infant death. But, in what health experts call an ominous portent, progress has stalled and in recent years the death rate has risen in Mississippi and several other states. The setbacks have raised questions about the impact of cuts in welfare and Medicaid and of poor access to doctors, and, many doctors say, the growing epidemics of obesity, diabetes and hypertension among potential mothers, some of whom tip the scales here at 300 to 400 pounds. “I don’t think the rise is a fluke, and it’s a disturbing trend, not only in Mississippi but throughout the Southeast,” said Dr. Christina Glick, a neonatologist in Jackson, Miss., and past president of the National Perinatal Association. To the shock of Mississippi officials, who in 2004 had seen the infant mortality rate — defined as deaths by the age of 1 year per thousand live births — fall to 9.7, the rate jumped sharply in 2005, to 11.4. The national average in 2003, the last year for which data have been compiled, was 6.9. Smaller rises also occurred in 2005 in Alabama, North Carolina and Tennessee. Louisiana and South Carolina saw rises in 2004 and have not yet reported on 2005. Whether the rises continue or not, federal officials say, rates have stagnated in the Deep South at levels well above the national average. Most striking, here and throughout the country, is the large racial disparity. In Mississippi, infant deaths among blacks rose to 17 per thousand births in 2005 from 14.2 per thousand in 2004, while those among whites rose to 6.6 per thousand from 6.1. (The national average in 2003 was 5.7 for whites and 14.0 for blacks.) The overall jump in Mississippi meant that 65 more babies died in 2005 than in the previous year, for a total of 481. READ IT ALL
Abstract: For decades, Mississippi and neighboring states with large black populations and expanses of enduring poverty made steady progress in reducing infant death. But, in what health experts call an ominous portent, progress has stalled and in recent years the death rate has risen in Mississippi and several other states. The setbacks have raised questions about the impact of cuts in welfare and Medicaid and of poor access to doctors, and, many doctors say, the growing epidemics of obesity, diabetes and hypertension among potential mothers, some of whom tip the scales here at 300 to 400 pounds. “I don’t think the rise is a fluke, and it’s a disturbing trend, not only in Mississippi but throughout the Southeast,” said Dr. Christina Glick, a neonatologist in Jackson, Miss., and past president of the National Perinatal Association. To the shock of Mississippi officials, who in 2004 had seen the infant mortality rate — defined as deaths by the age of 1 year per thousand live births — fall to 9.7, the rate jumped sharply in 2005, to 11.4. The national average in 2003, the last year for which data have been compiled, was 6.9. Smaller rises also occurred in 2005 in Alabama, North Carolina and Tennessee. Louisiana and South Carolina saw rises in 2004 and have not yet reported on 2005. Whether the rises continue or not, federal officials say, rates have stagnated in the Deep South at levels well above the national average. Most striking, here and throughout the country, is the large racial disparity. In Mississippi, infant deaths among blacks rose to 17 per thousand births in 2005 from 14.2 per thousand in 2004, while those among whites rose to 6.6 per thousand from 6.1. (The national average in 2003 was 5.7 for whites and 14.0 for blacks.) The overall jump in Mississippi meant that 65 more babies died in 2005 than in the previous year, for a total of 481. READ IT ALL
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