Anyway, Neiman then shifts her focus to the United States, heading for Oxford, Mississippi, and then Nesoba County, location of the infamous lynching of Emment Till.
She spends a lot of time with well meaning people who are trying to change things in Mississippi. Before this spring, I would have thought it was a fool's errand, but, not for the first time, maybe I'm wrong.
She focuses more on attempts to remember the Civil Rights movement in Mississippi, rather than the Civil War. She spends some time at "Ole Miss" and their attempt to downplay the "Rebel" iconography. She meets with folks from the desperately poor hamlets of the Delta, whose ambitions seem unbelievably basic for 21st century American state: renovate the local school, modern equipment and wifi. The structures associated with Till's murder, some are being repurposed as museums.
Lately with the vandalism and destruction of some Confederate statues has been in the news. It has been greeted as the fall of western civilization. The
Emment Till monument has been vandalized for years, shot full of bullets, hammered, spray painted, knocked down and has had to be replaced multiple times. Western Civilization however wasn't threatened by all this violence directed towards the memorial of a murdered child.