Berks County Bar Association The Berks Barrister Spring 2018 - 22
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Being Reminded of Slavery and Segregation While Traveling on the Blues Trail
Continued from page 21
and one gets a sense of the strategic importance of
the besieged city during the war (often referred to
in the South as the War of Northern Aggression)
and the genius and verve of Grant as a general. We
left Vicksburg for Clarksdale, stopping on the way
in Indianola, at the B.B. King Museum. This is a
wonderful place that reflects the life of Riley (B.B.
for Blues Boy) King. His early story is common
among blues players. He came from a poor sharecropping family, was orphaned at an early age and
passed around from relative to relative. His love
of music began in church. B.B. King got a leg up
in his musical education from his cousin Bukka
White in Memphis, who was an accomplished
guitarist. He catapulted his success on radio to
touring, first on the "chitlin" circuit of all AfricanAmerican clubs and then to playing in every
possible venue internationally. In the 1950s when
he and his band toured in his bus, they would
stop for gas and a break. Often the proprietor
would be anxious to fill up the bus with gas, but
would initially refuse to allow the musicians to
use the toilets. B.B. used the power of the purse to
integrate the toilets, and his Foundation continues
working toward a more just world.
We spent a night in Clarksdale, where guitarist
Robert Johnson sold his soul to the devil at the
crossroads in exchange for his guitar skills. The
music scene is amazing, with something happening
every night all over town, from Morgan Freeman's
music hall to Red's living room/bar. We had a tour
of the area with a descendant from home-town
boy Tennessee Williams. He spoke about his
sense of the difference between how Northerners
and Southerners regard race. This is probably not
a topic that a tour guide in Philadelphia would
feel compelled to mention, but it was something
of which we had been aware. Like so many other
things, change seems to come slow in the South.
We passed Parchman Prison Farm on our way
to Memphis. Parchman is a sobering sight with
a harrowing history. This is the infamous prison
where the Freedom Riders were taken straight
off the busses after they were arrested. From the
inception in 1904, African-American prisoners
were forced to work on the farm for no wages
and the funds earned went to the state. The most
violent prisoners were given guns and acted as
overseers. Prisoners were segregated by race with
blacks assigned to the cotton fields. Mississipians
claimed that many young, strong AfricanAmerican men were arrested simply as labor for
the farm. In 1971, a successful civil rights suit
22 | Berks Barrister
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Berks County Bar Association The Berks Barrister Spring 2018
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Berks County Bar Association The Berks Barrister Spring 2018 - 1
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