Suburbs

Sometime in the late 1970s, while working in Jackson, Mississippi, I went on an assignment to the Neshoba County Fair. One of the lasting scenes from that event was politicians stumping to the crowd.

One of them — I’m pretty sure it was a U.S. senator — belted out “Are you from Dixie?” to the crowd gathered on the fairgrounds near Philadelphia, Mississippi. Plenty of those in attendance joined in the chorus when the trio of states was mentioned.

This week, almost 50 years later, it looks like the State of Mississippi has finally reversed that memory.

As reporter Aarron Fleming documented throughout the week, Scott Colom— after a long and arduous process — was declared the winner in the statewide U.S. Senate race over Republican incumbent Cindy Hyde-Smith.

With the eyes of the nation watching Mississippi, the counting, separating, documenting, discarding and calculating took more than a week to reach a point that Colom’s slim advantage stretched out enough to declare him the winner.

And for Hyde-Smith to issue a concession statement.

As was pointed out repeatedly, Colom, a district attorney, is the first Black senator elected in Mississippi since Reconstruction and is the first Democrat to win a U.S. Senate race in the state since 1982, when John Stennis entered his last term.

The interesting aspect of all this is that the Democrats of the pre-1970s would have had nothing to do with a Black man running for office. Mississippi was notorious for its stance supporting segregation.

Now, the people whose ancestors fought against inclusion have a Black senator representing them.

It took long enough.

What led to Colom’s victory? Was it part of the blue wave that swept the country? Was it pulling the lever against the direction of the country under President Donald Trump’s administration? Was it the perceived lack of representation by Hyde-Smith? The expectation by Hyde-Smith that having the “R” next to her name along with incumbency would be enough to waltz into another term?

Heck fire, the creative Colom ads that mocked things like Hyde-Smith saying there are all kinds of protein as an alternative to high grocery prices may have swayed some voters.

Or maybe it was just time for a change in representation, without consideration of party or race. Colom building momentum at the end of the campaign and drawing attention to an election that months earlier, most didn’t believe he could win.

Maybe it was all of the above.

Whatever was the turning point, a Black man will soon represent Mississippi in the Senate.

And the slogan is not “Are you from Dixie?”

As the crowd chanted outside the DeSoto Election Commission after Colom was declared the winner, they are from “Missi-Flippy.” - Suburbs editor Clay Bailey

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