I've been thinking about this comment.

I think, and talk, a lot about how mississippi lives rent free in non-mississippian's heads. I'll touch on the rhetorical uses of bringing up mississippi shortly, and how doing so is both ahistorical and unnecessary. https://twitter.com/adriawalkr/status/1301671897000808448

first, though, I am interested in the specification of a "hicktown" in "backwoods" mississippi. as if--historically and presently--rural people aren't the first to slide. as if mississippians have not and don't continue to start and lead movements.

where would we be without ida b. wells, wihout fannie lou hamer, without medgar evers, without amzie moore, without mississippi period? each of those people no only did the work themselves, they inspired others. you don't get kwame ture without fannie lou hamer. know the lineages

it's also of note that all of them were rural mississipians. they were from backwoods, hicktowns in mississippi. the notion that mississippians and rural folks ar large are passive and apathetic in the face of injustice is totally ahistorical.

an early slave revolt was in mississippi! in the natchez uprising of 1730--almost a century before ms became a state, almost half a century before the country was founded. enslaved ppl allied w the natchez ppl & took up arms against the french. ms is true to this, not new to this

there's a reason the book is called "we will shoot back: armed resistance in the MISSISSIPPI freedom movement." there's a reason the republic of new afrika was in jackson, MISSISSIPPI. there's a reason kwame ture talks about MS in dang near every chapter of "Stokely Speaks."

people outside the state of missisisppi--across the country--use mississippi as a rhetorical device. mississippi is not the state, mississippians are not the people y'all like to pretend we are. know that. "this isn't mississippi," yeah, you're right. it's not.

I understand that a lot of y'all haven't visited mississippi & might not know any mississippians. I know when y'all see "missisisppi" y'all think of django unchained. please learn my state's actual history and what is continuing to happen there before you speak on us.

rant over.