McComb’s racial and political unrest has received a lot of exposure over the past ten days. A lot. Beginning on the frontpage of this issue we have printed stories from and about people outside of McComb who are looking at what’s going on down here.

My interview with Roland Martin was very revealing. And the story written by Ward Schaefer of the Jackson Free Press was so revealing that we asked if we could reprint the long story in its entirety. It is a must read! Both articles, I believe point out a glaring problem we have here in Pike county. Blacks make up a majority of the population (65% in McComb) but we are afraid to use the power and position that is rightly ours to improve our conditions. We are afraid and our white overseers continue to hold on to their control over us.

Martin is blunt when he speaks about it. He said we are afraid and we are setting a bad example for the next generation. We are afraid to demand what should be ours, power and position to bring about positive and lasting change in our Black communities. Four selectmen, Danny Esch, E.C. Nobles, Robert Maddox and Wade Lamb acted illegally when they stripped McComb Mayor Zach Patterson of his powers. How could this happen? Because we failed to act. To stop them. To reverse them. Too many of us are afraid to demand what is right in the face of white power and control.

And, some of us have sold out, sold our souls to the good-ole-boys to keep Blacks in our place and whites in theirs: whites on top and Blacks at the “bottom of the well”.

Oh how proud I was and oh how I celebrated when Zach Patterson became the first Black Mayor in the history of McComb. I saw him as a strong Black leader who would skillfully utilize a Black majority on the city board to finally bring everybody to the table of power and benefits, including Blacks. And that is exactly what he tried to do.

But, according to attorney Norman Gillis and others, Patterson was going to far. He was going beyond his vested power. Beyond the city charter. You can read it. His statements are prominent in that Jackson Free Press article. He said the mayor did not have the power he was exerting. But if that were true, then why would Gillis notarize a legal notice for amendments to city ordinances to take away the same powers from Mayor Patterson that Gillis was saying that the mayor never had? Indeed, Gillis contradicts himself throughout the article. I’ve printed a small section of the Gillis portion of the article:

JFP: But Gillis said that his opinion of the mayor turned negative when it became clear to him that Patterson was trying to shoulder more authority than was legally his. “McComb has always been a happy, prosperous, good, fine place to live,” Gillis said. “It was only when we had a conflict between the aspirations or assumptions of a ‘strong mayor’ and the constitutional basis for government” that things turned bad.” The mayor’s supporters believe Gillis has more to do with the mayor/board feud than he lets on. Chief Financial Officer Mary Adams, a Patterson loyalist, compares Gillis to the Wizard of Oz. Since losing confidence in the mayor, Gillis has taken positions that put him on the other side. When Patterson questioned the residency of a white selectman, Danny Esch, Gillis represented Esch. In his November 2008 letter to the Enterprise Journal, Gillis called on the board to request “an injunction to restrain the mayor’s continuing breach of his oath of office.” And this June, when the board majority approved the ordinance amendments that stripped Patterson’s power to supervise city employees, Gillis notarized the legal notice that accompanied the ordinance changes. To Patterson, these stances confirm Gillis’ place in the white “good old boys network.” Patterson says that Gillis soured on him when he refused to take advice from the attorney outside public meetings. Since then, Patterson believes, Gillis has tried to shape city policy by orchestrating the opposition efforts by the white selectmen. “He’s the lead guy,” Patterson told me. “They are puppets of him.”Gillis scoffs at the mayor’s accusations and says that opposition to Patterson has nothing to do with race. “McComb went through hell in the ‘60s, but we came out of that with about as good a community feeling as you could possibly want between the races, to the extent that that’s at all possible,” Gillis said. “Every municipality in Pike County is black, and there’s a certain amount of resentment in some places, but I think it’s more on the black side than the white side.” “And now the mayor’s chief opponent is a black guy, E.C. Nobles,” he added.

I am convinced that Gillis puts his foot in his mouth several times and shows his true colors in those statements. He said that “McComb has always been a happy, prosperous, good, fine place to live.” Well, that may have been true for the white people who lived in McComb, but try and sell that to majority of Black people who lived here before the civil rights movement, during the movement when McComb was given the title of the “Bombing capitol of the world”, and up to this very day when the economic and social conditions of the average Black resident is lower than the average white resident.

Just compare the condition of the streets in several parts of the Black community to the streets in the white community. Just look at what’s going on at city hall. This mayor won’t stay in his place, so the good-ole-boy system is putting that “Black Boy” back in his place. Gillis is not as smart a man or as intelligent as some would lead you to believe. I mean, he actually said that there is a certain amount of resentment between the races, but that he believed it is more on the Black side. Are you kidding me?

Enterprise-Journal editor Jack Ryan publishes a “My Two Cents column in his newspaper and allows posting on the website blog each day. The commentors are mostly white and they are very very resentful of Blacks. And, they aren’t bashful about talking about Blacks and their resentment of Blacks, and Ryan is not bashful about publishing this point of view.

Yes, this thing is really about a Black man, indeed, Black people with too much power, more power than white people can stomach. And, Gillis uses E.C. Nobles to create a false picture that this is not about race. And Nobles is foolishly allowing himself to be used as their frontman.

But, that is a discussion for next time...