Why Black Mississippians shouldn't just leave their home state

“Black people in Mississippi, get out now!”

“Why do Black people still choose to live in Mississippi?”

“As a Black person, I’ll never step foot in Mississippi”

Those are real statements being posted on social media in the wake of the deaths of Nolan Wells and Tasia Fortune in recent weeks.

But this framing misses how the state got here in the first place. Mississippi policy guru Hannah Williams breaks down why in this new video.

(Click the photo to view.)

During the Great Migration, Williams says, millions of Black Americans left the South chasing safety and opportunity, escaping Jim Crow — but that history rarely accounts for what was left behind: Black political power, Black economic power, Black institutions, and the people who stayed. A common misconception outside the South is that Mississippi’s racism still looks like 1963 — lunch-counter refusals, slurs shouted in public. It doesn’t. Everyday life is often more integrated than outsiders imagine; the real tension today lives in who holds power.

And still, Black Mississippians remain some of the proudest people around. The same soil where enslaved people were forced to labor is now where generations gather for family reunions, where someone’s grandfather can live in a trailer on 250 acres of family land and be one of the wealthiest people in the county. It’s the home state of Walter Payton, B.B. King, and Alice Walker — and the churches, HBCUs, juke joints, blues music, and civil rights organizing that continue to shape American culture, evidenced by how enthusiastically audiences embraced Sinners and the wave of memes it spawned.

So before you talk down to Black Mississippians, please remember: The path to freedom, as the saying goes, still runs through Mississippi.