"The Help" didn't help: Church in Jackson, Miss., refuses to marry black couple

Drip, you are not the Southern cultures expert you think you are.

 

What kind of church is this? Is this an old, very pretty, "destination" church? That is, would non church-goers want to have weddings there? I ask because I've been members of Episcopal churches like that -- one was the inspiration of the whole Mitford series by Jan Karon -- and often it's the case that they have pretty strict rules on who can and who cannot get married there. Usually, you have to be a member of record. You can't just start attending for a few weeks/months and then have your wedding there. Maybe it's the case that the couple in question ran afoul of such a policy in this instance and the mutterings had to do with that. I'm not saying I believe that's what happened in this case, but I can't dismiss the possibility out of hand.

 

I wondered about that too but it does say this in the article: "Wilson said he had been attending the church for about a month and his now wife had been attending for more than a year. His wife's father also attended the church, and her uncle was custodian at the church."

 

dq -- if that had been the case, they never would have been given approval to do the ceremony in the first place. They got that approval, though, and were just fine until they did the rehearsal and the other members saw that they were ... so tall.

Also, if that were the church's policy, you would think someone in the church would have proffered that explanation at some point in the past few weeks. Yet that never came up.

 

Again, I don't think that was the case. But I have seen some pretty squirrelly stuff in these kinds of scenarios. And lots of times the head honcho -- rector, priest, pastor, whatever -- is one of the last to be up on the details of policy. It's possible that something like that happened here.

 

I think you're giving them far too much benefit of the doubt for an act that was straight-out country racism, which they themselves really haven't even tried to deny.

 

You're probably ... no, most likely ... right. But I'm a slightly overweight white guy with a thick Southern accent, and I can assure you that I have found myself doing all the right things -- i.e., following all policies/procedures as they're intended to be followed -- while hoping like hell that nothing blew up. Because if something ever did blow up, I knew that there'd be plenty of people who'd immediately chalk it up to "straight-out country racism." But, to repeat, I'm pretty sure you've diagnosed the situation here correctly.

 

I have never called myself a southern cultures expert That's what you call me. However, I do have personal experience about life in Lauderdale and Neshoba counties. Do you?

 

Re: "The Help" didn't help: Church in Jackson, Miss., refuses to marry black cou

Yes to Lauderdale, no to Neshoba.

 

Neshoba is somewhat atypical, then and now. The large number of Choctaws introduced a third culture at a time when the South was programmed to see everything in binary terms. Now the big casino complex puts the local economy on a whole different footing. If you want a "classic" east Mississippi county, I nominate Noxubee.

 

Yes. Quite a bit. About five years worth.

 

Then I guess we have something in common.