A holiday faced us, a sunny, wintry day just before the inauguration of our transformational president. The university and my wonderful publishing company both acknowledge the day as the holiday it rightly is. No sense giving in to guilt and working. This day was asking for a short road trip.
We decided to go somewhere we had heard so much about, just an hour away. It’s at the confluence of two powerful rivers: the Ohio and the Mississippi. Cairo, Illinois.
Now I don’t know much about the history of Cairo, only that racism killed the place. I had read about it, and to be honest, was afraid to see it. What better day than the Martin Luther King holiday to go there and confront the demons?
In some ways, it was more pleasant than I expected; in others, it was more horrible. There were some mansions in an area with brick streets. But then there was the once-downtown. The photo here shows how sad and complete the state of decline. You think about “the tipping point” and wonder what date that was in Cairo.
I’ve been to places defined and shaped by their racist pasts: Birmingham, Chicago, Memphis, Detroit, Newark, Philadelphia—but none have touched me like this. This is where fear met despair.
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