38 United States The EconomistNovember 16th 2019
21O
n the morning of November 2nd, six
white men and two women, dressed in
uniforms of dark tops and khaki trousers,
gathered on the east bank of the Talla-
hatchie river in the Mississippi Delta. One
carried the flag of a group called the League
of the South, which advocates for “Anglo-
Celtic” supremacy. Its founder, Michael
Hill, said: “We are here at the Emmett Till
monument that represents the civil-rights
movement for blacks. What we want to
know is: when are all of the white people
over the last 50 years that have been mur-
dered, assaulted and raped by blacks going
to be memorialised?”
This is not the first time that the spot,
which is near the point where, in 1955, the
mutilated body of an African-American
boy named Emmett Till was pulled from
the waters, has attracted racist protests.
The monument is the fourth marker on the
riverbank. The others have been stolen,
thrown in the river, replaced, riddled with
bullet holes, cut down, replaced again, shot
up again and replaced for a third time. Be-
cause of the vandalism, the new memorial,
erected two weeks before the protest,
weighs 500 pounds and is made of rein-
forced steel covered in bulletproof glass. It
is also surrounded by security cameras.
When the cameras picked up the protest
and triggered an alarm, the protesters ran
away. The event was widely reported as
showing that racism still bedevils the com-
memoration of civil rights in the Deep
South. That is true. But there is more to the
story than that.
Within a 20-mile radius of the memori-
al at Graball Landing (named after a dock
for unloading goods) are over two dozen
places associated with Emmett Till’s final
days. They include a museum, two restored
buildings, a park and nature trail (now
overgrown) and a community centre. Pov-
erty, denial, indifference, local rivalries
and greed, as well as racist violence, have
all beset these commemorations of Em-
mett Till, and muted the racial reconcilia-
tion that public acts of remembrance are
intended to bring about.
Twenty miles downstream from Graball
Landing stands Bryant’s Grocery and Meat
Market, a shop in the village of Money. It
was here, on the evening of August 24th
1955, that Till, a 14-year-old from Chicago
who was visiting his uncle, wolf-whistled
at a white shop assistant, Carolyn Bryant.
She claimed in court that he had proposi-GRABALL LANDING, MISSISSIPPI
Racism versus commemoration in one
of America’s poorest regionsHistory in the Mississippi DeltaMemories of
Emmett Till
F
rom thetop of theksdpradio tower,
200 feet in the air, station manager
Austin Roof could see nearly all of Popof
Island, a scrap of tundra surrounded by
sea at the base of the Aleutian chain. But
the picturesque view was not what he
was thinking about as 25-mile-per-hour
winds bellowed in his ears. “It was blow-
ing like a son of a gun,” he said. The lines
he was hoping to use to hoist a 75-pound
antenna to the top of the tower were
flying out of reach. Sand Point, a village
of about 1,000 and the island’s only
settlement, lay below him. “I don’t get
paid extra for this,” he thought.
In a remote, coastal village like Sand
Point, the radio station provides a crucial
service, and not just because it broad-
casts reports from the commercial fish-
ing industry—the community’s bread
and butter—as well as games (home and
away) of the high-school basketball
team, the local pride and joy. The station
is responsible for sending out emergency
advisories, which are particularly impor-
tant here along the Pacific Ring of Fire,
one of the most seismically active places
on Earth. Over the past five years the
Aleutian Islands have experienced three
tsunami alerts.
In recent years, as state funds in
Alaska for public radio have dwindled,
the three-man crew at Sand Point’s radio
station has had to take drastic measures:
they have been trained in tower climbing
and rescue so they can perform mainte-
nance on their 1980s-era, 20-storey radio
tower. Otherwise, Mr Roof explained,
they would have to spend $5,000 to get a
technician out to the village every time
something comes loose.
Since getting trained about four years
ago, Mr Roof estimates he and his staff
have carried out $100,000-worth of
tower maintenance. At a time when
America is in need of trusted—and local-ly minded—sources of information, this
characteristically Alaskan, shoestring
approach is helping keep an outpost of
broadcasting alive. But even withdiy
tower upkeep, Mr Roof recently cut staff
hours and salaries, including his own, to
make ends meet.
Last summerexceptionally hot, dry
conditions whipped up wildfires across
Alaska, prompting public radio stations
to work round-the-clock to provide
updates on road closures and evacua-
tions. In a video announcement, Go-
vernor Mike Dunleavy advised Alaskans
to “stay tuned to the radio so you can get
emergency updates”. Less than two hours
later the governor, a devotee of the aus-
terity schemes, vetoed all state funding
for public broadcasting.Extreme broadcasting
Public radioSAND POINT, ALASKA
Budget cuts in places that rely on public radio lead to dangerous ingenuityDon’t touch that dialeconomy from recession, then Mr Powell,
by reacting promptly to the yield-curve
omen, may have actually weakened its pre-
dictive power. Few workers, or presidents,
are likely to complain.
But the coast is not yet clear. The Fed
might yet seize defeat from the jaws of vic-
tory. Rather than recognising its own suc-
cess, it could interpret the un-inversion of
the yield curve, and the absence (so far) of a
downturn, as a sign that the original omen
was a false alarm. Were a new round of
headwinds to threaten the American econ-omy and re-invert the curve, the central
bank might wrongly dismiss the signal and
under-respond, thus bringing on the fore-
told recession.
It could also be that the slump that was
predicted still looms ahead. Less than a
year has gone by since the yield curve first
inverted. Perhaps more important, each of
the past three pre-recession inversions re-
versed themselves before the ensuing
downturn began. So while financial mar-
kets are celebrating a bullet dodged, the
bullet may still be on its way. 7