History Speaking - Old Capitol Museum

Today, I went to Jackson seeking things to take to Brazil.  I knew that I wanted to take things that were as representative of Mississippi as I could, things made here, crafted by people from here if possible.  The big problem is finding things like this, especially affordable things in the quantity I needed.  I picked up my best friend, and we made a day of it.

Rotunda, Old Capitol Museum, Jackson, MS

We started at the Old Capitol Museum in downtown.  I had remembered a large gift shop there from when I had gone a long time ago, and I decided it would be a good place to start.  The Old Capitol was damaged heavily when Katrina came through, and it underwent major renovations after that.  It was very different.  The restored building has multimedia exhibitions and is very nice.  It is a very pleasant place now.

One of the exhibitions is a screen that scrolls down from the ceiling in the former House chamber on the hour and half-hour.  A film is projected onto it with actors recreating the debate that took place when Mississippi chose to secede from the Union.  It is rather intense to stand and watch as the actors attempt to persuade you to vote for or against secession.   As I stood on the third-floor balcony looking down at that film playing to the huge chamber, empty except for my friend and me, it struck me suddenly that I was standing in the place where that decision had happened, that it wasn't an abstract nebulous concept, some random string of dead letters on a page, but real people who had argued with each other and had come to the decision that the best thing for the state was to leave the Union.

Somehow, even though I have lived here and grown up as any Mississippi native or transplant does surrounded by the Past (with the capital P on purpose), it seldom feels real.  Maybe it is exactly because we are so inundated with it that it lacks sharpness.  You don't have to go far to see it.  It might be a redneck with a rebel flag sticker or a devout bunch of costumed Civil War reenactors on a major holiday, but keeping the past alive is a full-time hobby or job for people here.  There are even holidays that nobody else takes, for example, my trash didn't get picked up because it was Confederate Memorial Day. (Who takes THAT?  Apparently my trash guys.)   I think all this familiarity breeds contempt, though, or at least builds up a giant callus. We drive past major moments in history everywhere, and I think that sometimes we need to shake off that ennui and remember that real people struggled, chose, lived, and died during them.  I don't mean that every moment needs to be dedicated to glorifying or resurrecting that past, but when we become so numb to it that it becomes just another part of the background, I think something important has been lost.

Doorknob Detail
Governor's Office Door

The museum had a very fine edge to tread, and it did it well.  While we have some things and some people of which we may be very rightly proud in our state, Mississippi's past, let's face it, is not exactly 100% glorious.  I won't absolve my state of any past transgressions nor will I try to gloss them over, but I will say that we are not alone in that in this nation.  We are not alone in that in this world.  Every place has some part of its past that it must overcome. Every place, just like every person, has some scar to carry with it, some wound to heal.

 That's the other reason museums and the going to them are important.  For better or worse, even if it's something quite terrible, I think it's always better to know who you really are and what you really come from.  Know your good and your bad, your strengths and your weaknesses.  Such self-knowledge gives a firm foundation to build a future on.  The museum is a living example of that, and not just in its exhibitions. In its various stages and phases of renovation, it has physically removed the bad, that which has decayed through time so much as to be no longer functional, and it has replaced those things with that which supports, that which meets the needs of the current day. One whole room chronicles the various changes the Old Capitol has had to make to survive including removing original brick in some cases because it was crumbling or damaged and of course restorations after not one but two hurricanes sheared away its roof.  I guess we can use the Old Capitol as a bit of an object lesson, not just for what is housed inside it but also for the structure itself then.  If we as a state and we as individuals within it can manage to do as well as this one museum,  perhaps we can all use the past, whatever mixture of good and bad it may be, to reinvent ourselves gracefully to meet the challenges ahead.