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Articles by Jonathan Odell
Opinion | Et Tu, Hoss: How ‘Bonanza’ Turned the Channel on Segregation
Growing up in Mississippi in the mid-20th century, I believed we white folks had it all figured out. We knew who we were: good, humble, God-fearing people, proud of our heritage and state. Sure, we didn’t travel much, but we read the papers, flipped through magazines, watched plenty of movies and devoured TV. The stories we consumed never challenged us—they affirmed our beliefs. No one asked us to feel guilty about slavery, the Civil War, Jim Crow or what was happening right under our noses.
Et Tu, Hoss?
Growing up in Mississippi in the mid-20th century, I believed we white folks had it all figured out. We knew who we were: good, humble, God-fearing people, proud of our heritage and state. Sure, we didn’t travel much, but we read the papers, flipped through magazines, watched plenty of movies, and devoured TV. The stories we consumed never challenged us—they affirmed our beliefs. No one asked us to feel guilty about slavery, the Civil War, Jim Crow, or what was happening right under our noses.
White Narratives Undersell Leontyne Price’s Triumphs
A few years ago, my hometown paper in Laurel, Miss., asked me to write a series of columns focusing on local historical events. I decided to cover Black history since the white perspective was dominant. In one column, I wrote about one of our renowned citizens, Leontyne Price, who was raised a dozen or so blocks from where I grew up. Despite the challenges of Jim Crow, she is an African American who rose to become the world’s most celebrated opera singer.
My Reckoning With the Lost Cause Myth
My home state of Mississippi is one of only four states that made Confederate Memorial Day a public holiday. In Mississippi alone, 25,000 state employees get the day off with pay, courtesy of state taxpayers. Ironically, nearly 40% of those government workers are Black. I’m pretty sure they don’t spend their day off extolling the virtues of the Confederacy.
How It Is Down Here – Salvation South
As I sat in a seventh-grade science classroom in Mississippi on a warm day in late November, my born-again science teacher said, “One day soon, your faith will be mightily tested by this great abomination.” Then Mrs. Shaw wrote the word EVOLUTION in big block letters on the blackboard. Like all my teachers, she was a resolute Christian and felt it was her duty to witness in public.
‘Home Town’ Reflects an Incomplete Picture of Laurel
I tell people where I grew up, and they say, “Oh, is that the Laurel, Miss., on HGTV?” Then they gush “It sounds just like Mayberry!” parroting one of the perky hosts on the blockbuster home-improvement show “Home Town.” I suspected the show was repackaging my memories for popular consumption, because my Laurel was no Mayberry.
Returning to Laurel
When I tell people where I grew up, they say, “Oh, is that the Laurel, Mississippi, on HGTV?” Then they gush, “It sounds just like Mayberry!” parroting one of the perky hosts on the blockbuster home improvement show Home Town. I suspected the show was repackaging my memories for popular consumption, because my Laurel was no Mayberry.
Returning to Laurel
When I tell people where I grew up, they say, “Oh, is that the Laurel, Mississippi, on HGTV?” Then they gush, “It sounds just like Mayberry!” parroting one of the perky hosts on the blockbuster home improvement show Home Town. I suspected the show was repackaging my memories for popular consumption, because my Laurel was no Mayberry.
What Daddy Can’t Fix – Salvation South
If I admitted I had an alcohol problem, it meant acknowledging my mother as an alcoholic, and her father, most of her brothers, as well as my father’s family. Ancestors dating back to our first juniper-berry-squeezing progenitor would be outed as alcoholics. So, no, I wasn’t an alcoholic. It just wasn’t acceptable. “Where’d you ever get an idea like that?” my mother asked. “For starters, that DWI in Mississippi and the DUI in North Carolina a year later.
Grace, Glitter and Radio Preachers
Ten years ago, a childhood friend came out to me. He was nearly sixty and living in Laurel, Mississippi, the small town where we both grew up. He said he had been seeing the same woman now for twenty years, unable to come to terms with his sexuality. He had had plenty of sex with men but had never had a date with one. Had never spent the entire night with one. Had never been sent flowers. Had never been kissed.
OPINION EXCHANGE | She slices! She dices! She gives (and receives) with love.
Opinion editor's note: Star Tribune Opinion publishes a mix of national and local commentaries online and in print each day. To contribute, click here. ••• On a visit to my mother in Mississippi, we fell into reminiscing about the old days. I asked her, after more than 60 years of birthday, Christmas and Mother's Day gifts, what her favorite was. She didn't hesitate. "That vegetable slicer you gave me!" she exclaimed. "I've never been prouder of anything." Her voice broke.
Black History Can Save White Folks, Too.
At a press conference in January 2023, Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida argued against an advanced-placement course in African American studies, warning that such material acted as a trojan horse for indoctrinating students into “left-wing” ideology. The statement infuriated me, but once I settled, I had to agree with him. In fact, such a thing had happened to me.
What a White Man Learned Selling a Black History Encyclopedia Door to Door in 1971
SOURCE: Mississippi Free Press 5/10/2023 Breaking News tags: African American history, Ebony Magazine, Ron DeSantis, Lerone Benett by Jonathan Odell Jonathan Odell, native of Laurel, Miss., is the author of three novels. His first novel, The View from Delphi (Macadam Cage 2004), deals with the struggle for equality in pre-civil rights Mississippi.
White Americans need to study Black history to better understand their own stories Original
As an author who has written three novels and countless essays exploring race in Mississippi, I am deeply troubled by the GOP’s full court press to ban Black history from the classroom. They seem to agree with Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis when he called it a Trojan horse for left-wing ideology. The truth is, I agree with their characterizations of Black history as a gateway drug to a more liberal perspective. It happened to me.
Pani Hazel i klub Rosy Parks
DRAMAT RASOWYCH PRZEŚLADOWAŃ I SIŁA KOBIECEJ PRZYJAŹNI. Pani Hazel i Klub Rosy Parks to słodko-gorzka opowieść o kobiecej sile i prawdziwej, rodzącej się w bólach przyjaźni. Wydaje się, że nic nie może przerwać głębokiej depresji Hazel Graham. Wyrwanej z nizin społecznych kobiecie, która zupełnie nie odnajduje się w rolach żony i matki, tragicznie umiera dziecko. Nagle pojawia się Vida. Służąca pomaga Hazel wrócić do życia i razem rozpoczynają walkę o prawa czarnoskórych mieszkańców Missisipi.
Move Confederate monuments to museums: Letter
My recommendation for Mississippi’s Confederate Heritage Month, which began April 1, is to move all vestiges that glorify or justify “the Lost Cause” into museums where they belong. All these Confederate monuments, including the one erected in my hometown of Laurel, went up years after the war was over, when whites were violently reclaiming the South from Reconstruction governments.
Review: 'Soul Serenade,' by Rashod Ollison
Rashod Ollison, an award-winning pop music critic and culture journalist, is also a gifted memoirist. In "Soul Serenade," Ollison tells of how his obsession with soul music sustained him through the heartbreaking hardships of growing up poor, black and gay in rural Arkansas in the 1970s and '80s. Ollison uses the authentic language of home, profane and poetic, to vividly describe a childhood lived in a state of impermanence.
I am a recovering racist: I was somehow taught hate as a gift of love
As a native Mississippian and recovering racist, I finally discovered why a seemingly innocuous thing like a state flag can bring out the absolute worst in us. It took a group of 11-year-old students to teach me that lesson.After reading about my most recent novel dealing with race in Jim Crow Mississippi, the principal of a private school in Minneapolis invited me to speak with his fifth-grade students. All the classes had been studying the civil rights movement.
Never Get Good At What You Hate: Advice for Graduates
If I were ever asked to address a graduating class, I’d look all those starry-eyed, career-bound capitalists in their shining faces and say, “Never get good at doing what you hate. If you do, you will be asked to do more of it. And for more money. It’s a trap. Run away as fast as you can. In fact, if you are forced to do what you hate, do it very badly. So badly they fire you for it. There is no shame in that. It may be the only way for you to find what you truly love.
“Tell me this one, Momma”: Each snapshot revealed something new about who we were
Dad’s tone was businesslike. “They’ve moved your mother to the ICU. They don’t know why she’s going downhill so fast.” My father couldn’t have called at a more depressing time. I was watching my impractical dream of being a writer turn to dust: I was in Minnesota trying to salvage the novel on which I had worked for five years. I had just lost my big time New York agent.
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