The wound of slavery has been aggressively treated, but has not healed, Mississippi Supreme Court Justice James E. Graves Jr. said this morning at a Martin Luther King Jr. Day breakfast.

In his keynote address to the 250 or so people at Rainbow Arena, Graves compared slavery to the broken heart sung about in a popular song, “Unbreak My Heart.”

“There is a song by Toni Braxton,” Graves told the 250 or so who gathered at Rainbow Arena for Vicksburg’s annual Martin Luther King Jr. Day breakfast. “And in the song she tries to plead with a former lover she says to him, Unbreak my heart.'”

“The fact is that’s how it is with slavery in America. Americans cannot uncry the tears that were caused by slavery,” he said in his keynote address. “They can’t undo, Americans can’t, the pain that was caused by slavery. But until America acknowledges that slavery left a wound and that reconstruction was just a scab on the wound, and that segregation and Jim Crow and lynchings and separate but equal’ were all salt in the wound and the civil rights movement was just aggressive treatment of the wound, but the wound remains.”

The annual breakfast was the 14th produced by the local alumni chapter of the Alpha Phi Alpha fraternity, said breakfast chairman Lewis Burke, also a judge of Vicksburg Municipal Court.

The size of the crowd was “about the same as last year,” organization treasurer Ben Brown Jr. said.

“This is the third or fourth different place we’ve had it,” he said, adding that the Vicksburg Convention Center is the other local venue large enough to accommodate the annual crowd.

“The first time, there were around 150 people,” he said. “We’ve had as many as 275 or 300.”

Graves, who was appointed to replace retiring justice Fred Banks in 2001, previously served for 10 years as judge of the 7th Circuit Court District, which then included Hinds and Yazoo counties. He was appointed to that post in 1991 and was re-elected without opposition in 1994 and 1998.

Graves said that, in preparing for his address, he reviewed videotapes of King’s speeches and other records of King’s life and the civil rights movement of the 1960s.

“I want to encourage you to do the same,” he told the crowd. “It is so exciting because the words have so much weight and meaning and power.”

Graves also referred to the recent display of a copy of the Declaration of Independence at the Capitol in Jackson. He added that some of the first words of the Declaration of Independence, “We hold these truths to be self-evident…,” had special power for him during his visit with his parents to that display. He had recently heard them in King’s famous “I Have a Dream” speech in 1963.

Brown said he had been to all 14 breakfasts.

“We’ve had a lot of different speakers,” he said, adding that judges and attorneys had addressed the gathering before. “They’ve all been (from) within the state of Mississippi.”Mississippi Supreme Court justice

says slavery’s wound not yet healed

sknowlton@vicksburgpost.com

The wound of slavery has been aggressively treated, but has not healed, Mississippi Supreme Court Justice James E. Graves Jr. said this morning at a Martin Luther King Jr. Day breakfast.

In his keynote address to the 250 or so people at Rainbow Arena, Graves compared slavery to the broken heart sung about in a popular song, “Unbreak My Heart.”

“There is a song by Toni Braxton,” Graves told the 250 or so who gathered at Rainbow Arena for Vicksburg’s annual Martin Luther King Jr. Day breakfast. “And in the song she tries to plead with a former lover she says to him, Unbreak my heart.'”

“The fact is that’s how it is with slavery in America. Americans cannot uncry the tears that were caused by slavery,” he said in his keynote address. “They can’t undo, Americans can’t, the pain that was caused by slavery. But until America acknowledges that slavery left a wound and that reconstruction was just a scab on the wound, and that segregation and Jim Crow and lynchings and separate but equal’ were all salt in the wound and the civil rights movement was just aggressive treatment of the wound, but the wound remains.”

The annual breakfast was the 14th produced by the local alumni chapter of the Alpha Phi Alpha fraternity, said breakfast chairman Lewis Burke, also a judge of Vicksburg Municipal Court.

The size of the crowd was “about the same as last year,” organization treasurer Ben Brown Jr. said.

“This is the third or fourth different place we’ve had it,” he said, adding that the Vicksburg Convention Center is the other local venue large enough to accommodate the annual crowd.

“The first time, there were around 150 people,” he said. “We’ve had as many as 275 or 300.”

Graves, who was appointed to replace retiring justice Fred Banks in 2001, previously served for 10 years as judge of the 7th Circuit Court District, which then included Hinds and Yazoo counties. He was appointed to that post in 1991 and was re-elected without opposition in 1994 and 1998.

Graves said that, in preparing for his address, he reviewed videotapes of King’s speeches and other records of King’s life and the civil rights movement of the 1960s.

“I want to encourage you to do the same,” he told the crowd. “It is so exciting because the words have so much weight and meaning and power.”

Graves also referred to the recent display of a copy of the Declaration of Independence at the Capitol in Jackson. He added that some of the first words of the Declaration of Independence, “We hold these truths to be self-evident…,” had special power for him during his visit with his parents to that display. He had recently heard them in King’s famous “I Have a Dream” speech in 1963.

Brown said he had been to all 14 breakfasts.

“We’ve had a lot of different speakers,” he said, adding that judges and attorneys had addressed the gathering before. “They’ve all been (from) within the state of Mississippi.”