How Poverty and Racism Persist in Mississippi

Editor’s Note: Read The Atlantic’s special coverage of Martin Luther King Jr.’s legacy.

I how poor my family was until my maternal grandmother told me a story about sackcloth dresses and beans. I was in my 20s, and we were sitting in her kitchen, the tickle of cool air from the window air-conditioning unit barely on us, when she told me that while she was a child, her mother made dresses for her and her siblings from sackcloth, and that she was always disappointed because the sacks with pretty patterns were taken by the time she was given the opportunity to choose. “We ate beans every week when I was little,” my grandmother said. “We didn’t have meat, just some fatback for flavor.” The white wave of her hair fell across her face as she shook her head. “I could do without them now. When I moved out, I bought myself dresses, nice dresses. And I never wanted to eat beans again.” Beans and rice fueled the children through school, through work after school and on weekends, through the hours they spent planting, hoeing, weeding, and harvesting. My grandmother speaks openly of her lasting desire for fancy clothes, but she never mentions hunger. It is the