Ralph Eubanks - Research Paper Example

He was also one of the first coloured students to attend the integrated school. In describing his experiences, he has highlighted his acute embarrassment and feelings of isolation upon being the Eubanks has also mentioned the State Sovereignty Commission and says that this institution was empowered to do any and all actions that would help to preserve the sovereignty of the state of Mississippi, so that she could continue with her racist policies without any interference from the federal Government.

As a result, while the other states in the Union flourished through increased representation of black students in integrated schools, colleges and Universities, the state of Mississippi lagged far behind. Eubanks sums up the purpose of this organization as being in effect, working to “instill fear in Mississippians like my parents: well educated, progressive thinking African-Americans, more commonly known as uppity niggers.” (Eubanks Xiv). Finding his own parents names on the Commission’s list – as people who needed to be spied upon and watched, in order to ensure that they did not interfere with the segregated fabric of the state, was a shock to the author.

One of the people that Eubanks spoke to during the course of his self discovery and discovery of his past was Horace Harned, the Chairman of the Commission. This was a man who had wielded a considerable amount of power in the small farming community where his father and mother lived. At one time he had been a member of the Ku Klux Klan and was strongly in support of segregation and the standard of life that he and his contemporaries had enjoyed by rigidly maintaining the structure of the segregated society.

In speaking to him, Eubanks was told that most certainly, the fact that his parents’ names had been on the list would suggest that they were always in danger of actions being taken against them by people Harned described ad rednecks. He described himself as the firebrand of the