The people of Mississippi have not been angels. The history of the Magnolia State and segregation invites the kind of scrutiny and criticism that has recently been visited upon the state. Media reports that the Walthall County School District has been ordered to stop segregating its schools raised the ire of most Americans because it was a reminder of a particularly ugly moment in this nation’s history—a history that Americans have no desire to repeat.

Still it stretches the limits of credulity when a school that is 66 percent White and 35 percent Black is labeled a “racially identifiable ‘White’” school and the county supporting the school is depicted as filled with a bunch of ugly racists just itching to don the bed sheets and ride through the night terrorizing the countryside. Yet, that is exactly the case in Walthall County, Mississippi.

(NNPA)—On Tuesday night, (May 3) PBS’s “American Experience” series will premiere “Road to Memphis,” a two-hour documentary on the interconnected final days of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and his assassin, James Earl Ray. As one who has read every major book on the King assassination, I was looking forward to this movie, which is based on the book, “Hellhound On His Trail: The Stalking of Martin Luther King, Jr. and the International Hunt for His Assassin” by Hampton Sides (Doubleday).

There are two no more important questions that you can ask yourself. Why? Generally what we do with our lives, how our children develop can be determined by how we perceive ourselves. If you lack a strong sense of self-esteem it is often reflected in how you live your life. For example, a drug addict and alcoholic are those who lack self-esteem and must do something synthetic to help them feel that they are somebody.

Too many define importance and being somebody as someone who is rich, with expensive cars, money, houses and other symbols of material wealth. It is my conviction that richness is a state of mind not a state of being.

(NNPA)—We are all afforded one lifetime. Born into varying circumstances and faced with differing degrees of challenges and opportunities, we all ultimately define the course of our own lives.

Some make it a point to encourage and assist others in their own struggles, while others only focus on their own personal advancement. There are those who volunteer in their local communities from time to time and those that decide on pursuing careers that will help educate or somehow heal the next generation.