The Better Chancery Practice Blog

W. Ralph Eubanks is publishing editor at the Library of Congress and a native of Covington County, Mississippi.  His book, EVER IS A LONG TIME, is a thought-provoking exploration of Mississippi in the 1960’s, 70’s, and the present, from the perspective of a black child who grew up in segregation and experienced integration, and that of a young black man who earned a degree from Ole Miss, left Mississippi vowing never to return, achieved in his profession, established a family, and eventually found a way to reconcile himself to the land of his birth. 

It was his children’s inquiries about their father’s childhood that led Eubanks to begin to explore the history of the dark era of his childhood.  In his quest for a way to help them understand the complex contradictions of that era, he came across the files of the Mississippi Sovereignty Commission and found his parents’ names among those who had been investigated, and he became intrigued to learn more about the state that had spied on its own citizens. 

Eubanks’ search led him to Jackson, where he viewed the actual files and their contents and explored the scope of the commission’s activities.  He had decided to write a book on the subject, and his research would require trips to Mississippi.  It was on these trips that he renewed his acquaintance with the idyllic rural setting of his childhood and the small town of Mount Olive, where, in the middle of his eighth-grade school year, integration came to his school.

There are three remarkable encounters in the book.  The author’s meetings with a surviving member of the Sovereignty Commission, a former klansman, and with Ed King, a white Methodist minister who was active in the civil rights movement, are fascinating reading.

The satisfying dénouement of the book is Eubanks’ journey to Mississippi with his two young sons in which he finds reconciliation with his home state and its hostile past.

If there is a flaw in this book, it is a lack of focus and detail.  The focus shifts dizzyingly from the Sovereignty Commission, to his relationship with his parents, to his rural boyhood, to life in segregation, to his own children, to his problematic and ultimately healed relatiosnhip with Mississippi.  Any one or two of these themes would have been meat enough for one work.  As for detail, the reader is left wishing there were more.  Eubanks points out that his own experience of segregation was muted because he lived a sheltered country existence, and his memories of integrated schooling are a blur.  For such a gifted writer whose pen commands the reader’s attention, it is hard to understand why he did not take a less personal approach and expand the recollections of that era perhaps to include those of his sisters, or other African-Americans contemporaries, or even the white friends he had. 

This is an entertaining and thought-provoking book, even with its drawbacks.  I would recommend it for anyone who is exploring Mississippi’s metamorphosis from apartheid to open society.

The title of this book has its own interesting history.  In June of 1957, Mississippi Governor J. P. Coleman appeared on MEET THE PRESS.  He was asked if the public schools in Mississippi would ever be integrated.  “Well, ever is a long time,” he replied, ” [but] I would say that a baby born in Mississippi today will never live long enough to see an integrated school.” 

In January of 1970, only twelve-and-a-half years after the “ever is a long time” statement, Mississippi public schools were finally integrated by order of the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, a member of which, ironically, was Justice J. P. Coleman, former governor of Mississippi. 

Eubanks