I saw where MS population growth was the slowest among the Southern states, and it got me thinking. What does MS have to do to improve economically? We know all the usual factors: education, bring a factory in, etc. We know we've got casinos, agriculture, the outdoors and the Coast (and all it offers). But the state needs another economic engine. I'm thinking something along the lines of a civil right museum trail.

This country is obsessed with civil rights. We love to talk about how we can 'correct the wrongs'. Well, why doesn't MS go to the forefront. Let's quit trying to hide our past, instead embrace it. It happened. Let's show the world (and while we're at it, charge $30 a pop for it). I could see northerners absolutely FLOCKING down here for that.

I'm thinking a huge museum and trail for the civil rights workers in Philadelphia. Emmett Til museum in the Delta (they may already have that). How about an Oprah Winfrey museum in Kosciusko? Tours of old slave-owning plantations, showing how it used to be. So much history in the state that needs to be charged money for, instead of covered up. Is your old farming town dying (see any Delta town)? Let's have recreations of a typical day of a white Mississippian and a black Mississippian in 1940. I mean all these things that we run from everyday, we should use it. Ole Miss should have James Meredith stuff everywhere (think bigger here than Egg Bowl shit-throwing).

I mean, it's not going away. People still think we don't have air conditioning down here. The state's image has not improved in that regard. So let's try something else, and make money doing it.

Thoughts?