Dear Editor,
I am from Columbia and my husband is from Sandy Hook, south of Columbia. We both moved on in multiple ways a long time ago. Yesterday, I was reading aloud the list of newspapers that printed editorials stating that they are not the enemy of the people.
My husband was driving and listening to the list as I read. I looked at the A’s. No papers in Alabama had joined the protest. No surprise there. I read on down, and as I came to the L’s, I realized no papers in Louisiana had joined either, and I commented on that to my husband.
“You know no papers in Mississippi will speak out either,” I said.
“You’ve got that right. Nobody there has the courage to speak up,” my husband said.
Then I came to the M’s! “Ken, I said to my husband, “you won’t believe this. The only paper in Mississippi to post an editorial was The Columbian-Progress!” Neither of us knew what to say for awhile as we let it sink in that a small-town paper in Mississippi had done something that larger papers had not done.
I was so very proud of you. I looked online to try to order you and your staff a cake, but I found no bakeries there except Walmart and a donut shop. If you will let me know where to order one, I will still send you and your staff a cake. What you did was so obviously right, and yet so difficult in the area in which you live and work.
Thank you for the courage and commitment to protecting our right to a free press. I was reminded of the poem “Carl Hamblin” from “Spoon River Anthology,” and I have enclosed a copy of it.
Thank you again for your editorial, and let me know the name of a good bakery.
Barbara G. Brown, M.D.
North English, Iowa
Editor’s Note: A few other Mississippi newspapers did end up participating in the editorial campaign, including the Greenwood Commonwealth and the Sun-Herald in Biloxi.
