In the Town That Lott Built, Residents Are Forgiving

Gratitude can buy a lot of forgiveness, and if Sen. Trent Lott had stopped by the shipyard that is the biggest employer in his hometown, he would have encountered both in ample supply.

It made sense that Lott would choose to return home Friday for his high-stakes effort to undo the damage over comments last week that appeared to endorse segregationist politics of the 1940s. Lott is revered by many in Pascagoula, which has a middle school and airport named after him and owes much of its stature as a center of shipbuilding and military bases to the clout in Washington of its favorite son.

Like many people across Mississippi, residents here took offense to the remarks Lott made at a birthday gathering for retiring Sen. Strom Thurmond (R-S.C.), who turned 100. But as the nationwide furor persisted -- along with calls for Lott, a Republican, to step down as the Senate’s next majority leader -- many residents of this blue-collar port town were inclined to give Lott the benefit of the doubt, even before his nationally televised apology Friday.

Outside the hotel where Lott held a news conference, the marquee read: “We Love You Trent.”

At Hulas, a diner down the street from the looming Northrop Grumman shipbuilding complex, the lunchtime crowd of shipyard workers seemed more worried about the harm to the area’s economy if Lott were to step down than about the remarks themselves. The area depends on the largess of the federal government. Military contracts keep the shipyard going, and the Navy and Coast Guard each have stations in Pascagoula, about 100 miles east of New Orleans. As senator, Lott helps assure that the spigots remain open -- even more so as majority leader.

“The man had a poor choice of words, but he shouldn’t have to lose his job over it,” said Leroy Tillman, a 44-year-old shipbuilder who is white. Tillman was finishing a crab sandwich and fries at a table with seven other shipyard workers, white and black.

“Around here, what he said doesn’t amount to a hill of beans,” Tillman said.

Gabriel Wells, 30, a ship fitter who is black, agreed.

“It embarrassed me for him to represent Mississippi and for him to say that. People already have a bad impression of us,” Wells said. “People are not going to overlook it. He’s done a lot for Pascagoula so they will eventually move on. I personally don’t think he meant anything. I think he was caught up in the moment.

“It would definitely hurt the shipyard if he was out of power. A lot of people would have to move.”

Tom Eubanks, the white owner of Hulas, offered a grander analysis. He swept his right arm in the direction of the shipyard. “All this here,” he said, “is because of Trent Lott.”

Whatever his political importance to the region’s economy, some in this Gulf Coast city of 115,000 have stepped forward to criticize Lott, who became senator in 1988. The city’s daily newspaper, the Mississippi Press, has called for him to step aside as Senate Republican leader. In an editorial Thursday, the newspaper said that Lott’s remarks praising Mississippi’s support of Thurmond’s segregationist campaign for president in 1948 -- and similar comments in 1980 -- disqualified him for the job.

The newspaper’s editor, Dan Davis, said many residents reacted angrily to the editorial, which he wrote. Some called or sent e-mails decrying the stance. A few canceled their subscriptions.

“If there were a popularity contest between me and a convicted child molester,” said Davis, who is white, “I’d be a distant second.”

But some black residents said Lott’s comments showed that, despite a series of apologies this week, he still harbored racial beliefs that were discredited decades ago.

“He said out loud what a lot of us felt was in his heart,” said Pam Wells, a black 30-year-old hairstylist, who is not related to Gabriel Wells. “He should resign because he is supposed to represent all of us, and now people don’t believe he can represent our people fairly.”

For many, the Lott controversy served to return the nation’s gaze unhappily to a racist legacy that Mississippi has labored hard to extinguish. Many Gulf Coast residents in their 40s can remember the days when blacks were barred from the beach not far from Pascagoula. The periodic fights over displaying the Confederate battle flag in public settings stir sentiments over race, as happened last year when the state’s voters agreed to keep the emblem as part of the state flag.

“I’ve lived in times when there was racism and you could see it everywhere,” said Marvin Pickett, 67, who retired from teaching social studies at what is now Lott Middle School. Pickett, who is black, spoke as he was getting his hair cut at a shop downtown called Brothaz and Sistahz. “Now you don’t see it as much, but you feel it every day. You know it still exists.”

But the old caricature of the state as a racist backwater grows less apt by the day as Mississippi lures state-of-the-art automobile plants and its Gulf Coast twinkles with the lights of casinos. Many Mississippians, black and white, have cringed as the storm over Lott has played out, certain that it has damaged the state’s efforts to craft a new image, said Marty Wiseman, director of the John C. Stennis Institute of Government at Mississippi State University.

In the senator’s waterfront neighborhood in Pascagoula, where his wood-framed house bears a sign that says “Lott’s Landing,” a neighbor said he was upset because the affair might harm the prospects for Lott’s fellow Republicans. “What he said puts the Republicans in a bad light,” said Al Frank, a 77-year-old retired salesman.

“I don’t know what more he can do but apologize. Do they want him to slash his wrist?” said Frank, who is white. “He shouldn’t have shot his mouth off. I thought he was smarter than that.”

*

Hart reported from Pascagoula, Miss., Ellingwood from Atlanta.