"Last week, I was driving south from Hattiesburg to Biloxi on my way to spend a couple of days on the Mississippi Gulf Coast. I decided to take a different route than my usual trek south on US Highway 49. Instead, I took Interstate 59 to MS Highway 53. About a mile or two after taking the exit, I came upon Juniper Grove Road. It led me to Juniper Grove Baptist Church, which sits in front of a graveyard where my cousin Theodore Gilmore Bilbo is buried. I decided to pull over and visit his gravesite, given that I had never been and that Bilbo is my most infamous relative. As I approached the church, I saw a sign that read, “Life has many choices. Eternity has 2. What is yours? Heaven or hell?' ” . . .
. . .
"His tomb does not say it, but the full title of Bilbo’s 1946 book was, “Take Your Choice: Separation or Mongrelization.” In the book, Bilbo argued that the survival of our nation hinged upon whether we would be able to prevent the large scale mixing of the races. He feared that a breakdown of racial barriers would result in racial intermarrying, which, in turn, would produce a nation that was no longer black and white – but instead a nation of “mongrels.” He considered this to be a threat to the integrity of the white race. He also argued that it was a threat to the integrity of the black race.
"You’ve probably heard such calls for racial purity before. Muhammad Ali would echo them years later – and would be given a pass by a fawning media willing to forgive anything he said after he refused service in the Vietnam War. But coming from Bilbo it was more dangerous. " . . .
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