Memo from NYC

In 1964 three civil rights workers -- including two Jews from NYC -- were murdered in Mississippi. They were killed in a car by members of the KKK while on the way to meet members of a black church that had also been the the target of racist violence.

The murders of these three men -- Chaney, Goodman, and Schwerner -- and the aftermath were part of what made the Civil Rights movement explode, and it became the basis for the 1988 movie Mississippi Burning.

Mississippi has a particularly ugly racial history, fueld by violence drenched in blood. Emmett Till, Medgar Evers, and countless other deaths marked this state as a place where black Americas were regularly terrorized, often by law enforcement itself.

Well now ... Mississippi has a black US Senator. And he's a Democrat -- and not a 19th or 20th century Democrat like John Stennis who was a blatant segregationist -- a young, smart lawyer named Scott Colom. 

And how'd he do it? He used humor, running one of the funniest and smartest ads in US political history. 

There's nothing funny about Mississippi's racial history, and winning a US Senate race is serious business, but the fact that he won using humor and enagement is so great, and this is an amazing moment in American history. 

Just glad that NYC played a small part in it, sixty-two years ago.