OPINION: Dancing on bloody sand

By Selika Sweet, M.D., FAAFP

JA Guest Writer

(Names and identifying details have been changed. This essay is a work of creative nonfiction based on real events.)

I once lived across the street from the Gulfport Pier. One morning, determined to finally try crabbing, I walked into a small bait shop and bought a red wire crab cage, some string, and bait. I put on a sun hat, tucked Crabbing for Dummies into my bag, and crossed the busy beach road toward the pier.

Sweat ran down my back as traffic backed up behind me. When I reached the boardwalk, I saw an older Black woman sitting beside a younger one who looked like her reflection from years past. Both wore worn straw hats and held fishing poles. I set my bags down next to them.

“May I?” I asked.

“Come on,” the older woman said. “You’ve never been crabbing before. I’ll show you.”

We watched a large wedding party gathering down the beach. White chairs, bright dresses, a DJ setting up speakers.

“Black folks couldn’t even walk on this beach once,” she said. “Now look at them throwing weddings.”

The younger woman gently tried to quiet her. “Grandma, stop. You’re just jealous.”

“No, she’s not,” I quickly came to her defense.

The older woman’s voice softened. “My grandpa, my daddy, and me marched right here with Dr. Gilbert Mason in 1960. I was ten years old. They call it the Bloody Wade-Ins. A white mob beat my daddy. My granddaddy picked me up and ran while they threw rocks and fired guns. We hid and watched. Now people who were too scared back then throw parties out here like none of that ever happened. Nobody ever invited my family. Not then and not now.”

She lowered her crab cage into the cloudy Gulf water.

“They did not do a damn thing to integrate this beach,” she said. “They were scared.”

I knew the history. The New York Times called the Wade-Ins one of the worst racial riots in Mississippi history. The Mississippi Sovereignty Commission quietly supported the violence.

Trying to lighten the moment, I said, “If I ever get married again, it will be right out there. You’ll be first on the guest list.”

Her face brightened. “I make cakes. I do decorations. I even got a little catering business.”

I laughed. “But I won’t be wearing white. That sand would turn to ash.”

“So would I,” she said, grinning. “I already had a child when my daddy brought my husband home from the shipyard. We stayed married 50 years. He was a good one. But before him…”

The DJ began playing Juvenile’s “Back That Thang Up”. The three of us laughed and swayed as the sun browned my arms from pecan to cocoa. I looked at her and thought about how a woman who once ran from bullets so Black people could touch this beach was now standing on it, laughing.

But joy on that sand did not erase what it cost to claim it.

In 1959, Dr. Gilbert Mason and other Black residents petitioned local officials for access to Biloxi’s taxpayer-funded beaches. When asked if they would accept only part of the shoreline, Mason replied plainly:

“We want access to every damn inch of it.”

That demand was not just about sand. It was about dignity.

Today, weddings and beachfront developments sit where Black families were once beaten back. We enjoy the freedom to stand there because people like Dr. Mason and families like the one I met on that pier paid the price.

The music was loud. The water was warm. The crabs were biting.

And beneath our dancing feet was history that still remembers who fought for every inch.