Anti-gay laws in some southern U.S. states are provoking condemnation and cancellations by businesses, writers and musicians. We put together three powerful protest songs - Steve Earle's "Mississippi, It's Time", Phil Ochs's "Here's To You, Mississippi", and Nina Simone's "Mississippi Goddam."
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Canadian musician Bryan Adams canceled a performance in Biloxi, Mississippi, in protest over the state’s new law that allows religious groups and some private businesses to refuse service to gay couples. (Cynthia Karam/Reuters)
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Sunday Edition8:49Mississippi, protest and music
Crazy old Mississippi is in the crosshairs again. Best-selling author John Grisham, Pulitzer Prize winner Donna Tartt, National Book Award winner Jesmyn Ward and more than 90 other writers took aim at their home state this week. And shortly after Bruce Springsteen cancelled a concert in North Carolina, Canadian rocker Bryan Adams pulled out of a big Mississippi gig.
Steve Earle's song, "Mississippi, It's Time", was written as a protest against the state's refusal to remove Confederate imagery from its flag, after nine people were fatally shot at an African-American church in Charleston, South Carolina. It's all to protest the new so-called "religious freedom" laws, which allow individuals, private organizations and businesses to refuse to perform services for LGBT people.
Nina Simone's powerful "Mississippi Goddam" was written after the murder of civil rights activist Medgar Evers in June 1963, by the Klu Klux Klansman Byron De La Beckwith. Critics call it state-sanctioned discrimination. We put together three powerful protest songs - Steve Earle's "Mississippi, It's Time", Phil Ochs's "Here's To You, Mississippi", and Nina Simone's "Mississippi Goddam."
A crowd of around 500 protest against House Bill 1523 outside the Governor's office in Mississippi's state Capitol during a rally by the Human Rights Campaign on Monday, April 4, 2016 in Jackson. (James Patterson/AP Images for Human Rights Campaign)
The struggle for civil rights is nothing new in Mississippi, as this photo shows. In June 1966 participants marched in honour of slain civil rights campaigner James Meredith in Canton, Mississippi. (Photo by Harry Benson/Daily Express/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)
