Several times a day, Scott Colom, a 35-year-old district attorney in northeast Mississippi, walks past a Confederate monument in front of the courthouse. He rarely glances at it, but he knows that from one side it looks startlingly like a hooded Klansman (from the front, it’s a Rebel soldier carrying a flag, which is perhaps bad enough). His twin brother pointed out the resemblance several years ago. Yes, Colom says, it’s at the least irritating to be constantly confronted with a symbol of white supremacy. But then, “Look how far we’ve come. Whoever put that statue up, back in the day, this” — he looks himself up and down, a black man dressed for court in a trim charcoal suit, a black man who’s the area’s top law-enforcement official — “this is their worst nightmare.”
The day I meet Colom, we’ve just passed the statue, on our way to lunch, when a truck stops in front of us. A burly white man leans out the car window.
“Hey Scott! Austin just got out!”
“Today?” Colom yells back. “Congratulations.”
“Yeah, this morning. I really appreciate it, man!” The driver spins off.
[For more on this story by Nick Tabor, go to http://nymag.com/daily/intelli...e-out-of-prison.html]
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