Day Twenty | 29th May 2017

Vicksburg, Mississippi, to White Castle, Louisiana.

Distance: 186 miles
Total: 4159 miles
Total states: 17

Today was Memorial Day, and by chance we happened upon a small parade in Vicksburg, just after breakfast. It was watched by a handful of people, silent but not sombre. There were old men driving old army vehicles, a police car dragging a golden cannon on a trailer, and even half a dozen men on horseback, dressed as Union soldiers. 

Later, in the Cedar Grove Cemetery, we saw that this town still has a complicated relationship with the Union. There, on tall poles, hung the state and Confederate flags, but no Stars and Stripes. Rows of headstones memorialised Confederate soldiers in the Civil War, some of them unknown. Little flags had recently been affixed to many of these graves, and to other, civilian gravestones, and they fluttered brightly in the hot wind. This flag, here, is a deeply complicated symbol.