MISSISSIPPI: Them Dang Movies

Gloomy Sunday is a 120-year-old tradition in Mississippi. An 1822 blue law still forbids Mississippians to attend bearbaiting, cockfights, bullfights and any other routine amusements of a Sabbath. Sunday movies are taboo-to the intensified boredom of some 110,000 soldiers training in the State. They wander aimlessly up & down the dead, empty streets of Mississippi towns, honing for something to do, and usually finding it only in honky-tonks and back-street bordellos.

Last week the Mississippi Senate, for the third time this session, fearlessly faced the issue. The opposition thundered that a bill...

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