A bid to buff Mississippi's image

"It is frustrating that the United States as a whole lumps us all as a bunch of ignorant racists who are uneducated and don't have shoes and go around having stereotypes about everybody else," says Bess Averett, director of the Southern Cultural Heritage Foundation in Vicksburg, Miss. "Hey, we have cars and trains like everyone else, so we could leave if we wanted."

Ms. Averett, who went to integrated schools in Mississippi as she was growing up, says it can be easy for outsiders to judge harshly the continued segregation in Mississippi, forgetting that reform and redemption are a daily part of life in the state.

"We celebrate what has happened in our past and how we've grown from it," she says. "We acknowledge all parts of it. It made us the state that we are today and the people in that state, and there's no reason to act like things didn't happen that brought us all to where we are today."

Of course, the South isn't the only place to fight an image of being backward. Maine resident Phil Bailey, who visited Mississippi to help out after hurricane Katrina, knows that all too well. "I could say people look at Maine and say it's backwards, rural, a bunch of dumb fishermen, and we're really only here to serve Massachusetts and New York as a summer vacation spot – but the reality is different," he says.

Based on his own observations, however, he says racial reform in Mississippi seems slow. "I don't think that we fix problems with a campaign that implies that problems don't exist," says Mr. Bailey.

The state's detractors say the fact that Mississippi had no reported hate crimes last year and that New Jersey had about 1,500 doesn't reveal any truth about how attitudes have changed in the Magnolia State. Rather, they say, it's a sign that people are still reluctant to report such crimes in Mississippi.

"Mississippi is a victim of its own history," says Heidi Beirich, spokeswoman for the Southern Poverty Law Center in Montgomery, Ala. "Deep South states are very, very reluctant to deal with hate crimes."

Looser says his intent is not to whitewash such realities. But he contends that segregationist attitudes are a marginal part of Southern society.

During Looser's year-old campaign, his ad agency has received positive e-mails from all over the world. But it's on the hot dog and hamburger buffet circuit where Looser draws the most emotional reactions. "I had a little old lady come up to me with a tear rolling down her cheek" at one Rotary Club event, Looser says. "She said, 'I tried to read these ads and I only got halfway through them and I started crying. You have said, in these words, what I have wanted to say my whole life, but didn't know how to articulate.' "

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