US Senate candidate Mike Espy (D) declared he wanted to known as the healthcare senator at a rally in Clarksdale last week.
Espy, the uncle of Clarksdale mayor Chuck Espy and brother of former mayor Henry Espy, spoke outside of Chapel Hill Missionary Baptist Church on Page Avenue. He is challenging incumbent Cindy Hyde-Smith (R) for the senate seat in the upcoming Nov. 3 election.
Hyde-Smith defeated Espy in a special election in 2018 when Thad Cochran (R) retired from the US Senate.
Hanna Espy, daughter of Chuck Espy and niece of Mike Espy, introduced her uncle.
Espy said he was the first African-American cabinet secretary over agriculture. He was later forced to resign that post under allegations he inappropriately took gifts.
“With your present support, on Nov. 3, I’ll be the first African-American Senator elected in Mississippi since the Civil War,” Espy said. “I say all that, not just to glorify myself. I tell you I’ve been something. I’m not running this time to be something. I’m running to do something for you.”
Espy, age 66, was born in 1953 when Mississippi was last in healthcare, education, jobs and income. He said Mississippi is still last in those areas.
Espy said he had chronic asthma until he was 12 years old.
He reflected on a time in 1957 when hospitals were segregated in 1957 and his father took him to the African-American hospital in Yazoo City. The hospital did not have enough oxygen to save him, so his father took him to the white hospital in the area.
The white nurses went against the racial disposition of that day, gave his father oxygen. Espy’s father took him back to the African-American hospital, he was put on a ventilator and his life was saved.
Espy then told a story he learned about in 2019 where Shy Shoemaker of Houston, Miss., had an asthma attack, but the hospital in her community was closed. She died en route to an emergency room at a hospital 30 minutes away.
“Shy Shoemaker died last year, in 2019,” Espy said. “Mike Espy lived 60 years before that. It was six decades between her sad story and my happy story. Sixty years with all the advances in medical technology. Sixty years with all the breakthroughs — nebulizers and breathing treatments and taking care of asthma. Sixty years between Shy Shoemaker and Mike Espy and she died and I lived.”
Espy said the reason he survived was there were two rural hospitals in his area, while the emergency room was closed in Shoemaker’s area.
He said he would like to do something about that as a US Senator.
State Sen. Robert Jackson, state Rep. Orlando Paden, Coahoma County Democratic committee chair Ray Sykes, Coahoma County Board of Supervisors president from District 4 Johnny Newson and Chuck Espy all spoke during the rally for Espy.
