This editorial by Jay Wiener originally appeared in The Northside Sun Thursday, Sept. 11, 2025.
The Mississippi Department of Archives and History (MDAH) is reminiscent of Lyndon Johnson’s assessment of Richard Nixon, “He’s like a Spanish horse, who runs faster than anyone for the first nine lengths and then turns around and runs backwards.”
Or Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s poem,
“There was a little girl, Who had a little curl, Right in the middle of her forehead. When she was good, She was very good indeed, But when she was bad she was horrid.”
It is difficult to reconcile a governmental department that accomplishes so much, extraordinarily well, with the entity that razed the city of Jackson’s flagship library.
The employees of MDAH are stellar individuals for whom I have utmost regard. Their probity is such that, if asked about book bans, they would agree that limiting access to books is indefensible. Nonetheless MDAH displayed no hesitation before eliminating a library housing countless volumes.
Why was the Eudora Welty Library razed? The flagship library was removed because its loading dock was conspicuous opposite the Two Mississippi Museums entry. (Please note the irony that the department overseeing the Eudora Welty House and the Eudora Welty Foundation destroyed the Eudora Welty Library.)
MDAH knew the location of the library’s loading dock before it broke ground for the two museums. They could have been entered on Mississippi Street or North Jefferson Street. A blind eye is turned toward that inconvenient truth as Jackson endures the absence of a flagship library, a crowning symbol of civic pride. Whenever Jacksonians lament the lack of a flagship library — as far as the eye can see — the penalty paid for serving as the state’s capital is inescapable.
Please do not take this critique to disapprove of public spaces shared by rich and poor alike. I am an advocate of public parks and prefer as many as possible, available in as many places as possible.
What I deplore, first and foremost, is that Jackson lacks sufficient funds to maintain city streets. MDAH could have constructed a state of the art public library, at state expense, in exchange for vacating the property sought. What occurred is as if one’s next-door neighbor bulldozed one’s home, refused recompense, and justified outrageous presumption, saying that the neighborhood was enhanced by the creation of green space.
The Northside Sun reported, on Friday August 22, 2025, that Jeanne Williams, Executive Director of the Jackson Hinds Library System, has informed Jackson’s City Council that the system’s board of directors recently “toured potential sites in an effort to re-establish the demolished Eudora Welty Library… ‘To renovate one of those sites would have been in the $12 million to $18 million range…’”
Second, state elected officials vociferously decry Federal Government overreach but, when the State Government overreaches, no conceivable dissembling is deemed excessive: When Thompson Field opened in 1963, it was built by the City of Jackson but, when the State of Mississippi sought control over our airport, the property was appropriated — once again without the citizens of Jackson being paid for the taking.
MDAH, given its focus on Mississippi history, is acutely aware of Mississippi’s troubling tradition of silencing dissent; running from town anyone saying what people in power do not want heard. I will not win friends among individuals fearful of realities being exposed that they prefer go unexamined notwithstanding the importance of pondering the pertinent problems implicated.
Not unlike Martin Luther’s protest, “I cannot and will not recant anything, for to go against conscience is neither right nor safe. Here I stand, I can do no other, so help me God. Amen.”
These days it’s difficult enough to think about a turntable at all, much less to think about one as a piece of furniture. But in the middle decades of the 20th century, they became mammoths.
These record players (for that’s essentially what they were, hi-fi or stereo) came in all sorts of styles to match your other furniture, too: Mediterranean, French provincial, Queen Ann, you name it. Furniture stores sold these primitive behemoths as well as recordings themselves, and it’s through the furniture business that Lillian Shedd McMurry, a former secretary and law student, fell down a rabbit hole and into the land of the blues.
According to her nephew, recording artist John Webb (“Wilder”) McMurry, “My Uncle Willard, Lillian’s husband, and his family weren’t real musical folks. They all had furniture stores. Willard and a furniture store, my dad, Webb, had a furniture store, and my uncle Carl had Super Furniture Market in Jackson. Willard’s niche was used furniture stores and he would buy the pre-existing stock out of a bankrupt store and get it going again. So there was some stock in a hardware store Willard had bought on Farish Street that included 78s of black music, what would have been called “race music” at the time. Lillian had a lot of get-up-and-go, had played the piano early in her life and was interested in music. But she knew nothing about blues or secular music.”
Lillian selected a record and put it on the turntable The record she chose was Wynnie “Mr. Blues” Harris’s “All She Wants to Do Is Rock”, and according to an interview with Living Blues magazine in 1986, what she heard changed her life. “It was the most unusual, sincere and solid sound I’d ever heard,” she said. “I’d never heard anything with such rhythm and freedom.”
“So Lillian,” Webb continued, “being enterprising, set the rest of the records out on the counter and they sold like hot cakes. And she began to get more involved.” Lillian acquired more records and began selling them on a full-time basis. She made trips to New Orleans and Memphis to bring in more recordings and eventually the couple converted the hardware store into a record/furniture store called Record Mart-Furniture Bargains.
The store specialized in blues, gospel and what was then called “hillbilly” music. Between walk-ins and mail orders the business began to thrive. “The Record Mart became a very big mail-order business,” Webb said. “I didn’t know until recently how big a deal that was.” It wasn’t long before Lillian got the idea to record her own material using local talent. Lillian and Willard McMurry became the founders and owners of the Diamond Record Company, which released records on the Trumpet label. “God, I didn’t know what I was getting into,” Lillian said later.
What she was getting into was a pioneering position in the roots music recording industry. The label’s first releases were gospel recordings by the St. Andrews Gospelaires, a 3-piece jubilee group from the Enoch Grove Baptist Church, and the Southern Sons, who were the most popular and influential gospel groups performing during the early 50s in the Mississippi Delta. McMurry made many trips to the Delta to sign up talent, and on one she signed up a “harp” player who called himself Sonny Boy Williamson. Sonny Boy Had garnered a devoted following through his appearances on “King Biscuit Time” over station WFFA in Helena, Arkansas.
McMurry signed Sonny Boy to a contract in December, 1950. She did not learn until years later that his real name was Alex “Rice” Miller. Miller had appropriated the name of another highly-regarded harmonica-playing blues singer because he had once been convicted of stealing a mule from a neighbor. He had whitewashed the mule, which was a sure disguise for the animal until the next inevitable Delta downpour. With McMurry riding herd on him, Sonny Boy Williamson (II) turned out a string of blues standards, including “Eyesight to the Blind”, “Nine Below Zero” and “Red Hot Kisses”, written by Lillian herself. Sonny Boy also wrote a tribute to McMurry’s car, which was recorded as “Pontiac Blues”.
Edward Komara, former head of the Blues Archive at the University of Mississippi, said, “The main thing I remember about Lillian McMurry is her toughness, which was a combination of a low tolerance for bullshit and a lion-taming instinct. This toughness was not something she had to develop while running Trumpet. She may have well had it since birth. She was also born with a pageant-quality beauty, as evidenced by the published photos of her in her 50s, taken during the Trumpet years. But musicians and record industry people alike learned she was much more than a pretty face.”
However she came by it, Lillian McMurry’s toughness became a key asset in the rough-and-tumble world of the independent record business. Sonny Boy Williamson, her biggest star, was hard-drinking, cantankerous and prone to drunken brawling. Williamson also carried a knife and a gun and freely used profane language, but only once around Lillian. Legend has it that when Williamson began cursing in the studio one day, Lillian told him to leave. When he refused, McMurry took his own gun, which she had taken the precaution to relieve him of, marched him outside and sent him on his way. A much-humbled Williamson returned a couple of weeks later, and McMurry took him back in.
According to Webb, McMurry had problems with other artists as well. “She had Elmore James under contract, but Elmore had problems sticking to it. At one point, she got a tip-off and had to go to Canton to bust up a recording session that Elmore had no right to do. There’s actually a tape recording of a telephone conversation between Elmore and Lillian where he’s asking about coming back, and she said, ‘Well, Elmore, would you stand hitched?’ meaning would he honor a contract. But he never followed up on it.”
Elmore James’s only Trumpet recording, “Dust My Broom”, became a nation-wide hit and a classic in the blues repertoire. “She and Willard were visiting with my parents when I was in high school or junior high, and she was sitting there in the front room and I was dashing out the door with a vinyl copy of “Tommy” by The Who. And she said something like, ‘Oh, I thought the rock opera was an abortion,’ or an abomination or something like that. And I left thinking, ‘Well what does she know?’ but later I realized they recorded HER song wrong. She cut the original ‘Eyesight for the Blind’ but they did it in a minor key with a whole different feel and melody.”
But the Trumpet label was short-lived. Even with such brilliant talent stock as Jerry McCain, Arthur “Big Boy” Crudup and Willie Love, competition with labels having deeper pockets eventually proved to be too much. According to blues aficionado Dr. Woody Sistrunk, “One of the biggest reasons Trumpet ended was that a large record distributor in Texas went broke. And back then, it was not cash for sale. A lot of business was on credit, especially as records became hits. If a record became a hit, you had to get it to a pressing plant, and no one had a pressing plant except for the big labels. You had to have it pressed, and if you didn’t get paid by your distributors, or one-stops as it were for stocking juke boxes at the time, you simply didn’t have any money to pay them off,” Sistrunk explained.
“At the very end of Trumpet, Sonny Boy Williamson was the biggest artist that the label had. His contract was traded to Buster Williams’ Plastic Products in Memphis as a trade for some of the label’s debts,” Sistrunk said. “Williams then turned over Sonny Boy’s contract to the Chess Brothers with options, who in turn picked up Sonny Boy and ran with him.”
After only five years (1951-56) in the business, this was Trumpet’s last note. “That was it, except for another $50,000 that Lillian and Willard had to absorb, which they did strictly through hard work,” Sistrunk said. “A lot of people don’t realize how important their studio was. Many of the records were cut at the old State Furniture Company at 211 State Street on the corner of State and Pearl. For a long time, they would cut records in the back room on Sunday afternoons with someone else’s equipment. But by 1954, they had a studio at 309 Farish Street where they were cutting a number of things. That was another big expense during 1953-54, and that set them back some as well.”
Lillian McMurry was a scrupulous businesswoman, a meticulous bookkeeper and obsessive when it came to royalties. “For eight years, I maintained her Trumpet papers at the Blues Archive,” Komara said, “and she never let a single detail slip by. She fought hard and successfully for the artists whose financial estates she assisted. She continued until her death to assist her Trumpet recording artists, scoundrels though they sometimes were. She demanded honesty and got honesty and delivery of contracted promises from them during the recording sessions, and in return she made sure they received what was due.”
Vitrice, Williard and Lillian McMurry in the 1980s (image via “Trumpet Records: Diamonds on Farish Street”, Marc W. Ryan)
“She knew about artists’ egos and she protected them, plus she knew about artists’ sufferings and made sure they all got paid,” Sistrunk said. Vitrice McMurry Rankin, Lillian and Willard’s daughter, said, “Mom was always a strong-willed and fierce person who fought for what was right, treated the musicians with a great deal of dignity and fought for their rights. She was incredibly cagey, and could deal with copyright lawyers on a level of legal think so that she was able to win most of the suits she brought. “
“She was actually close to graduating from Jackson School of Law when she met my Dad and got married, which seems untypical of her that she wouldn’t have gone ahead and finished school,” Rankin said. “She had that kind of steel clamp of a mind that could handle thousands and thousands of legal ramifications and technicalities and argue to the death. I think some of the settlements she got were just to get her off their backs because she was so utterly relentless in her pursuing of these people who did so much bold-faced thievery. She would tend to spend $10,000 to make $10,000. Who knows ultimately if financially it was worth it, but ethically it was, because so many people were vindicated.”
But McMurry’s upstanding business ethics were often sorely lacking in other recording business personalities of the 50s. And the demise of the Trumpet label may have been in part to unscrupulous machinations on the part of other record labels. “Lillian told me that there were some people who wanted to press her out of the business,” Sistrunk said. “And one big label allegedly said, ‘If you stock her labels, we won’t let you stock ours.’ This was a big label, and every jukebox carried this label, and it seemed pretty ugly.”
After McMurry got out of the music business, she still maintained a studio. According to Sistrunk, “’From the Bottom’ and a lot of the later Sonny Boy Williamson songs were recorded there, and she was the one ‘at the knobs’ when Earl King did ‘Those Lonely, Lonely Nights’ for Ace Records. ‘Rockin’ Pneumonia and the Boogie Woofie Flu’ could very well have been recorded there as well.”
The impact of the Trumpet label on American music has been profound and lasting. “You can’t describe Trumpet’s contribution to music history strictly within a blues niche,” Sistrunk said. “You’d have to describe it in terms of the music of Mississippi that was not being recorded, that being gospel with the Southern Sons Gospel Quartet, that being Lucky Joe Almond, Jimmy Swan and all the other hillbilly artists and that being Sonny Boy Williamson and Willie Love with the blues.”
“All of those folded together are basically what made rock-and-roll as we know it. It’s all incredible.”
This article, written well over a decade ago, contains information that still has relevance as what was once called the LeFleur Lakes project has been resurrected once again by proponents under the name of the Pearl River Revitalization Project.
The Pearl River makes her way from a confluence of sloughy waters in the very heart of Mississippi to the marshy outskirts of the Gulf of Mexico in a graceful 500-mile arc. Lacking the majesty of the Mississippi, the cachet of the Yazoo or the utility of the Tombigbee, the Pearl is often cast as a poor relation; but she has played a significant role in Mississippi history, not the least of which has been putting Jackson on the map. In 1821, state commissioners decided that there was no desirable location within the required 20-mile limits of the geographic center of the state for the new seat of government, so they recommended a site “above the floods” of the Pearl River. In their report to the Legislature, the commissioners recommended the location of the new capital on LeFleur’s Bluff. They also suggested that the town should be laid out in President Jefferson’s design, a checker-board plan that stretched no more than a mile westward from the crest of the bluff where the new capital building would stand.
Initially, the Pearl River served the city as one of its earliest routes to and from civilization. The 1830s were a high water mark in the role of the river as a resource and a reason for the city, but by 1845, rail traffic had been established, and then roads rolled in from all quarters of the compass. Gradually the river fell into abeyance as a platform of commerce for the burgeoning city. But soon the Pearl came to assume a different economic role in the history of Jackson; the bluff could no longer accommodate all of its citizens and buildings began to be erected upon the floodplain. Flooding along the Pearl River in the Jackson area has been a problem since the beginning of the city, but it has been especially noticeable since development has spread into the floodplain. Since then, the river and its urban tributaries have flooded different areas on a periodic basis. Major floods have been classified by their severity according to the frequency at which they are estimated to occur. The 1979 flood has been called a 100-year floodplain event. The 1983 flood was a 50-year event. And the 1991 flood was a 10-year event. It should not pass without notice that all three of these events occurred within a 12-year period.
Reservoir spillway under construction, c. 1960
Ironically enough, given this catastrophe of riches in terms of water, area leaders were discussing the problems of an adequate drinking water supply for Jackson as early as 1926. One of these leaders was State Senator Mitchell Robinson who succeeded in obtaining a flood control and navigability study from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. The study proved unfavorable, but Robinson was persistent. Some dismissed his idea of a dam north of Jackson on the Pearl to provide water and recreation for the city as “Mitch’s ditch,” others warmed to the idea. By 1955, Jackson’s water consumption had increased in excess of five times the rate of 1935 and pollution in the Pearl was a mounting problem. The labyrinth of legal and legislative problems and other obstacles that stood in the way of the construction of the Ross Barnett Reservoir are history now, and the reservoir is a pivotal element in the life of the city. But the Reservoir never was really designed for flood control; it was primarily constructed to create a water supply and to provide recreation. Despite that, the reservoir, because of its very nature as an impoundment of water, plays a crucial role in flood control in the lower river basin. According to Kenneth Griffin, general manager of the Pearl River Valley Water Supply District, the Ross Barnett Reservoir presents special problems in that area.
“One of the challenges, and one of the reasons this reservoir is so difficult to manage for flood control is that you have a huge watershed for this size river, this size of control structure,” Griffin said. “Regrettably, even with perfect hindsight, all you can do is to handle something like a 15- or 20-year event, depending upon when it comes. Certainly you can’t handle a hundred-hear or five-hundred year event,” Griffin added. “1979 was a really terrible flood, and we managed that one with very little in the way of rain gauges and stream gauges. We had manual rain gauges, cooperators that would simply call in the precipitation and we did not have any sophisticated software at that time. And even then, I think the people did a very good job, came very close to doing the best job possible.”
Local attorney Joe Kerley adds this footnote to the construction of the reservoir. “My Dad worked with the US Department of Agriculture, and was involved in the Rivers and Harbors organization. He attended meetings regarding the US Corps of Engineers and other federal and state entities involved in planning the reservoir. Our state could not fund a structure that would adequately control flooding. However, federal funds could have been provided so that the dam would be multi-purpose: flood prevention, drinking water and recreational. However, to obtain federal funding, the reservoir would have to be accessible to all citizens, black and white. Our legislature, as typical of the times, would not agree, and declined federal funding.
“Dad was livid about this,” Kerley said. “He saw the writing on the wall at that time and was sure the reservoir would ultimately accessible to all. There were many discussions about this at home in Hattiesburg, and with like-minded friends. But the legislature would not allow the federal funding, and this many decades we are still trying to figure out how to protect Jackson from the Pearl floods and the inadequate dam at the Rez.”
But even in the case of reservoirs that are designed to control flooding, the use of impoundments for this purpose has been discredited because of their downstream (and upstream) impact. Flood control reservoirs are set at a specific area in a drainage system to control flooding in an immediate area, but reservoirs impact rivers both above and below their dams. The LeFleur Lakes project is such an impoundment proposal intended to solve the flooding problems in the Jackson area in such a manner that “the attractiveness and growth potential of the metropolitan area would also be enhanced.” The proposal states that flood levels would be permanently lowered in the Jackson-to-Byram area by providing a better flow course for the passage of water and by reducing the rate of flow in the river and envisions the creation of a vital new waterfront district for the Jackson Metropolitan area.
Under the LeFleur Lakes proposal, large amounts of sand from beneath the numerous railroad and highway structures south of downtown Jackson would be excavated. This would be needed in order to provide the proper flow course through this area of the river. The study proposal maintains that existing levees and bridges presently block the river’s flow and back water up into Jackson homes and businesses. To accommodate the excavated material, the Flowood levee would be moved to the east and the dredged material would then be put in the middle of the newly formed lake. This would create a 600-acre island opposite downtown Jackson. North of Lakeland the dredged material would be placed on the east side of the newly formed lake. The newly-created land, an artificial island in the middle of the Pearl near where an extended High Street would stretch, would be accessed by bridges and by constructing interchanges of parkways and city streets over it and along the entire length of the 3000 acre lake. The LeFleur Lakes proposal states that “many roads and bridges are needed at this time to alleviate the metropolitan area’s traffic congestion,” and that both the traffic and flooding problems can be solved simultaneously and at less cost than plans for previous flood control, roads and bridges. The proposal also says that all the structures that flooded in the 1979 flood should be protected from another 100-year flood by the new lake and the improved reservoir discharge procedure. Additionally, the plan would provide that surveying be conducted in order to determine what structures exist in the various flood prone areas that would not be protected from a so-called 100-year flood. If any structures exist that need protection, auxiliary plans would be considered and, if warranted, additional protection would be extended to those structures.
The LeFleur Lakes plan would accelerate the flow course for the river by removing the trees from the very lowest level of the river floodplain (the river bottom land). This level would then be lowered another 5 feet with dredges and other earth-moving equipment, and then the entire 11-mile river course opposite Jackson would be made into a permanent lake. This lake would be necessary to prevent the redistribution of sand and silt and to prevent the regrowth of trees in the river flow course. Naturally, the Ross Barnett Reservoir would play a key role in the project’s success. According to Griffin, “The LeFleur Lakes plan includes two components. Obviously, the lakes themselves are proposed. But the other half of the plan involves some major operational plans in how the (current) reservoir is operated, specifically how the gates are operated.” LeFleur Lakes admits to other drawbacks, as well. For instance, under the proposal, levels in the Ross Barnett Reservoir, on two or three occasions each year, over a period of a day and a half, will fall one foot then rise again to their original level. According to the original Two Lakes website (now defunct), “Once every 25 years they (“Reservoir people”) would be warned to untie moorings and move boats because the level will be taken down below 295 feet. On the positive side, they would enjoy an extra one half to one foot of water in their boat slips” and “would be compensated by knowing that two thousand of their neighbors will never have to worry about their homes and businesses flooding again.” In addition, metal buildings at very low elevations would not be protected from another 1979 flood, but they would be compensated by “having protection from a 100-year flood on structures that probably will not last 100 years.” People who own land and camps on the river south of Jackson would experience “one or two” river bottom floods that they would not have had otherwise, but they would be compensated by the assurance that the new reservoir would have the capacity to take one foot of elevation off of every major flood that could occur in the area. “One foot off of the 1979 flood would have prevented much of the flooding that these people’s neighbors suffered in 1979.”
Supporters of LeFleur Lakes cite the need some sort of flood control and the availability of direct funding for a local agency to undertake the project. Federal commitment to flood control in the Jackson area does exist; otherwise the Corps would not have sought funding for a more thorough and inclusive system of levees, a proposal now called the Comprehensive Levee System of 1996. In April, 1988 the Pearl River Basin Development District asked the Corps of Engineers to initiate alternative flood control studies. The Corps received authorization and funding in February 1989. Federal funds were used for the reconnaissance study which was completed in June 1990. The District agreed to serve as local sponsor for the study for the Jackson Metro area, which took 54 months to complete and cost $3 million. The District provided one-half of this amount in cash and in-kind contributions. A feasibility cost-sharing agreement was signed in September 1991, and feasibility studies were initiated in October of the same year.
The Pearl River Feasibility Flood Control Study (a.k.a. the Comprehensive Levee Plan) was completed by the Corps of Engineers in February 1996. The Corps recommended the construction of 21 miles of new levees at a cost of $122 million. The local sponsor would be required to provide $38 million for the acquisition of land, easements, rights-of-way, relocations and disposal areas. Legislation enabling the Pearl River Basin Development District to serve as the local sponsor for the Flood Control Project was defeated in the 1995 and 1996 sessions of the Mississippi Legislature. The plan also included $30 million worth of recreation amenities and improvements, most of which would have been cost shared. Even before then, in 1984, the Corps also proposed a dry dam that would catch heavy flows from extreme rainfall events in the upper basin, events similar to those which caused the ’79 and ’83 floods. Called the Shoccoe Dam to be installed near Carthage, it was planned at a cost of $80.1 million ($24 million shared). It was identified by the Corps of Engineers as the most comprehensive flood control project for the Pearl Basin. But in October, 1984, the Mississippi House of Representatives defeated a bill authorizing the District to serve as the local sponsor for Shoccoe. Local opposition killed the funding measure, but many people still consider Shoccoe to be the best plan for flood control in the middle reaches of the Pearl.
Everybody has their favorite proposals. “As far as we know, the Comprehensive Levee System (proposed by the Corps) is still viable, but we’ll have to evaluate it again,” Walker said. “We will have to see if the levee alignment is still in place, and we’ll have to see if any development has gotten in the alignment and we’ll have to adjust it.”
“What we’re looking at are the levees and LeFleur Lakes. It’s probable that LeFleur Lakes might turn out different than what it is now. The final result might be some combination of lakes and the levee system. We have several of what we call milestones that we’ll reach as we go through the study. We’ll discuss these with the sponsors, since these will be decision points where we’ll decide whether we need to go forward or not. If we get to the point that something showed up as a “show-stopper,” we would have to evaluate with the Levee Board at that time whether we want to proceed with that plan or do something else. But we could not proceed without them being agreeable to that. There is a consensus that something needs to be done, but the question is what the plan is on how to control it. Public opinion is such that something is needed to control flooding, but we don’t know what the plan is. As to other proposals, as we go through the process, a sponsor will have to sponsor a study for other alternatives. With the proper sponsorship, other plans could be submitted.”
* * * * * * * * * *
The Pearl River Basin covers an area of about 7,800 square miles, comprising about 16 per cent of the state as a whole. From Neshoba County, the river flows southwesterly, eventually forming the boundary between Louisiana and Mississippi in the southern part of the basin and discharging into the Gulf of Mexico just north of New Orleans. Before the Pearl reaches the Gulf from Jackson, it still traverses some two hundred plus miles, and the lands along the lower river have already felt the impacts of impoundment and flood control in the Jackson Metro area. One of the most serious effects is that of bank erosion, which has been a crucial and continual problem since the development of the state. Andrew Whitehurst, a wildlife ecologist with the Mississippi Museum of Natural Science, is the author of the newly-published Mississippi Streamside Handbook, available as a free download from the Mississippi Department of Wildlife, Fisheries and Parks website. Whitehurst said that rivers are able to carry a great amount of sediment. But when a stream goes into a reservoir, it slows down and the energy of the water is dissipated. Much of the suspended material it carries drops out, and the water leaves the reservoir sediment-starved.
“A normal river will gather a suspended load from its bed and from whatever flows in from its tributaries and through normal bank erosion and moving sand bars around,” Whitehurst said. “Our river (the Pearl) is altered. The fact that the discharges can be abruptly stopped after a flood event makes the levels go up and down, so the banks become saturated during floods and when the water is quickly shut off and the level of the river channel drops, the banks can slough or heave.” Whitehurst points out that there are three well-known diadromous (migratory salt-to-freshwater) species that will be impacted by the dams: the American eel, the Alabama shad and the Gulf sturgeon. The maritime connection of the Pearl is another crucial element when flood control anywhere along the river is under consideration, since the wetlands that lie near the mouth of the Pearl are important to the seafood industries along the central Gulf. In a public hearing in Biloxi on March 11, coastal residents expressed concerns that LeFleur Lakes would damage the Coast, especially in terms of the area’s seafood industry. Gulf citizens were particularly worried that the project would reduce the amount of fresh water flowing into the Mississippi Sound, degrading its oyster beds and shrimp population. Lauren Thompson, of the Mississippi Department of Marine Resources, said, “Our concern is with reduced or increased salinity as well as with sediment and nutrient transport down the Pearl River. The reduced flow of nutrients and sediments down the Pearl can change the environmental conditions in the Mississippi Sound, affecting salinity and water quality.
“So it could have a negative impact on oysters, shrimp, blue crabs and finfish. Oysters, which can’t move, have a narrow salinity band. If the salinity is too high, predators come in; if the salinity is too low, the oysters close up, and if they stay closed for an extended period of time, they die.” Since the Pearl empties into the Gulf just north of New Orleans, the State of Louisiana is also keeping an eye on flood control along the river, as it will impact their seafood industry as well as salinity levels in LakePontchartrain.
The Pearl River levee system.
Apart from the Reservoir, flood control in the Jackson area is also managed by a system of levees built by the Corps of Engineers in the 1960s. These levees serve as buffers for the floodwaters and also funnel the flood downstream. Aside from emergency situations, the levees are largely maintained by local interests. Periodic inspections of maintenance are made by personnel from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and from local levee and drainage districts, in this case the Rankin Hinds Pearl River Flood and Drainage Control District, also known locally as the Levee Board. This board has been given broad powers to deal with flood control along the Pearl River in Rankin and Hinds Counties. The board is made up of the mayors of Richland, Pearl, Jackson and Flowood as well as the head of the Mississippi Development Authority, Leland Speed, in his role as representative of the Mississippi State Fair Commission. Robert Stockett Jr. represents Hinds County, and the chair, Billy Orr, represents Rankin County. The board itself is funded by the Boards of Supervisors of Rankin and Hinds Counties.
There are fourteen miles of levees in the Jackson area that protect flood lands in Flowood, practically all of Pearl and those in Richland. They also protect those lands below the bluff around the fairgrounds on the Hinds County side of the river. The levee board has taxing power on property that is protected by the levees. If you own a business or property that is protected by a levee, then you are taxed by the Board to help pay for the maintenance of the levees as well as pump maintenance and levee patrols during flood times. The tax revenue brought in by the Board totals less than a half million dollars. The Corps and the Levee Board have agreed to initiate a three-year, $2.8 million feasibility study that will be limited to updating the cost of the 1996 levee plan and a complete analysis of the LeFleur Lakes Plan. “We don’t have a set schedule for reviewing the progress of the analysis,” Orr said, “We have other things to do, but the Corps will be on it daily and we’ll keep up with it very often. We do keep up to date on it, and it is our responsibility to make sure it goes right. Whatever the requirements are as these studies go along, we will meet as often as necessary.” Orr said that they follow the Corps’s recommendations in matters of maintaining the levees and that while some people might claim that they are more partial to one flood control plan over the other, “We will be partial to LeFleur Lakes only when it has been studied and it has been proven that it can do the job.”
The decision to put the LeFleur Lakes Plan in the hands of the Levee Board was made by the three county governments of Rankin, Hinds and Madison Counties as well as the governing bodies of eleven cities in the three county areas. Purportedly, they will expand the district and build some version of the project. The levees will be incorporated into the LeFleur Lakes strategy, since the levees were part of the original “Two Lakes” plan. According to Gary Walker, project manager for the Corps of Engineers, “The EIS (environment impact statement) draft (for LeFleur Lakes) is scheduled for October, 2005 and it will take about six months after that for the final. The recommendation will be a joint process between us and the sponsor,” Walker said. “It will be a plan we both can agree on, it will be a joint recommendation between us and the Rankin-Hinds Pearl River Flood and Drainage Control District. We’re doing a full evaluation and the study will determine how we assess the project. We’re not going to make any pre-determined notions. The study will speak for itself.”
As to alternatives to LeFleur Lakes and the comprehensive levee plans, no others are under consideration, since Walker said that the Corps can’t recommend anything without a sponsor. But “assuming we went through the process and found a feasible plan and a sponsor, yes, we could approve (an alternative).”
“People ask how long it will be before a flood control plan will be put into place,” Orr said. “But we don’t know how long it will take. The study itself is going to take two and a half years. After that, it would be left up to funds that are available, and this project (LeFleur Lakes) is big. Now, it might not come to anything, because environmental concerns might knock it down or something else like public sentiment or lack of funding might come into play. The only thing I can say is that this board would like for the LeFleur Lakes project to be a reality if it does the job in controlling flooding. The only thing we’re interested in is flooding. Economic development and all the other factors do not interest us. Our job is flood control, and if this project does not meet the required specifications, it will be gone. I’m sure there’s room for modification,” Orr said. “With all the study and money going into this, we hope something will come out of it that will work. The only thing for sure is that Rankin and Hinds Counties need some flood control assistance somewhere. I was head of the Fair Commission in 1979 during the Easter Flood and we lost over $2.5 million, and that’s a lot of money.”
* * * * * * * * * *
In the final analysis, until people begin to perceive of the Pearl as a resource rather than as an obstacle, LeFleur Lakes, or some similar project involving development along the river that will control flooding and perhaps create revenue, will continue to receive a lot of support in the Jackson Metro area. But we do have other choices. Metro Jackson can either preserve the riverfront with options that have the potential to appeal to a younger, more aggressive entrepreneurial population while continuing to promote more downtown development, or the city can align itself with political and business leaders who seek to develop the riverfront at great expense and create a new district that will in all likelihood fail within the next decade or so, benefiting nobody save those who developed (or dredged up) the property in the first place. Supporters say the LeFleur Lakes idea is just a different approach from the levees, one which has the economic development and recreational components that levees just don’t have. They also cite the support of local governments, state agencies and the congressional delegation. John McGowan, the Jackson entrepreneur who originally conceived of the LeFleur Lakes (then called Two Lakes) plan, declined to comment on the evaluation in a telephone interview and deferred comments on the project to the Levee Board.
Detractors of LeFleur Lakes tend to focus on the negative environmental impact the project will have, but not necessarily in the sense that it will endanger already threatened species of wildlife. These detractors cite numerous studies showing that in addition to education and other quality-of-life issues, aesthetics and recreation are important to young entrepreneurs, especially younger business owners who are looking to relocate. They point out that LeFleur Lakes is going to destroy the wetlands and natural resources that are in the corridor, the same resources that in other parts of the country, smaller urban areas use to provide green space for recreational opportunities that appeal to people oriented towards activities carried out in natural settings, like hiking, biking, jogging and nature viewing.
Pearl River swampland
These critics feel that the LeFleur Lakes project is simply not progressive enough and does not address the changing demographics and mindset of the 21st century South. In this context, the controversy surrounding LeFleur Lakes becomes a conflict of perception about the way Jackson should move, about the best venues that the city can take in order to become a more vibrant community rather than a battle between tree cutters and tree huggers. As an alternative to both LeFleur Lakes and the comprehensive levee system (which unlike LeFleur Lakes included green space facilities), proponents of green space, who include local businessmen as well as conservationists, are proposing a greenway that will transform what is now a denuded floodplain into an area that will feature hiking, biking and jogging trails, parks with sports fields and playgrounds, a scenic river corridor for boating as well as wilderness areas. Jackson geologist Dan Hill is among those who maintain that the greenway proposal has the potential to increase city revenue by attracting young professionals and entrepreneurs who look for such things as aesthetics and outdoor recreational activities when seeking to relocate. “The Levee Board has denuded the area between the levees to improve the convenience of the flood waters out of the flood zone,” Hill said. “The Levee Board maintains the levees and the floodways such as the areas at Lakeland and I-20. They clear the floodways rather than do any aesthetic features and it’s ugly.”
“When you clear the trees away from the river, there are no roots to hold the banks,” Hill said. “The reason they clear the trees is that those trees and vegetation create a drag on the water going through, so what they do is straighten up and dredge the channel as it has been along I-55. That improves the passage of water. One of the things that the Mississippi Department of Wildlife, Fisheries and Parks didn’t like was the clearings in the 1996 plan, which would have increased the number of clearings. It’s ugly; it looks like a moonscape going across I-20. And this creates a negative impression about Jackson.”
The greenway proposal is problematic because it can’t control flooding along the river and has limited appeal for those who are unaccustomed to more nature-oriented forms of activity (biking, hiking, kayaking, etc.) and are more acclimated to the hustle and bustle of a more people-oriented environment; shopping malls, for instance. But the environmental issues are still crucial. Water quality is a primary concern. According to Jackson businessman Jerry Litton, “If you look at the area that will be draining into LeFleur Lakes and look at the trash and debris that flushes from the city every time we have a rain, that is what the water in those lakes is going to look like.”
“Debris will collect on the edges of the lake, or collect on drifts that are out in the open or on the edges of the (proposed) island,” Litton said. “It’s going to be there, and somebody’s going to have to float around in a boat in a net and dredge it out, all of the stuff that comes down from the spillway itself, plus what flushes out of the creeks in the city.” Nonpoint pollution is also a consideration. Nonpoint pollution is source pollution, or “polluted runoff,” created when rain, irrigation and other water sources run over the land, picking up pollutants and transporting them to local water bodies. You’re going to hold water there in a large volume, and you’re going to have all the nonpoint pollutants that come from the city. Nonpoint sources are parking lots and roadways and fields. Then what about all the motor oil, paint and paint thinners that people won’t take the time to take to the toxic waste centers? It’s being poured down storm drains.”
Hill agrees. “The shallowness of the proposed reservoirs (LeFleur Lakes) is such that water temperature is going to heat up and that’s going to affect water quality. Not only that, but when they impound the lake they’re going to flood one landfill that I know of, and there’s probably a second landfill. I found out when they tore down the old Baptist hospital, they put the asbestos from that in a fill that would be flooded.” Sewer mains are another concern for the LeFleur Lakes project. Broken sewer mains would flow directly into the lake from the city. One such sewer is the West Main Intercept, which drains north Jackson and travels through the floodway. The construction of a lake in the floodplain opposite Jackson would put that sewer main underneath the lake itself. Environmental issues aside, when it comes to local sentiment, the LeFleur Lakes proposal appeals to a genuine need for the people of Jackson to feel as if they are living in a vibrant, growing community that is making changes and improvements. In addition to the attractions of proposed flood control and potential economic benefits, LeFleur Lakes has come to represent an alternative to apparently ineffective downtown development. Granted, LeFleur Lakes appeals more to the outlying metro area than it does to the city itself; on the surface, the project has much greater appeal for those sections of Ridgeland, Hinds and Rankin Counties between the spillway and Byram, but it still has its supporters in the city itself, not the least of which is former Jackson mayor Harvey Johnson Jr.
“The continuing flooding we experience nearly every year undeniably demonstrates that we very much need a comprehensive flood protection plan,” Johnson said. “As a member of the Rankin-Hinds Levee Board, I work closely with mayors from Rankin County and other board members to address ongoing flood control measures.”
“The public has rallied around the LeFleur Lakes project as an alternative to levees. The City of Jackson has gone on record as being in support of the LeFleur Lakes project, and we continue to work closely with federal, state and other local authorities to come up with the right answer to solve our problems with floods. We will continue to evaluate the LeFleur Lakes proposal as it evolves while we decide the best ways to provide flood control,” Johnson added.
“The problem with any development on the Pearl is hydraulics,” Litton adds. “Up to 1959 – 60 the river mostly only rose up to 28 or so feet crest. After the resevoir was built and levees it has gone up to 43 or so feet. Problem with this is it does not go up appreciably in the upper and lower reach as it does here. Why? Levees, reservoir, urban development and the unknow fact, the Pearl has a fifty or so mile long crest when it gets up. Check the data or the 79 floor. From the dam to about Rockport the crest was almost flat at 43 feet. Oddity, no sir, it is the hydrological sequence of hard bottom, forest shouldered edges, a narrow girth and the necessity for the river to get up this high to push the water through.”
But according to Matthew Dalbey, assistant professor in the Department of Urban and Regional Planning at Jackson State University, “From a physical planning point or perspective, when you have an interstate between a new development project and downtown, I don’t see how that is going to help downtown. As a matter of fact, I think it’s going to make downtown dead. It’s just too big of a separation; it’s just like any other type of leap-frog development or urban sprawl. The people who argue for this will say that any new development within the boundaries of the city will provide a positive economic impact, but the issue remains that the new development will be separate from the old development. It will kill downtown because of the separation. I think that there’s a tendency to support new development by local people, so for instance you can get a premium rate for something new whether it’s strategically located or not. In other words, there’s nothing new downtown, so people aren’t investing downtown, but take the Fondren Corner building; it’s a redone building in an area that had formerly been in decline,” Dalbey said. “But the new investment in that place has been such that they can get a premium on the rents there. As a matter of fact, Fondren is in a rebound, and people like being there.”
Of course, it’s questionable whether LeFleur Lakes, or any such new development district will improve the local economy. Some people are of the opinion that the city has extended itself already and that further development is superfluous; after all, the state economy is drawing back, consolidating itself and trimming edges, so it makes sense that the capital city should follow suit. Under scrutiny, LeFleur Lakes appears to be an antiquated development concept that creates more problems both in Jackson and downstream than it solves. Jackson deserves a solution to flooding that is effective and progressive, one that focuses on enduring issues rather than quick-fix alternatives. We need protect ourselves, but we need to take care of our river, too; after all, she’s why we’re here in the first place.
Wil lived around the corner from me in a sedate residential neighborhood in downtown Jackson, Mississippi. More than anyone I’ve ever known, Wil embodies the American Dream of work rewarded and a life well-lived. Here is his story for the world; it matters.
Wil as a toddler in Jackson, MS
I was born September 26, 1939, in a shotgun house on Farish Street in the heart of the black community. The neighborhood had four barbers, three restaurants, and two fast food restaurants for hamburgers, pig ears, smoked sausage, and sandwiches. We had our own grocery store, a cleaner, a shoe repair shop, a laundry, an ice cream parlor, and movie houses on Farish and Amite. We also had two funeral parlors, a bike shop, and a bus company that brought people from the country to sell their produce. Three doors from my house was a pool hall and a cab stand, and all my friends lived within a few blocks.
My aunt always told me I should try to make some money on my own, so I got a job at a beauty parlor on Capitol Street. It was owned by a guy named Baldwin, one of the biggest jerks who ever lived. He said he’d give me six dollars a week to shine shoes, but I couldn’t take tips. I was supposed to make six dollars a week, but he would give me five one week and four the next.
It went on like that for a while until I finally got tired of it and told my aunt. She said, “We’re going to go down and get your money.” She put her pistol in her purse, and we went to the beauty parlor. “Mr. Baldwin,” said my aunt, “you owe this boy six dollars, and you need to pay him.” Baldwin said, “Well, I’m not going to give him anything. He’s fired.” My aunt reached into her purse and pulled out her pistol, walked around the chair where he was standing and said, “You need to pay him his money.” And he did.
Our house at 518 Farish backed up on an alley across from Rodger’s Tailor Shop. Up the alley lived a lady bootlegger named Cara Lee, whose daughter was a whore. All kinds of trouble went on up there on Friday and Saturday nights, and, because my bed was under a window, I heard things I hoped I’d never hear again. Sometimes the police raided Cara Lee’s place, and one night a policeman shot our little cocker spaniel just because he was barking. At that, my aunt came out of the house with a Winchester rifle and told the policeman she might blow his brains out. A long, tense moment passed, and I was sure someone was going to get shot, but finally another officer came over and said, “Please ma’am, Lord to God, he was wrong to shoot your dog, and I’m sorry.” The policeman apologized, and my aunt huffed back into the house.
After all that, my aunt decided it was time for me to get back with my mother. She said, “Son, you know I love you more than life, but if you stay here, either I’m going to be killed or you are. I think it’s time for you to go be with your parents.” Correspondence went back and forth, and in the summer of 1954, I left Jackson and went to Madison, Wisconsin, where my mother and stepfather rented a house in South Madison. The neighborhood was called “The Bush” and was made up entirely of blacks and Italians. I was surprised because every one got along fine.
My new school was Edgewood Sacred Heart Academy, where I was the sixth black among five hundred students. I didn’t do well in school; it was hard for me to concentrate because of the trouble I had at home. My stepfather was an alcoholic, and he couldn’t stand to see my mother and I growing close.
In 1958, I graduated from Edgewood with a C-minus average. Luckily, I was a good athlete and got an offer from Bishop College in Marshall, Texas. I played ball for them over a few semesters, when, out of the blue, my real father sent me a train ticket to come out to Los Angeles. I liked being with my father and planned to go to L.A. City College in the fall, but my grandmother died, and my mother insisted I come back to Farish Street for the funeral. My father begged me not to go, but I had to. I never saw my father again.
By 1961, I was living in Madison again. One snowy day, I was walking down Park Boulevard when two of my buddies and a woman drove by in a Volkswagen bug. I asked, “Where are you going?” They said, “We’re going to New York City.” I said, “Hold on, drive by the house, let me pick up some stuff!” That’s how I got to New York.
I’ll never forget standing on 6th Avenue thinking, “I’m in New York! I’m in the Village!” I moved into a little flea-bag hotel on 43rd Street and found a part-time job right around the corner. Everything was fine until I started going out with a woman who worked in the same place. It wasn’t long before our relationship got to a point where I felt trapped. I wanted to be free, but didn’t know what to do.
One morning, I was looking at the travel section of The New York Times when something caught my eye: a Yugoslavian freighter was due to sail out of Brooklyn for Tangier and Morocco, and you could get passage for $141. As soon as I saw that notice, I remembered the night back in L.A. when my father shook me awake. I said, “What’s the matter?” He said, “Dorothy’s in the kitchen.” I said, “So what?” He said, “She’s boiling water to make tea, and she don’t drink tea. Get dressed–we’re going to your sister’s.”
That was it. If you want to get free, all you have to do is leave. A few days later, I was on that Yugoslavian freighter bound for the Straits of Gibraltar.
The voyage lasted nine days. I had my own room, the food was excellent, and I got so drunk off slivovitz, I’ll never drink another drop of it. When I got off the boat in Morocco, a little Berber kid offered to carry my luggage. Now, I’d just gotten off the boat from New York, where you do NOT give someone your luggage. When I hesitated, the kid looked at me an said, “What’s wrong with you, black man? You’re home now!”
In Tangiers, I rented a room for seventy-five cents a day in a hotel near the Casbah. A few days later, I went to an American bar and was introduced to Mark Gilbey, who owned Gilbey’s Gin. We talked and had some drinks, and after a while, he invited me to a Christmas party. He had a fabulous place overlooking the Atlantic Ocean with a red room, a blue room, and so on.
I stayed in Morocco nine months, in Tangier, Affairs, Rabat, Casablanca, Marrakesh, and Showan. When I finally decided to leave, I crossed the Mediterranean to Spain. I loved the Spanish people, but when I got into France, I ran into problems. I didn’t speak French, and the natives were nasty about it. From Nice, I took a train into Rome. I was sitting on the Spanish Steps when a guy came up to me and said, “My name is Wilpert Bradley, I’m from Chicago, and I’m gay.” I shook his hand and said, “My name is Wil Cunningham, I’m from New York, and I’m straight.” He laughed and said, “Wil, you’re the first American I’ve met who didn’t take offense at that.” I said, “I’m travelling and living my life. Ain’t no problem.”
Bradley had come over with the “Cleopatra” film company. He had a big place over on Via Seccalle and let me a room in the back. That’s where I stayed for a year and a half.
A publicity photo of Wil in Italy
I did a little modeling, and I was in some spaghetti Westerns, made up as a Mexican bandito. I got fifty dollars a day to stand around and wait for them to shoot me and fall off the horse. It was fun–fifty dollars a day for doing nothing. When I’d made a little money, I’d go up in the Scandinavian countries. I just travelled, met people, travelling was cheap, I could get on the train and be in Paris in just a few hours. But Rome was my home. I could go away for four or five days and come back, and I had a place to stay.
Some friends were showing my Portfolio around to movie companies in Rome when my mother called with bad news. My step father was in the hospital with cirrhosis of the liver, and the doctors feared he would not make it. I thought it was time I should go home for a while–I could get back to Europe after the crisis was over. As it turned out, it would be years before I returned.
When I got back to New York, I stayed with a friend from UW and waited for instructions from mama. The friend was from New Rochelle, New York; that week-end, there was a party up there, and he asked me if I would like to go. That was one of the best things that ever happened to me, for it was at that party I met my wife-to-be. We had a great time together, and we fell in love.
Her father gave us good advice: “Get out of the city,” he told us. “Get out of New York. You’ll never make it there.” My stepfather was in a Madison hospital, and my mother was having a hard time. I talked it over with Beverly, and she said, “Let’s do it. Let’s go to Wisconsin.”
I fought my demons and finally reconciled with my stepfather. As for Bev, my mother thought of her as a daughter until the day mama died. Eventually, Bev and I found jobs, and in no time, we had our own place. That September, we went back to New York and got married.
I attended community college to see if I could get my grade average high enough that a university would accept me. Meanwhile, I got a job at a clothing store called “No Hassle.” The guy liked me a lot because I was very fashion-oriented, I had just come back from Rome, and I knew a lot about clothes and shoes. What I really wanted, though, was to open my own business.
After a year at the community college, I qualified to enroll at the University of Wisconsin, but the desire to open my own business was too strong, and I only stayed one semester. I reached out to a friend of mine, Lamont Jones from Mobile, Alabama, who had just gotten his MBA, and we wrote up a business plan for a woman’s shoe store. He would handle the money, and I would be the buyer, something my time at “No Hassle” had prepared me for.
The problem was, Lamont and I had just two thousand dollars apiece and little credit. The Small Business Administration loaned us nine thousand, and in 1969, we finally opened our shoe store–“Compared To What”–on State Street in Madison, about three blocks from the university campus. Then we had another problem: we simply couldn’t get a credit line with any of the suppliers. When they sent us the shoes, we had to send them the money. We were selling shoes like mad, but we didn’t have a cash flow.
After five years, Lamont and I realized we had a losing proposition. We just couldn’t get ahead, and we still owed Small Business nine thousand dollars. We went down there to pay them off, and the guy said, “We can’t take cash.” I said, “You’re going to take cash today, and I want a receipt.” I counted out nine one-hundred-dollar bills, then Lamont and I split up the remainder: two thousand dollars each, same as we started with.
I decided I’d have to set aside my father-in-law’s advice and return to New York. I had contacts among shoe buyers and suppliers, and through them, I met the general manager of Thayer-McNeil, a division of Florsheim Shoes, in Manhattan. He made me manager of a store at 73rd Street and 3rd Avenue. I had been at Thayer-McNeil/Florsheim a year when a guy told me about a job with Converse. At that time, Converse had an office on the eighty-first floor of the Empire State Building. As soon as I walked in the door, the general manager said, “You’re hired. I like the way you walked in.” (I always dressed well as a salesman.) When the paperwork was finished, I was told my territory would be Brooklyn, a part of New York I knew nothing about.
They gave me a company car with a trunk-load of samples. Next day, the valet parked it in the garage while I went up to the eighty-first floor to check with the general manager. When I got to the car again, I drove across the Brooklyn Bridge and down Flatbush Avenue to my accounts. My first stop was a store that sold Converse; I went in and gave the manager my card. Luckily, business was slow, and the manager was glad to have someone to talk to. I went out to the car to get my samples from the trunk . . . and they were gone! I drove straight back to Manhattan, had the valet park my car, went up eighty-one stories, and said to the general manager, “Irving! I went to a store on Flatbush Avenue, went in to see the manager, came out to get my samples–and they were gone!” Irving closed his eyes for a moment, then said, “Earlier this morning, you parked in the garage downstairs, right?” I said, “Yes.” He said, “Next time, when you give the valet your keys, take the trunk key off the ring.” That was my first lesson on the new job.
Irving Cole taught me a lot when I was at Converse. My first time out with him, for example, he taught me to listen. We went into a store in Brooklyn, and before I could unpack my bags, the store manager started complaining about how hard it was to work with our company. He went on for a long time, using language that made me uncomfortable. Meanwhile, Irving never said a word, just let the guy vent. Finally, when the manager calmed down a little, Irving said “Let me apologize for the problem you have getting this shoe in your store.” Then he took out a notepad and asked what colors and sizes the guy needed, and how soon he would need them. When he had the information, he went to the store phone, called our customer service, and arranged for everything to be shipped next day.
After we left the store, Irving asked, “What were you thinking in there?” I told him the guy scared me, and if I’d been by myself, I probably would have walked out. “You got to listen,” Irving said. “The whole time we were in there, the guy never once said he didn’t want our product–he was mad because he couldn’t get it when he needed it. The secret to making a sale like that is not to overreact, but listen to what the guy really needs and see that he gets it. The most important thing you can do is listen.”
Will with Jimmy Conners, NYC
In November, 1975, I moved to the sporting goods division, which is where I should have been in the first place. My territory was all five boroughs of New York City. It was a ten-million-dollar account, and I made that and above. In addition, I was given the responsibility of signing pro athletes for Converse; I had the Jets, the Giants, the Knicks, the Jets, and the Yankees (I would go to spring training with the Yankees and make sure they had everything they needed.) Famous guys like Reggie Jackson, Larry Bird, Bernard King, and Larry Johnson would call me at home. Yogi Berra called once, and Spring, my youngest daughter, said, “Yogi the Bear is on the phone!”
I worked that job for twenty-nine years, trying to make a difference. Then, in 2000, I made up my mind that Converse was going nowhere. New owners were taking over, and they were looking to flip the company to the highest bidder. I knew I was not part of their plan, so I took my retirement. It was all right with Bev; she knew it was time.
After my stepfather died in 1996, my mother went home to Jackson, and I talked to Bev about moving down there to look after her. Bev was all for it; she loved mama and was like a daughter to her. We owned five acres in Madison County, and I had the dream of building a big house where all of us could live. In 2001, we moved south, back to the town I started out in. Before long, I realized my dream of building a big house in the country was not going to happen. First, every contractor we spoke to quoted a price way out of our range. Second, I discovered that, no matter how much two women might love each other, each wants her own place.
Bev and I ended up buying a beautiful little house on Kenwood Street in Belhaven. The neighborhood is old and peaceful, and I looked forward to reconnecting with people I’d known as a teenager. As it turned out, this was another dream that, if not lost, was deferred.
One day I brought my oldest friend to the house we had bought. When we got out of the car, I noticed he was hanging back a little, as if he were confused. “Why did you buy a house here?” he asked. “We never came over here when we were kids. Who do you know lives here?” I said, “I was told there’s only one other black owns a house in Belhaven. Now there’s two.” He had nothing to say after that. Another time, Bev and I invited about ten people over for coffee. The men were uncomfortable, and the women sat with their purses in their laps and said little or nothing. These people will always be friends of ours, and we hope that, one day, whatever discomfort they felt will be a thing of the past.
Farish Street is empty now; all the life is washed out of it, and it will never again be like it was when I was a kid. We can’t return to the past, and often it’s hard to catch up to the present, yet, after eighty years, I find myself looking down the road to bridges I’d like to cross. All I can say now is what I said to Wilpert Bradley on the Spanish Steps so many years ago: “I’m travelling and living my life. Ain’t no problem.”
You’ll find imitation smoked sausages sold in ropes across the Lower South, most often in the freezer section. In central Mississippi, our signature brand is Red Rose, which was originally produced by the Jackson Packing Company in 1945. Polk’s Meat Products (“Picky People Pick Polk’s”) in Magee purchased the brand in 1990. Two landmark restaurants in Jackson, the Beatty Street Grocery and the Big Apple Inn on Farish, offer Red Rose, and Polk’s gets plenty mail orders from expatriated Mississippians who loved and remember Red Rose on the table.
On July 15, 1975, Jackson was stunned by the brutal murder of a man whose cultural contributions to the city still reverberate.
Frank Woodruff Hains, Jr. was born July 7, 1926 in Wood County, West Virginia. After graduating from Marietta College in Ohio and serving two years in the military, Hains began a radio career that took him to Vicksburg, Mississippi, where he became active in both the Vicksburg Little Theater and the Jackson Little Theater.
A few years later he moved to Jackson, beginning his twenty-year career with the Jackson Daily News as literary critic and champion of the arts. He remained active in the Jackson Little Theater and was one of the founders of New Stage Theater in 1966.
In addition to his position at the Jackson Daily News, through his work as actor, director, and set designer for the local theaters as well as his contributions to the New York Times, Hains helped high schools and colleges in the area with their productions. In 1958 he received the National Pop Wagner Award for work with young people, and in 1970 the Mississippi Authority for Educational Television presented him with its Distinguished Public Service Award.
Hains was savagely beaten to death by a drifter from Indiana who had come to work in a blood bank near the offices of The Jackson Daily News and The Clarion Ledger. Two weeks later, this memorial written by his close friend Eudora Welty appeared in the combined Sunday Clarion-Ledger and Jackson Daily News (27 July 1975):
IN MEMORIUM
For all his years with us, Frank Hains wrote on the arts with perception and clarity, with wit and force of mind. And that mind was first-rate — informed, uncommonly quick and sensitive, keenly responsive. But Frank did more than write well on the arts. He cared. And he worked, worked, worked for their furtherance in this city and state. He was a doer and a maker and a giver. Talented and versatile to a rare degree, he lived with the arts, in their thick.
So it was by his own nature as a man as well as in the whole intent of his work that he was a positive critic, and never a defeating one. The professional standards he set for art, and kept, himself, as a critic, were impeccable and even austere. At the same time he was the kindest, most chivalrous defender of the amateur. And it was not only the amateurs — it was not artists at all — who knew this well: his busy life, as he went about his work and its throng of attendant interests, was made up of thousands of unrecorded kindnesses.
I speak as one working in the arts — and only one, of a very great number indeed — who came to know at first hand, and well, what ever-present perception and insight, warmth of sympathy, and care for the true meaning, Frank in his own work brought to a work of theirs. The many things he has done in behalf of my own books I wouldn’t be able to even count; his dramatic productions of my stories are among the proudest and happiest events of my working life. He was a dear and admired friend for twenty years.
Frank gave many young talents their first hope, sometimes their first chance, and I am sure he never could have let any talent down. He didn’t let any of us down, but was our constant and benevolent and thoroughgoing supporter, a refresher of our spirits, a celebrator along with us of what we all alike, in the best ways we were able, were devoting our lives to.
What his work contributed — the great sum — had an authority of a kind all its own. I wonder if it might not have had a double source: his lifelong enchantment with the world of art, and an unusual gift for communicating his pleasure in it to the rest of us. Plus the blessed wish to do it.
Jackson native Lehman Engel (1910-82) was a composer and conductor of Broadway musicals, television and film. Engel worked as musical director for the St. Louis Municipal Opera for a number of years before moving to New York to conduct on Broadway. He won 6 Tony Awards, and was nominated for 4 more. Among other works, Engel wrote The American Musical Theatre: A Consideration, the first book to discuss in detail the writing of a Broadway musical, the elements that went into it, and the art of adapting plays into musicals. He also founded the BMI (Broadcast Music, Inc.) Lehman Engel Musical Theatre Workshop, a two-year educational program that has been called “the premier incubator for Broadway In his captivating autobiography, This Bright Day (Macmillan: 1973), Engel provides an endearing profile of his friendship with Eudora Welty.
It’s strange how people in a small town know each other, speak in passing and not really know one another at all. Although I had met Eudora Welty in Jackson before either of us went away to school, it was not until several years later in New York, when a group of Jacksonians were there each simultaneously pursuing various schoolings, that we had first real contacts. Eudora was at Columbia along with Dolly Wells and Frank Lyell, who had first introduced me to Eudora in the Livingstone Park Lake. I was at Julliard. We changed to meet here and there. I think it was at Norma and Herschell Brickell’s (also from Jackson) where all of us, including Nash Burger, whose father used to play cards with my father, often went.
Each summer all of us went home to swelter, and there the threads grew stronger. There were about five such summers before I began staying on in New York, with work to occupy and to pay me. But at home, Frank, Eudora, Hubert Creekmore, and I used to meet at Eudora’s, and we formed the Night-Blooming Cereus Club, the total membership of which sat up to see the glorious white flower with the yellow feathery center bloom. The morning after, it looked like a swan with a broken neck. Those summers are jumbled together in my memory. During on of them Eudora did some letter-writing for me. Perhaps it was at another time that she took many snapshots. Several of them are among the best any photographer ever took of me. I have one of Eudora, we really invented “camp”, sitting in a tree, a Spanish shawl around her shoulders and on her face an uncharacteristic expression of world-be disdain.
With the passing of time, many things happened to us separately, and we seized every opportunity to communicate and to be together. On my visits to see my family perhaps twice a year—and more often in my parents’ failing days—Eudora was, as she is today, always available whenever it is possible for me to get away from family and family friends. To insure our being together to talk without interruption, she usually picks me up in her car—never a fancy one—and takes me for a ride just anywhere away from everybody else. At her house or mine while my mother was still alive, or at any of my cousins’, Eudora always enjoyed her bourbon and I my scotch.
She has endured a great deal. Her father died many years ago, but her mother lingered in poor health for some years. When finally it became necessary for Eudora to put her in a nursing home in Yazoo City, more than an hour’s drive from Jackson, Eudora drove to see her nearly every day. During those days she developed the habit of starting her work at 5 a.m. so tht she could spend several hours of writing without interruption. She still retains that habit. Very shortly before her mother died, Eudora’s two brothers—both married and each living in his own house—died within days of each other. I have seldom heard her refer to any of this, and what suffering she experienced she kept as her very own.
She is selfless, simple, timid, unworldly, and dedicated to her work. She has had every possible honor and success heaped on her, but nothing has ever changed her lifestyle or her nature. She lives in Jackson—the only place where she feels comfortable—travels when it is necessary only on trains (if possible), and speaks so quietly as to be often in audible. She lives in her parents’ house, which is very nice and devoid of any fanciness. It has two stories made of dark-red-to-purple bricks, and Eudora lives as she prefers—alone. The front yard has large pine trees and the house is surrounded by japonicas (camellias) of all kinds and colors. Behind the house there is a lovely garden containing more camellias and gardenias. The garden is no longer as well manicured as it once was, but I imagine Eudora prefers it that way. Now devoid of family responsibilities, she works consistently and hard. As she prefers never to discuss her work-in-progress, I seldom ask her what she is doing.
If I have given any notion that, like Emily Dickinson, Eudora is a recluse, let me assure you that she is not. She has many old friends, all of whom respect her privacy, and everyone in Jackson is deeply proud of her distinguished achievements.
LEFT: I snapped this picture of Eudora Welty with her camera. Frank Lyell was the Señor; Eudora, the unwitting inventor of camp, was herself above it all. RIGHT: Taken on a summer vacation in Jackson by Eudora Welty. I was about twenty.
