Mississippi Moments Podcast: Recent Episodes
Center for Oral History & Cultural Heritage - Univ. Southern Miss
Mississippi Moments, a weekly radio program airing on Mississippi Public Broadcasting, is a partnership between the University of Southern Mississippi Center for Oral History and Cultural Heritage, the Mississippi Humanities Council, and MPB.
In the twenty years since Hurricane Katrina, numerous storms and tornadoes have brought death and destruction to our nation. But for Mississippi, no other event has had as much of an impact, with the possible exception of Hurricane Camile.
Anyone who lived here during that time has a Katrina story and while some of the details have faded in the decades that followed, the emotional trauma remains just below the surface.
Within a month of Katrina, the Center for Oral History and Cultural Heritage began planning an oral history project to preserve those stories while the details were fresh and the trauma apparent.
In this episode, we hear from National Guard leaders who used their Katrina experiences to guide them through subsequent catastrophes. And we discuss disaster preparedness with historians and how the proposed elimination of FEMA could affect our state in the future.
To those conversations, we add the stories of individuals who used their trauma as a catalyst for change.
Hosted by Bill Ellison
Produced by Ross Walton
Executive Producer Dr. Kevin Greene.
Written by Ross Walton, Isabel Loya, Jerra Runnels, Andrew Leib, and Holli Parker.
Additional interviews were conducted by Isabel Loya, Jerra Runnels and Andrew Leib.
Special thanks to the Center for the Study of the National Guard and the Mississippi Humanities Council.
As the wind and rain began to die down, people crawled from the wreckage to survey the damages left by Hurricane Katrina. The most common description of what they found was "a warzone."
First came the first responders seeking, listening, for survivors. Then came the Mississippi Army National Guard. They were soon joined by community and business leaders desperately searching for sources of water, food, and fuel to pass along to those in need.
Then came an army of volunteers from across the nation and around the world: from the American Red Cross and countless faith-based and philanthropic groups, to individuals with trucks, trailers, tools, and big hearts.
As the focus moved from rescue to recovery and finally to rebuilding, the physical and emotional stress began to show on even the most stalwart individuals as people returned to pick up the pieces from amongst the debris.
In this episode, we hear from key decision-makers from the Mississippi National Guard, along with community leaders, fire chiefs, bankers, nurses, and volunteers.
To their memories, we add stories of hope, despair and frustration, from individuals determined to rebuild their homes, lives, and livelihoods.
Hosted by Bill Ellison
Produced by Ross Walton
Executive Producer Dr. Kevin Greene.
Written by Ross Walton, Isabel Loya, Jerra Runnels, Andrew Leib, and Holli Parker.
Additional interviews were conducted by Isabel Loya, Jerra Runnels and Andrew Leib.
Special thanks to the Center for the Study of the National Guard and the Mississippi Humanities Council.
Graphic Design and Social Media: Isabel Loya
Early in morning of Monday, August 29, 2005, Hurricane Katrina made landfall near the Louisiana / Mississippi state line and the eyewall passed over the cities of Bay St. Louis and Waveland as a Category 3 hurricane. A 27 foot storm surge with sustained winds of 120 mph made for a devastating one-two punch that rocked even the most storm-hardened shelters and wiped away 90% of all structures within six miles of the beach.
Joining us for the interview today we have Dr. David Holt, Associate Professor of Geography in the School of Biological, Environmental and Earth Sciences and coordinator of the Sustainability Sciences BS program at USM, and Dr. Deanne Stephens, Co-Director of the Center for the Study of the Gulf South at USM.
To their expertise, we add the raw accounts of city officials, firemen, nurses, and everyday people who share their stories of survival and tragedy during those harrowing hours when life and death hung in the balance.
Hosted by Bill Ellison
Produced by Ross Walton
Executive Producer Dr. Kevin Greene.
Written by Ross Walton, Isabel Loya, Jerra Runnels, Andrew Leib, and Holli Parker.
Additional interviews were conducted by Isabel Loya, Jerra Runnels and Andrew Leib.
Special thanks to the Center for the Study of the National Guard and the Mississippi Humanities Council.
On the afternoon of Friday, August 26, 2005, the National Hurricane Center changed the predicted landfall of Katrina from the panhandle of Florida to Mississippi. As the storm continued to increase in size and intensity, Federal, State, and local officials, began planning for the worst case scenario.
For Gulf Coast residents, it was a familiar dilemma: to stay or to go? Boarding up homes and businesses, packing up and heading north was a costly effort that too many times, proved unnecessary. Afterall, it had been some 36 years since Hurricane Camile, the yardstick by which all hurricanes were measured, had devastated the Gulf Coast. What were the odds that Katrina could cause that level of destruction?
In our first episode, we look back on the days leading up to Hurricane Katrina. We examine the choices that were made and why. We hear first-hand accounts by key decision makers of the Mississippi Army National Guard including Major General Harold "Hac" Cross, Major General Bobbie Ginn, and Major General Janson "Durr" Boyles.
We also hear from Dr. David Holt, Associate Professor with the School of Biological, Environmental and Earth Sciences and Coordinator of the Sustainability Sciences BS program at USM, and Dr. Deanne Stephens, Co-Director of the Center for the Study of the Gulf South at USM.
To these voices, we add the stories of Mississippians from all walks of life, recorded shortly after the storm. From these raw accounts of survival and resiliency, we will hopefully gain a deeper perspective of how they prepared to meet the moment that fateful weekend in August of 2005.
Hosted by Bill Ellison
Produced by Ross Walton
Executive Producer Dr. Kevin Greene.
Written by Ross Walton, Isabel Loya, Jerra Runnels, Andrew Leib, and Holli Parker.
Additional interviews were conducted by Isabel Loya, Jerra Runnels and Andrew Leib.
Special thanks to the Center for the Study of the National Guard and the Mississippi Humanities Council.
On August 25th, 2005, Hurricane Katrina crossed over South Florida and into the Gulf, where it quickly strengthened into a massive category 5 storm. Gulf Coast residents watched with increasing alarm as it became obvious that Mississippi was in the crosshairs of this once-in-a-generation weather event.
As President George W. Bush declared a state of emergency and evacuations were ordered for New Orleans and the Mississippi Gulf Coast, emergency crews, equipment, and supplies, were prepositioned for the rescue and recovery efforts that would follow.
Key to those efforts would be the Mississippi National Guard. Already stretched thin due to deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan, Adjutant General Harrold "Hac" Cross knew we would need assistance from other states to meet the moment.
When the storm made landfall near the Louisiana-Mississippi state line early on the morning of August 29, those who were unable or unwilling to evacuate experienced sustained winds of 120 miles per hour and a 27 foot wall of water. Many clung to trees or floating debris, desperate to survive.
By the time Hurricane Katrina left Mississippi, no part of the state was left untouched. All 82 counties were declared disaster areas. On the Gulf Coast, some 90% of the buildings within a half mile of the shoreline were wiped away, leaving 238 people dead, 67 missing, and billions of dollars in damages.
As massive as the storm itself was the rescue and recovery efforts. Relief agencies and philanthropic groups from around the world descended on Mississippi with truckloads of food, water, and other desperately need supplies. Rescue and relief would take weeks, recovery efforts would take years.
Even before the power was fully restored, the Center for Oral History and Cultural Heritage at the University of Southern Mississippi began planning for an oral history project to preserve for future generations, the shared impact of what our people had just experienced. Over the next five years, the Center would collect some 400-plus interviews to be used for museum exhibits, presentations, books, radio programs, and even a stage play.
In this four-episode podcast series, produced by the Center for Oral History and Cultural Heritage, and the Center for the Study of the National Guard at USM, with support from the Mississippi Humanities Council, we will mine that collection for stories of survival and resilience. To those stories we will add new interviews with key decision-makers and scholars to gain some new perspectives on the lasting legacy of Hurricane Katrina.
I'm your host Bill Ellison, inviting you to take this journey with me as we witness the ferocity of nature and the resilience of our citizens.
Mississippi Moments Presents: Voices of Our People - Hurricane Katrina: Twenty Years Later.
Hosted by Bill Ellison
Produced by Ross Walton
Executive Producer Dr. Kevin Greene.
Written by Ross Walton, Isabel Loya, Jerra Runnels, Andrew Leib, and Holli Parker.
Additional interviews were conducted by Isabel Loya, Jerra Runnels and Andrew Leib.
Graphic Design and Social Media: Isabel Loya.
Special thanks to the Center for the Study of the National Guard and the Mississippi Humanities Council.
To celebrate the publication of an important new book Dogwood, A National Guard Unit's War in Iraq, by Dr. Andrew Wiest of the Dale Center for the Study of War and Society, we present this one hour special podcast episode. In 2003 US and coalition forces unleased Operation Iraqi Freedom to overthrow the regime of Saddam Hussein, expecting an easy victory and a short war. After a quick seizure of Baghdad, though, the nation of Iraq dissolved into disarray, with an insurgency, led by both Saddam loyalists and foreign jihadists, spiraled out of control. The deteriorating situation meant that the US would need more forces in Iraq, and quickly, which resulted in the mobilization of National Guard units from all over the country. As part of that mobilization the 155th Brigade Combat Team from Mississippi would be activated and made ready for war. Their efforts to bring peace to the heart of the insurgency at a remote forward operating base codenamed Dogwood would result in the loss of some of their best and brightest. This is the story of one such Guardsman, Sergeant First Class Sean Cooley, during his deployment to Iraq in 2005. In this podcast episode, Dr. Andrew Wiest provides in-depth context to the story and we learn of the sacrifice and legacy of this remarkable young man as told by his wife and friends.
From the producers of Mississippi Moments comes a new 10 episode long form podcast,
Voices of Our People: WWII. Follow this link to subscribe or search your favorite podcast directory:
https://directory.libsyn.com/episode/index/id/32993807
From the Center for Oral History & Cultural Heritage at USM, comes a new history podcast combining the best of our extensive Oral History collection and in-depth analysis of the major events that have fundamentally shaped modern society.
In Season 1 of Voices of Our People, The COH&CH, in partnership with the Dale Center for the Study of War & Society at USM and the Mississippi Humanities Council, presents a new 10 episode exploration of the greatest conflict of the 20th Century, World War II.
Hosted by Bill Ellison, Voices of Our People: WWII will premier on Monday, Sept. 30, with a new episode each subsequent Monday through Dec. 2--five days before the 83rd anniversary of the Pearl Harbor attack.
About the Center for Oral History & Cultural Heritage
Since 1971, the COH&CH has collected and preserved the stories of Mississippi from all walks of life. In sharing their memories, the over 4,000 and counting contributors to our collection have given the Center--and all of Mississippi--a precious gift that remains long after they pass on. Our collection has proven an invaluable resource for researchers, journalists, teachers, students, documentarians, and museums.
About the Dale Center for the Study of War & Society
As one of the top military history programs in the country, the Dale Center for the Study of War & Society houses a distinguished academic community with expertise in how conflict affects communities, soldiers, and non-combatants. The Dale Center expands on the field of military history, with its traditional focus on leaders, strategies, and operations, and seeks to identify and understand the social and cultural consequences of war.
About the Mississippi Humanities Council
With funding from the State of Mississippi through the Mississippi Department of Archives and History, the Mississippi Humanities Council creates opportunities for Mississippians to learn about themselves and the larger world and enriches communities through civil conversation about our history and culture.
On this Memorial Day, we look back at episode #615 from May 2019.
Jim Swager of Brookhaven joined the US Army shortly after his 18th birthday, three months before D-day. In this episode, he shares his memories of the journey from Mississippi to the battlefields of France as part of the 103rd Infantry, Cactus Division. Although he weighed a mere 130 lbs. his captain made him a machine gunner and assigned him a BAR. The Browning Automatic Rifle was a 30-caliber light machine gun used extensively by Allied forces during WWII. Swager recalls the challenge of lugging the twenty-pound weapon across Europe.
During the war, Swager always enjoyed meeting other Mississippians and remembers how he and his buddy from Iuka survived a German artillery barrage together. In the chaos of war, soldiers are sometimes mistaken for the enemy by friendly forces and pay the ultimate price. Swager gets emotional when he discusses how another friend was killed doing night reconnaissance.
The Nazi government sent millions of Jews and other so-called undesirables to concentration camps for forced labor and eventual extermination. Swager describes the barbaric conditions of one such camp they helped liberate near the end of the war.
WARNING: This episode contains graphic descriptions of violence and atrocities.
Today we look back at a classic MSMO from April of 2016. Carl Walters of Laurel landed his first newspaper job in the 1920s working as a printer’s assistant. In this episode, he recalls how his love of sports led him to become a sports writer. Later, Walters began working for the Meridian Star. He discusses how the Meridian paper broke new ground by being the first to segregate the sports news into its own section. Walters became the first sports editor for the Jackson Daily News in 1946.
Walters reflects on his career as a sports editor and columnist with pride and the innovations we take for granted today, such as the Fall Football Preview Guide. Walters was inducted into the Mississippi Sports Hall of Fame in 1993. You can learn more by visiting their website. http://msfame.com/hall-of-fame/inductees/carl-walters-sr/
This week we look back at the storied career of USM football coach, P. W. Underwood in this MSMO classic from March of 2016.
After playing football for Southern Miss, P.W. Underwood returned to Hattiesburg as an assistant coach in 1963. In this episode, he remembers the team ranked number 1 in defense, three years out of four.
When Underwood was named head football coach for Southern Miss six years later, he knew some changes needed to be made. At that time USM was known as The Generals and the mascot was a character named General Nathan after Confederate General Nathan Bedford Forrest. That year Underwood signed Willie Heidelburg, the first black player for a major Mississippi school and felt it was time to find a new mascot and establish some new traditions. He recounts the programs and processes he put in place to accomplish those goals.
After a humiliating loss to Ole’ Miss the year before, USM was given no chance of winning their 1970 rematch. Coach Underwood recalls how the Eagles were able to beat the odds.
Bernard Tessman and Karl Heimburg worked for Dr. Werhner von Braun in Nazi Germany on the V-2 rocket program. After WWII, 118 rocket scientists were brought over from Germany to work for the US Army. In this episode, Tessman and Heimburg remember those early days launching V-2 rockets in White Sands, New Mexico and the decision to locate the Redstone Arsenal in Huntsville, Alabama.
After President Kennedy announced the goal of putting a man on the moon by the end of the decade, the decision was made to build a rocket test facility in Hancock County, Bernard Tessman led the design team. He recalls the swampy conditions of the Pearl River basin.
In a podcast extra, Heimburg explains why the decision to build the Hancock County facility was based on unrealistic expectations. Today, the isolated location of the Stennis Space Center allows for the testing of larger engines.
In this MSMO Classic episode from January 2016, we look back at the inspiring life and career of Coach David Dunaway.
Coach Dunaway grew up in Tylertown during the Great Depression. In this episode, he recalls how the town became his substitute family after his parents split up. Dunaway worked all through school to support himself and still found time to participate in sports. He credits the guidance he received from his coach and teachers for his decision to pursue a career in coaching/teaching at the junior high level.
Dunaway graduated high school in 1944 at the age of 17. He remembers playing for Mississippi State in the first college football game he ever saw, alongside State football legend, Shorty McWilliams.
Today's MSMO classic discusses efforts by outside business interests to turn Noxubee County into a toxic dumping ground.
In 1983, a hazardous-waste disposal company attempted to build a toxic waste dump in the town of Shuqualak in Noxubee County, Mississippi. In this episode, Martha Blackwell describes how local citizens organized to fight back and were able to have a five year moratorium placed on chemical disposal sites in Mississippi.
In 1991, after the moratorium expired, plans were announced to construct three toxic waste facilities in Noxubee County. Blackwell recalls how she learned about a hazardous-waste dump to be constructed on her neighbor’s land. She details how their group fought to keep these facilities out of Noxubee county and why they felt that having three high capacity sites would lead to waste from across the country being brought to Mississippi for disposal.
In a podcast extra, Blackwell credits the Choctaw Indians with preventing the plans to construct a dump site on reservation land. Originally published on August 3, 2015.
After the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor and American entered the war, young men joined the military in droves leaving big holes in the work force. Women stepped up to fill those jobs traditionally held by men, helping out on the home front and showing what they were capable of in the process.
For Women's History Month, We look back at this classic MSMO episode from February 1, 2016, featuring the story of Bonnie Stedman of McComb who went to work for Illinois Central right out of high school.
Stedman recalls typing orders for the trains, changing light bulbs, and even working as a switch man. Her memories of the challenging and sometimes hazardous work are compelling and heartwarming.
Today, we are look back at Episode #485, which features James Jones of Laurel discussing his time with the 761st Tank Battalion during WWII.
The 761st Tank Battalion was the first armored combat group made up of African American soldiers. Prior to this time, black men rarely served in combat roles in the U.S. Military and were generally relegated to menial labor jobs like stevedores. After being given the opportunity to serve under General George S. Patton in the European Theater, the 761st distinguished themselves as a brave and effective combat force in face of enemy fire.
Joining me for the interview today is Dr. Douglas Bristol.
Douglas Bristol, Jr. is the Buford “Buff” Blount Professor of Military History and a Fellow of the Dale Center for the Study of War and Society at the University of Southern Mississippi. The Smithsonian, Duke University, and the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library have awarded him post-doctoral fellowships. He is a member of the Editorial Board for the Quarterly Journal of the Army War College, Parameters. He has published two books: Knights of the Razor: Black Barbers in Slavery and Freedom and Integrating the U.S. Military: Race, Gender, and Sexuality since World War II. His current book project is War as Labor: Black GIs in Army Service Forces during World War II. His interviews have been included in the Christian Science Monitor and the New York Times along with the PBS documentary Boss: The Black Experience in Business
Today, we look back at Episode #475, featuring an interview with Roscoe Jones Vol. 740, conducted on May 9, 1997 and first aired in February 2016.
Jones's memories of Chaney, Goodman and Schwerner are riveting because according to Jones, he had planned on going to Neshoba County that fateful day.
For anyone not familiar with the story: Civil Rights Activists James Chaney from Meridian, MS, along with Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner from New York City were abducted and murdered on June 21, 1964 while investigating a church burning in the city of Philadelphia, MS.
Joining me for the interview today via Zoom, is Olivia Moore. Olivia, a doctoral candidate in history, is currently working on a dissertation that explores the fractures that developed between civil rights leaders in Hattiesburg throughout the 1960s. Olivia received her BA in History and Politics from the University of Exeter in 2014, and her MA in History from the University of Southern Mississippi in 2016. She has since been awarded a Graduate Certificate in Public History, and was the 2019-2020 recipient of the Baird Fellowship. More recently, Olivia worked on a collaborative project with L.J. Rowan High School’s Class of 1968 that resulted in the publishing of the book, The Class of 1968: A Thread Through Time. Her research interests include race, gender, oral history, and the memory of the civil rights movement.
February is Black History Month and today we are looking back at Episode number 471, featuring an interview of Hattiesburg native and Civil Rights activist, Doug Smith. Smith was present for several key events in the Movement including the March on Washington in August of 1963, and Hattiesburg Freedom Day in January of 1964 which kicked off Freedom Summer that year. Doug Smith was also active in a series of voter registration drives which led to greater participation in voting by black citizens from across the state. His activities also led to his being arrested some 32 times by his count.
Joining me for the interview today is Dr. Kevin Greene.
Kevin is an associate professor of history in the School of Humanities at the University of Southern Mississippi, where he is the Director of the Center for Oral History and Cultural Heritage, and a fellow in the Dale Center for the Study of War and Society. He teaches courses in Oral History, American history, African American history, Urban history, World history, Research Methodology, and Cultural History. He is the author of The Invention and Reinvention of Big Bill Broonzy, a cultural and intellectual examination of William “Big Bill” Broonzy with the University of North Carolina Press for their catalog in African American Studies.
We will be discussing the March on Washington, the 1964 Hattiesburg Freedom Day, and how local law enforcement was used to suppress desegregation efforts.
This is our first Redux of 2023 and because Monday the 16th is Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, we are looking back at a favorite past Mississippi Moments episode: MSM 601 Father Peter Quinn - Dr. King Comes to Hattiesburg, which aired originally on January 28, 2019.
For the interview, we are joined by Dr. Rebecca Tuuri, an associate professor of history at the USM with expertise in Civil Rights, African American, and Women’s and Gender history. She is co-director for the Center for the Study of the Gulf South and a member of the Center for Black Studies at USM. She also serves on the boards of the Gulf South Historical Association, the Mississippi Historical Society, and is the Mississippi State Scholar for the Smithsonian exhibition Voices and Votes.
Her 2018 book Strategic Sisterhood: The National Council of Negro Women in the Black Freedom Struggle won the 2019 prize for best book in Southern women's history from the Southern Association of Women Historians.
Father Peter, O. Quinn moved from his home in Ireland to Hattiesburg, Mississippi, in September of 1962, shortly after being ordained into the priesthood at the age of twenty-five. His first assignment was at Sacred Heart Catholic Church, and then he became the priest at Holy Rosary Catholic Church, which was an all-black church in Hattiesburg.
Father Quinn was very much involved with the youth groups including the Youth NAACP and the Catholic Youth Organization, advising and sponsoring the young people on weekly dances, ball games, and fund-raising. But also in promoting the advancement of Civil Rights by organizing boycotts, protests and picketing of whites-only businesses and facilities.
Quinn gives a hair-raising account of being shot at as two truck-loads of men attempted to run him off the road as he returned from a meeting at Vernon Dahmer's house. When Martin Luther King, Jr. came to Hattiesburg in 1968, ten days before his death, he took a nap in Father Quinn's parsonage before continuing on his journey.
PHOTO: Associated Press
Because our classic Mississippi Moments episode this week is about Greek cooking and holiday traditions, we thought we'd ask USM Historian Andrew Haley to discuss his field of study and give an opinion as to how Mediterranean culture and cuisine has influenced our food ways.
Dr. Haley studies class, culture and cuisine in the United States from the Gilded Age through the 1950s. His first book, Turning the Tables: American Restaurant Culture and the Rise of the Middle Class, 1880-1920, is the winner of the 2012 James Beard Award for Scholarship and Reference.
Haley has conducted an in-depth study of Mississippi community cookbooks exploring such cultural aspects of these historic artifacts as immigrant integration, civic engagement, and the empowerment of women through shared recipes.
We then revisit a classic episode from December 2015 with Kris Gianakos discussing Greek Cooking and the holidays.
'Tis the season for home cooking and today's episode provides a heaping plateful! Jennifer Brannock, Professor and Curator of Rare Books and Mississippiana here at USM takes us on a tour of their massive community cookbook collection. It is a fun and informative discussion on how the project came into being and why the history of food is so important to understanding our culture. Delve into our online collection of rare community cookbooks by following this link: https://www.digitalcollections.usm.edu/mississippiana-and-rare-books
Jennifer's interview is followed by a classic MSMO episode from December 2015, with New Orleans chef Marcelle Bienvenu discussing the history of Cajun cooking and the impact Chef Paul Prudhomme had on Louisiana foodways.
Today is Veterans Day and in today's episode, we remember the sacrifices of all of our service men and women by focusing on the experiences of American prisoners of war in Vietnam.
We are joined by noted Vietnam War scholar Dr. Andrew Wiest for a discussion of the infamous Hanoi Hilton and the POW experience in general.
Afterwards, we hear from Hattiesburg native, George R. Hall about his seven years as a POW and readjusting to civilian life upon returning home in this classic MS MO episode from October of 2015.
On November 3rd, America lost one of the greatest all-around athletes of this or any age. Ray Guy was the first punter to ever be drafted in the first round into the NFL. During his career with the Oakland Raiders, he led the team to three Super Bowl victories. He was the first pure-punter to be inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame. And he remains the standard by which all other kickers are judged. But Ray was so much more.
During his years with the University of Southern Mississippi, he dominated not only as a kicker, but as sports writer Rick Cleveland recalls, "besides being USM’s first consensus Division I All-American as a punter, Guy also shares the school’s pass interception record. He was the team’s emergency quarterback and could throw the ball 80 yards, seemingly with no great effort." Ray also was a first class pitcher and once pitched a no-hitter.
Senior Writer with University Communications, David Tisdale joins Mississippi Moments Producer Ross Walton in a discussion of Guy's career and his memories of interviewing the Pro Football Hall of Famer for the Center for Oral History and Cultural Heritage. We then give a listen to the MSMO episode featuring excerpts from that interview, first broadcast in January of this year.
To read Rick Cleveland's elegant tribute to his friend Ray Guy, follow this link to the Mississippi Today article: https://mississippitoday.org/2022/11/03/ray-guy-best-athlete-mississippi
Welcome to the MS MO Redux Podcast! We will be rolling out format changes in the coming days, but here's the gist: Although Mississippi Moments is not currently in production, we have amassed a huge number of episodes, most of which have never been rebroadcast. So we intend to use this podcast to revisit each episode as its daily spots are being aired statewide on MPB. Many episodes will also contain additional information about the speaker, as well as, interviews with Mississippians involved in the Humanities about upcoming projects and events. More details to follow.
This week's Redux episode was originally aired in 2015 and comes from an interview of Dr. Andrew Wiest conducted that same year about his work documenting the history of Charlie Company and how their time in Vietnam affected their lives.
In 1997, USM professor Andrew Wiest began teaching a class on Vietnam. In this episode, he recalls looking for ways to make history come alive for his students and the unexpected results of those efforts.
After meeting Vietnam veteran John Young, Wiest was inspired to write The Boys of ’67. He details the writing process and the book’s impact on the men of Charlie Company and their families.
In 2014, the National Geographic Channel premiered The Boys of ’67, a documentary based on the book. Wiest explains how the project came about and the challenges it presented.
The documentary received Emmy Award nominations in four categories. In a podcast extra, Wiest discusses the prospect of winning an Emmy and what it means for the men of Charlie Company.
Native Americans first used fire to manage the forests of South Mississippi. After decades of discouraging the practice, forestry experts have shifted their thinking about prescribed burning. Ecologist, Tate Thriffiley explains why this practice is good for the longleaf pines and the entire ecosystem.
By 1930, virtually all of the longleaf pines in Mississippi had been harvested. Thriffiley describes the mistakes made in replanting the DeSoto National Forest and explains why a host of State and Federal agencies have teamed up with conservation groups to promote the planting of longleaf pines in Mississippi.
Keith Coursey is the Prescription Forester on the DeSoto National Forest. He recounts the history of the Forest Service and its evolving attitude towards fire. Please enjoy this classic episode first broadcast in 2015.
Just wanted to send out an update to let you know that we are in the planning stages for a new series of podcasts to be called Mississippi Moments Presents: Voices of Our People.
In each of these series, we will delve into an important historical event from the perspective of the Mississippians who experienced them firsthand.
The extended episodes will rely on noted historians to provide in-depth analysis on various aspects of the event along with the personal stories of our collection's narrators that you've come to expect from Mississippi Moments.
We'll have further updates as the first series goes into production. I don't want give away too much, but our first topic will be on the Greatest Generation's memories of World War II.
Just wanted to send out an update to let you know that we are in the planning stages for a new series of podcasts to be called Mississippi Moments Presents: Voices of Our People.
In each of these series, we will delve into an important historical event from the perspective of the Mississippians who experienced them firsthand.
The extended episodes will rely on noted historians to provide in-depth analysis on various aspects of the event along with the personal stories of our collection's narrators that you've come to expect from Mississippi Moments.
We'll have further updates as the first series goes into production. I don't want give away too much, but our first topic will be on the Greatest Generation's memories of World War II.
We’re taking a break from production this summer, but don’t worry, the Mississippi Moments podcast will return this fall with new and classic episodes, along with exciting announcements about upcoming shows!
Since 2009, our little podcast has developed a loyal following and we’re looking to build on that success by expanding the Miss Mo brand. Soon, we will be offering additional podcast programming, as well as student projects and oral history-based documentaries.
We at the Center for Oral History and Cultural Heritage want to thank our production partners at the Mississippi Humanities Council, Mississippi Public Broadcasting, and the University of Southern Mississippi for fourteen years of support and encouragement and of course, we want to offer a special thanks to you, our listeners! (The MSMO broadcast began in 2005)
So, keep us in the mix and we’ll keep you in the loop about all the exciting new programming headed your way.
Thanks!
Ross Walton, Writer, Producer
Bill Ellison, Host
PHOTO: Bill Ellison
On June 6, 1944, Allied Forces launched the largest amphibious assault in history against Nazi-occupied Europe. In this episode, Rip Bounds of Hattiesburg describes piloting a Utility Landing Ship to the beaches of Normandy.
As Allied Forces landed on the beaches of Normandy, they faced devastating fire-power from the Germans. Bounds recalls how the eighty-eight millimeter artillery shells decimated both men and equipment.
Thousands of American soldiers were wounded or killed as they stormed the beaches on D-Day 1944. Bounds remembers how they bravely worked to save wounded troops from the rising tide. In the weeks that followed D-Day, Bounds and his crew ferried wounded soldiers to awaiting hospital ships for treatment. He recounts how Red Cross workers attempted to give aid and comfort to these men as they lay on the deck of his ship.
WARNING: CONTAINS GRAPHIC DESCRIPTIONS OF WAR AND CARNAGE.
PHOTO: USA Today
After serving in the South Pacific for eighteen months during WWII, Rip Bounds became a naval officer. In this episode, he recalls being sworn-in and attending officer indoctrination schools in Arizona and New York. While at officer training school, Bounds was made platoon leader of a group of former Seabees. He explains why his men resented being treated as new recruits and how an act of insubordination led to a policy change.
As Allied Forces prepared for the invasion of Europe, Bounds was made captain of a Utility Landing Ship. He remembers crossing the Atlantic as German U-Boats attacked their convoy of ships, nightly.
In the weeks leading up to D-Day, Allied Forces performed mock invasions along the coast of England. Bounds describes the day their practice drill turned out to be the real thing.
The United States Naval Construction Battalions, better known as the Navy Seabees, were formed during WWII to build airstrips and other installations vital to the war effort. In this episode, the first of two parts, Rip Bounds of Hattiesburg remembers his decision to join the Seabees in 1942.
After the United States declared war on Japan, the Seabees rushed to build airfields on small islands in the Pacific. Bounds recalls how they built a landing strip in the jungles of Espiritu Santo in just fourteen days. As a Transportation Pool Dispatcher for the Seabees, Bounds oversaw all motor vehicles for their naval base. He discusses using his position to get ice cream and other perks for his men.
Thanks to his hard work, Bounds was soon promoted to Petty Officer First Class. He remembers how an investigation into the disappearance of eighty-seven cases of liquor was dropped after several boxes of the missing booze found their way to the commander’s quarters.
Part Two, where Bounds discusses piloting a Utility Landing Ship during the invasion of Normandy on D-Day, will be released in two weeks.
PHOTO: https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=4002928
Scott Cooper of Saltillo joined the army when he was twenty-four years old. In this episode, he remembers flying to Kuwait for additional training before being deployed in Iraq. While serving in Afghanistan, American soldiers were routinely targeted by snipers and improvised explosive devices. Cooper recalls how they would alter their route each day to avoid the IEDs.
Many soldiers who served in Iraq and Afghanistan experienced some form of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. Scott Cooper compares his symptoms of PTSD with those of his friends. Veterans of the Global War on Terror are still dealing with emotional, physical, and financial challenges. Cooper explains why it is so important to support those who served and those who still serve today.
PHOTO: Dept. of Defense Staff SGT. Leo Medina
Butch Brown was working at a Hattiesburg jewelry store in 1968 as the war in Vietnam raged on. In this episode, he recalls the day his mother met him at the front door with a draft notice and an airline ticket to Canada.
As a communications man in Vietnam, Brown was responsible for repairing field radios in the jungle. He discusses being the company “scrounger” and how he earned the call sign “Soda Six.” Brown would occasionally go out on patrol with his infantry company as the radio man. He remembers the night they set up a large ambush in the jungle to catch the Vietcong.
As public opinion about the Vietnam War soured, returning soldiers were often greeted with hostility. Butch Brown describes the reception he got in California versus the one he received in Jackson.
For thousands of years, Choctaw Indians hunted, farmed and fished the land that would become Mississippi. In this episode, Tribal Historian Kenneth York discusses their way of life and how European settlers took their homes. In 1830, the Federal government attempted to remove the Choctaw Indians from Mississippi. York describes their connection to the land and sacred burial mounds.
The Choctaw lands of Mississippi are divided into three districts and nine communities. York lists these areas and explains how they got their names.
Today, the tribal headquarters of the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians is in Neshoba County. According to York, Choctaws still enjoy hunting, fishing, and growing their own food, despite the convenience of modern grocery stores.
PHOTO: Flag of Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians - choctaw.org, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=117029903
WARNING – CONTAINS RACIALLY EXPLICIT LANGUAGE
After Biloxi’s sand beach was reconstructed in the 1950s, only white people were allowed to use it. In this episode, Clemon Jimerson remembers when a trip to the beach meant riding with his family to Gulfport.
On April 24, 1960, Biloxi physician, Gilbert Mason led a group of 125 black citizens to the whites-only beach. Jimerson recalls how that protest turned violent when they were attacked by an angry mob. As protestors relaxed and recreated on the beach, they were approached by a large group of white men armed with sticks, bricks, chains, and other weapons. Jimerson describes the bloody mayhem that followed and how he ran away, fearing for his life.
After the Biloxi Beach Wade-in of 1960, civil rights groups organized voter registration drives, sit-ins, and other demonstrations across the Gulf Coast. Jimerson discusses his role in these events.
Bess Simmons grew up in Liberty, Mississippi during the 1920s and 30s. In this episode, she recalls riding to school on her sister’s pet donkey and later, in a homemade school bus. Simmons had a chance meeting with her future husband when he came to her school for an FFA event. She explains why they didn’t start dating until years later.
In the early 1950s, Simmons worked as a substitute teacher, and with various civic groups. She remembers welcoming new McComb residents as a member of the Howdycrats.
As a longtime resident of McComb, Simmons met many interesting people and wrote about them in her weekly newspaper column. She recounts the story of Ms. Eddie Newman, known far and wide as a talented seamstress.
PHOTO: McComb, Mississippi in the 1950s.
Copiah-Lincoln Community College opened their Natchez Campus in Fall of 1972. Carolyn Vance Smith remembers those early days and her role in starting the Natchez Literary and Cinema Celebration.
Each year, the Natchez Literary and Cinema Celebration focuses on Mississippi’s contributions to the world of Literature. Smith discusses how they select the theme for each conference. Since 1989, the NLCC has worked to present memorable programs for conference attendees. Smith recalls two of her favorite events from past years.
The NLCC always includes events and programs for students from the junior high level through college. Smith explains why it is important to make Literature and Writing more accessible to young people.
PHOTO: Natchez Democrat
Helen Butler was born in Raleigh, Mississippi in the early 1920s. In this episode, she describes living in the Cohay logging camps when her father worked for the Eastman Gardiner lumber company. Butler grew up on her family’s farm in Smith County during the Great Depression. She recounts riding to school on dirt roads in the primitive school buses known as tally-hoes.
Growing up on a small farm in rural Mississippi during the 1930s meant learning to do without. Butler remembers cooking on a wood-fired stove and patching her school shoes with pasteboard.
According to Butler, even though money was scarce during the Depression, they were never hungry. She explains the advantages of growing your own food and how they would roast and grind coffee beans.
PHOTO: Primitive Model T school bus known as a “Tally-Ho.” Photo and bus restoration by Kirk Hill.
Sergeant Jacquelyn Welborn joined the Mississippi Army National Guard in fall of 2002. In this episode, she discusses her service in Iraq during Operation Iraqi Freedom. She credits her family’s military history and the events of 9/11 for inspiring her to enlist.
On April 4, 2003, Welborn’s convoy made the arduous journey from Kuwait to Bagdad. She recalls being cheered on by children and the poor condition of their new base at Abu Ghraib. As the NCO in charge of housing, Welborn’s duties included providing overnight lodging for passing convoys, as well as Marine units needing a place to rest. She takes pride in the quality of accommodations they were able to offer the soldiers.
When Sergeant Welborn first arrived at Abu Ghraib in Iraq, morale among the troops was low. She describes how they worked to provide the soldiers with activities, entertainment, and a place to rest.
PHOTO: briannomi.wordpress.com
Mona Astin was working in Washington DC as a secretary when she heard about the Women’s Army Corps. In this episode, she discusses joining the WACs and her decision to go to Europe to assist in the war effort. As a WAC serving in England during the war, Astin helped prepare the invasion force for D-Day. She recalls how German planes and buzz bombs would fly over on their way to targets in London.
In September of 1944, a group of WACs drove a convoy of trucks to the docks in South Hampton for the trip across the English Channel into France. Astin describes riding in a landing craft to Omaha Beach and arriving at the new Allied Headquarters in Rheims.
Six months after WWII ended, all the women who had joined the military were discharged. Astin recalls her service fondly and celebrates the opportunities women enjoy in today’s army.
PHOTO: womenofwwii.com
Leland native, Mary Allen joined the newly formed Women’s Army Corps in the Summer of 1943. In this episode, she recalls the public’s negative reaction to the WACs and how she gained her father’s approval. As a recruiter for the Women’s Army Corps, Mary Allen signed up young women for service during WWII. She remembers travelling around South Alabama convincing parents to allow their daughters to join.
The Caterpillar Club honors people who have jumped by parachute from a disabled airplane. Allen describes joining that group when the military plane she was riding in crashed. During the final year of WWII, Allen was assigned to a hospital providing support services for soldiers. She discusses riding the hospital trains and the pitiful condition of the returning POWs.
Reuben Anderson grew up in Jackson, Mississippi in the 1940s and 50s. In this episode, he recalls being inspired to become a civil rights attorney at a young age. When Anderson graduated from Ole’ Miss Law School, there were only a few African American attorneys in Mississippi. He remembers his first job working on school desegregation cases.
In 1985, Rueben Anderson became the first African American to serve on the Mississippi Supreme Court. He discusses his initial reluctance and the comradery he shared with his fellow justices. Justice Anderson served for two terms on the Mississippi Supreme Court. He explains why being first is not as important as the opportunities Black attorneys enjoy today.
PHOTO: MSU.edu
Alyce Clarke was the first African American female elected to the Mississippi House of Representatives. In this episode, Clarke shares her memories of a groundbreaking career in state politics.
She remembers being encouraged to run for political office by her family and friends in 1984. Clarke began her first term in the Mississippi House of Representatives on March 24, 1985. She recalls the swearing-in ceremony and a misunderstanding about her first committee assignment.
As one of the Mississippi House of Representatives’ longest serving members, Clarke has authored several key pieces of legislation. She discusses two of her proudest achievements.
Since 1976, the Mississippi Legislative Black Caucus has promoted the needs of their constituents. Clark discusses how they worked to change the rules regarding leadership positions.
Dr. Eddie Holloway grew up in the Mobile Street area of Hattiesburg during the 1950s and 60s. In this episode, he shares his memories of the mentors, teachers, and business leaders who helped him along the way. He recalls the Black Community as vibrant and self-sufficient with plenty of success stories.
According to Holloway, Black students in Hattiesburg had many good role models to emulate. He discusses the positive impact teachers had on every aspect of his life growing up on Mobile Street. Even though he was raised in the segregated South, Holloway never felt disadvantaged. He credits the wisdom of the community’s elders in helping him prepare for success.
PODCAST BONUS: As a lifelong educator, Holloway recognizes the importance of a tight knit and involved community. He laments the loss of decorum, respect, and commitment in many of our schools today.
“A lifelong resident of Hattiesburg, Holloway earned four degrees from USM, including a doctorate in educational administration. He is a 2004 inductee of the Southern Miss Alumni Association Hall of Fame and has served as dean of students since 1997 and assistant vice president for student affairs since 2015. Prior to filling these roles, he also served the University as a counselor and instructor/assistant professor of psychology, as assistant dean of students, and as interim dean of students.” - USM website
Dr. Holloway retired in 2019 but has returned to USM part time.
PHOTO: USM website
During the Depression, the Civilian Conservation Corps gave young men jobs to help support their families. In this episode, Bidwell Barnes of Gulfport recalls joining the CCC and working to battle forest fires in South Mississippi. Shortly after his twenty-first birthday,
Bidwell Barnes was drafted into the army to fight in Europe. He describes the basic training required to become a medic for the 92nd Infantry Division. As an army medic during WWII, Bidwell Barnes was expected to give medical aid to friend and foe alike. He remembers how both sides would spread falsehoods about him and his fellow black soldiers.
After helping to defeat fascism in Europe, Bidwell Barnes returned to the Mississippi Gulf Coast. He recounts feeling surprised at having to sit in the back of bus after serving his country.
Jewel Rushing grew up in Magnolia, Mississippi, during the Great Depression. In this episode, he remembers befriending the hobos who used to camp outside of town and discusses how growing up in that time of hardship inspired him to help others later in life.
In 1968, the Mayor of McComb asked Jewel Rushing to serve on the city’s public housing board. He recalls organizing a Boys and Girls Club chapter after watching poor kids playing in the streets. Rushing also served on the Board of Directors of the McComb Salvation Army for many years. He recounts how a generous donation by a retired railroad worker allowed them to keep their doors open.
During his lifetime, Rushing worked tirelessly as a community activist. He served on numerous boards including the Southwest Community College Board of Trustees, the McComb Housing Authority, the Salvation Army, and the United Way of Southwest Mississippi. He explains how growing up poor inspired him to try and help young people overcome their circumstances.
Jewel Rushing passed away on September 13, 2011, at the age of ninety.
PHOTO: http://bgcswms.com/
As the daughter of famed restauranteur Mary Mahoney, Eileen Mahoney Ezell grew up immersed in Biloxi history and tradition. In this episode, she recalls being asked to serve as Mardi Gras Queen Ixolib for 1976. For Ezell, serving as the Gulf Coast Carnival Queen was a whirlwind of festivities. She describes the Coronation Ball, parades, and other events that make Mardi Gras so special.
Mary Mahoney’s Old French House Restaurant opened for business in Biloxi on May 7, 1964. Ezell remembers her mother as real people person who loved the Mississippi Gulf Coast.
Since 1908, Biloxi’s Mardi Gras has continue to grow and evolve into a world class celebration. In this interview recorded in 2004, Ezell discusses how the Gulf Coast Carnival Association works to ensure the future of the event while respecting traditions of the past.
PHOTO: allevents.in
Pro Football Hall of Fame Punter, Ray Guy, redefined the position for all who would follow. A tremendous athlete, Guy was as good a pitcher as he was a punter. After finishing high school in his hometown of Thomson, Georgia, he decided to come to Southern Miss to play football and baseball. Guy recalls why choosing a smaller school like USM was a “no-brainer.”
Although Guy could kick footballs great distances, he often chose height over yardage. He discusses the strategy behind his high, hanging kicks. During his years playing football with the Oakland Raiders, Guy shattered many NFL records. He explains why records are meaningless if the team doesn’t win.
Even though Ray Guy was first nominated for the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1994, he was not inducted until the Class of 2014. In this interview, recorded shortly before the induction ceremony, he describes how his former coach John Madden would present him for enshrinement and the festivities to follow.
PHOTO: Famed Raiders Coach John Madden (L) and Ray Guy (R) the night of the enshrinement ceremony in 2014.
Claudette Romious grew up the Delta town of Alligator, Mississippi. In this episode, she discusses her father’s various business ventures including a garage, gas station, café, grocery store and juke joint. She also shares her memories of growing up as the daughter of a hardworking African-American entrepreneur.
The Rabbit Foot Minstrels tent show travelled the South entertaining both white and black audiences. Claudette Romious recalls sneaking into the adult-oriented burlesque show as a child.
As a teenager, Romious and her sisters worked in their father’s juke joint on the weekends. She describes learning how to handle drunk customers and not be afraid of confrontations.
When Romious’s father passed away in 1979, people called and came from all over the country to express their condolences. She remembers the diverse array of mourners and their stories of how her father had helped each of them to achieve their dreams.
Hattiesburg resident Samuel Lahasky has lived in cities with both large and small Jewish populations. In this episode, he observes how Jewish communities in the South tend to be more closely knit than those in the North. Lahasky shares his memories of growing up in Abbeville, Louisiana, and later moving to Atlanta at the age of six. He compares and contrasts those experiences as well as the differences between the Jewish communities at Tulane versus LSU and Hattiesburg.
Henry S. Jacobs Camp in Utica, Mississippi provides summertime recreational and cultural activities for Jewish youth. Lahasky recalls attending the camp as a child and the lifelong friends he met there. Since 1946, Temple B’nai Israel has served the Hattiesburg Jewish community. Lahasky explains how being a member of a smaller synagogue requires a greater level of commitment.
There have always been negative stereotypes associated with Jewish people. Lahasky discusses how he uses humor to gently disabuse his non-Jewish friends and coworkers of these mistaken beliefs.
PHOTO: Temple B’nai Israel, Hattiesburg – WDAM.com
Dr. John Quon’s father immigrated from China in 1924 and settled in Moorhead, Mississippi. In this episode, he discusses how immigration laws prohibited Chinese nationals from owning property until 1943. Quon’s family lived in the back of their Moorhead grocery store until it became too crowded. He recalls how threatening letters led his father to purchase a cotton farm and build a home away from town.
Quon began working in his family’s grocery store at the age of five. He remembers working long hours during growing season and how their lives centered around the business.
After years as a successful merchant and cotton farmer, Quon’s father became well-respected as a businessman and patriarch. He recounts how his father sponsored other Chinese families and describes how their home became a meeting place for the Delta Chinese-American community.
PHOTO: DeltaState.edu
Walter Wallace grew up on a dairy and cotton farm in Cleveland, Mississippi in the 1930s. In this episode, he shares his memories of helping his family with the daily chores. He recalls having to milk ten cows each morning before going to school.
According to Wallace, Cleveland was a busy town in the 1930s and 40s. He remembers the crowded streets on Saturdays and riding the train with his mother to Memphis. Prior to 1936, the Wallace home had no electricity or indoor plumbing. He describes sleeping on the porch in the summertime and the excitement of finally getting electric lights.
In 1940, Wallace’s father passed away, leaving him and his mother run to the farm. He recounts trying to bargain with the cotton buyers for the best price and attending college at Delta State.
PHOTO: https://clevelandmschamber.com/
James Lindsey grew up on his father’s cotton farm in Bolivar County in the 1940s. In this episode, he shares his memories of a life spent farming in the Mississippi Delta.
Lindsey remembers plowing the fields with mules and picking cotton by hand before the days of mechanization. Later as an adult, Lindsey began his career as a cotton farmer on four hundred acres near Cleveland, Mississippi. He recalls increasing the size of his farm to around 3,500 acres and why he later decided to downsize.
Advances in farming equipment, chemicals, and genetically-engineered seeds have led to higher yields per acre for cotton growers. Lindsey discusses the balance between increased cost and profit.
At the time of this interview in 2009, Lindsey had witnessed a drastic decline in the number of cotton farms in the Mississippi Delta. He explains why so many of his neighbors have moved away from cotton production to other crops.
PHOTO: MS State Univ. Extension
Hattiesburg native Clarence Williams was drafted into the army in the final days of WWII. In this episode, he shares some of his many experiences gained during a decades-long military career. Not many veterans can claim to have served in WWII, Korea, and Vietnam, but Williams saw service in all three conflicts.
Williams recounts his brief service in Germany and returning to Mississippi afterwards to finish high school. Then while attending college at Tuskegee, he was recalled to active duty for the Korean conflict. Williams remembers how his unit would have to jump into their foxholes when the Chinese attacked.
Clarence Williams served as an Air Force Manpower Survey Officer during the war in Vietnam. He describes his duties in planning for the deployment of supplies and equipment. In a military career spanning over twenty-five years, he visited many countries. Williams expresses gratitude for the opportunities the Air Force provided him and his wife to see the world.
PHOTO: med-dept.com
In 1918 New Orleans residents George Walter and Annette McConnell Anderson purchased 24 acres of land facing the Mississippi Sound in Ocean Springs. Annette wished to establish a retreat for artists. They named their new venture, Fairhaven. Their three sons, Peter, Walter and Mac, shared Annette’s love of the Arts and found inspiration there. Shearwater Pottery was founded in 1928 by Peter Anderson. In this episode, his nephew, John Anderson explains how Shearwater Pottery got it name.
As a painter, Walter Anderson, lived the life of a hermit, spending much of his time on Horn Island, painting Gulf Coast wildlife in his own unique style. His youngest son, John, recalls his father’s strained relationship with the rest of the family and shares an emotional early memory.
Even though Walter Anderson died in 1965, his work was unknown to the Art world until the 1970s. John Anderson remembers how an exhibit at a Memphis gallery helped turn his father into a cultural icon.
The Friends of Walter Anderson was established in 1974 to help catalog and preserve the late artist’s work. Anderson explains how that group led to the establishment of the Walter Anderson Museum.
Rev. Carolyn Abrams is perhaps best known as the mother of voting rights advocate, Stacey Abrams, but she has accomplished much more than being the matriarch of a dynamic and successful family. After earning her first master’s degree from the University of Wisconsin at Madison in Library Science, she spent fourteen years working as the director librarian for William Carey University. She then answered the call to ministry, joining her husband Robert in attending the Emory University Candler School of Theology, where both received Master of Divinity degrees.
Abrams grew up in Hattiesburg during the 1950s and 60s. In this episode she recalls attending segregated schools and being barred from entering whites-only establishments. Growing up in the segregated South, young black students had limited job opportunities available to them. Abrams explains how parents and teachers stressed education as the key to a better future.
Abrams and her husband encouraged their six children to earn good grades and to aim high in life. She discusses the accomplishments of each child and the role education played in their success.
As a lifelong resident of Hattiesburg, Abrams has witnessed many positive changes in her community. She describes the challenges of today and the need for young people to return to the Church.
PHOTO: Abrams family portrait, Hattiesburg American.
Growing up black in the 1940s, Katharine Carr Esters learned at an early age to stand up for herself. In this episode, she shares her memories of racial segregation and the struggle for dignity and respect. She recalls being taught by her father to “know who you are, and to be what you can be.”
During the Jim Crow era, blacks in the South were expected to sit in the back of public buses behind a partition. Esters describes an altercation she had with a bus driver in 1946 and how her letter to the bus company led to a change.
Before the Civil Rights Movement, black adults were not called Mr. or Mrs. by white people. Esters remembers insisting her mother be addressed as Mrs. by their bank in Kosciusko. Throughout her life, Esters has been an advocate for the marginalized in our society. She explains why it’s important to treat each other respect, dignity, and fairness.
Dr. Joseph Clements, a former USM professor, was drafted into the U.S. Army in the Fall of 1941. In this episode, he shares his memories of the war. Clements remembers hearing about the attack on Pearl Harbor while training in Texas and his first assignment in Alaska, where he encountered the “midnight sun.”
During WWII, thousands of allied troops gathered in England in preparation for the invasion of France. Clements recalls fondly the diversity of the people he met while waiting for D-Day.
As allied forces battled their way across the French countryside, livestock was slaughtered indiscriminately. Clements describes the devastation and a grateful French woman who offered them a homecooked meal. Before America entered WWII, Joseph Clements watched newsreel footage of the fall of France. He recounts visiting the spot where Hitler danced after forcing the French to surrender.
This episode of Mississippi Moments was written by Sean O'Farrell and produced by Ross Walton, with narration by Bill Ellison.
PHOTO: French surrender to German forces during WWII near Compiègne, France.
Dr. Louis Kyriakoudes joined the USM History Department in fall of 1997. In this episode, he discusses the importance of community connections locally, and political connections in Jackson. In 2008, Kyriakoudes became the director of the Center for Oral History and Cultural Heritage. He recalls his goals for continuing the Center’s work and the need for digitizing the oral history collection.
According to Kyriakoudes, his tenure as director of the center was a search for funding. He remembers having Mississippi Oral History Day at the state capitol and commissioning a stage play for high school students based on interviews in the collection.
As a grant-funded NPO, the COHCH depends on projects to survive. Kyriakoudes explains how a manmade disaster provided funding for two years of research.
PHOTO: Capitol Day 2010. (left to right) Linda VanZandt, Jobie Martin, Ross Walton, Louis Kyriakoudes
During WWII, Illinois Central Railroad started an apprentice program for McComb high school boys. In this episode, Edwin Etheridge recalls working at the railroad maintenance shop during the day while taking classes at night. As an apprentice at the McComb railroad shop, Etheridge was expected to learn all aspects train car and locomotive maintenance. He remembers the older men who patiently shared their experience with the newbies.
After turning eighteen, Edwin Etheridge left his job on the railroad to serve in the Navy during WWII. He discusses returning to his apprenticeship after the war and the different skills he was taught.
During his forty-plus years with Illinois Central, Etheridge rose through the ranks to become shop superintendent. He describes working on the wrecker crew and the equipment they used to clean up after train wrecks and derailments.
As a lifelong resident of Port Gibson, James Allen witnessed many important moments in his hometown’s history. In this episode, he shares some of those memories. Allen attended the Chamberlain-Hunt Military Academy in Port Gibson in the early 1920s. He recalls the night McComb Hall burned and three student’s harrowing escape from the third floor.
Allen’s father owned one of the first car dealerships in Port Gibson. He recounts his father’s favorite story of selling a retired rancher his first automobile and how the man tried to coax the car up a hill. People have been decorating the cars of newlyweds since the earliest days of the automobile. Allen describes the lengths to which they would go to harass their just-married friends.
F. S. Wolcott’s travelling minstrel show used Port Gibson as its home base during the off season. Allen remembers how Wolcott would wait to pay his credit accounts until the merchant asked for the money.
PHOTO: Chamberlain-Hunt Academy postcard
Lt. General Emmett H. "Mickey" Walker joined the Mississippi State ROTC program in 1941. In this episode, he recalls being activated in 1943 and going through basic training in the Texas summer heat. As war raged in Europe during WWII, soldiers who were wounded or killed in action needed to be replaced. Walker discusses being a replacement soldier and his long journey to the front lines.
During WWII, the German-held city of Metz in Northeast France, was considered a veritable fortress. Walker describes how Allied forces were able to take the city in half a day’s time.
The Battle of the Bulge was a last-ditch effort by the Germans to split Allied forces with a surprise counter-offensive through the Ardennes Forest in December of 1944. Walker remembers driving all night through the harsh Belgium winter with General Patton’s Third Army.
PHOTO: Wikimedia.org
Mississippi’s Country Comedian, Jerry Clower, described himself as having “backed into showbusiness.” Clower began his career as an assistant county agent in Oxford before taking a job selling seed corn and then fertilizer for Mississippi Chemical Corporation. It was while calling on customers, he began telling stories about his rural upbringing in East Fork, Mississippi. The homespun humor, combined with Clower’s gregarious personality, led to more and more speaking opportunities at churches, trade shows, and civic clubs until finally, he was convinced to cut a record in 1970. The unlikely success of that recording, sold by mail order and out of the trunk of Clower’s car, and the airplay it received by supporters like country DJ Big Ed Wilkes, led to a recording contract with MCA. By the time Clower was inducted into the Grand Ole Opry in 1973, he was appearing on television programs nationwide and performing live at rodeos and state fairs.
In this episode, his daughter, Katy Clower Johnson shares her memories of the man she called Daddy. She recalls being introduced to the audience of the Grand Ole Opry at the age of three by country music legend, Roy Acuff. At the peak of his career, Clower performed over two hundred shows per year. Johnson remembers travelling with her father and how he used those trips as educational opportunities.
During his twenty-seven year career, Clower amassed a large collection of memorabilia. Johnson and her mother, Homerline Clower discuss their decision to open a Jerry Clower Museum. Johnson also considers her father’s legacy and how it compares to the man she knew.
Bill Stallworth was a Biloxi city councilman when Hurricane Katrina hit the Coast in August 2005. In this episode, he recalls the shock and fear in the eyes of his constituents as he viewed the devastation. Basic necessities like food and water were unavailable for days after Hurricane Katrina struck the Gulf Coast. Stallworth gets emotional when he recounts early efforts to feed the survivors.
Before the storm even ended, relief workers from across the country began making their way towards the Gulf Coast. Stallworth remembers how two volunteers from Oxfam America helped him fund and organize relief efforts throughout the city.
Three years after Hurricane Katrina, Stallworth reflected on the rebuilding efforts to date. He shares his hopes for the future and the lessons to be learned from that experience.
PHOTO: Linda VanZandt
Linda VanZandt began working for the Center for Oral History and Cultural Heritage in 2003, shortly after graduating from USM with a degree in International Studies. During a trip to Vietnam, she recounts being deeply affected by the generous spirit of the Vietnamese people and their culture. In this episode, VanZandt explains her decision to reach out to the East Biloxi Vietnamese fishing community after Hurricane Katrina.
While assisting with relief efforts on the Gulf Coast, VanZandt befriended many of the Vietnamese-Americans living in Biloxi. She recalls being led to conduct an oral history project to preserve their stories for future generations. VanZandt developed a traveling exhibit documenting the stories of the Gulf Coast Vietnamese fishing community. She remembers the impact it had on second and third generation Vietnamese-Americans.
Developers of the Two Mississippi Museums made extensive use of the oral history collection at USM. VanZandt discusses assisting the exhibit designers and how the Center’s Vietnamese-Americans of the Gulf Coast Oral History Project impacts how this community is represented there.
Dr. Stephen Sloan accepted the position of Assistant Director of the Center for Oral History and Cultural Heritage in 2003. In this episode, he discusses those years and how his tenure was shaped by the arrival of Hurricane Katrina in September of 2005. Sloan begins the conversation with memories of how his family survived the storm and the cleanup that followed.
Soon after Katrina, the COHCH began conducting oral history interviews of the survivors. Sloan describes the need for such a project and the positive response it received. Based in part on those experiences, Sloan co-authored a book on conducting post-crisis oral history projects. In Listening on the Edge: Oral History in the Aftermath of Crisis, he reflects on the need to protect the mental health of interviewers, as well as the interviewees.
In 2007, Dr. Sloan left the Center to become Director of the Institute for Oral History at Baylor University. He recalls fondly his time at USM and how it shaped his career.
Curtis Austin became the Assistant Director of the Center for Oral History and Cultural Heritage in 2000, before assuming the Directorship one year later. During his seven year tenure, the Center would expand its Civil Rights Documentation Project, becoming the definitive resource for researchers, teachers and museums seeking answers on the Civil Rights Movement in Mississippi.
In this episode, Austin recalls growing in Yazoo City, Mississippi, the son of sharecroppers. He recounts his education and early career. His first oral history interview after becoming assistant director of the Center was of 104 year old King Evans. He remembers how it changed the way he thought about voting rights. As director of the oral history program at USM, Austin interviewed some key players in the Civil Rights Movement. He expresses pride in the Center’s work and discusses its importance.
Austin also discusses the Roots Reunion, a live Americana music program presented annually by the Center during the 1990s and 2000s. He describes the program’s impact.
The Center for Oral History and Cultural Heritage has always relied on grant funding for special programs and projects. Austin expresses disappointment in the university’s unwillingness to assist the Center financially during lean years and questions their level of support for this “hidden gem” during previous administrations.
PHOTO: library.osu.edu
Dr. Shana Walton began working with the Mississippi Oral History Program in 1992. As an anthropologist, Walton worked to expand the MOHP’s mission to include preserving the state’s cultural heritage. She and Director Chuck Bolton assembled a team that included not just historians, but also political science majors, anthropologists, and folklorists. During that transformative decade, the MOHP became the Center for Oral History and Cultural Heritage, a prominent name in the preservation of Civil Rights history. In this episode, Walton recalls conducting oral history workshops for local communities interested in preserving their memories.
It was during this period that Walton met, hired, and befriended a legend in the Civil Rights Movement, Worth Long. The son of an AME preacher, Long rose to prominence in 1963, when he became leader of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee in Selma, Alabama. By the time Long began working with the COHCH in the 1990s, he was suffering from a degenerative eye condition that was slowly robbing him of his sight, but that did not slow him down in the least.
Worth Long traveled around Mississippi by bus conducting oral history interviews even though he was legally blind, relying on the kindness of strangers to help him reach his destination. Shana Walton remembers how Long used his blindness as an opportunity to make friends and preserve stories. As a civil rights activist, Worth Long heeded his father’s advice on how to set aside anger and see the good in people. Walton marvels at how her friend’s love for humanity would overcome the emotions of the moment.
Oseola McCarty received national acclaim for donating the bulk of her life’s savings to the University of Southern Mississippi. Shana Walton discusses recording McCarty’s oral history and the impact of her gift.
PHOTO: Alabama Department of Archives and History
During the yearlong celebration of our 50th Anniversary, the Center for Oral History and Cultural Heritage has been interviewing former directors and staffers to preserve our own history. This week, we share the memories of Dr. Charles Bolton.
In 1990, Chuck Bolton became the fourth director of the Mississippi Oral History Program at USM. A Picayune native, Bolton had graduated from USM with a bachelor’s degree in history and moved to Durham, North Carolina to attend graduate school at Duke University. In this episode, he remembers his oral history professor and mentor Larry Goodwin and how being from Mississippi lead to a unique first interview.,
After receiving his Ph.D. in History, Bolton returned to USM to accept a teaching position in the History Department and the Directorship of the MOHP. He recalls the legacy of the Mississippi Oral History Program’s first director, Dr. Orley Caudill and how they were able to build on those early successes.
The Stennis Space Center Oral History Project was launched in 1991 by the Mississippi Oral History Program. Bolton discusses the roots of that fourteen year project and the opportunities it created. In 1992 Shana Walton was hired to be Assistant Director of the Mississippi Oral History Program. Bolton explains how her background in Linguistic Anthropology allowed the Program to evolve into the Center for Oral History and Cultural Heritage.
PHOTO: Ellisville Blues legend, Tommie T-Bone Pruitt performs at an early Roots Reunion show, an annual Cultural Heritage program put on by the Center during the 1990s and early 2000s.
This week, for our 50th Anniversary, we begin to document the story of us with a short series of episodes based on interviews conducted this spring of former directors and staffers. Unfortunately, our first director, Dr. Orley B. Caudill, Sr., passed away in 2015 at the age of 97. But luckily for us, his son, Brandt Caudill was willing to share his memories of his father and he had plenty of good stories!
Orley Caudill was working as a grocery store manager in Wenatchee, Washington when WWII erupted and soon found himself in the Army, guarding the Pacific coastline from possible Japanese invasion. He transferred into the Army Air Corp and served in the Pacific Theater as a navigator, bombardier, and radar operator. Caudill saw plenty of action. On one mission, his crew’s B25 bomber limped home with 450 bullet holes!
After the war, Caudill remained in the Air Force and flew night bombing missions during the Korean War. On one mission, their pilot was awarded the medal of honor and Caudill a bronze star. Caudill became an Air Force Public Information Officer and was stationed at Holloman Air Force Base for several years. He then served in Paris, taking his young family with him. Later, he served in the Pentagon before a final tour of duty in Vietnam. All told, he flew 120 combat missions!
By the time Caudill retired from the Air Force after 27 years, he had earned a Ph. D. in Political Science and moved his family to Hattiesburg, Mississippi to teach at USM in 1968. In 1971, he became the first director of the newly formed Mississippi Oral History Program and kept a grueling pace of 100 interviews per year until he retired in 1986.
In this episode Brandt Caudill recounts his father’s 27 year career in the U. S. Air Force. He recalls his father’s decision to move to Hattiesburg and teach Political Science at USM. Caudill also remembers his father’s love for oral history and the famous Mississippians he interviewed. Finally, he reflects on his father’s natural curiosity and zest for life throughout his 97 years.
Lloyd Munn grew up in Mendenhall, Mississippi, the third of four brothers. In this episode, he remembers being part of a musical family and why he chose to play the harmonica.
Munn began sitting-in with bands at the George Street Grocery and Subway Lounge in the 1990s. He recalls the talented musicians he met and befriended at those iconic Jackson music venues. Greg “Fingers” Taylor played harmonica in Jimmy Buffett’s band, the Coral Reefers, for many years. Munn discusses his friend and mentor and how he always told him to “respect the music.”
“The Warrior Bonfire Program provides opportunities that improve the lives of Purple Heart recipients on their lifelong journey of recovery and healing.” Munn describes the impact of the program.
Even though Kat Bergeron was not born on the Mississippi Gulf Coast, when she moved here with her family in the early 1960s, she fell in love with the sights, sounds, music, history and lore of the area. In other words, all the things that make a place feel like home. It’s a phenomenon she calls having a “sense of place.” In this episode, she explains what it means to have a “sense of place” and why it’s important.
Since the 1980s, Bergeron has been a feature writer for the Gulf Coast Sun Herald. She discusses the difference between writing about history and being a historian. According to Bergeron, most legends are based on truth, even if the facts have been lost over time. She recalls how her friend Jim Stevens helped dispel a popular myth about the Biloxi lighthouse.
The shoreline along the Mississippi Gulf Coast has been called the world’s longest manmade beach. Bergeron rejects that notion and describes how the original sand washed away over time.
After the Deep Water Horizon Oil Spill of 2010, NOAA asked us to conduct an oral history project to preserve the stories of those who fished the Gulf for a living. What one hears in these interviews a decade later is a myriad of emotions: pride in the past, exasperation at the evolving markets and conditions, and fear for the future. This week, we return to the interview of Thomas Schultz, junior, a fifth generation fisherman who, though he had retired, was still very much involved with preserving a way of life that he felt was slipping away.
2011 - Before the days of motorized fishing boats, fishermen relied on manpower and the wind to ply their trade. In this episode, Thomas Schultz of Biloxi describes how his father’s family would row a skiff thirty miles to sell their catch.
Schultz spent decades catching and selling shrimp with his own shrimp boats. He recalls being out in the Gulf for weeks at a time and how the price of shrimp has fluctuated. After Schultz retired from shrimping, he remained active with the Southern Shrimp Alliance, a group of industry professionals dedicated to ensuring “the continued vitality and existence of the U.S. shrimp industry.” He explains why he thinks the threat that shrimping poses to the sea turtle population has been greatly exaggerated.
According to Schultz commercial fishing is a great life and allowed him to provide for his family. He worries that pollution and government regulations are discouraging the next generation of fishermen.
PHOTO: robertstjohn.com
As a new class of inductees ascend to the Rock n Roll Hall of Fame, we look back to this classic episode featuring Jai Johanny Johanson, a founding member of the Allman Brothers band. "Jaimoe" as he is known, had many interesting stories to share and we were all ears! Inducted into the Hall of Fame in 1995, please enjoy this classic MSMO. We will be back next week with a new episode.
2012 - Ocean Springs native Jai Johnny Johanson got his first big break as a professional drummer in 1966 when he joined Otis Redding's band. Over the next couple of years, he played for several big names including Percy Sledge, Joe Tex, Johnny Jenkins and Clarence Carter, but by 1968, found himself struggling to make ends meet. Johanson was about to leave the south and move to New York to pursue a career in Jazz when he heard of a young guitar player named Duane Allman, looking to form a new band. The two men were soon joined by bassist Barry Oakley and that trio would serve as the foundation for the Allman Brother Band.
In this episode, Johanson shares his memories of that time including the phone call he got from Cadillac Henry about joining Otis Redding’s band. He recalls going to see Percy Sledge at the Apollo and how he got the nickname, Jaimoe. Finally, he discusses what made Duane Allman such an exceptional musician and the legacy of the Allman Brothers Band.
PHOTO: J. Bayer: https://www.flickr.com/photos/jlbnyc/3388544821/
1975 – Doyle Ball moved from Amite County, Mississippi to Kansas in 1912 and took a job on a large cattle ranch. In this episode, he recalls learning to rope and ride and how to tend to the cows when they were sick.
During WWII, Ball leased out his farm in Crystal Springs and began working at a shipyard. He describes building mine sweepers and other ships critical for the war effort. After the war, Ball returned to his home in Crystal Springs and opened a dairy farm. He discusses the different types of farming operations he managed during his long career.
In 1975, Ball could look back with pride on the sixty-five years he spent in agriculture. He considers the changes he has witnessed and offers advice to any young farmers just starting out.
PHOTO: Grit.com
Some of Sam Alman’s earliest memories are of sleeping upstairs in his family’s fledgling soft drink business as the machinery below filled the bottles to be delivered the next day. And his stories of a life spent as part of the Gulf Coast community are filled with love and appreciation for the place he called home.
2004 – Sam Alman’s father moved their young family to Gulfport in the 1930s in search of new opportunities. In this episode, he recalls how they opened a soft drink bottling company and lived upstairs in those early days.
For his final two years of high school, Alman attended the Gulf Coast Military Academy which opened in 1912. He explains how the training he received there prepared him for life in the Navy during WWII.
Mardi Gras was an important part of Alman’s life from an early age and he participated in the Gulf Coast festivities for most of his life. He remembers serving as the King of Mardi Gras in 1971 and how local businesses would build their own floats.
During his lifetime, Alman watched the Mississippi Gulf Coast grow and prosper. He reflects on the changes he witnessed and why he wouldn’t want to live anywhere else.
PHOTO: Gulfcoast.org
1974 – During the timber boom of the early 20th Century, logging camps harvested virgin pine trees across Mississippi. In this episode Carriere native Spence Lumpkin recalls visiting one of the camps as a boy in the early 1930s. Prior to the development of mechanized tree harvesting, giant yellow pines covered Mississippi. Lumpkin describes the way these majestic forests were clear-cut by northern profiteers.
After the timber companies harvested all the pine trees in South Mississippi and moved on, locals searched for new crops to support the economy. Lumpkin discusses how late frosts, insects and hurricanes eventually wiped out the peach, satsuma and tung trees they planted.
As a life-long resident of Carriere, Spence Lumpkin survived several major storms. He remembers the hurricane of 1947, as well as, Betsy and Camille.
1978 – G. R. Sullivan of Raleigh, Mississippi joined the army one month before the attack on Pearl Harbor. In this episode he recalls being assigned to an armored reconnaissance unit and boarding a ship bound for England. On Christmas Day, 1943, Sullivan’s troop ship lay off the coast of Gibraltar. He describes the submarine countermeasures and being attacked by the German Luftwaffe.
While stationed in Algiers, North Africa, Sullivan had been driving for the company commander. He recounts being asked to serve as a scout car driver for General Dwight Eisenhower, a position he held for nine months until his unit left North Africa.
As fighting raged on in Italy, G. R. Sullivan’s unit was driven from a small village by German artillery. He remembers being assisted by a colonel with a jeep, a radio, and a lot of American firepower.
PHOTO: maritimequest.com
For as long as he could remember, Will Davis Campbell wanted to be an evangelical preacher in a small southern church. He was ordained by the elders of the East Fork Baptist Church at the age of seventeen and was attending Louisiana College when the United States entered WWII. Campbell volunteered for the army in 1943 and was assigned to a medical unit in the Pacific. While serving in that capacity he read the historical novel Freedom Road by Howard Fast and his views on race relations were challenged “in a very dramatic and lasting fashion.”
After the war, Campbell attended Wake Forest, Tulane, and Yale Divinity School. He graduated and was called to be the pastor at a Baptist church in Taylor, Louisiana, but his progressive views on race and the 1954 Brown vs Board of Education decision inspired him to seek a more academic position. Campbell became Chaplin at the University of Mississippi but again his progress stance on the issue of race generated a great deal of controversy. After two and a half years, he resigned and went to work for the National Council of Churches as a field director for race relations, a role that would thrust him into the national spotlight as the Civil Rights Movement began heating up.
1976 – Will Davis Campbell grew up in the East Fork community with plans of becoming a preacher. In this episode he recalls how his thinking on race relations evolved while serving in the army. Campbell became a field director for the National Council of Churches in 1956. He explains how that position brought him to Civil Rights hotspots throughout the South.
In 1957, a group of nine African American students enrolled in Little Rock Central High School. Campbell recounts escorting the students through the angry mob gathered out front. The Southern Christian Leadership Conference recruited a group of 125 rabbis, priests, and ministers to come to Albany, Georgia in 1963 to be arrested and immediately bailed out of jail. The plan was to shine a national spotlight on the city’s anti-congregation laws. Campbell remembers how Andrew Young allowed the clergymen to remain incarcerated overnight to get the "full activist experience."
CAUTION: CONTAINS RACIALLY EXPLICIT LANGUAGE
As a professional musician in the early 20th Century, Joe Berryman faced many challenges. Before the days of airliners and modern highways, just getting to the next gig could take days or even weeks. Please enjoy this classic Mississippi Moments from 2018.
1972 - Dr. Joe Berryman spent his life and career involved with high school, college and professional bands as a musician, composer, instructor, and conductor, as well as, a product representative and developer for several musical instrument manufacturers. After moving to Mississippi, he served as the band director at Itta Bena High School before coming to USM where he became coordinator of the band staff and taught percussion and orchestration. Berryman also worked with the Mississippi Lions All-State Band for well over a decade as director, writing much of the music, himself. At the time this interview was recorded in July of 1972, the band had won first prize at the Lion’s International Convention five of the last six years.
In this episode, Berryman discusses his early life and career. He was ten years old in 1914, when his family moved from Texarkana to Meridian. He recalls shipping their automobile and furniture by train because there were no highways. When he decided to become a musician, his parents wouldn’t pay for music lessons because they didn’t think he was serious. He remembers earning the money by selling magazines and taking the lessons in secret.
In the age of silent movies, musicians would provide live music to match the action on the screen. Berryman describes playing in the orchestra pits of the movie theaters in Kansas City. In addition to showing motion pictures, movie palaces of the day also booked live entertainment. He shares his memories of working the vaudeville houses in Topeka and providing sound effects for a hot-tempered comedian.
PODCAST BONUS: When he was not playing theaters in the 1920s, Berryman travelled with several tents shows around the Midwest. Known as chautauquas, these shows were intended to bring cultural enlightenment to isolated rural communities.
PHOTO: USM Archive
When Claude E. Ramsay sat down with us in April of 1981 to discuss his career and tenure as President of the Mississippi AFL – CIO, the three main topics of that series of interviews were: worker’s rights, voting rights, and civil rights. Forty years later, those same three issues are still grabbing headlines across the nation. Whether it is Amazon employees in Alabama trying to unionize, GOP efforts to restrict voting after the 2020 election, the Black Lives Matter movement, or the uptick in violence against Asian, Hispanic, and Jewish communities, the struggle for better working conditions, access to the ballot and freedom from discrimination continues against the same forces using the same tactics and reasoning.
1981 - In 1939, Claude Ramsay went to work for the International Paper Company in Pascagoula. In this episode, he recalls joining the paper-workers union and rising through the ranks to become president. Ramsay was elected President of the Mississippi AFL – CIO in 1959. He discusses working with Medgar Evers to secure voting rights and labor rights for all Mississippians. Ramsay also details his meeting with President Kennedy the day after Evers’s assignation.
In 1964, after years of complaints about the anti-union, anti-civil rights biases of WLBT, the AFL – CIO joined the United Church of Christ in petitioning the FCC to revoke the Jackson television station’s license. Ramsay explains why they felt it was important to take a stand against “right wing propaganda.”
The Civil Rights Act of 1964 outlawed employment discrimination based on gender and ethnicity. Ramsay discusses how the law also aided efforts to organize Mississippi’s workers.
Through the years, we have delved through our large collection of veteran oral histories, many times, to find impactful war stories that really bring home the hardships and sacrifices of our soldiers and sailors during WWII. This is not one of those episodes. For while Albert Russell did escape calamity on multiple occasions during his service as a navigator aboard a Navy patrol bomber in the Pacific theater, the man clearly had more fun and more good fortune that most during the war. In training, Russell frequently enjoyed the nightlife in Atlanta, Washington DC, and San Francisco. While serving in the Pacific, he met and cavorted with one of Hollywood’s most glamorous actresses of the day, Carol Landis, who was touring with a USO group in Australia at the time. Clearly, the man knew how to enjoy his downtime.
1977 - Albert Russell joined the Navy in 1942 and served as a flight navigator in the Pacific. In this episode, he describes basic training and the methods of navigation in those early days. As young Navy ensign during WWII, Russell was assigned to a base near Pacific fleet headquarters. He remembers taking an early morning swim in the private pool of Fleet Admiral Bull Halsey.
While on leave in Australia, Russell met and befriended two USO performers: actress Carol Landis and singer Martha Tilton. He recalls a month of dancing and dining and being the envy of his commanding officer.
During WWII, bad weather was a constant source of danger for patrol planes in the Pacific. Russell recounts how a typhoon forced him to change course repeatedly for nineteen hours.
Besides cotton, the timber industry generated more money and jobs in Mississippi during the early 20th Century than any other. When European settlers came to the territory, they found vast stands of virgin long-leaf yellow pine trees. But it took until the late 1800s before the technology was developed to harvest these giant trees for their high-quality lumber. By WWI, hundreds of sawmills covered the Piney Woods and their tree-cutting and turpentine camps often attracted a rough breed of men from around the country, drawn by the lure of plentiful work. Our storyteller for this episode helped build many of the sawmills and railroads used to process and transport this valuable commodity.
1976 - Charles Ainsworth was born in 1885 near Sontag, Mississippi. In this episode, he describes the hard, dangerous work of cutting timber in the Piney Woods. During the timber boom years, logging camps harvested trees from across the state. Charles Ainsworth remembers the men who worked these camps as “some of the meanest people in world.”
As a young man, Ainsworth helped construct sawmills throughout the Piney Woods. He recalls earning the respect of the mill owner in D’lo through determination and hard work.
Ainsworth moved to Hattiesburg in 1916 and began building houses. He recounts gaining a reputation for working smarter and saving his clients money in the process.
As we continue our 50th Anniversary celebration, we turn our attention this week to Public Health. COVID-19 has given most of us a fresh appreciation for our healthcare professionals. We look at how far public health in Mississippi has evolved by dipping into this interview from 1975 when Ms. Edith Reece ended her thirty-five-year career as a public health nurse by sitting down to record her oral history.
1975 – Edith Reece of Woodville became a public health nurse in 1940. In this episode, she recalls the challenges of working for rural county health departments in those early days. At that time, sexually transmitted diseases were common and there were no effective treatments. Reece explains that public health nurses were required by law to report and roundup members of the community who refused treatment for their STDs. She explains that spinal taps were often necessary for diagnosis of syphilis and babies often contracted congenital syphilis from their parents.
In 1942. Reece volunteered to become an Army Nurse and was sent to England. She describes caring for wounded soldiers and how she put on a brave face for her patients. After serving as an army nurse, Edith Reece returned to her public health job in Mississippi. She remembers convincing county officials to replace the dilapidated health department in Woodville.
Edith Reece retired from the Mississippi Department of Health in 1975. She discusses the changes in public health she witnessed during her thirty-five-year career as a nurse.
PHOTO: Public health nurse, Floridamemories.com
O.C. McDavid never wanted to be THE Editor of the Jackson Daily News because he didn't want to be the face of the paper at official functions, nor did he want to be a firebrand "pulpiteer" in the image of Fred Sullens or Hodding Carter, Jr. Instead, he wanted to be the man who put out the "best newspaper in the world."
1975 - As a boy, O. C. McDavid knew he wanted to pursue a career as a newspaper reporter. In this episode, he remembers going to work for Oliver Emmerich at the McComb Enterprise in 1925, sweeping up in the print shop and learning how to run the press.
In the late 1930s, McDavid became a reporter for the Jackson Daily News. He recalls the fiery relationship between editor, Fred Sullens, and Senator Theodore Bilbo. After serving in the military and working at several other newspapers, McDavid returned to the Jackson Daily News in 1957 as the News Editor. He discusses the role of editor as a community opinion maker and how his style differed from that of Emmerich and Sullens.
McDavid took up painting on the advice of his doctor to relieve stress. He became an accomplished painter and sculptor. He explains how that hobby led him to write an art column for the Jackson Daily News.
O.C. McDavid passed away on March 12, 1998, at the age of 86.
PHOTO: The Clarion Ledger
From a young age Patrick Carr dreamed of being a pilot in the Army Air Corps, even sending for literature from Jackson when he was twelve. After the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor and the United States entered WWII, nineteen year old Carr enlisted in the Army Air Corps determined to make that dream a reality.
Unfortunately, Carr washed out of the pilot program because of faulty depth perception. It was then he decided to enter gunnery school instead and became a waist gunner on a B-24 Liberator heavy bomber. This week we dive into his story from this interview recorded on October 4, 1973.
1973 – Patrick Carr grew up on a farm near the small community of Paulding, Mississippi. In this episode, he recalls joining the Army Air Corp and becoming a gunner on a B-24 bomber in 1942. In August of 1944, Carr’s plane was shot down during a bombing run over Budapest. He remembers the angry mob waiting for him and being captured by the Germans.
Carr was held prisoner in a German POW camp (Stalag Luft IV) during the final eight months of WWII. He describes the meager rations they lived on and being slapped around by the guards. As the Russian Army advanced on their camp in the closing days of the war, Carr and his fellow POWs were marched away from the front line by the German guards. He describes a couple of times they were at risk of being killed by friendly fire.
PHOTO: Model of Stalag Luft III, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=534329
During our 50th Anniversary Celebration, the Center for Oral History and Cultural Heritage will continue to dig deep into our collection to bring you significant stories of Mississippians from all walks of life.
On the 25th Anniversary of the Mississippi Humanities Council’s founding, Dr. Cora Ellen Norman made this observation on being selected as the group’s first Executive Director. “If I were being interviewed for [the] job today, there is no one in the humanities in the nation that would hire me. I had no background in the humanities.”
Indeed, someone with a master’s in chemistry and physics seems an unlikely choice to champion the humanities in our state, but it turned out to be the right choice. Norman brought a passion and commitment to the task of developing programs for the betterment of all our citizens that far outsized her slight stature. In this interview from 1997, recorded soon after her twenty-four-year tenure ended, she pulls no punches in recounting the challenges they faced.
1997 – In 1972, Cora Norman was working in Continuing Education at the University of Mississippi. In this episode, she recounts being hired as director of a new statewide Public Humanities program. Early Mississippi Humanities Council programs focused on improving education. Norman recalls the reluctance of school superintendents to host these public forums.
Convincing civic groups to host Humanities Council events required spending a lot of time in the field. Norman explains how limited staffing made being out of the office even more difficult.
The Mississippi Humanities Council Speaker’s Bureau “features our state’s finest historians, writers and storytellers talking about a wide variety of subjects related to Mississippi and beyond.” Norman reflects with pride on the positive impact the program had during her tenure as director.
Dr. Cora Ellen Norman, 94, passed away on Monday, Jan. 11, 2021.
During our 50th Anniversary Celebration, the Center for Oral History and Cultural Heritage will continue to dig deep into our collection to bring you significant stories of Mississippians from all walks of life.
Few individuals had more impact on the Civil Rights Movement in Mississippi than Dr. Aaron Henry. The son of sharecroppers, Henry was born in Dublin, Mississippi and raised on the Flowers brothers’ plantation. Henry’s father trained to become a cobbler and moved their family to Clarksdale to provide better opportunities for his children to receive an education.
Henry excelled scholastically and would eventually own his own pharmacy. In 1951 he was a founding member of the Regional Council of Negro Leadership. He joined the Mississippi chapter of the NAACP in 1954 and was elected President in 1959. His accomplishments are too numerous to name here, but Henry was on the front lines of every battled waged for equality in Mississippi throughout his life. He served as a member of Mississippi State House of Representatives from 1982 to 1996. He died of congestive heart failure in 1997. Please enjoy these excerpts from his COHCH interview conducted May 1, 1972.
1972 – Dr. Aaron Henry of Clarksdale joined the Mississippi Chapter of the NAACP in 1954. He explains how the organization’s shift towards integration angered the white community. Throughout the Civil Rights Movement, Henry promoted unity and equality for all Mississippians. He reflects on the need for racial reconciliation in a healthy and prosperous society.
During the long hot summer of 1964, three young civil rights workers went missing in Philadelphia, Mississippi. Henry recalls the search for Goodman, Chaney and Schwerner, as well as his own brush with death.
As a civil rights activist, Dr. Aaron Henry listened to many inspirational speeches. He shares some of his favorite lines from newspaper publisher Hodding Carter and others.
PHOTO: Getty Images, John Dominis
During our 50th Anniversary Celebration, the Center for Oral History and Cultural Heritage will continue to dig deep into our collection to bring you significant stories of Mississippians from all walks of life.
1978 – From a young age, Burris Dunn of Jackson was interested in learning the printing business. In this episode, he recalls going to work for a political newspaper owned by Governor Theodore Bilbo in 1923. The Mississippi Free Lance newspaper’s sole purpose was to promote the re-election of Governor Bilbo. Dunn describes working in the printing plant for the charismatic politician.
After Bilbo was elected to a second term in 1927, he lost interest in owning a newspaper. Dunn remembers finding work at another printing house before being called back by the Governor to aid in the election of a political ally.
In the early 1930s, Dunn was working in a Jackson printing house and barely making ends meet. He recounts buying a small printing press and setting up shop in his garage to earn extra money.
PHOTO: Senator Theodore G. Bilbo.
1972 - Hiram Todd grew up on his family’s Newton County farm in the 1880s. In this episode, he describes how they grew their own food and raised cotton for cash. After graduating high school, Todd decided to pursue a career in education. He taught school in Ellisville, Crystal Springs and Hattiesburg before moving to Natchez to accept a position with Stanton College, a private academy.
After eight years, Todd began selling insurance for Penn Mutual and John Hancock, eventually moving into farm appraisals and loan brokerage. After World War I, a boom in the cotton market led to risky land speculation in the Delta. Todd recalls how easy credit brought many Mississippians to financial ruin when the market bubble burst in 1920.
Todd discusses the challenges that Mississippians faced in those days, including the awful effects of chronic and communicable diseases. When Todd was young, outbreaks of malaria, typhoid, and yellow fever were common in Mississippi. He remembers how advances in medicine and public health brought these diseases under control.
In 1941, Todd went to work for the Mississippi State Experiment Station. He reflects on how their research led to advances in agriculture and tree farming.
PHOTO: extension.msstate.edu
1973 - In 1915 Hawkins Vickers went to work for his brother-in-law selling vegetable plants to local farmers. In this interview from 1973, he explains how that pioneering business model grew into a nationwide industry. Vickers moved to Hattiesburg in 1923 to start his own vegetable plant business. He recalls how two years of bad weather nearly convinced him to return to Georgia.
Raising vegetable plants for industrial farms required mules and manual labor when Vickers started his business in the 1920s. He explains how the development of specialized equipment and growing techniques made their fields more productive and profitable. Vickers would plant vegetable seeds, raise the seedlings to a uniform height, and sell the plants to northern vegetable farms. He discusses the importance of buying seeds from a reputable breeder.
From 1924 until 1966, Vickers Plant Farm was a major source of vegetable plants for northern growers like Campbells, Heinz, and Van Camp. During their busiest year, they shipped over 66 million cabbage plants.
Gov. William F. Winter passed away on Dec. 18, 2020. He served as Mississippi’s 58th governor from 1980 – 1984. Winter, a Democrat, championed public education, historical preservation, and racial reconciliation. His legacy includes the Education Reform Act of 1982, the Two Mississippi Museums, and the William Winter Institute for Racial Reconciliation.
In honor of his passing, we present episode MSM 568, first broadcast the week of April 30, 2018. We will return with new episodes on January 11, 2021.
Former Governor William Winter was first elected to the Mississippi House of Representatives in 1947. In this episode, he remembers how the verdict in Brown versus the Board of Education solidified opposition to desegregation throughout the South. Gov. Winter was running for State Treasurer in 1963 when he learned of the assassination of civil rights activist, Medgar Evers. He recalls being shocked by the news and even more shocked by the reaction of a respected church elder.
In 1997, Gov. Winter was appointed to President Bill Clinton’s Advisory Board on Race. He reflects on his work with the Board and the things that are important to most Americans.
Today, the William Winter Institute for Racial Reconciliation supports harmony and wholeness among all Mississippians. He explains how each of us have a role to play and why it’s so important.
In March 2008, Governor Winter was given the Profile in Courage Award by the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum for his work in advancing education and racial reconciliation.
PHOTO: winterinstitute.org
The Mississippi Moments Decades Series continues counting down to the Center for Oral History and Cultural Heritage 50th Anniversary Celebration in 2021. This week we hear from Aino Driegert’s oral history recorded on January 12, 1973. It would the first of seven interviews documenting the story of Finnish immigrants who came to Mississippi beginning 1899. They settled on the Gulf Coast in a small community named for a nearby orange grove. The name was changed to Laine after the first Finnish settler in the area, Gideon Laine, who encouraged other Finns to come. After the Southern Paper Company opened a mill there in 1912, the name was changed to Kreole. Today it is part of Moss Point.
In the early days, the group had to deal such difficulties as hostile locals, who would terrorize them with night rides, firing into the air and yelling “Yankees go home.” The children were also teased as “foreigners” until they learned to speak English. But soon the hardworking Finns proved their worth and were accepted as part of the community, learning to fit in while keeping their cultural traditions and Lutheran faith intact.
1973 – Aino Driegert was born in Orange Grove, Missisippi in 1902. In this episode, she discusses why her parents left Finland and her father’s love for America. As the daughter of Finnish immigrants, Driegert started school before she could speak English. She recalls how her family struggled to become part of the Gulf Coast community in those early days.
The Gulf Coast Finnish Community worked to maintain their cultural heritage and traditions. Driegert describes various social gatherings such as communal bathing in the family sauna. According to Driegert, even though the children of their community have scattered across the country, they still consider the Gulf Coast home. She reflects with pride on the character of the Finnish people.
PHOTO: Joanne Anderson, Gulflive.com
The Mississippi Moments Decades Series continues counting down to the Center for Oral History and Cultural Heritage 50th Anniversary Celebration in 2021.
Al Key and his brother Fred developed a passion for aviation while in their teens and worked hard to make their dreams of flying a reality. They started their own flying service and took over as managers of the Meridian airport in the early 1930s. When the city decided to close the airport in 1935, Al and Fred decided to promote Meridian as an aeronautical hub by breaking the world record for longest time sent in non-stop flight. They succeeded on their third attempt, remaining aloft for over 27 days. The no-spill nozzle they helped develop for mid-air refueling is still used by the US Air Force.
In 1939, Al helped form the Mississippi Air National Guard and became a full time military pilot in 1940. He was commanding a squadron of B-17Cs when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. He and Fred made several suggestions for armament modifications for US bombers that were adopted by the manufacturers. Their work landed them positions with the 8th Air Force Operational Engineering Section and Al became a Chief Liaison Officer with the British on designing new types of bombs.
Al retired as a colonel from the US Air Force in 1960 and served two terms as mayor of Meridian.
1973 – Al Key grew up on his family’s Kemper County farm in the 1910s. He describes being inspired to pursue a career in aviation when three biplanes planes landed in their pasture.
While managing the Meridian Airport in the 1930s, Al and Fred Key joined the newly formed Mississippi Air National Guard. Al Key recalls how their jobs as B-17 pilots changed after Pearl Harbor. During WWII, Al and Fred Key commanded bomber squadrons on submarine patrols and combat missions. Al Key explains how their suggestions for bomber designs made the planes less vulnerable.
While serving with the 8th Air Force Operational Engineering Section, Al Key worked with the British to develop a massive bunker-busting bomb known as the “Disney bomb.” He discusses how it was used to destroy German concrete-reenforced submarine pens.
PHOTO: Lonestarflight.org
The Mississippi Moments Decades Series continues counting down to the Center for Oral History and Cultural Heritage 50th Anniversary Celebration in 2021. Today we dip into an interview conducted in August of 1973. Mrs. Mary Lillian Peters (Ogden) Whitten graduated from Mississippi Normal College (USM) with a degree in Music Education in 1923. She has many fond and entertaining memories of college life in those early days, but in this episode, we focus on her life growing up on a farm in Noxubee County.
1973 – Mary Whitten of Macon, Mississippi was born on her family’s farm in 1904. She remembers selling vegetables and dairy products to the local agricultural high school for extra income. Farm life in Mississippi during the early 20th Century required hard work and self-sufficiency. Whitten recalls hunting wild honey and hickory nuts and smoking meat in winter.
After Whitten’s father died in 1915, the entire family worked to keep their dairy farm going. She describes rounding up the cows for milking and washing clothes in a nearby spring. Part of Whitten’s responsibilities included churning cream and clabber into butter and buttermilk. She recounts feeling heartbroken once after accidentally spilling the contents of the churn.
The Mississippi Moments Decades Series continues counting down to the Center for Oral History and Cultural Heritage 50th Anniversary Celebration in 2021. This week, we dip into a terrific interview conducted in 1972 of William Hubbell, a longtime resident of Biloxi who served as a merchant marine before opening his own business. After retirement, Mr. Hubbell enjoyed collecting and sharing stories of life on the Gulf Coast as an amateur historian.
1972 - William Hubbell moved to Biloxi as a child in 1909. He describes the beautiful wind-powered schooners used by Gulf Coast fishermen in those days and how they would race each other along the shore during the annual regatta, which drew thousands of spectators each year. According to Hubbell, the Fireman’s Parade was another popular event in Biloxi. He recalls the brightly colored trucks and how the firemen were rewarded with copious quantities of beer.
Gulf Coast residents have always traveled to New Orleans for work, shopping, and recreation. Hubbell discusses riding the “Coast Train” before automobiles were common. He also recounts a typical day and riding his pony cart to school along the old beach road.
As a resort town, Biloxi has always been a popular destination for tourists in the summertime. Hubbell remembers the Iowa farmers who chose to spend their winters on the Gulf Coast.
The Mississippi Moments Decades Series continues counting down to the Center for Oral History and Cultural Heritage 50th Anniversary Celebration in 2021. This week, we are happy to share a few memories from Pulitzer Prize winning editor and Hattiesburg native, Robert Woodrow Brown. At the time of this interview on November 3, 1973, Brown was still working as a newspaper editor in a career spanning more than forty years. In addition to several high-profile print positions, he also worked in the news departments of NBC, ABC, and the International News Service. Brown passed away four months after this interview was recorded, on April 2, 1974.
1973 - At a young age Robert Brown decided to pursue a career in Journalism. In this episode, he recalls going to work for the Hattiesburg American while still a high school student in 1930.
In 1936, Brown moved to Greenville to work for newspaper publisher, Hodding Carter, Sr. He explains why their decision to publish a picture of Olympic medalist Jesse Owens was so controversial. Being a proponent of social and economic justice made Carter a fearless newspaper man. Brown reminisces about his mentor and friend.
In the late 1930s, Brown accepted a position with the New Orleans Times Picayune, eventually moving to Washington D.C. for the paper during WWII. He recalls befriending a colorful character known as “The Mystery Man in the Big Red House on Avenue R.”
PHOTO: Tampa Bay Times
The Mississippi Moments Decades Series continues counting down to the Center for Oral History and Cultural Heritage 50th Anniversary Celebration in 2021. This week, we delve into one of our first POW interviews.
Lt. Commander James W. Bailey (Bill) sat down to share his experiences with us on September 11, 1973, less than a year after his release. His memories of sixty-eight months as a POW were still fresh and raw in his mind.
1973 - Kosciusko native, Bill Bailey, served as a Navy Flight Officer on the aircraft carrier, USS Ranger. In this episode he recalls how his F4 Phantom jet was shot down over North Vietnam on June 28, 1967. When Bailey’s plane was downed by the North Vietnamese, he and his pilot were taken prisoner. He describes being tortured for three days by interrogators trying to obtain information.
As a prisoner of war in North Vietnam, Bill Bailey was subjected to harsh treatment by the camp guards. He remembers how they were replaced by with new, more humane guards in early 1970.
After spending sixty-eight grueling months as a POW in North Vietnam, Bailey was finally allowed to go home. He recounts how conditions in the prison camp improved dramatically about a month before they were released.
CAUTION: CONTAINS GRAPHIC DESCRIPTIONS OF TORTURE.
PHOTO: A plane load of recently released POWs on their way home in 1973. Public domain.
The Mississippi Moments Decades Series continues counting down to the Center for Oral History and Cultural Heritage 50th Anniversary Celebration in 2021. This week, we look back with pride at our interview of civil rights icon, Fannie Lou Hamer. The first part was conducted in Fall of 1972 and focused more on her work with voter registration and the Freedom Democratic Party. In the second part, conducted in January of 1973, Hamer reflects on the current state of the movement, her efforts to provide housing and healthy foods choices for Mississippi’s poor people, and how the Civil Rights Movement was evolving to address new challenges.
1973 –In 1964, Hamer and ten other civil rights activists travelled to Africa for a much-needed rest. She recalls how the people they met on that trip inspired her to see what was possible for blacks in America. Hamer remembers feeling angry that African Americans had had they culture, and history stolen from them and how they had been made to feel ashamed by the West’s distorted image of their homeland.
One objective of the Civil Rights Movement was to change the old ways of thinking about race. Hamer discusses the importance of realizing that we all need each other. In 1969, Hamer and a group of donors founded the Freedom Farm Cooperative. She explains how they grow vegetables and other crops to help feed poor people in the Delta.
By 1972, many goals of the Civil Rights Movement had been met and some said the work was finished. Hamer opines on how the Movement has evolved and why the struggle must continue.
The Mississippi Moments Decades Series continues counting down to the Center for Oral History and Cultural Heritage 50th Anniversary Celebration in 2021. This week, we dip into the interview of Dr. William Penn Davis, conducted on March 24, 1972. During the Civil Rights Movement, no white church leader in Mississippi showed more bravery or strength of his convictions than Reverend Davis. His lifelong work towards racial unity—which he called “human relations”—was met at times with threats of violence and scorn by white Christians and non-Christians alike.
1972 - Dr. William Penn Davis was born in Union County, Mississippi, in 1903. In this episode, he recalls how his parents taught him, by example, to treat people with respect, regardless of race. While attending Mississippi College, Rev. Davis served as pastor of a church in the Brownsville community. He explains how a hate crime inspired his work to improve race relations in the state.
From 1957 until 1971, Davis served as president of the Mississippi Baptist Seminary. He discusses their efforts to promote racial unity during the Civil Rights Movement. As an advocate for race relations, Rev. Davis was often targeted by white supremacists. He remembers being beaten and left for dead by a group of masked men.
Because black churches were meeting places for civil rights organizers, dozens were burned in retribution. Dr. Davis recounts how the Citizens of Concern rebuilt fifty-two churches during that time.
CAUTION: CONTAINS RACIALLY EXPLICIT LANGUAGE AND DESCRIPTIONS OF VIOLENCE.
The Mississippi Moments Decades Series continues counting down to the Center for Oral History and Cultural Heritage 50th Anniversary Celebration in 2021. As the last layperson to be elected president of the Southern Baptist Convention, Owen Cooper recognized the need for fundamental changes in the organization’s approach to racial issues. While the nation attempted to build on the tenuous gains of the Civil Rights Movement, Cooper recognized that Baptist churches, too, must evolve in the way they dealt with their black brothers and sisters in Christ. However, his determination to change the old ways of thinking and put those changes into action would require the sacrifice of his political aspirations.
1972 - Like many Mississippians of his generation, Cooper gave little thought to racial equality. He recalls how his daughter’s desire to attend an integrated church sparked a change in his thinking. As President of the Southern Baptist Convention for two terms, 1972 – 74, Cooper recognized the need for churches to be more welcoming of African Americans. He explains the dilemma for church leaders during that time.
As a prominent businessman, Owen Cooper’s work with pro-civil rights organizations created controversy. He remembers how a picture of him eating dinner with NAACP leader Aaron Henry was widely circulated. When Cooper decided to work with black citizens in such groups as Mississippi Action for Progress, he knew it would end his hopes of running for governor. He reflects on that decision.
Forty-eight years after this interview was conducted, the Southern Baptist Convention has made solid progress in the way it handles the issue of race. However, for the nation as a whole, Sunday morning worship services remain the most segregated of hours.
PHOTO: Baptistpress.com
The Mississippi Moments Decades Series continues counting down to the Center for Oral History and Cultural Heritage 50th Anniversary Celebration in 2021. This week we look at the career of civil rights attorney R. Jess Brown. Brown originally came to Mississippi in 1946 as a public-school teacher. After Gladys Noel Bates was fired and black-listed from teaching in Mississippi for agreeing to be the plaintiff in a landmark civil rights lawsuit, Brown volunteered to take her place. When his teaching contract was not renewed, he left the state to attend law school at Texas Southern University. He passed the Mississippi Bar Examination in 1954 and established his law practice that same year.
1972 – At the time this interview was conducted in the Jackson law office of R. Jess Brown on April 2, 1972, Brown was still an active, practicing attorney. Brown was born in Coffeeville, Kansas in 1912. In this episode, he explains how growing up in Oklahoma inspired him to become a civil rights attorney. As the Civil Rights Movement gained momentum in the early 60s, activists were often targeted by police. Brown recalls representing these defendants against a variety of charges.
In preparing for the Mississippi Freedom Summer of 1964, workers received training on how to protect themselves both physically and legally. Brown remembers going to Oxford, Ohio, to warn them of the hazards they would likely face.
During the Civil Rights Movement, some black citizens feared reprisals after the activists went home. Jess Brown discusses the strategy of direct confrontation versus a protracted legal battle.
WARNING: CONTAINS RACIALLY EXPLICIT LANGUAGE.
The Mississippi Moments Decades Series continues counting down to the Center for Oral History and Cultural Heritage 50th Anniversary Celebration in 2021. This week we look at the life of George Edward Allen. Few figures of the 20th Century had a bigger impact on American politics and business.
Following in his father’s footsteps, Allen became an attorney, but made a name for himself early as an investment banker with Halsey-Stuart. After a large investment in a hotel company threatened to go bad, the firm took over the company and sent Allen to Washington DC to oversee operations. He did well in hotel management and his continued rise through the ranks of the Democratic Party eventually netted him a position in the Roosevelt administration. His penchant for using humor to diffuse tense situations earned him the nickname “Court Jester,” a moniker that he enjoyed, but his wife did not.
After serving in two administrations, Allen returned to the business world as a consultant. It is said that in his day he held more board of directors positions than anyone on the planet. He amassed considerable wealth and was active in many philanthropic organizations. Allen passed away less than five months after this interview, on April 23, 1973. He is buried in the family plot in Booneville.
1972 - Booneville native, George Allen became interested in politics at a young age. In this episode, he recalls attending his first political convention as an alternate delegate in 1912 at the age of 16.
In 1933, Allen was appointed Mayor of Washington DC by President Franklin D. Roosevelt. He then served in the Truman administration as Secretary of Political Appointments. He explains how that position made him unpopular with certain party bosses.
George Allen served in the Roosevelt and Truman administrations and was a close personal friend of President Eisenhower. He compares the personalities of the three men.
After serving in two administrations, George Allen returned to the private sector as a paid consultant. He credits luck and opportunity as important factors to his success.
PHOTO: Wikipedia
The Mississippi Moments Decades Series continues counting down to the Center for Oral History and Cultural Heritage 50th Anniversary Celebration in 2021. Another controversial Mississippian takes the spotlight in this week’s episode. Few public figures did more to hinder the cause of civil rights in our state than Judge Thomas P. Brady of Brookhaven.
1972 - In 1948 President Harry S. Truman ordered the desegregation of the US Military. He also supported progressive civil rights legislation that threatened long-established Jim Crow laws of the day. In this interview recorded on March 4, 1972, Judge Brady recalls helping form the State’s Right Democratic Party or “Dixiecrats” in response. In the 1950s, a series of progressive Supreme Court decisions angered conservative whites across the South. Brady states his reasons for wanting Justices to be elected and not appointed.
After school segregation was ruled unconstitutional in Brown versus the Board of Education, Brady railed against that decision in a speech entitled “Black Monday.” He explains how the speech became a book and inspired the formation of Citizens’ Councils across the country. While overtly rejecting the violent tactics of the KKK, the Citizens’ Council covertly worked to destroy the lives and livelihoods of all who openly supported integration and equal rights of black Mississippians.
Judge Brady was appointed to the Mississippi Supreme Court in July of 1963. Despite his record on racial matters, in several cases that came before the court, he demonstrated a fealty to the Constitution beyond his personal beliefs. He discusses his decision to integrate a “whites only” park in Greenwood despite being a segregationist.
PHOTO: actual Citizens Council membership card from private collection.
The Mississippi Moments Decades Series continues counting down to the Center for Oral History and Cultural Heritage 50th Anniversary Celebration in 2021.
1972 - Percy Greene had a terrible secret. When the civil rights pioneer and publisher of the Jackson Advocate newspaper agreed to be interviewed by us in December of 1972, he had been secretly serving as an informant for the Mississippi State Sovereignty Commission for years. It was a secret he would take to the grave when he passed in 1977 and not revealed until the Commission’s files were unsealed much later.
So why would a man so nationally respected as a voice for the disenfranchised black citizens of Mississippi agree to share damaging information about the Civil Rights Movement’s leadership with the state?
It is an intriguing question. Perhaps it was Pride—bitterness at having lost his role as the state’s voice for equality under the law—that drove him to do it. Maybe it was his belief that the Movement was a communist plot to overthrow the country: a conspiracy theory that echoes today’s criticism of the Black Lives Matter Movement. Whatever the reason, Greene’s role as an informant has forever overshadowed his legacy.
In 1940, Greene, organized the Mississippi Negro Democrats Association. In this episode, he describes their early efforts to register Black Mississippians to vote. By 1944, over 8,000 African Americans had been registered to vote in Mississippi. Greene recalls Senator Theodore Bilbo’s campaign of black voter suppression.
As publisher of the Jackson Advocate, Greene championed equal rights under the law. Even so, he believed the Civil Rights Movement was in fact, a communist plot. Greene opposed efforts to integrate public schools and the use of the word “Black” instead of “Negro.” He explains how his call for a “New Liberalism” throughout the South would be more tolerable to whites than forced desegregation.
Greene’s characterization of young civil rights workers as communists and militants made him a pariah of the Movement. He discusses how his newspaper’s circulation dropped as a result and how he has worked to gain more subscribers.
CAUTION: CONTAINS RACIALLY EXPLICIT LANGUAGE
PHOTO: State Sovereignty Comm. file photo - MS Dept. of Archives and History
The Mississippi Moments Decades Series continues counting down to the Center for Oral History and Cultural Heritage 50th Anniversary Celebration in 2021. This week we delve into an interview conducted in August, 1971 of famed Southern writer, Erskine Caldwell. Perhaps no single work of fiction influenced the world’s view of the American South more than Caldwell’s breakout novel, Tobacco Road, published in 1932.
The interview, conducted by USM English Professor Jac Lyndon Tharpe, is a classic battle of the “Lits” versus the “Langs.” Throughout the almost six hour recording, Tharpe repeatedly attempts to draw Caldwell into a discussion of Literary Theory, while the exasperated author focuses on the process of writing—seemingly dismissive of all Tharpe holds dear.
1971 Growing up poor in the South, Caldwell had limited access to books and magazines. In this episode, he recalls how the wide variety of literary journals at the University of Virginia inspired him to write. As a sophomore in college, Caldwell only took courses related to his goal of becoming a writer. He remembers convincing an English professor to let him take a graduate-level writing workshop.
Even though Caldwell’s novels were inspired by his memories of growing up in the South, he insists he never knew how the story would end before it was finished. A prolific writer, Caldwell wrote 25 novels and 150 short stories. When asked which book was his favorite, his only reply: his next one. He also confesses that he is never satisfied with the final story.
PHOTO: By Giorgio Lotti (Mondadori Publishers) - http://www.gettyimages.co.uk/detail/news-photo/american-writer-and-journalist-erskine-caldwell-smoking-a-news-photo/186170230, Public Domain.
The Mississippi Moments Decades Series continues counting down to the Center for Oral History and Cultural Heritage 50th Anniversary Celebration in 2021.
1971: Luther A. Smith came to Hattiesburg as a young attorney in 1908. In this interview, conducted on June 18, 1971, Smith shares his memories growing up in North Georgia. As the son of a Methodist minister, Smith was taught to avoid certain groups and activities. He recalls how his mother found him at a party one night on the Chattahoochee River.
Even though Smith’s family did not have a lot of money, he was determined to attend law school. He recounts how a chance reunion with a childhood friend provided the means to pay his tuition. While attending law school at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Smith became friends with Hattiesburg native, George Curry.
Smith moved to Hattiesburg with his classmate to establish a law firm in 1908. He shares his initial impressions of the town and the story of how he met his future wife, Lorraine McInnis. The Hattiesburg National Bank of Commerce expected the Curry-Smith law firm to provide the bank with fulltime support. Smith explains how the partners flipped a coin to divvy up the work.
PHOTO: National Bank of Commerce facade, Hattiesburg, MS.
As the Center for Oral History and Cultural Heritage approaches its 50th Anniversary in 2021, we continue our Mississippi Moments Decades Series by starting at the beginning and working our way through the collection, year by year. This week we look at Volume 1.
1971 New York Times Editor Turner Catledge began his newspaper career at the Neshoba Democrat in 1921. In this episode, he recalls those early days and how publisher Clayton Rand helped him get started. Newspaper reporters and publishers have often been attacked for writing unflattering stories. Catledge remembers two fearless Mississippi journalists: Clayton Rand and Fred Sullens.
In 1971, the New York Times published a secret document on the US war in Vietnam known at the Pentagon Papers. Mississippi native, Turner Catledge, discusses their decision to run the story.
Even though Turner Catledge left Mississippi as a young man to purse a Journalism career, he was always proud of his home state. He opines on the state’s reluctance to change and expresses hope for the future.
PHOTO: New York Times
1971 One year after the courts forced Mississippi to fully integrate its K -12 public schools, the newly-formed Mississippi Center for Oral History at the University of Southern Mississippi sat down with former governor Ross Barnett to discuss his life and career in politics. Barnett was a good storyteller and had much to share about his childhood and career as a young attorney. During his tenure as governor from 1960-64, Barnett worked hard to bring much needed industry to Mississippi and had several large-scale construction projects of which to boast. But his views and actions as an unrepentant segregationist have rightfully defined his place in history. This episode focuses on his memories and opinions surrounding that time.
Barnett campaigned as a diehard segregationist, promising to maintain the status quo in Mississippi as the winds of change in America began to blow in earnest. That promise would soon be put to the test when a young African American named James Meredith attempted to enroll at the all-white University of Mississippi. After a Supreme Court ruling in his favor, Meredith was finally allowed to enroll at Ole’ Miss in 1962. When President Kennedy sent in troops to enforce the court’s ruling, the standoff turned into a riot. Three years after the riot at Ole’ Miss, it was revealed that Barnett had been in secret negotiations with the Kennedy Administration. He shares his version of those events.
The Mississippi State Sovereignty Commission tried to maintain racial segregation by investigating civil rights workers and through public relations campaigns. Barnett discusses traveling the country presenting his views and the hostile reception he received in Michigan. Segregationists claimed the Civil Rights Movement was really a plot to destroy America. In the interview, Barnett argues why integration would ultimately fail and how the communists were involved.
Caution: this episode of Mississippi Moments contains racially derogatory language.
PHOTO: Wikipedia
In 1971, Charles Evers, brother of slain civil rights leader Medgar Evers, became the first black Mississippian to run for governor in modern times. That same year, he agreed to be interviewed by a new group of scholars at the University of Southern Mississippi called the Mississippi Oral History Program.
At the time of the interview, Evers was forty-nine years old and had lived through a lot. He was frank about his early days in Chicago, describing how he worked in illegal gambling and prostitution before opening a series of successful night clubs. Evers stated he had always intended to return to Mississippi eventually, but his plans were upended when his brother was assassinated in 1963. He returned home the next day and took over Medgar’s duties as field secretary for the NAACP. From there, he became politically active, running for and becoming mayor of Fayette, Mississippi in 1969.
The interview is a snapshot in time, taken exactly halfway through his ninety-eight years. In this episode, Evers recalls how a white lady named Mrs. Paine became like a second mother to him and Medgar. He discusses how his life in Chicago was interrupted by Medgar’s death and how he tried to share his brother’s fate by actively provoking confrontations with law enforcement and the Klan upon his return to Mississippi.
He describes his reasons for going into politics, his vision for a better, more inclusive Mississippi, and why more black citizens needed to run for political office at all levels.
Charles Evers passed away on July 22, 2020. Now in our forty-ninth year, the Center for Oral History and Cultural Heritage is proud to share with you excerpts from the seventh volume in our collection: The Honorable Charles Evers, Mayor of Fayette, Mississippi.
CAUTION: CONTAINS RACIALLY EXPLICIT LANGUAGE.
Malcolm White became interested in the local music scene as a student at Booneville High School. In this episode, he remembers his early career booking bands and managing music venues in Hattiesburg and Jackson. In 1985, White opened Jackson’s largest music venue, Hal and Mal’s. He recalls the wide variety of bands that played there and how casinos affected their business.
After Hurricane Katrina, White became involved in rebuilding the state’s cultural centers. He discusses becoming Executive Director of the Mississippi Arts Commission and the formation of the Culture Club. During his time with the MAC, White has worked to develop the state’s cultural economy. He explains how the Mississippi Blues Trail promotes cultural tourism.
After nearly 15 years of public service to the state of Mississippi, Malcolm White will retire as executive director of the Mississippi Arts Commission on September 30, 2020.
The Civilian Conservation Corps was established in 1933 to create jobs for young single men. In this episode, Charlie Odom of Gulfport recalls learning to operate heavy equipment as part of the CCC.
Odom learned to drive large trucks while working with the Civilian Conservation Corps. He explains how that ability proved useful after being drafted into the Army during WWII.
During the war, Odom was a motor pool sergeant, hauling men and materials to the front lines. He discusses his service in the European and Pacific theaters. After the war ended, Odom spent six months serving in Yokohama, Japan, as part of the occupying force. He remembers befriending several of the Japanese soldiers assigned to his motor pool.
PHOTO: Defense.gov
Robert Darville grew up working in his father’s café during WWII. In this episode, he shares his memories of the food service business in the days before chain restaurants. His father was a welder at the McComb Railroad Maintenance Shop in the evenings and ran his own lunch counter in the mornings. Darville explains what made the hamburgers at the old Taste and Sip Shop so special.
According to Darville, his father’s café had lots of competition. He discusses some of the town’s classic eateries of the 1940s and 50s.
After serving in the Korean War, Darville returned to McComb and opened the Hollis drive-in restaurant with his father and uncle. He remembers fondly how the community supported their business. Darville and his father sold hamburgers and hotdogs to the McComb Railroad workers for decades. He recalls how many of their customers ate the same lunch every day, year after year.
Ruth Colter attended school in Natchez from the first grade through high school during the 1930s. In this episode, she shares her memories of those days and life in Natchez during WWII.
During the war, thousands of young men from across the country came to Mississippi for basic training. Colter recalls how the Military Maids assisted these new recruits. After graduating high school in 1942, Colter went to work for a Natchez trucking company. She explains how she and her friends still managed to shop and socialize despite wartime shortages.
PODCAST BONUS: During her lifetime, Ruth Colter witnessed many changes to her hometown of Natchez. She remembers shopping downtown, buying produce from street vendors, and the low cost of groceries.
PHOTO: Camp Shelby Military Museum
Tom Johnson was a student at Baylor University when he started working for his father as a hotel manager. In this episode, he recalls how that job led him to pursue a career as a corporate trainer for Holiday Inns in Memphis. By the early 1970s, Holiday Inns, Inc. had grown from a few dozen hotels to over 1300 locations worldwide. Johnson remembers the decision to build the company’s new training facility in Olive Branch.
As the travel industry evolved during the 1960s and 70s, the skills needed to run a hotel changed as well. Johnson explains how Holiday Inns expanded the training they offered company employees.
The Kemmons Wilson School of Hospitality and Resort Management at the University of Memphis prepares students for a variety of careers in the hotel industry. Johnson discusses his decision to become the General Manager of the school’s hotel and conference center.
Gene Stork of Big Point, Mississippi, became a commercial fisherman in 1954. In this episode, he recalls working on a “mother boat” for Clark’s Seafood and how they used four skiffs to catch fish. Commercial fisherman like Stork would release redfish over a certain size because those were the egg layers. He explains how the popularity of blackened fish led to a reduction in the redfish population.
Fishing boats sometimes haul in sharks and poisonous species of fish, unintentionally. Stork remembers falling overboard once as he tried to release two sharks from his net. During his time as a commercial fisherman, Gene Stork witnessed many changes. He discusses those changes and compares the nets of today with those of the past.
PHOTO: WLOX.com
The brutal death of Emmett Till in 1955, shocked the nation and ignited the Civil Rights Movement. In this episode, civil rights icon Cleveland Sellers, Jr. recalls how he and other students were inspired to confront systemic racism.
In 1964, after his sophomore year at Howard University, Sellers left school to devote himself fulltime to the cause of racial equality. He became active in SNCC, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. Sellers discusses how they would often protest in front of the White House and the importance of SNCC’s DC office in planning the Mississippi Freedom Summer.
After four years of working in Mississippi and other segregation hotspots, Sellers moved to Orangeburg, South Carolina to attend school at South Carolina State University. Soon after moving there, students began protesting at a local bowling alley about their “whites only” policy. On February 8, 1968, State Troopers opened fire on a group of 200 unarmed protesters on campus. Sellers and thirty others were shot and three died. He explains why he was the only person charged in the incident.
After serving seven months in prison, Sellers found it impossible to find a job due to his record. He remembers how one white woman looked past his FBI file and gave him the opportunity to rebuild his life and his reputation.
Cleveland Sellers, Jr. was pardoned by the State of South Carolina in 1993.
When J.E. Yarbrough of McComb became a train engineer, Illinois Central was still using steam engines. In a career spanning several decades, Yarbrough witnessed many changes as the nation’s transportation demands evolved. In this episode, taken from his 2006 interview, he reflects on those changes. He begins by discussing the switch from steam to diesel in the 1950s.
Before the development of two-way radios, railroads depended on synchronized watches to keep the trains running on time. Yarbrough explains the importance of keeping to a schedule. On average, there are 5,800 collisions between trains and road vehicles per year in the United States. Yarbrough recalls how people would risk their lives to avoid waiting for a train.
After working for decades as a freight train engineer, Yarbrough was promoted to passenger trains, running the famous Panama Limited between McComb and New Orleans. He remembers how a near collision with a log truck convinced him it was time to retire.
PHOTO: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/27/Illinois_Central_Railroad_Panama_Limited_diesel_streamliner.JPG
This Memorial Day, we salute all our service men and women who have paid the ultimate price in the line of duty, with the story of Marine demolition man, Alvy Ray Pittman. A Columbia, Mississippi native, Pittman volunteered to join the U.S. Marine Corp in November of 1942. After bootcamp, he went to demolition school for training in the use of high explosives and landmine removal. In this episode, Pittman explains the hazards of being on a demolition team and why their casualty rates were so high.
During WWII, the campaign to take the Pacific Islands held by Japanese forces, resulted in thousands of casualties. Pittman recalls how so many of his friends died in combat.
On February 19, 1945, U.S. Marine and Navy forces attacked the island of Iwo Jima. During five weeks of constant fighting, the Marines endured heavy artillery barrages from the entrenched and fortified positions of the Imperial Japanese Army. Pittman describes a phenomenon he calls “Combat Wisdom.”—a combination of battle experience and premonition that helped him and his team escape death on multiple occasions.
Given the human cost, some have questioned the strategic value of taking certain Pacific Islands during WWII. Pittman discusses why the battle of Iwo Jima saved more lives than were lost.
While most American cities had electricity by the 1930s, most farms were still without power. In this episode, George Taylor of Hattiesburg discusses designing power grids for rural electric cooperatives.
The South Mississippi Electric Power Association was formed by a group of rural electric co-ops, to provide their customers with affordable electricity. Taylor recalls the challenges they faced. In 1962, he left Southern Engineering and became Chief Engineer for the Singing River Electric Power Association. Taylor recalls being promoted to Manager of SMEPA and building the organization from the ground up.
PODCAST BONUS: According to Taylor, SMEPA provided its members affordable, dependable electricity through the buying power of a large organization. He explains why energy security and operational independence is so important.
In 2016, SMEPA changed its name to Cooperative Energy. They continue to provide electricity to over 417,000 homes and businesses.
PHOTO: Library of Congress
Dr. T.E. Ross came to Hattiesburg in 1892 and set up an office on Main Street. In this 1975 oral history interview, his son, Dr. T.E. Ross, Junior, recalls his father’s decision to move their family from Neshoba county.
Before vaccines and antibiotics, the only way to stop infectious diseases was through quarantine. Dr. Ross recounts how his father was blocked from returning home during a yellow fever outbreak.
Dr. Ross graduated from Tulane Medical School in 1918. He remembers the circumstances that led him to set up his practice in Hattiesburg like his father.
PODCAST EXTRA: W.S.F. Tatum was a successful Hattiesburg timber magnate who served as mayor in the 1920s and 30s. Dr. Ross describes the soft-spoken businessman as a frugal, yet good and generous man, who disliked ostentatious displays of wealth.
Retired Fire Chief Robert Gavagnie joined the Bay St. Louis Fire Department in 1972. In this episode, he looks back with pride on a career spent savings lives and training young people to become firefighters. Before the opening of the Mississippi State Fire Academy, local fire departments had limited training resources. Gavagnie discusses how things have changed over time.
As part of their jobs, many first responders witness horrific scenes of carnage and devastation they can never forget. Gavagnie remembers a tragic fire he responded to and how that memory haunts him even now.
When Robert Gavagnie retired as Bay St. Louis Fire Chief in 2007, he had over 25 years of experience. He explains what makes firefighting such a demanding and yet rewarding career.
CAUTION: Contains graphic descriptions of tragic scenes witnessed by the speaker as a firefighter.
Established in 1889, the Neshoba County Fair is known for the privately-owned cabins located on its fairgrounds. Dorothy Dixon’s great-grandparents built a cabin there during the early years and their family has maintained a house on the main square ever since. In this episode, Dixon discusses how the Neshoba County Fair has evolved during her lifetime. She compares the early cabins to the ones of today.
People come the Neshoba County Fair ready to eat their fill of good, southern cooking. Dixon discusses the tradition of inviting people to eat at their family’s fairground cabin.
Dixon recalls that on certain days, fairgoers would dress up in their most stylish attire and the girls would always have a “Thursday” dress. According to her, the Neshoba County Fair was originally intended as a place where county farmers could meet up with old friends before it was time to go home and pick the cotton. She describes those simpler times and what the fair has evolved into today.
PHOTO: weirdsouth.blogspot.com
James Bass of Laurel was fifteen years old when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor in 1941. In this episode, he recalls convincing his father to sign his enlistment papers when he was only sixteen. After joining the Navy, Bass was assigned to a destroyer minesweeper. He remembers learning to be a gunner as they sailed from Boston to Pearl Harbor.
During the battle for Okinawa, Bass’s ship was struck by a kamikaze plane and heavily damaged. He describes the events leading up to the attack and how their captain managed to keep the ship afloat.
After Bass’s ship was damaged in the battle for Okinawa, the crew was given a 25-day leave. He reflects on how the dropping of the atomic bomb probably saved his life and millions more.
PHOTO: USS Harding DMS-28
In 1961, Ruby Magee was a student at Jackson State College, majoring in History and Political Science. In this episode, she explains how her participation in local Civil Rights demonstrations, almost led to her expulsion.
That summer, Magee returned to her home in Tylertown and attempted to register to vote. At that time, Mississippians were required to pass a literacy test before being allowed to register. Magee remembers how her application was rejected even though she passed the literacy test.
After being denied the right to vote in Walthall County, Magee filed a complaint with the Justice Department. She describes her parents as supportive, even as they feared for her safety.
In 1961, the U.S. Justice Department filed suite against the Walthall County registrar, and others, for denying blacks citizens the right vote. Magee recalls the outcome of that trial.
This episode was written by Ellie Forsyth, a senior at Sacred Heart Catholic School in Hattiesburg.
Mississippi Moments is produced by Ross Walton, with narration by Bill Ellison.
G. R. Harden grew up working on his family’s cotton farm near the Delta town of Cleveland. In this episode, he explains how that experience gave him a leg up when he attended Mississippi State. Taking over the family farm at a young age, Harden felt ill-prepared and unsure of himself. He recalls being taught to think of commercial farming as a game and to always plan ahead.
In the early 1950s, the Hardens transitioned their farm from growing cotton to the production of rice. He discusses why they made the switch and how farming has changed during his fifty years in the business.
After spending decades working on his Cleveland farm, Harden began collecting old tractors. He shares how that hobby led his club to host the Tunica Southern Nationals Antique Tractor Pull.
G. R. Harden passed away on February 20, 2014, at the age of 74.
Elder Elias Harris of Port Gibson grew up a sharecropper’s son on a plantation near Pattison. In this episode, he recalls that even though their family worked hard every day, they never missed church. From a young age, Harris knew he was going to be a preacher. He remembers how he and his sister would have pretend church services as children.
As a spiritual leader, Harris works with other Port Gibson residents to affect change within the community. He discusses how the group Christian Concerned Citizens tackles issues in an inclusive way. Being a longtime resident of Port Gibson, Harris has witnessed many changes over the years. He explains how white and black spiritual leaders formed a race relations senate to bring the community closer together.
PHOTO: Google Maps
Rosie Washington was sixteen years old when Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. came to Grenada in 1966. In this episode, she recalls how meeting the civil rights icon inspired her to explore activism and school integration. Washington and her siblings were among the first students to integrate the public schools in Grenada. She remembers the severe backlash they encountered from the white community.
During the Civil Rights Movement, Washington’s family hosted several visiting activists. She explains how that experience encouraged her to participate in protests across her hometown.
While picketing in downtown Grenada, Washington and the rest of her group were rounded up and incarcerated. She describes the trauma of being forced onto a flatbed truck and driven to Parchman without representation or due process.
This episode was written by Abigail Wiest, a senior at Sacred Heart Catholic School in Hattiesburg.
Mississippi Moments is produced by Ross Walton, with narration by Bill Ellison.
PHOTO: theatlantic.com
Willie Mac Blaine was born in Ethel, Mississippi, in 1936. In this episode, he shares his family’s long history in Attala County and how he came to live in the town of McCool. Established in 1883, McCool, Mississippi was a thriving railroad town. Blaine recalls the town in its heyday and how his grandfather helped build the train depot.
Like many small-town banks, the Bank of McCool was unable to survive the Great Depression of the 1930s. Blaine explains how skittish depositors and a sympathetic banker led to the bank’s demise. According to Blaine, the town of McCool began to decline when it was bypassed by HWY 12. He discusses life there today and why so many other communities get their mail from McCool.
PHOTO: McCool Post Office by J. Gallagher
Dr. Stuart Rockoff grew up in Houston, Texas, as the grandson of Jewish immigrants. In this episode, he recalls how a class in Texas History led to a job with the Institute of Southern Jewish life, here in Jackson.
Rockoff became the Executive Director of the Mississippi Humanities Council in 2013. He explains how the Council’s commitment to inclusive storytelling impacted the Two Museums project. For everyone involved with the development of the Two Mississippi Museums, giving a complete and accurate account of our state’s history was a top priority. Rockoff remembers how each word was scrutinized for truthfulness and tone.
As a member of the Two Museums Review Committee, Rockoff’s goal was to insure that all Mississippians could take pride in the stories being told. He discusses why inclusiveness is so important.
Philip Freelon was born and raised in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. In this episode, he explains how his family background in Education and the Arts inspired him to become an architect. As a young African American architect, Freelon aspired to design libraries and schools. He recalls how a focus on education and community development led him to several museum projects.
Philip Freelon is proud to have been chosen as the chief architect of the Mississippi Civil Rights Museum. He laments that so few women and people of color choose to enter the field of design.
According to Freelon, the decision to have two Mississippi museums was an unusual choice. He discusses the positive aspects of having two connected and centrally located facilities.
In 2016, Philip G. Freelon was diagnosed with Lou Gehrig’s disease. He passed away on July 9, 2019.
Kosciusko native W.C. “Billy” Leonard got married and joined the Army in 1940. In this episode, he recalls how his life changed after hearing news of the Japanese attack on a place called Pearl Harbor.
While serving as an artillery officer, Leonard met several people from his hometown. He remembers being pleasantly surprised by one such Kosciusko connection.
Leonard’s artillery platoon was transferred to a base in Burbank, California to await deployment. He recounts how he and his wife were able to tour Hollywood before he was shipped out.
After months of fighting in the Philippine Islands, Leonard was given a 30-day leave before the planned invasion of the Japanese mainland. He explains how dropping the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki changed those plans.
After the war, Billy Leonard came home and eventually took over Leonard’s Department Store from his father. He ran the business until his retirement in 1985. Leonard passed away in fall of 2005.
Jerry Mitchell was working as a reporter for the Clarion Ledger when he attended a press premier for Mississippi Burning. In this episode, he explains how that event piqued his interest in civil rights-related cold cases.
After the Mississippi State Sovereignty Commission was dissolved in 1977, its records were ordered sealed for 50 years. Mitchell recalls how he was able to get a look at those files in 1989. The ACLU filed a lawsuit to gain access to the sealed records of the State Sovereignty Commission, and the judge ruled in their favor. Mitchell recounts how having access to those files helped investigators solve several civil rights cold cases.
In his work as an investigative reporter, Jerry Mitchell gained extensive knowledge about the Civil Rights Movement. He describes his feelings about the Two Mississippi Museums and their impact.
Jerry Mitchell was awarded a Genius Grant by the MacArthur Foundation in 2009.
PHOTO: macfound.org
On January 6th, 2020, a statue of slain civil rights leader Vernon Dahmer was unveiled at Hattiesburg City Hall.
In this episode, taken from her 1974 COHCH interview, Ellie J. Dahmer remembers her husband as a Christian man who helped everyone regardless of race. As a prominent figure in the Civil Rights Movement, Vernon Dahmer received death threats, daily. Ellie Dahmer recalls the extreme measures she and her husband took to protect their family.
On the night of January 10, 1966, Vernon Dahmer attended church and then returned home to prepare for another week of hard work. Ellie Dahmer describes waking up to gunfire and trying to rescue her children as bullets riddled their burning home.
Vernon Dahmer died January 10, 1966 from injuries sustained when his home was firebombed by the KKK. Ellie Dahmer discusses her husband’s legacy and why she thinks he would do it all again.
(note: in the podcast and broadcast, the statue dedication date was incorrectly given as January 4th, not January 6th)
For Gulf Coast residents, January means Mardi Gras season and in the South, no Super Bowl party is complete without a King Cake. Beyond the traditional Carnival celebrations in Mobile, Biloxi, and New Orleans, many other southern cities have established their own annual parades and festivities in recent years.
Ocean Springs native, Christa Hode grew up attending the Biloxi Mardi Gras parades with her family. In this episode, she remembers the day her father asked if she would like to be the Queen of Carnival for 1971. As Queen Ixolib for the Biloxi Mardi Gras, Hode wore an elaborate gown and long flowing train. She describes having the gown made in New Orleans and the heavy fabrics they used back then.
Hode has many fond memories of being the Biloxi Queen. She remembers how cold it was during the night parade and how much fun she had waving to the crowds. Having spent her life participating in Mardi Gras festivities, Hode has witnessed the comradery and sense of community it provides Gulf Coast residents. She also appreciates the economic benefits and tourism Carnival brings to the area.
During WWII, a key component of the Allied strategy to defeat the Axis powers in Europe was a sustained aerial bombing campaign against key German military and civilian targets. Despite the vaunted reputation the B-17 bomber achieved, they were outnumbered by the lesser known B-24 Liberator.
Greenville native, Colonial C.R. Cadenhead trained to be an B-24 bomber pilot. In this episode, he shared some memories of his time flying missions over Germany. Cadenhead explains how he and his crew dined on fancy French cuisine while on their way to Europe and how they helped a shell-shocked bombardier complete his tour of duty. He also describes how, on one mission, his crew made it back to base after losing two of their four engines with some help from the Tuskegee Airmen.
PODCAST EXTRA: After completing his tour of duty in Europe, Cadenhead expected to be sent home. Instead he was shipped to California to prepared for the invasion of Japan. He remembers how the sudden end of the war in 1945 allowed him to return to college that fall and play football for Mississippi State.
This episode of Mississippi Moments was researched by Hayley Hasik and produced by Ross Walton, with narration by Bill Ellison.
PHOTO: US Air Force
Betty McGehee grew up on Scotland Plantation in Vidalia, Louisiana, in the 1930s and 40s. Later, she married a Natchez native and crossed the river for good. In this episode, McGehee shares some memories from her childhood. She recounts raising chickens and selling the eggs to earn extra spending money. She also discusses how they would collect rainwater to drink in an above-ground storage tank and why her father later dug a well on their farm.
The Natchez-Vidalia bridge across the Mississippi river was completed in October of 1940. McGehee recalls crossing the river by ferry and how the bridge made traveling so much easier. When the bridge was first completed, drivers on the Mississippi side had to pay a 50-cent toll. McGehee explains how her Natchez boyfriend would wait for her on his side of the bridge to save money.
Jackie Hancock Schulze grew up in Natchez during the 1930s and 40s, in the house built by her great-grandfather, Natchez Mayor William G. Benbrook. In this episode, taken from her 2004 interview, she shares some precious childhood memories of family and friends and her hometown.
Schulze recounts going to the movies downtown, learning to swim in the Elks Club swimming pool and having “Coca-Cola parties” with her friends. She describes these gatherings as the product of a simpler, more innocent age.
When Schulze was a child, her grandmother would take her to New Orleans each summer to shop. She remembers staying on Canal Street and the amazing things to see and do in the Big Easy.
Years after Schulze left Natchez, she moved back to the family homestead, which by then was unoccupied. After celebrating so many holidays in the dining room, surrounded by her loving family, she found it hard to eat there alone.
Jackie Schulze passed away on September 13, 2005.
Billie Rossie Tonos’s family immigrated from Lebanon and opened a store in Clarksdale. In this episode, she recounts how her parents then moved to Shaw and opened their own business with help from the Lebanese community.
During the Great Depression, many small business owners struggled to keep their doors opened. Tonos recalls her parent’s resourcefulness during that difficult time.
As the daughter of Lebanese immigrants, Tonos’s mother was proud to be an American citizen. She describes her mother’s fierce patriotism when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor.
Being part of the Delta Lebanese community gave Billie Tonos a sense of belonging and fellowship. She remembers how there was always room at the table for family and friends, especially during the holidays.
This episode of Mississippi Moments was researched by Hayley Hasik and produced by Ross Walton, with narration by Bill Ellison.
PHOTO: Schlatter.org
Charlsie Mae Graham Hammond grew up in Ethel, Mississippi, just outside of Kosciusko in the 1930s and 40s. In this episode, taken from her 2001 interview, she shares some cherished childhood memories. She discusses her father’s job at the sawmill there and how he would take her and her brothers on business trips occasionally to provide them a real-world education.
Growing up in a large family, Hammond spent much of her free time outdoors. She recounts watching Westerns with her parents and playing “cowboys” with her siblings and friends. As a child, Hammond also enjoyed a close relationship with her maternal grandparents. She recalls her grandfather as a good-natured shopkeeper and her grandmother as an entrepreneur.
Hammond has many fond memories of life in Ethel. She describes how she and her best friend would ride the train to Kosciusko, listen to favorite programs on the radio, or travel to the Delta with her family to visit her paternal grandparents.
Charlsie Mae Hammond enjoyed a long career as a public school teacher. She taught in the Port Gibson Public Schools, the Ethel Public Schools, and the Kosciusko Public Schools. She was a member of Kosciusko First Baptist Church, serving in various departments of the church. She was also active as a volunteer in organizations of her town and community. She passed away on June 3, 2017.
Dr. Kent Wyatt became the President of Delta State University in 1975. In this episode, Wyatt shares some of the accomplishments and challenges of his tenure. He also explains the importance of having an emphasis on academic excellence and an “open door” policy for faculty and students.
When Wyatt took over as President of Delta State in 1975, inflation made it difficult to control operating costs. He recalls how that early experience foreshadowed future shortfalls brought on by statewide budget cuts. Throughout Wyatt’s tenure as the President of Delta State, he insisted on developing programs that met the academic needs of the Mississippi Delta. He discusses some of those programs.
The Bologna Performing Arts Center at Delta State University was built in 1994 through state funding from the Mississippi legislature. Dr. Kent Wyatt explains the importance of having such a Center in the Delta.
This episode of Mississippi Moments was researched by Hayley Hasik and produced by Ross Walton, with narration by Bill Ellison.
PHOTO: http://inauguration.deltastate.edu/past-presidents/
As a young man, Fred Clark of Jackson traveled to Midway, Georgia, to attend a series of meetings with Dr. Martin Luther King. In this episode, he recalls fearing for his safety as the group planned protests across the Jim Crow South.
The Freedom Riders were protesters who rode interstate buses to challenge southern segregation laws. Clark describes being arrested in Jackson in June of 1961 for trying to buy a ticket from the whites-only window. So many Freedom Riders were arrested in Jackson, many were taken to Parchman to handle the overflow. Clark remembers how their nonstop singing led to severe reprisals by prison officials.
PODCAST BONUS: In order to break the spirit of the protesters, prison guards resorted to putting them in windowless iron holding cells known as hotboxes. Unable to breath in the sweltering heat, Clark describes feelings of panic and being ridiculed by the guards.
PHOTO: MS Dept. of Archives and History
Fred Clark, Sr. grew up in Jackson, Mississippi, during the 1950s and 60s. In this episode, the first of two parts, he recalls the death of Emmett Till and how fear dominated the black community at that time. As events unfolded around him, Clark was determined to overcome his fear and work to make things better.
During the Civil Rights Movement, local organizers would hold events called Mass Meetings. Clark explains how these gatherings satisfied a variety of needs within the community. After the meetings, he would often catch a ride with civil rights leader Medgar Evers. He describes the sense of dread he felt riding with Evers, even as he marveled at the man’s bravery.
The culture of fear used to maintain social order in the Jim Crow South was deeply ingrained in everyone. Clark explains how being part of a greater movement inspired everyone to do their part.
In the late 1920s, Donald Hemphill’s father took a job with the Homochitto Lumber Company and the family moved to Bude, Mississippi. In this episode, he shares his memories of growing up in the thriving sawmill town. At that time, many sawmills provide free company housing for their employees. Hemphill recalls the move to Bude and the primitive conditions in which they lived.
For Hemphill, growing up in Bude was a pleasant and carefree life. He recounts walking home from school to eat lunch and working at the local service station. He also discusses Bude’s prosperous times, and the important role passenger trains played in the people’s lives.
While the Homochitto Lumber Company was in business, life in Bude revolved around the mill’s work whistle. Hemphill describes the sawmill’s last day and how they tied the whistle down after the last board was cut.
PHOTO: MS Dept. of Archives and History
Jewish immigrant, Jacob Kern, migrated from Germany to America in the late 1800s. His daughter, Lourachael Kern Ginsberg recounts how her father paid for twelve of his family members to join them in Bastrop, Louisiana, in 1938. Growing up Jewish in Bastrop, Ginsberg remembers their family was accepted as part of the community. She remembers raising chickens and ducks for food and driving to Monroe to go to Temple.
Ginsberg was attending Tulane University, when she met her future husband Herbie Ginsberg. She recalls knowing immediately that he was ‘the one’, and her mother’s reaction to the news. After the couple married, they moved to his home in Hattiesburg. She describes stopping off at the bootleggers to pick up a bottle for his law partner and future Governor, Paul B. Johnson, Jr.
Funding for two Mississippi museums was approved by the state legislature in 2011. In this episode, Lucy Allen recalls the planning process for the Civil Rights Museum and the message contained in its design. When Mississippi announced plans to build a civil rights museum, some doubted it would tell the whole story. Allen explains how the state’s willingness to ‘go there,’ resulted in a powerful learning experience.
With a mandate that the two museums be opened by the State’s Centennial celebration in 2017, Allen’s team was hard pressed to deliver on time. She recounts the process of selecting the design firms and the endless meetings they sat through.
As the opening day approached for the Two Mississippi Museums, there were countless small details to be addressed. Allen remembers the pre-opening tours and feeling proud of a job well done.
Lucy Allen moved from North Carolina to Mississippi and spent the next seven years teaching school. In this episode, she explains how her interest in photography led to a career with the Mississippi Department of Archives and History.
In 1961, the first State Historical Museum for Mississippi opened in the Old Capitol building. Allen discusses conditions that highlighted the need for a new museum and archives and how MDAH began planning for a new state museum in 1998. She recalls how Hurricane Katrina devastated the old museum in 2005 and altered all their plans.
PODCAST EXTRA: As MDAH developed plans for a new state history museum, the State Legislature’s Black Caucus continued their years-long push for a separate civil rights museum to be located on the campus of Tougaloo College. Allen recounts how Governor Haley Barbour, former Governor William Winter, and Judge Reuben Anderson worked with others to combine the two museums together into one state-funded project.
Don’t miss next week’s episode as Allen discusses the challenges they faced in making the Two Mississippi Museums a reality!
PHOTO: Two Mississippi Museums architectural drawing
Jimmie Person grew up in Port Gibson, Mississippi during the 1930s. In this episode, he recalls summers on his father’s plantation and the warm, nurturing environment small-town life provided the children. Back when Person was a child, the closest hospital to Port Gibson was in Vicksburg. He remembers how doctors would make houses calls, and the childhood diseases of that time.
When Person reached high school, he attended Chamberlain-Hunt Military Academy in Port Gibson. He reflects on life at the all-male school and how they hosted off-campus dances in an old ballroom.
PODCAST BONUS: Person was in his freshman year at Mississippi State when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. He shares those vivid memories and discusses how he ended up as a Military Policeman at a base in England.
PHOTO: MS Dept. of Archives and History
As Hurricane Katrina churned across the Gulf in August of 2005, Ruth Christian left her Pascagoula home to wait out the storm with her son’s mother-in-law, a few miles inland. In this episode, taken from an interview conducted in 2007, she shares her memories of the days following the storm as people struggled to feed themselves. She recalls trying to feed 16 people with anything they could find.
A couple of days after the hurricane, Christian found out her home had been destroyed. She remembers coming to terms with the loss of everything she owned at the age of 77.
According to Christian, everyone was in a state of shock. She describes the despair she felt combing through the wreckage, and the joy of finding family keepsakes.
PODCAST BONUS: Because Hurricane Georges damaged her home in 1998, Christian decided not to rebuild a second time after Hurricane Katrina. She discusses her decision to move into an apartment, but remain on the Gulf Coast.
For many young people, participation in the Civil Rights Movement began with a membership in the NAACP. In this episode, Franzetta Sanders of Moss Point recalls joining the group and the work they did to promote Equality for all. During the 1960s, members of the NAACP would test local businesses for compliance with new Civil Rights laws. Franzetta Sanders describes their work in Moss Point and how the community reacted.
In the Jim Crow South, there were separate public restrooms marked for “Whites Only” and “Blacks Only.” Sanders recounts how a stopover at the Hattiesburg bus station resulted in their bus being surrounded by police.
Most Mississippi public schools did not begin to fully integrate until 1970. As the mother of six children, Sanders worked to make sure they had the best educational opportunities possible. She remembers those difficult early days and how things eventually got better.
During the Civil Rights Movement, Sanders worked diligently to break down racial barriers. She expresses frustration at the apathy of young people who are reluctant to join the NAACP.
This episode of Mississippi Moments was researched by Lucas Somers, and produced by Ross Walton, with narration by Bill Ellison.
PHOTO: USM Digital Collections – Herbert Randall
Fifty years ago this week, Hurricane Camille left a wide path of destruction across the Mississippi Gulf Coast. Dr. Henry Maggio was working at a Bay Saint Louis hospital on August 17, 1969 when Camille slammed into the Gulf Coast. In this episode, he remembers feelings of dread as the storm came ashore.
As Hurricane Camille made landfall, it brought devastating winds and flooding to coastal communities. Maggio describes being stranded in the hospital during the storm. He discusses trying to reach the injured afterwards and his decision to evacuate the hospital.
After the storm was over, the long recovery and rebuilding process began. Maggio shares his memories from that time, like being reunited with his family, the loss of their new home, and all the people who brought needed supplies to aid in the recovery effort.
PHOTO: Fred Hutchings – Pass Christian, MS after Hurricane Camille
During WWII, young men from cities and towns across the nation, answered the call to serve. So too, did young men from isolated areas of the country—boys who had never been away from the farms where they were raised—but were still compelled to go to the battlefields of countries they had only read about in textbooks. For many, that rural lifestyle held advantages in wartime. For example, those who grew up hunting with their fathers found the experience of targeting game with hunting rifles and shotguns useful in the army.
In this episode, Thurman Clark of Laurel remembers training for combat and winning a prize for his marksmanship.
American soldiers deployed to the battlefields of Europe, crossed the Atlantic Ocean by the thousands on troops ships. Clark recalls the misery of being seasick for his entire seventeen-day voyage. As a member of the 66th Infantry Division, Clark was assigned to harass German installations in the occupied city of Lorient, France. He describes dodging artillery fire and the stress of keeping watch for enemy attacks at night.
For many Mississippi farm boys, WWII was their first time traveling far from home. Clark reflects on the culture shock of his time in France and the myriad of memories he brought back.
PHOTO: wikimedia commons
Bill Booth’s grandfather, Tom Booth, came to Tupelo, Mississippi, in 1912. There, he opened a hardware store on Main Street. “Pappy” Booth soon sold the business to his son, George H. Booth who changed the name to Tupelo Hardware. Owned and operated by the Booth family since 1926, it remains for many, the go-to place for hard-to-find tools. Famously, Gladys Presley bought her son Elvis, his first guitar there.
In this interview, conducted in 1991, Bill Booth shares with us some memories of his grandfather and of life growing up in Tupelo. During the early days of automobile travel, most Mississippi roads were primitive, unpaved wagon trails. Booth recalls how his grandfather once stopped to help a friend who was stuck in a stream.
As a lifelong citizen of Tupelo, Booth witnessed a lot of important changes over the years. He discusses the city’s first traffic light and one cantankerous driver’s reaction to it. For many Mississippians, their first time behind the wheel of a car was on a secluded country road. Booth recounts learning to drive his grandfather’s 1925 Buick on a trip to Shreveport.
PODCAST BONUS: President Franklin D. Roosevelt came to Tupelo in 1934 to deliver a speech on the Tennessee Valley Authority. Booth remembers how his boy scout troop lined the path to the President’s car, and being patted on the head by FDR, afterwards.
PHOTO: MDAH - FDR in Tupelo 1934.
Edmond Boudreaux’s family came to Biloxi in 1914 to work in the seafood factories. In this episode, he shares his family’s long history in the seafood industry and how his father would work in the factory as child before and after attending school each day.
Growing up on “The Point” in East Biloxi, Boudreaux never thought of his family as poor. He recalls how he and his brothers would play and fish in the nearby marshes and bayous. According to Boudreaux, all people living on the Mississippi Sound develop a connection to the water. He explains how those ties remain constant, even as changes in technology have resulted in fewer people actually working in the seafood industry.
Over the years, the Gulf Coast fishery has weathered challenges from hurricanes, floods, and pollution. Boudreaux discusses those challenges and how recent events have affected the livelihoods of Mississippi fishermen.
In 1973, Gayle Greene-Aguirre, a professor at Mississippi Gulf Coast Community College, was studying History at the University of Connecticut. In this episode, she recalls her decision to enlist in the Women’s Army Corps, College Junior Program. Green-Aguirre chose a career in the US Army based more on economic incentives than a sense of duty. She explains how that experience, and exposure to top secret information, made her a pragmatic patriot.
Green-Aguirre joined the US Army as the war in Vietnam was beginning to wind down. As a historian and officer, she gives her perspective on why that war was unwinnable.
When soldiers returned home from Vietnam, they faced a hostile American public, who viewed them as complicit in the atrocities committed against the Vietnamese people. Green-Aguirre discusses the burden shared by those returning veterans and how their legacy has evolved over time.
Kiln, Mississippi native Christine Harvey has spent much of her life defying expectations. In this episode, she discusses how stereotypes about her race, gender, and home state, have little to do with reality. In 1971, Harvey was one of two black players on the Hancock North Central Girls basketball team. She recalls being attacked by the opposing team and how her fellow students responded.
While attending college during late 70s, Harvey was offered a summer job at the Stennis Space Center. She explains how choosing a position that defied expectations, led to a career in photography. In 1997, after nearly two decades of helping preserve the history of the Stennis Space Center as a photographer, Harvey sat down with us to share her thoughts on identity and the importance of diversity.
Dr. Dollye Robinson grew up in a musical family, two blocks from what is now Jackson State University. In this episode, she recalls how being surrounded by music inspired her to become a band director. While attending Lanier High School, Robinson would often rehearse with the Jackson College band. She remembers how that experience landed her a music scholarship after graduation.
As a music major at Jackson College in the 1940s, Robinson joined the Duke Otis Orchestra. She describes the challenges of being a female, first-trumpet player in an all-male dance band.
After Robinson graduated from Jackson College, she became an assistant band director at a high school in Brookhaven. She explains how being teased by alumni from other colleges, over the meager size of the Jackson College band, led her to return to her alma mater to help recruit new members.
In 1952, Robinson became the Assistant Band Director and Instructor of Music at JSU. She left long enough to earn two master’s degrees and a Ph.D. from Northwestern University and has served JSU as the head of the Department of Music, Chair of the Division of Fine Arts, Associate Dean of the School of Liberal Arts and Dean of the College of Liberal Arts.
Mississippi Moments is written and produced by Ross Walton, with narration by Bill Ellison.
PHOTO: jacksonstate.wordpress.com
Senator Thad Cochran was born in Pontotoc, Mississippi, on December 7th, 1937. In this episode, he discusses his family’s long history in Mississippi and his parents’ careers in Education. As the son of public school teachers, Cochran was expected to excel in academics, sports and music. He explains how their emphasis on education and hard work made theirs an achievement-oriented family.
Even though Cochran’s parents worked hard to provide for their family, money was always scarce. He remembers how they scrimped and took on extra jobs to make sure he and his brother could attend college.
Cochran got his first experience in politics when his parents campaigned for various candidates and got him involved, as well. He also recalls his poker-playing grandmother’s run for county supervisor.
Mississippi Moments is written and produced by Ross Walton, with narration by Bill Ellison.
There was a variety of landing craft utilized in the invasion of Normandy on June 6, 1944. Cmdr. Rip Bounds of Hattiesburg piloted a Utility Landing Ship designed to carry the heavy equipment Allied forces would need to wage war on the Axis occupiers in France. He bravely guided his craft into enemy fire loaded with tons of highly explosive ammunition, landed on the beach, waited to be unloaded, and headed back for another load. He also carried troops to the beach and wounded soldiers back to a waiting hospital ship, often the same men. In this episode, he gets emotional as he talks about the "Red Cross ladies" who rode with him, providing comfort for the wounded on the bloodstained decks of his vessel.
Please note that this episode, produced in 2012, contains contact information that may not be accurate today. For more information, visit COHCH.org.
Mississippi Moments is produced by Ross Walton and narrated by Bill Ellison.
Founded in 1816, a full year before Mississippi achieved statehood, Natchez Children’s Services has always worked to provide our most vulnerable children, respite from abuse, hunger, and neglect. Nancy Hungerford began her tenure as director of the state’s oldest nonprofit in 1983. In this episode, taken from a 1999 oral history interview, she recounts some of the organization’s 200-year history. Originally set up as an asylum for Mississippi’s orphans, Hungerford describes how the organization’s name and mission have evolved over time to keep up with societal changes.
Although times have changed, the needs and concerns of children have remained constant: love, support, and consistent care. In Mississippi alone, there are thousands of children in foster care due to abuse and neglect. Hungerford recalls how the Natchez Children’s Home (now Natchez Children’s Services) provided stability for kids in need.
In 1999 Natchez Children’s Services still housed 16 children in their residential facility. Hungerford recalls how visitation day was often a day of hope and heartache.
To learn more about the vital work of nonprofits like NCS, visit http://ntzchs.org .
Jim Swager of Brookhaven joined the US Army shortly after his 18th birthday, three months before D-day. In this episode, he shares his memories of the journey from Mississippi to the battlefields of France as part of the 103rd Infantry, Cactus Division. Although he weighed a mere 130 lbs. his captain made him a machine gunner and assigned him a BAR. The Browning Automatic Rifle was a 30-caliber light machine gun used extensively by Allied forces during WWII. Swager recalls the challenge of lugging the twenty-pound weapon across Europe.
During the war, Swager always enjoyed meeting other Mississippians and remembers how he and his buddy from Iuka survived a German artillery barrage together. In the chaos of war, soldiers are sometimes mistaken for the enemy by friendly forces and pay the ultimate price. Swager gets emotional when he discusses how another friend was killed doing night reconnaissance.
The Nazi government sent millions of Jews and other so-called undesirables to concentration camps for forced labor and eventual extermination. Swager describes the barbaric conditions of one such camp they helped liberate near the end of the war.
WARNING: This episode contains graphic descriptions of violence and atrocities.
Mississippi Moments is written and produced by Ross Walton, with narration by Bill Ellison.
PHOTO: browning.com
During WWII, American long range bombers decimated German industrial sites in order to shorten the war. In this episode, Phil McGuire of Macon recalls his decision to become a ball turret gunner on a B-17 flying fortress.
The B-17 heavy bomber, bristling with machine guns, is one of the most iconic planes of the war. They could survive heavy damage and still make it home again. Even so, being part of a B-17 crew was a high risk job with the most dangerous position being ball turret gunner. The tiny motorized Plexiglas and aluminum pods, tucked underneath the fuselage, held twin 50 caliber Browning machine guns. Unlike the rest of the crew, the ball turret gunner had no room to wear a flak jacket or parachute and had to lie on his back in a fetal position with his feet held in foot rests level with his head. McGuire discusses how he would tie his parachute in the plane’s waist close to his station in hopes of reaching it in time.
German forces relied on FLAK guns to protect them from Allied aircraft in WWII. McGuire describes his first bombing mission and the harmless-looking puffs of smoke the guns put before them. In the early days of the war, American bombers had to fly daylight missions deep into enemy territory without fighter escorts. McGuire recounts how one of his crewmembers mistook hostel gunfire as a friendly signal.
Podcast Bonus: Bomber crews were required to complete 25 combat missions before returning home. It was estimated the average crewman had only a one in four chance of actually completing his tour of duty. McGuire discusses fulfilling his obligation and spending the rest of the war as an aerial combat instructor.
PHOTO: ww2incolor.com
Macon, Mississippi, county seat of Noxubee County, has a long and storied past. It served as the state capital during the second half of the Civil War and was the place where the Treaty of Dancing River was signed. When longtime resident, Joseph Maury, Jr. and his wife, Selma, sat down to share their memories in September of 1999, it was obvious they both had a great love for the town and the life they had shared together.
Joe Maury’s father became the Night Marshall in Macon during the 1910s when the city had a thriving saloon district. He describes how his father dealt with the rowdy, “over-the-river” crowd when they had too much to drink.
During the Great Depression of the 1930s, a scarcity of jobs forced people to find creative ways to earn a living. Maury remembers how the citizens of Macon got through those tough economic times and why the 8th of the month was so important to the town’s merchants.
While attending high school in Macon, Maury worked part time at a local grocery store. He recalls how a discarded cigarette and a basket full of fireworks caused a panic one Christmas Eve. In the late 1930s, he and two other young men were hired to help install river gauges in the Noxubee river. He explains how their enthusiastic use of dynamite to blow a cofferdam resulted in a hail of debris at the nearby Chevrolet dealership.
PHOTO: recent shot by Morgan Adams of the building where W.P. Chancellor's store was located.
Elmer McCoy represented Prentiss County in the Mississippi House of Representatives from 1936 until 1952 and was chairman of the Education Committee for nine years. He authored important legislation including the free textbook law, homestead exemption, and state supported public schools. And he played a crucial role in the creation of Northeast Mississippi Community College.
McCoy was born in 1902 in the New Site community of Prentiss County. In this episode, he explains how a love of public speaking and debate, led him to consider a run for the state legislature. When McCoy began teaching in 1923, Mississippi did not have state-funded public schools. He recalls running for the legislature in 1935 on a platform of state-funded schools and free textbooks. As a teacher serving in the State House of Representatives in 1940, McCoy wrote the bill to provide Mississippi children with free textbooks. He remembers the hard work of everyone involved. He also discusses some of the memorable characters he met during his time in office.
Elmer McCoy passed away on November 17, 1995.
PHOTO: Clarion Ledger
In 1933, W.C. Nelms graduated from Mississippi State with a degree in Civil Engineering. In this episode, he discusses working for the Civilian Conservation Corp and their efforts to control the erosion that devastated so many Mississippi farms.
By 1934, it was estimated that 100 million acres of US farmland had lost its topsoil due to erosion. Nelms recalls how the CCC worked with Mississippi farmers to develop soil conservation techniques. One early solution, imported from Japan, would soon gain infamy. In the 30s and 40s, Kudzu vines were planted throughout the South as a way of controlling soil erosion. He explains the logic behind introducing the invasive plant to our ecosystem.
The U.S. Congress passed the Soil Conservation Act in 1935 and the Soil Conservation Service was formed. Nelms describes how the work of the SCS evolved into the development of state soil conservation districts.
To learn more about soil and water conservation in Mississippi, go to http://www.mswcc.ms.gov
PHOTO: Alamy Live News
Throughout WWII, U.S. armed forces remained segregated along racial lines. Even though over 900,000 African-Americans served in the armed forces during the war—proving their worth time and again—they were still viewed with suspicion by many of their white commanding officers and others.
LaMont Martin of Gulfport was drafted into the Army after graduating high school in 1942. In this episode, he shares some of his memories from that time, like how he and his buddy got left behind when the bus carrying them to Fort Benning, Georgia stopped for a meal in Alabama. After basic training, Martin was stationed in Massachusetts before being deployed to the European Theater. He remembers the day that he and a fellow soldier accidently wandered into a “white” USO club while visiting Boston.
Waiting to cross the English Channel into France, black soldiers were restricted from fraternizing with English women. LaMont Martin discusses the prevailing attitudes of that time and remembers how the reported rape of a German woman almost led to a race riot and the court-martial of their entire company.
This episode of Mississippi Moments was researched by Sean Buckelew, and produced by Ross Walton, with narration by Bill Ellison.
PHOTO: http://cdn.theatlantic.com/static/infocus/ww2_16/w12_01010428.jpg
Gulfport native Aurabelle Caggins lost her parents at a young age and went to live with her uncle’s family. In this episode, she shares her memories of growing up in a household where everyone was required to earn their keep. For Caggins that meant getting up each morning at 5 AM, to wash clothes in a cast iron pot, before walking to school.
When Caggins began attending school in 1925, students were required to purchase their textbooks. Often having no money for books or supplies, she remembers having to do homework, late at night, using books borrowed from her classmates.
Caggins began working odd jobs in high school to earn money for things like material for Home Economics class. Her grades earned her a $50 scholarship and she arrived at Alcorn State with enough money for her tuition and entrance fees, plus fifty cents. She describes her fear at being called to the matron’s office and the opportunity that meeting provided.
Aurabelle Caggins taught Home Economics in Gulfport for 38 years. She discusses the important life-skills her students received, and laments that Home Economics classes are no longer offered at many schools.
This episode of Mississippi Moments was researched by Sean Buckelew and produced by Ross Walton, with narration by Bill Ellison.
PHOTO: https://kristen-noble-keegan.com
Bay St. Louis native, Henry Capdepon, was 18 years old when the United States entered WWI in April of 1917. In this episode, Capdepon shares his memories of the two years and two months he spent serving in the trenches and on the battlefields of Europe. He describes his decision to enlist with the Marines as a “thirst for adventure.”
When Capdepon joined the Marines, the journey to the front lines of France was long and difficult. He recalls being packed into troop ships and the boxcars that could hold forty men or eight horses. Despite international bans on the use of chemical weapons, poison gases were widely used in WWI. He remembers seeing his first mustard gas victim and the dangers of chemical warfare.
After a two year tour of duty, Capdepon returned to Bay St. Louis, but had difficulty adjusting to civilian life. He discusses seeking medical help for symptoms that might be diagnosed as PTSD, today. He also looks back with pride at his decision to join the American Legion and the Society of Forty Men and Eight Horses: a charitable and patriotic organization whose purpose is “To uphold and defend the United States Constitution of the United States, to promote the well-being of veterans, their widows, widowers, and orphans, and to actively participate in selected charitable endeavors, which include among others, programs that promote child welfare and nurses training.” [Source: http://www.fortyandeight.org ]
PHOTO: By Feddacheenee - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=15696349
Billy Ferrell became Sheriff of Adams County in January of 1960. In this episode, he describes the rising tensions brought on by the Civil Rights Movement during the second half of his first term in office. During the 1960s, the Ku Klux Klan tried to intimidate anyone they perceived as supporting civil rights. Ferrell remembers countering threats against his family with some intimidation of his own.
While campaigning for a second term as sheriff, Ferrell was asked to give a political speech to a group of local Klansmen. He explains his reasons for agreeing to meet with the group and discusses how completely they had been infiltrated by the FBI.
On September 25, 1964, Klansmen bombed and damaged the home of Natchez Mayor John Nosser. Ferrell recalls going to check on the mayor afterwards and being questioned by the FBI.
THIS EPISODE CONTAINS MILD PROFANITY.
After graduating from medical school in 1947, Dr. Tom Mayer took a temporary job with the Mississippi State Department of Health while waiting to begin his internship. In this episode, he remembers trying to vaccinate school children in Walthall County. Later, he returned to McComb to set up a medical practice at the urging of a friend.
In the mid-1950s, Mayer was hired by the Illinois Central Railroad to be the company doctor. He discusses the advantages and disadvantages of being a railroad physician. At that time, penicillin had only recently been discovered. He recalls the limited number of available drugs and one old doctor’s story of a fifty-cent price limit.
Working around trains has always been a dangerous job and as a railroad doctor, Mayer has seen it all. He recounts some of his more memorable cases and reflects on the many friendships he collected during his career.
(contains a bit of graphic description of a patient's injuries)
Lusia Harris-Stewart grew up in Minter City, Mississippi, the tenth of eleven children. In this episode, taken from her 1999 oral history interview, she recalls how her love of basketball grew from a way to escape chores, to a way to attend college. Her standout abilities as a player on the Amanda Elzy High School girls’ basketball team caught the attention of Delta State recruiter, Melvin Hemphill, and she was invited to join the women’s team, in 1973.
For Harris-Stewart, adjusting to life at Delta State included overcoming her shyness. She remembers the support of her fellow students as the women’s basketball team rose to prominence, becoming national champions in 1975, ’76, and ’77.
In 1976, Harris-Stewart won a silver medal in the first-ever Olympic women’s basketball tournament. She discusses the historical significance of scoring the first points in Olympic history.
After graduating college in 1977, Harris-Stewart coached basketball at the college level and played professional ball before returning to her high school alma mater as a coach and teacher. She recounts her career and the honor of being inducted into the Women's Basketball Hall of Fame.
This episode of Mississippi Moments was researched by Sean Buckelew and produced by Ross Walton, with narration by Bill Ellison.
PHOTO: NBA.com
In 1959 Dr. Gilbert Mason was the only black physician on the staff of the new Biloxi Hospital. At that time, the 26 mile man-made Biloxi beach, paid for with Federal funding, was designated for whites only, in violation of the original agreement. In this episode, Mason explains his decision to try and integrate the beach.
After he was arrested, Mason and group of black citizens petitioned the Harrison County Board of Supervisors to make the beach available to all citizens. The board refused and the group made a second attempt in April of 1960. Mason describes being attacked by an angry mob while police watched the violence unfold.
In response, NAACP President Medgar Evers gathered citizen complaints to present to the U.S. Justice Department, who then filed suit against the board. Three years later, seventy protesters returned to the beach carrying black flags in honor of Evers who had been assassinated the week before.
The original group arrested for trespassing on the beach in 1960 was awaiting their verdict in county court the day John F. Kennedy was assassinated. Mason recalls how they honored the slain President. The case eventually made it all the way to the US Supreme Court and in 1968, Harrison County was forced to desegregate Biloxi Beach, making it available for use by all its citizens.
Amzie Moore of Cleveland, Mississippi, had to fend for himself from the time he was fourteen years old. In this episode, he recalls wondering why there was such economic disparity between the white and black communities. To his young mind, there must have been something special about white people that allowed them to attain a higher standard of living than blacks. It was only after serving in Europe during WWII Moore realized this was not the case. He came home determined to work towards a better life for himself and his community. He got financing to open his own Pan-Am service station, the only one between Memphis and Vicksburg that allowed black customers to use the restrooms. And he became politically active, first with the Black and Tan Republicans and later joining the Democratic Party. He also joined the NAACP.
In September of 1955, while serving as NAACP President for Bolivar County, Moore received a call from the grandfather of a boy named Emmett Till. He explains how Till’s death marked a turning point in Mississippi. Prior to the Voting Rights Act of 1964, Southern states used poll taxes and literacy tests to disenfranchise poor minority voters. Moore discusses how they worked to overcome those obstacles through the formation of the Freedom Democratic Party. Later, as leader of Project Head Start, he fought to bring affordable housing and new job opportunities to poor people in the Mississippi Delta. Moore looks back with pride at all they were able to accomplish.
In 1948, Gladys Noel Bates agreed to be the named plaintiff in a lawsuit brought by the black Mississippi Teachers Association against the state of Mississippi to demand equal pay for black teachers, knowing that she and her husband would most likely lose their jobs.
After news of the suit made headlines, Bates remembers the other teachers avoided being seen with her for fear of reprisals. She describes how being blacklisted by the state prevented the couple from teaching anywhere in the South.
Bates and her husband left Mississippi in 1960 and became teachers in Denver, Colorado. She recalls how their plan to keep a low profile was thwarted by a desire to improve racial relations. Soon, Bates had developed a reputation in the Denver public school system as someone who could work with people of all races. She gives several examples of the strategies she used to unite parents and students in the common goal of a better education for all.
CONTAINS RACIAL EXPLICIT LANGUAGE
In October of 1966, Father Peter Quinn became pastor of Holy Rosary, a small, black, parish in Hattiesburg. Interested in working with the youth of the community, he formed a group that would later become the Catholic Youth Organization. In this episode, he describes how their young people participated in picketing and boycotts during the Civil Rights Movement.
As an activist priest in Hattiesburg in the 1960s, Quinn often received death threats from the Ku Klux Klan. One night, his station wagon was fired on by men in two pickup trucks who tried to force him off the road. Afterwards, he was protected by a group of volunteers called the Deacons of Defense.
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. kept a grueling schedule of personal appearances during the Movement. Father Quinn recalls how on King’s last trip to Hattiesburg, just ten days before his assassination, he borrowed Quinn’s bed for a much-needed nap. After King was killed, violence erupted across the nation. Quinn describes leading a protest march through downtown Hattiesburg after pleading with the kids to leave their knives and guns at home.
PHOTO: Huffington Post
Henry Walton of Mendenhall, Mississippi, grew up in Waycross, Georgia, the son of a high school principal. He was seven years old when his father took him to see a performance by Birch the Magician and it inspired him to take up magic as a hobby.
In this episode, Walton discusses that experience and the Gilbert Mysto Magic Sets he later received for Christmas. He began collecting books on magic, learning card and coin tricks to fool his friends and family. Walton also recalls how a high school variety show gave him the chance to debut as a magician before a large audience.
After WWII, Walton traveled the South, installing telephone office equipment for Western Electric. While stationed in Tampa, he met a man well-known by magicians for building quality magic apparatus. He remembers how Warren Hamilton offered to build him an entire magic show and sponsored his membership in the International Brotherhood of Magicians.
After moving to Mississippi and getting married, Walton decided to take up magic, again, as a hobby. When Birch the Magician came to Jackson to perform, Walton took his wife to see his childhood inspiration. It was there he met Jackson magician, Gene Grant, and the two men became friends. He recalls how they formed a Mississippi chapter of the International Brotherhood of Magicians (local chapters are called “rings” after the famous linking rings trick). Soon, “Ring 98” was attracting members from across the state to their monthly meetings where they performed for each other and the public at special events.
PHOTO: Walton performs at Jackson Mall, 1974.
Mississippi author Shelby Foote, best known for his three volume history of the American Civil War, was born in Greenville, Mississippi in November of 1916. In this episode, we revisit his oral history interview, conducted by Dr. Orley B. Caudill on March 4, 1975, at his home in Memphis.
Foote discusses growing up in Greenville, how everyone attended the same school and what they did for fun during the Great Depression. He was just five years old when his father passed away, leaving him and his mother alone. He recalls how his mother always supported his decisions and never said hurtful things.
Anticipating America’s entrance into WWII, Foote left college after two years, returned to Mississippi and joined the National Guard. He remembers writing his first novel while waiting to be deployed, and selling short stories to the Saturday Evening Post. He also talks about his style of writing, which he describes as a slow, deliberate process.
David Baria and his wife decided to move their family to Bay Saint Louis in the spring of 2004. In this episode, taken from his 2008 interview, he recalls their idyllic life on the Gulf Coast, prior to the arrival of Hurricane Katrina the following year.
On August 28, 2005, people began fleeing the Gulf Coast area as Katrina approached. Baria remembers the challenges his family faced as they prepared for its arrival. After riding out the storm at his brother’s home, Baria, his brother and uncle rode down to Bay Saint Louis to survey the damage. It was then he realized their historic home, which had withstood many storms since 1875, had been completely wiped away.
They quickly developed a plan to help survivors by setting up a distribution network of water, fuel, food, clothing, medicines and cleaning supplies and then got to work. Unfortunately, just ten days later, Baria’s son was hospitalized with a mysterious illness. The child was in a coma for over a week before succumbing to what turned out to be rabies.
The family was determined to remain on the Gulf Coast and rebuild their lives. Baria began attending meetings of local citizen groups concerned with such issues as insurance companies that refused to honor homeowner policies and proposed building codes. He explains how a perceived lack of leadership inspired him to run for the State Senate.
David Baria served in the Mississippi Senate from 2008 to 2012 and is currently a member of the Mississippi House of Representatives from the 122nd district.
MSMO Holiday Classic from 2015: MSM 463 Kris Gianakos of Meridian comes from a large Greek family. In this episode, he discusses his favorite way to prepare leg of lamb. Lamb is a staple of Greek cooking. For his family, it was a dish usually served during the holidays. He also describes avgolemono soup, a traditional Greek chicken soup and explains why it always reminds him of home.
PODCAST EXTRA: According to Gianakos, wherever he travels, he runs into other Greeks eager to share their traditional foods. As examples he cites two Greek-owned restaurants in Memphis and Oxford.
PHOTO: Business2community.com
Many Mississippi families raised hogs for food and would cure the meat in a small shed called a smoke house. In this episode, Natchez native Charles Wright explains how neighbors would help each other out during hog-killing time.
Among the many pork products, Wright’s family would make with the meat from their hogs, was hogshead cheese. Hogshead Cheese is a cold cut meat product that originated in Europe during the Middle Ages. He remembers how his family would prepare Hogshead Cheese as a Christmas treat. Each Christmas, Wright’s family would gather at his great aunt’s house in Bude. He recalls the wide variety of wild game, fish and home-brewed beverages everyone would bring.
When Wright’s family assembled for the holidays, there was always an abundance of love. He gets emotional thinking back on those days when they could all gather together.
PHOTO: Bude, MS, depot. http://www.thetracksidephotographer.com
Ellen McCarley grew up near Port Gibson, the youngest of twelve cousins living on Drake Hill. In this episode, she recalls her idyllic childhood and the games they played to pass the time.
Before automobile ownership became common, Mississippians would travel to neighboring towns by train. McCarley remembers riding the train to Vicksburg to go Christmas shopping with her mother. Every Christmas Eve, the Drake family, would gather together for the lighting of the tree. She describes how her mother worked to make it a special time for all.
McCarley’s aunt ran a boarding house on St. Charles Avenue in New Orleans in the 1930s. She recounts visiting her aunt during Mardi Gras and witnessing a parade and dress ball.
After Japan attacked the US Navy Base at Pearl Harbor in December of 1941, thousands of American teenagers volunteered to go and fight. In this episode, humorist Jerry Clower of Liberty, Mississippi, explains how growing up on a farm prepared him for life in the Navy. Raised in the rural South, Clower’s perceptions of race were limited to Black or White. He recalls an incident in basic training that opened his eyes to a wider world of ethnicity and prejudice. (caution: uses a racist word that he had never heard prior to joining up.)
Clower served as a radio operator on the aircraft carrier, USS Hornet, in the Pacific Theater. He remembers the battles for Iwo Jima and Okinawa and the lessons they learned from each.
While serving aboard the Hornet, Clower survived several attacks by Kamikazes. He describes feeling conflicted about watching the Japanese pilots die, and discusses suffering from symptoms of PTSD for many years after the war.
PHOTO: courtesy of the Clower family.
As family and friends gather this week for Thanksgiving, we revisit the 2010 interview of freelance food and travel writer, Julian Brunt, who views cooking as his form of creative expression. In this episode, he explains why he is so passionate about preparing meals for his circle of friends. As the wife of an army officer, Julian Brunt’s mother hosted dinner parties for the other officer’s families. He remembers how she would prepare traditional Southern dishes for their friends. He also recalls how they expected their children to dress for dinner and join in on mealtime discussions. This is one reason why Brunt considers good conversation to be the main ingredient of any successful dinner party.
When Julian Brunt cooks a meal for his friends, each of the five courses compliments the next. He shares some of his tricks to keep things interesting and why he enjoys reading about classic French cuisine.
Whatever the week holds for you, we wish you safe travels, good company, good food, and pleasant conversation.
PHOTO: Julian Brunt public Facebook post.
Dorothy Wilkins Fraley was born on a farm in the Fairview Community outside of Brooksville in 1918. She was in her 82nd year of life when she sat down to record her oral history in October of 2000 as part of the Noxubee County Oral History Project. This episode is a continuation of one we did in September of this year (MSM 587) about her memories of growing up on the family farm.
As the holiday season is now upon us, we wanted to revisit her interview and recollections of Christmases past. The first recalling family Christmas traditions of her childhood and the last, the family Christmas traditions that she and her husband forged with their own family in Macon. In the middle, come two clips detailing the arc of her marriage and career.
During WWII, women took jobs normally held by the men who were off serving their country. Fraley explains how a part-time job at the sheriff’s office led to marriage and a new home in the county jail. After Sheriff Fraley’s term in office ended, the couple decided to open their own grocery store in Macon. Dorothy Fraley recalls the challenges of those early days and how the business grew along with their family. Fraley and her husband bought a large home in Macon across from the Dreamland Theater. She describes her family’s Christmas traditions and how everyone was made to feel welcome.
Dr. Joe Berryman spent his life and career involved with high school, college and professional bands as a musician, composer, instructor, and conductor, as well as, a product representative and developer for several musical instrument manufacturers. After moving to Mississippi, he served as the band director at Itta Bena High School before coming to USM where he became coordinator of the band staff and taught percussion and orchestration. Berryman also worked with the Mississippi Lions All-State Band for well over a decade as director, writing much of the music, himself. At the time this interview was recorded in July of 1972, the band had won first prize at the Lion’s International Convention five of the last six years.
In this episode, Berryman discusses his early life and career. He was ten years old in 1914, when his family moved from Texarkana to Meridian. He recalls shipping their automobile and furniture by train because there were no highways. When he decided to become a musician, his parents wouldn’t pay for music lessons because they didn’t think he was serious. He remembers earning the money by selling magazines and taking the lessons in secret.
In the age of silent movies, musicians would provide live music to match the action on the screen. Berryman describes playing in the orchestra pits of the movie theaters in Kansas City. In addition to showing motion pictures, movie palaces of the day also booked live entertainment. He shares his memories of working the vaudeville houses in Topeka and providing sound effects for a hot-tempered comedian.
PODCAST BONUS: When he was not playing theaters in the 1920s, Berryman travelled with several tents shows around the Midwest. Known as chautauquas, these shows were intended to bring cultural enlightenment to isolated rural communities.
PHOTO: USM Archive
Troy H. Middleton was born on a farm in Copiah County, Mississippi in 1890 and lived there until he was fourteen years old when he left to attend Mississippi A&M College preparatory department. A&M was a land grant college, therefore it had military training in which the students were required to participate. Middleton rose through the ranks until his senior year when he was promoted to Cadet Lieutenant Colonel. After graduation, he was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the US Army in 1913 and took part in the Mexican Border Campaign of 1914.
When the United States entered World War I, Middleton went to France as a company commander and by the end of the war he had received three promotions in one year becoming the youngest colonel in the Army. He then became the Dean of Administration for Louisiana State University. After the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, he returned to active duty and subsequently went to Europe, participating in the North African, Sicilian and Italian Campaigns before going to Normandy for the main campaign against Germany as Commander of the Eighth Corps.
In this episode, Middleton discusses the traits of a good leader and how to earn the respect of your subordinates. He remembers his longtime friend and fellow commander, General George Patton. He shares his opinions of Patton’s good and bad points. According to Middleton, Patton had no qualms about visiting the front lines any time of the day or night. He shares a humorous story of a late night visit by Patton and his encounter with a sleeping soldier.
The Battle of the Bulge was the last German offensive of WWII. It was Middleton who made the decision to hold the town of Bastogne against overwhelming opposition, in the winter of 1944. Although he was heavily criticized by Patton at the time, it turned out to be the right choice. He reflects on what it meant to the course of the war.
PHOTO: L-R, Middleton, Eisenhower, Patton
John Gouras left the island of Patmos to come to America with his father in 1921. In this episode, taken from an interview conducted in 1974, Gouras shares some memories of his life and career spent as a Jackson restaurateur. He remembers selling his father’s homemade candy to local businesses in Lake Charles, Louisiana as a teenager and how he and his partner purchased their first eatery, the People’s Café, in Jackson for $800, in 1928. He recalls how they survived the Great Depression and opened their second café, the Mayflower, four years later.
Shortly after becoming a naturalized citizen in 1938, Gouras joined the Army Air Corp and served as a supply officer in the Mediterranean theater. He explains how his restaurant experience was put to use by General William L. Lee.
At the time of the interview, the Mayflower Café had been open for 42 years. It is still in business as of 2018. Gouras describes the Greek community of Jackson as industrious, close-knit, and well-respected. He discusses how they work to keep traditional Greek holidays and customs alive.
PHOTO: roadarch.com
Growing up on his father’s plantation near Clarksdale, Marshall Bouldin, III, dreamed of being a commercial illustrator like his hero, Norman Rockwell. Encouraged by his mother to pursue his love of art, he left Clarksdale in 1939 to attend the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and there began a career that would gain him notoriety around the nation, even as it brought him home again.
In this episode, taken from our 1974 oral history interview, Bouldin details his evolution as an artist. During the year and a half spent at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, felt he learned from more by studying the Institute’s collection of paintings than he did attending class. When WWII broke out, he was forced to leave school. Deemed unfit for military duty due to a birth defect that left him with a limp, he worked as an illustrative draftsman for the Vultee Aircraft Company in Nashville, Tennessee.
After the war, Bouldin became the apprentice of a commercial illustrator in Connecticut where he honed his skills as he learned from the best in the business. He soon had his own studio and a New York agent who secured magazine work for him with publications like Colliers and Outdoor Life. It was after attending an exhibition of works by Vincent van Gogh, Bouldin realized that he envied the freedom of expression that differentiated artists from illustrators. He explains why he decided to come home to Clarksdale and become a portrait painter.
Throughout his career, Bouldin rejected the stereotypes associated with professional artists. He discusses why it’s important to stay connected to the rest of society. As a portrait painter, he was required to sell his services like any other professional. However, he maintained it was always about making new friends, not money. Of the hundreds of portraits he was commissioned to paint, many of the subjects were famous, including, President Nixon’s daughters, William Faulkner, William Winter and Mike Espy.
African-American soldiers returned home to the Jim Crow South after WWII, determined to press for an end to black voter suppression and “separate but equal” segregation laws. In this episode we examine the military career and civil rights activism of Taylor Howard of Gulfport.
Howard was drafted into the all-black, 92nd Infantry Division in 1942. He recalls the racial tensions they encountered while training in Louisiana, as well as, their trek from the Arizona desert to the Italian Alps.
After the Battle of Anzio, entrenched German forces inflicted heavy losses on the 92nd Infantry Division in Northern Italy. Howard recounts how a regiment of Japanese-American soldiers helped turn the tide.
African-American soldiers returned home after the war, convinced they would now be treated as equals. Howard remembers being denied the right to vote by a group of angry white poll-watchers the following year.
PHOTO: Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=2181029
Dorothy Fraley of Macon grew up in the rural community of Fairview, outside of Brooksville. In this episode, she shares some of her memories of that time, like how they used to ride a mule and buggy to the store every morning to catch the school bus, and the telephone “party” line they shared with their neighbors.
Born in 1918, the year of the great flu pandemic, Fraley blames the large number of deaths that year for there being so few students her age. Before modern vaccines and drugs, infectious diseases could only be controlled by limiting exposure. Fraley remembers the time her sister was quarantined after contracting Diphtheria.
A popular hairstyle for girls in the 1920s and 30s was known as the Buster Brown. Fraley describes how she and her sister wore their hair as children and her first perm. During the Great Depression, many Mississippians survived by being self-sufficient and growing their own food. Fraley explains how her mother made their school uniforms using wool from her father’s sheep.
Staff Sergeant Undaryl Allen of the Mississippi Army National Guard was deployed to Iraq in fall of 2004. In this episode, he shares his memories of that time in this interview conducted in May of 2006. Although trained as a mechanic, Allen’s first month was spent as a gunner on escort duty. He explains how his faith and his family helped him handle the stress of going out on patrol.
As an army mechanic serving in Iraq, Allen worked on a variety of combat equipment. He recalls repairing vehicles in which his friends were injured or killed. While serving in Iraq, Allen was assigned to a Forward Operating Base near Bagdad. He describes how he and his tent-mates would pool their resources for “home cooked” meals.
PODCAST EXTRA: Allen and his crew would occasionally be shelled by enemy forces while retrieving broken down vehicles, forcing them to run for cover. Looking back on those dangerous times, he finds humor in their mad scrambles to the bunker.
PHOTO: Hannah Heishman, Pinterest
The Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act of 1968 provided funding for the training of local police officers. In this episode, Tyler Fletcher explains how that funding led the University of Southern Mississippi to develop a curriculum in Law Enforcement. Fletcher retired from the U.S. Army as Chief of Criminal Investigations in 1972. He recalls his decision to accept a teaching position at Southern Miss.
Later, when the decision was made to establish a School of Criminal Justice, Forensic Science and Security, there were several hurdles to overcome. Fletcher discusses the struggle to recruit students, gain academic acceptance, and win the support of law enforcement supervisors.
In the1980s, Mississippi moved to develop a set of educational standards for police officers. Fletcher remembers serving on the advisory board and USM's role in that effort.
Last week, Mississippians remembered Hurricane Katrina on the thirteenth anniversary of the massive storm’s slow march up the length of our state. Considered the most destructive natural disaster in our nation’s history, it sparked a series of recovery efforts that would be measured in days, weeks, months and years. Thousands of lives would be interrupted, many drastically so. Some for only a brief time, some permanently.
While clean-up of the millions of tons of debris left in Katrina’s wake seemed like an effort that would take many years, much of it was accomplished at an astonishing rate. On the surface, a sense of normality crept in and with it, an alleviation of the emotional and mental stress such disasters visit upon the survivors. Feelings of hopelessness, depression and despair are not forgotten, but hard to convey years later.
To fully recall those stressful emotions, revisiting the interviews of first-responders conducted in the days that followed is helpful. In those recordings, the raw angst can be heard in a way not possible with the written word. For this episode, we turn to an in-the-moment account of a key decision maker in the South Mississippi relief effort: Barbra K. "Babs" Faulk.
As Director of the South-Central Mississippi Chapter of the American Red Cross, Babs Faulk coordinated the relief agency’s response to Hurricane Katrina. In the aftermath, the Red Cross served over half a million meals to those in need. Faulk discusses the agency's response and the importance of volunteers to the relief effort.
In this interview, conducted just two months after the storm, she recalls how they prepared to meet the challenge. As the head quarter's phones constantly drone in the background, the weariness and heartache of the previous eight weeks is unmistakable as she shoulders the blame for those they couldn't help.
The ferocity and devastation of Hurricane Katrina caught many Mississippians by surprise. Faulk’s frustration with the often lackadaisical response of many to impending disasters is apparent as she emphasizes the importance of hurricane preparedness and personal responsibility.
The disruption caused by the storm took an emotional toll on the survivors, but also on the relief workers and first-responders, themselves. Faulk reflects on the need for mental health workers and the long journey to recovery that lay before them in November 2005.
Hattiesburg native Richard Burger graduated with a degree in mathematics in 1965. In this episode, he recalls returning to Mississippi to work at NASA’s test facility (later renamed the Stennis Space Center) as a computer programmer. Because he was working for General Electric under government contract, Burger’s story was rather unusual for that time, as opportunities for African-American in Mississippi were typically limited to menial or low-level positions.
As a programmer, Burger worked with NASA engineers testing Saturn rockets. He remembers his first assignment working with a “unique” engineer named Charlie Parker to develop a fuel delivery system to speed the test-firing process.
Throughout his career, Richard Burger used a wide variety of computers and programming languages. He compares the NASA main frames of the 1960s to today’s more powerful laptops.
PODCAST BONUS: After working in the private sector for over twenty years, Burger returned to NASA in the 1990s with a new mission: taking at-risk African-American youth from inner-city high schools in Los Angeles, on a six week tour of NASA laboratories and Black Colleges. It was a program dubbed “Earth to L.A.”
“The Center for Gifted Studies was established in 1979 and dedicated as The Frances A. Karnes Center for Gifted Studies in 1999, its central purpose to further the education of gifted students and those with leadership abilities through teaching, research, and service. Emphasis is also placed on these areas for those interested in the gifted: teachers, parents, administrators, psychologists, counselors, and other concerned citizens.”
In this episode, Karnes shares her memories as an early innovator in the education of exceptional children.
Dr. Frances Karnes began her career at the age of 19, teaching first graders in Illinois. She explains how that experience inspired her to focus on the educational needs of exceptional children. In 1973, Karnes began teaching Special Education classes at Southern Miss and writing descriptions for new courses in Gifted Education. She remembers working to have the State’s Definition of Exceptional Children amended to include Gifted Children as well. Within four years, Karnes had helped develop the Gifted Studies Program for Children at USM. She recalls pitching the idea of a Center for Gifted Studies to Dr. Aubrey K. Lucas and how they secured the funding.
Since 1974 the Mississippi Association for Gifted Children has helped teachers and parents meet the needs of intellectually-gifted students. Karnes reflects on the unwavering support they’ve received. Learn more at: https://www.usm.edu/karnes-gifted
PHOTO: Center for Gifted Studies
To celebrate the recent opening of The Midtowner - Robert St. John's tribute to the classic American diner - we are re-posting this episode from last summer, in which St. John shares his knowledge of a favorite topic: the history of Hattiesburg restaurants.
Lunch counters and cafeterias have long provided time-strapped Americans with fast, affordable food. In this episode, restaurateur and author, Robert St. John discusses the evolution of Hattiesburg dining, beginning with three early Hub City eateries and why they were close to the train station. He also recalls the Frost Top, a franchise fixture from the 50s - 70s, all the times he ate there and what made the Frost Top so special.
Throughout the 20th Century, large companies and boarding houses provided plate lunches for hungry workers. St. John describes some of Hattiesburg’s favorite lunchrooms and their “meat and three” menus. For hungry shoppers, the department store lunch counters provided a ready respite, before eventually being replaced by mall food courts. St. John remembers some of Hattiesburg’s department store food fare and hanging out at the Cloverleaf Mall.
PODCAST EXTRA: Jimmy Faughn, an early Hattiesburg restaurateur, operated several eateries including The Collegian, Le Faughn’s, and the Sea Lodge. St. John reflects on Faughn’s reputation as the fine dining patriarch of Hattiesburg.
PHOTO: The Midtowner, Hattiesburg Hotel Indigo Facebook page.
David Baker loved Tupelo. Aside from time spent serving his country during WWII and a year in New York, Baker lived his entire 93 years in his hometown as a tireless promoter of the Arts and Humanities. In this episode, he looks back at the people and events that shaped his life with a keen and engaging wit.
Baker’s father opened a furniture store in downtown Tupelo in the 1920s. He recalls how they stayed open late on Saturday nights, and describes the downtown farmer’s market where his mother would shop for produce, haggling with vendors through the car window while he watched.
Not all of the memories were pleasant. On the evening of April 5th, 1936, a tornado struck Tupelo, killing 216 and injuring 700 more. Baker recounts how the storm ripped the roof off their house, and a neighbor’s cry for help.
In this interview, conducted in 2000, Baker discusses some of Tupelo's most notable characters, including Ms. Pledge Robinson. When Baker was growing up, Tupelo was known as the Jersey Cow capital of the world. He describes the cattle drives through downtown and Robinson’s crafty way of cashing in.
PODCAST BONUS: The success of Elvis Presley was always a source of pride for the residents of Tupelo. Baker remembers the Presley family and awarding Elvis his first prize as a singer.
PHOTO: Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal obituary 2-12-16
The University of Southern Mississippi was still the Mississippi State Teachers College when Bernard Reed Green graduated in May of 1934. In this episode, he recalls his decision to come back that fall as the Freshman Football Coach. According to Green, his coaching style differed from that of Coach Pooley Hubert, the man who hired him, and how that difference had a positive impact on the team’s performance. He explains his philosophy and why he made a practice of recruiting new players from local junior colleges.
In 1942, as the United States prepared for war, Mississippi Southern College as the school was known by then, suspended all intercollegiate sports activities. Green remembers how he found jobs for his football players so they could remain in school. With so many students serving in the military during the war, Mississippi Southern faced the possibility of having to permanently close its doors. Green recounts how he and others lobbied the Pentagon for an officer training school to be located on campus. He explains that hosting the OTS and allowing the officer trainees to live in the empty men’s athletic dorm known as The Rock, enabled the institution to remain solvent during those lean war years.
PHOTO: Mississippi Sports Hall of Fame (Wikipedia)
Helen Rayne grew up living in her grandfather’s antebellum home in Natchez during the Great Depression. In this episode, she remembers the genteel lifestyle and how they entertained themselves without a lot of money. She also describes the dedication of her teachers and how much they were respected by everyone in the community.
During her lifetime, Rayne witnessed many changes, both in her hometown and the world in general. She recalls taking walks with friends, stargazing with her grandfather, and the lessons he tried to teach her. And Rayne reflects on how the depression affected the way people socialized as they looked for ways to hang on to beloved traditions in the once prosperous river town.
Podcast Extra: The Historic Natchez Tableaux was started in 1932 as a way to attract tourist dollars and celebrate the city’s cultural heritage. It features a tour of the city’s antebellum homes, plays and musical performances, and the crowning of a king and queen. Rayne reflects on the humble, early days of the tableaux.
PHOTO: Landowne, Natchez, 1938, by Johnston, Frances Benjamin, 1864-1952, Library of Congress. Wikipedia.
Leatha Jackson learned how to cook ribs and steaks by working in her aunt’s restaurant in Bogalusa. In this episode, she looks back with pride on her fifty-year career as a professional short-order cook. For years, Jackson dreamed of opening a restaurant in her home near Columbia, Mississippi. She discusses the humble beginnings of Leatha’s Barbeque and why looks can be deceiving.
By the time Leatha’s Barbeque moved to Hattiesburg, it had become a destination spot for barbeque lovers around the world. She credits her love of people and the power of word-of-mouth advertising.
Podcast Extra: The menu at Leatha’s Barbeque Inn does not offer many choices: only five entrées and two sides. Jackson explains why the selection is limited and discusses the most popular menu items.
Although Leatha Jackson passed away in September of 2013, Leatha’s BBQ is still in business and keeping her legacy alive.
PHOTO: Leatha’s BBQ Inn Facebook page.
Lemuel A. Wilson Junior’s parents were the owners of a weekly newspaper in Richton, Mississippi. In this episode, he shares his memories of working at the Richton Dispatch after school in the 1920s and how the paper served their community. He also recalls how their family’s newspaper survived the Great Depression by running foreclosure notices and accepting food as payment for subscriptions.
After serving in the Air Force during WWII, Wilson worked for the Washington Post and the Star newspapers in Washington, DC. In this 1973 interview he discusses the pressures of working for a large metropolitan paper and his decision to come home to Richton and take over the family business. As publisher of the Richton Dispatch, Wilson pondered the difference between daily and weekly newspapers. While both are important, he felt the weekly format better suited to rural communities.
PHOTO: Richton Dispatch Facebook page
Charles Dunagin began his career in Journalism in 1957 as a reporter for the Jackson State Times. In this episode, he remembers covering the story of the first African-American to attempt to enroll at Ole’ Miss, five years before James Meredith.
In 1963, Dunagin became the managing editor of the McComb Enterprise-Journal. He shares his memories of the newspaper’s publisher, Oliver Emmerich, who he describes as a courageous and intelligent journalist. During the Civil Rights Movement, the paper reported on over two dozen acts of violence and intimidation. Dunagin recalls the feelings of fear and anger in the city, at that time.
PODCAST EXTRA: According to Dunagin the situation in McComb finally came to a head when local business leaders published a Declaration of Principles in the paper calling for an end to the violence.
PHOTO: USM School of Mass Communication and Journalism website
Hodding Carter was the outspoken publisher of the Delta Democrat–Times during the Civil Rights Movement. In this episode, Betty Carter remembers the firestorm of threatening phone calls her husband’s editorials generated.
Hodding and Betty Carter moved to Greenville, Mississippi in 1936 and started their own newspaper. Betty Carter discusses the importance of a Free Press and an educated public to Western Democracy.
As a newspaper publisher, Betty Carter maintained her faith in the good intentions of most reporters. But she does recall times when the words of her husband, Hodding Carter, were distorted by the press.
Because Hodding Carter was such an effective and outspoken critic of segregation, he was often the target of public ire in Mississippi. Betty Carter describes a time her husband was “burned in effigy” by some angry citizens. She also praises the Greenville police department for their unwavering protection of all those involved in the Civil Rights Movement.
For over 55 years, Oliver Emmerich, Sr., was editor and publisher of the McComb Enterprise Journal. In this episode he explains his philosophy of using the editorial page to influence public opinion. During the 1960s, Emmerich used his position as an editor to promote Civil Rights. He recalls publishing a series of articles about local schools to disprove the idea of “Separate but Equal.”
Emmerich also remembers Greenville journalist, Hodding Carter, Jr., an outspoken champion of the Civil Rights Movement. He describes his friend’s refusal to conform as something uniquely American. Podcast Bonus: As an award-winning journalist, Emmerich was never shy about expressing his political opinions. He discusses his opposition to Ross Barnett and Paul B. Johnson, Jr., as well as, Mississippians’ love of demagogues.
Special Event: Please make plans to attend People, Politics and the Press on Saturday, July 14, 2018. This one-day civic engagement summit at the Two Mississippi Museums features nationally recognized names in media, as well as the region’s best reporters for panel discussions, lectures and open format conversations exploring the crucial role journalism plays in creating informed citizens and a healthy democracy. People, Politics and the Press is an unprecedented collaboration between the Mississippi Humanities Council, Mississippi Public Broadcasting, the Mississippi Press Association Education Foundation, the Clarion Ledger and Mississippi Today. For more information go to http://www.peoplepoliticspress.com
This past weekend, June 2-3, 2018, the 89th Annual Blessing of the Fleet was held in Biloxi. As coastal fishermen head out into Gulf in search of shrimp, we decided to revisit the interview of Earl Ross, conducted in 2011. A third-generation fisherman, Ross began shrimping in 1977. In this episode, he discusses his first shrimp boat, the variety of nets he uses and the size of his territory.
When a shrimp boat leaves home on a fishing trip, it can gone for days or even weeks at a time. Ross describes an average day on the water and how he and his crew prepare for the trip. Searching for the best place to cast their nets is a constant challenge for commercial fishermen. Ross explains how shrimpers work together as rising fuel prices erode profits.
With all the challenges facing the Gulf Coast seafood industry, shrimpers have been forced to look for new ways to remain profitable. According to Ross, many shrimpers are now selling directly to retailers. He also discusses how shrimpers have faced increased regulation at state and federal levels in recent years.
PHOTO: GulfCoast.org
When the United States entered WWII, A.J. Jones of Hattiesburg decided to become a Navy fighter pilot. In this episode, he shares his memories of that experience, beginning with the training he received and all those who died trying to learn to land on an aircraft carrier.
As a navy fighter pilot, Jones was assigned to a carrier group in the Pacific Theater. He recounts targeting Japanese ships and supplies around the Lingayen Gulf in January of 1945. The following month, Jones’s carrier, the USS Bismarck Sea was part of the task force assigned to take the Japanese island of Iwo Jima. He remembers providing air support for the Marines on the ground and how his carrier was sunk by kamikazes during the battle. After the ship went down, the survivors of the 1,000-man crew waited to be rescued as the battle raged on shore. Later, when they witnessed the American flag raised over nearby Mount Suribachi, cheers arose, even as they mourned the loss of their 318 shipmates.
PHOTO: By U.S. Navy - U.S. Navy photo 80-G-240135 from Navsource.org, Public Domain
For this week’s episode, we revisit Coach Sank Powe’s 1999 interview. MSM 496 focused on his successful 25 year career as the men's baseball coach for Cleveland High School in Cleveland, Mississippi. Today, we examine his childhood, growing up on a Delta plantation as the son of a poor tenant farmer.
Powe enjoyed listening to professional baseball on the radio and recalls learning how to swing a bat by hitting rocks and bottle caps with an old hoe handle. He began playing baseball with local adult teams as a teenager in Mound Bayou, working on the farm after school and dreaming of becoming a professional ballplayer.
Mound Bayou was a favorite destination for Negro League baseball teams in those years. Powe enjoyed watching those legendary players and even toured with the Birmingham Black Barons when they needed an extra man. He explains how the public’s perception of the Negro Leagues’ legacy has evolved over time.
Sank Powe never played major league baseball, but he coached high school ball in Cleveland and scouted for the Cincinnati Reds and the St. Louis Cardinals. He reflects on his career, the advantages being a professional baseball scout afforded him, and all the young people whose lives he touched.
Coach Powe passed away on January 20, 2013.
Growing up in Sumrall, Eberta Spinks was taught by her parents to care for those in their community. In this episode, she remembers helping her mother deliver fresh-cut flowers and home-cooked meals to sick neighbors. Spinks was five years old when she and a playmate became gravely ill in 1919. She recalls how neighbors sat with her around the clock so her parents could get some rest during the ordeal.
During the Great Depression, many Americans relied on food assistance provided by the government. Spinks describes how her family shared the vegetables and meat they raised with their community. These lessons of working for the betterment of others would later influence her to become active in the Civil Rights Movement.
Spinks was living in Hattiesburg in 1964 when the Freedom Riders came to help black citizens register to vote. She credits her faith in God, and an understanding husband, with her decision to offer free housing to civil rights workers while they were in town.
PHOTO: onlyinyourstate.com
After the Empire of Japan attacked the US Naval Base in Hawaii and declared war on the United States, Americans of Japanese descent were forcibly relocated to internment camps, out of fear they would be loyal to the emperor. But, by the time Japan bombed Pearl Harbor, many Japanese-American men were already serving in the US military. In this episode, Herbert Sasaki recalls coming to Camp Shelby in South Mississippi to join the 442nd, a newly formed infantry unit of Japanese-American volunteers.
Growing up in Los Angeles, Sasaki was used to driving the most modern highways in the nation. His memories of Hattiesburg include, waiting in long lines and getting stuck in the mud, a lot.
The 442nd was a rapid deployment force tasked with creating breaks in the German lines. Sasaki explains how early success by the regiment convinced General Eisenhower to use them as much as possible. The 442nd Regimental Combat Team is considered the most decorated unit in US history. He looks back with pride at the sacrifices made by these loyal Americans during WWII.
PHOTO: lib.berkeley.edu
Former Governor William Winter was first elected to the Mississippi House of Representatives in 1947. In this episode, he remembers how the verdict in Brown versus the Board of Education solidified opposition to desegregation throughout the South. Gov. Winter was running for State Treasurer in 1963 when he learned of the assassination of civil rights activist, Medgar Evers. He recalls being shocked by the news and even more shocked by the reaction of a respected church elder.
In 1997, Gov. Winter was appointed to President Bill Clinton’s Advisory Board on Race. He reflects on his work with the Board and the things that are important to most Americans.
Today, the William Winter Institute for Racial Reconciliation at Ole Miss, supports harmony and wholeness among all Mississippians. He explains how each of us have a role to play and why it’s so important.
In March 2008, Governor Winter was given the Profile in Courage Award by the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum for his work in advancing education and racial reconciliation.
Clara Watson has many pleasant memories of growing up in Biloxi during the 1940s. The status quo nature of segregation so thoroughly permeated life that it wasn’t given much thought. In this episode, she explains how the city’s liberal atmosphere shielded her from the racial tensions faced by other black Mississippians. For instance, before the Civil Rights Movement, black customers were often turned away from white-owned businesses, but for Watson, the large number of black vendors and business-owners in her Biloxi neighborhood, blunted the impact of those imposed restrictions.
According to Watson, black residents of Biloxi had always been allowed to go to the beach and it was only after she was grown that property owners began trying to enforce a whites-only policy. On April 24, 1960, Dr. Gilbert Mason led a group of 125 black citizens to protest the “whites-only” policy at Biloxi Beach. In response, local white leaders organized a mob to attack the group and turn them back. Watson recalls the events of that day and some whites who were on opposing sides of the issue.
When civil rights workers came to the coast in 1964, Clara Watson helped them and participated in marches. She describes Biloxi as a safe haven activists could use as a base of operations.
CAUTION: CONTAINS FRANK AND RACIALLY EXPLICIT LANGUAGE
PHOTO: http://www.sunherald.com
Most people have heard of Leontyne Price, but there was another talented soprano from Mississippi, whose name is not so well known. That is because Kathleen Roberts Striegler chose to move to Germany in the late 1960s to pursue a career in opera, where some sixty state-funded opera companies provided steady income for professional singers.
Born in Hattiesburg in 1941, Striegler began studying music in Jackson, Mississippi, at young age. In this episode, she recalls her decision to move to Europe and become an opera singer. When Striegler arrived in Switzerland to study at the International Opera Center, she faced many challenges, like learning to speak German and how to make a living while getting established. She describes some of the highs and lows she experienced before finding a home in Darmstadt.
When she sat down to be interviewed by us in 1973, Striegler was a soprano with the State Opera House in Darmstadt, West Germany. She explained how the government supported the sixty opera companies that existed there, then. For Striegler, success as a professional opera singer required a clear-eyed assessment of the voice she’d been given. She discusses finding happiness as a Mississippi soprano in Germany.
PHOTO: Darmstadt Staatstheater By: Andreas Praefcke - Own work (own photograph), CC BY 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=14606479
Johnny Balser’s grandfather moved to McComb in the 1880s and took a job with the railroad. In this episode, he discusses his family’s long history with the Illinois Central maintenance shop there and why there was never any doubt he would follow in his grandfather’s footsteps.
When Balser graduated high school, his father insisted he follow the family tradition and work for Illinois Central railroad. He explains how that experience, as a machinist apprentice, kept him out of a foxhole during WWII.
After the war, Balser returned to McComb and his job at the railroad maintenance shop. He reflects on how quickly the new diesel locomotives replaced the steam engines and how older workers resented the change.
Balser eventually decided to leave the railroad and become a photographer. He remembers Illinois Central became a steady customer after he opened his studio.
PHOTO: McComb Railroad Museum
Reverend Robert Hartenfeld’s father ran a small country store in northwestern Ohio. In this episode, he explains how watching his dad interact with customers in an intimate and personal way taught him the importance of listening—a skill he would come to appreciate in later years as a Lutheran minister.
In 1983, Hartenfeld came to Long Beach, Mississippi, to help establish a new Lutheran congregation. He describes the anxiety of being a Yankee in the deep South and falling in love with the Gulf Coast. Again, it was his ability to listen and offer support that helped him to gain acceptance and respect in Mississippi.
After Hartenfeld retired from fulltime ministry in 1992, he began volunteering with the Back Bay Mission in Biloxi. As coordinator of the Loaves and Fishes soup kitchen, he feels his most important job is listening to those in need.
PHOTO: St. Paul Lutheran Church, Dailyherald.com
In 1917, Mississippi passed the Bone Dry law, prohibiting the sale and consumption of all forms of alcohol. In this episode, LeGrand Capers remembers Vicksburg’s fifty saloons, and how the city reacted to their closing. After alcohol was outlawed in the U.S. in 1920, bootleggers began making and selling homemade liquor. Capers describes Vicksburg’s moonshine marketers and how police looked the other way.
Until it was shut down during WW I, Vicksburg was also home to a thriving red-light district. Capers recalls the city’s ornate palaces of gambling and prostitution. Born in Vicksburg in 1900, Capers came of age as the glory-days of the red-light district were waning. He discusses selling shoes to the ladies of #15 China Street as a boy, and spending time there when he was older.
May not be suitable for young historians.
PHOTO: Washington Street, Vicksburg, 1915
On August 7, 1975, LeGrand Capers sat down with the Center for Oral History for the first part of a two-day interview. A lifelong resident of Vicksburg, Mississippi, Capers or “Doc” as he was known to his friends, was considered the town historian. His natural curiosity, love of the Arts, and memory for details made him the right person for the job. Born in 1900, Capers knew many Civil War veterans and folks who had survived the months-long siege of the city President Lincoln considered essential to a northern victory. In this episode, Capers remembers the hours spent as a young man, listening to stories of battles fought and hardships endured.
The Vicksburg National Military Park was established in 1899 to commemorate the siege of the city during the Civil War. Capers remembers the construction of the various state monuments and searching for relics on the battlefield as a boy. In 1916, a movie about the Civil War was filmed in the park. Capers describes joining the Mississippi National Guard in order to work as an extra on the film. After filming was completed and the country prepared to enter WWI, Capers’ father had to pull strings to get his under-aged son’s enlistment in the Guard struck so he could return to school.
In 1917, a joint reunion of Confederate and Union veterans was held at the national park in Vicksburg. Capers recalls the raucous arguments between the former foes and one old-timer who was a little too frank for polite company. There is a bit of profane language in this last story so parents beware.
PHOTO: larry-jan-tvc.net
Prior to the end of slavery in the United States, educating African-Americans was discouraged or prohibited by law throughout the South. After emancipation, opportunities for blacks to attend school were still scarce, but began to improve during the Reformation. Lounett Gore’s father was born a slave, but emancipated while still an infant. In this episode, she describes how he was educated by his mother’s former master.
As the youngest child of a sharecropper’s family, Gore was kept by her big sister while their parents worked. She remembers sitting in a classroom, as a toddler, while her sister attended school, and learning along with the older children.
During WWI, many African-Americans migrated from the southern states, northward, in search of better jobs. Gore recalls how her father went to St. Louis and earned enough money to buy his own farm. This gave them the chance to: improve their diet by growing their own food, keep all the profits their farm produced, and raise their standard of living. Even so, because black children were needed during planting and harvesting, their school year was only three months long.
PODCAST EXTRA: Prior to WWI, Home Demonstration Clubs were established by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. These clubs taught young women food preparation and other homemaking skills. Gore explains how belonging to a Home Demonstration Club gave her the opportunity to attend Tougaloo College—a historic black school, founded just north of Jackson, Mississippi in 1869 by New York–based Christian missionaries for the education of freed slaves and their offspring.
PHOTO: The Mansion at Tougaloo College, Mississippi. http://cds.library.brown.edu/projects/FreedomNow/scans/TJ0071.jpg
On Friday morning, Feb. 2, 2018, an unveiling ceremony was held on the USM campus for a new historical marker detailing the efforts of Clyde Kennard to enroll at Mississippi Southern College.
Kennard had tried to enroll as a student at Southern Miss multiple times in the late 1950s, but was denied admission because of his race. He was later arrested on trumped-up charges and sentenced to seven years in prison. In this episode, Raylawni Branch of Hattiesburg recalls Kennard’s attempts to integrate the all-white college. Branch was active in the Civil Rights Movement between 1959 and 1965. She describes her work with the NAACP and the limited opportunities for black people in Hattiesburg.
In 1965, Branch was a young mother, trying to make ends meet. She remembers being offered the chance to become one of the first African-American students at Southern Miss. Shortly afterwards, Vernon Dahmer, a popular businessman who led the local effort to register black voters, died from injuries he sustained when the Ku Klux Klan firebombed his home at Kelly Settlement. Branch recalls Dahmer’s generosity and how he died fighting back.
When Elaine Armstrong and Raylawni Branch became the first black students at USM, they were assigned six bodyguards for protection. Branch reflects on how they were accepted by the other students.
In the Jim Crow South, African-Americans had limited access to doctors and hospitals. One of the goals of the Civil Rights Movement was to improve healthcare for blacks in segregated states like Mississippi. In this episode, taken from a series of interviews conducted in 1998, Dr. Gilbert Mason recounts conditions as they existed in 1955, when he came to the Gulf Coast as a young doctor. He explains how black patients were crammed into a two-room annex in the New Biloxi Hospital. As a black physician, Mason was prevented from becoming a member of the hospital staff or joining the Mississippi State Medical Association. He recalls the struggle for recognition by his white colleagues.
As a civil rights activist, Mason is best known for leading a series of wade-ins on segregated Biloxi beach, but he also worked to improve healthcare for black Mississippians. He remembers Dr. Bob Smith, who led the Mississippi chapter of the NAACP Medical Committee for Civil Rights.
In 1965, the Biloxi School District was ordered to completely desegregate all its schools. Mason describes being attacked by a white man with scalding hot coffee after the ruling came down. When asked why he became a civil rights activist, Mason would credit his training as a boy scout and a physician. In his view, medicine and civil rights share an inseparable bond.
PHOTO: History.com
In this episode, we hear from Jobie Martin, a Jackson broadcasting pioneer who broke through the racial barriers of the day with his smooth vocals, jovial personality, and kindhearted nature. The only child of a single mom, Martin grew up in Mississippi at a time when job prospects for African-Americans were limited largely to menial labor. He takes us through his unlikely journey into broadcasting, gives us a sample of his disc jockey radio persona, discusses the challenge of selling advertising on the first black-hosted TV show in Mississippi, and lists some of his famous guests like Mohammad Ali, James Earl Jones, and Mahalia Jackson.
Jobie L. Martin was born in Hattiesburg, Mississippi in 1919. His father, George Martin, died in a car accident when Jobie was an infant. His mother, Leona Scott Martin, scrubbed floors to provide for her son and Jobie recalls her as a strict and protective single parent, not allowing him to play sports for fear of injury. He spent time growing up in Gulfport and Hattiesburg, attending Eureka High School.
While waiting to be called into service during WWII, he traveled to Chicago and enrolled in Worsham mortician school. After his military service, he returned to Chicago and graduated as a mortician, but didn’t like the work, taking a job at St. Luke’s Hospital as an assistant pathologist. He also joined Pilgrim Baptist Church Gospel Choir, under the direction of famed composer Thomas A. Dorsey, and sang with such notable gospel singers as Mahalia Jackson.
The following excerpt is from an article published in the Clarion Ledger on April 1, 2011:
“After returning home to Mississippi to assist family, Jobie worked as an airport porter, but his smooth voice drew the attention of supervisors' who had him announcing the airport's flights over the loud speaker.
From there he sought the job of a radio announcer. Instead, he was sent out to sell ads to black businessmen. He did so well, he was hired for the same job at Jackson's WOKJ. It was in Memphis that Jobie auditioned again for a disc jockey's job and was on the air for eight months until new owners came and spun Jobie back to Jackson.
He settled in as a Disc Jockey at WOKJ where he was known as "the loud mouth of the South". At the urging of his wife, Dorothy, Jobie enrolled in Jackson State College and earned his undergraduate degree. He also played on the Jackson State College football team earning the nickname "the Flash". [at the age of 39!]
Jobie taught school for ten years at Westside Elementary School where he taught Special Education and rehabilitation.
He opened two restaurants in Jackson, Valerie's and Jobie's Restaurant. He also hosted the Jobie Martin Show, becoming the first African American to have a commercial paid television show in Mississippi. He has served on the Board of Hinds Community College for the past 20 years.
His awards includes, Jackson State University Alumni Association Hall of Fame, Jackson State University's Sports Hall of Fame, Phi Beta Sigma Fraternity Inc., Mu Sigma Chapter, L. T. Smith Lifetime Achievement Award, Living Legend, and Mississippi's 2007 Outstanding Older Worker, just to name a few. However he was most proud of his work after retirement as a substitute teacher for the Jackson Public Schools where he continued to be a drum major for a whole new generation of students.”
Jobie Martin died in a car crash in March of 2011, at the age of 93.
Powell Ogletree was hired as the first Southern Miss Alumni Association Secretary in 1953. In this episode, he shares his memories of those early days spent recruiting new students, compiling alumni rolls with current contact information, and raising money for scholarships. One of Ogletree’s first tasks was to organize the group into local chapters. He explains why they chose March 30th as the day each chapter holds its annual meeting.
According to Ogletree, a successful athletic program plays an important part in recruiting new students to a university. He remembers the many hours spent driving Coach Pie Van to various events and how the Alumni Association pushed for radio and tv coverage of Southern Miss football.
The USM Foundation was formed on October 29, 1959 to raise money for academic and athletic scholarships. Powell Ogletree discusses serving as its Executive Secretary and how the foundation has grown over time.
PODCAST EXTRA: USM celebrated its 75th Anniversary with a 2 ½ yearlong fundraising campaign between 1985 and 1987. Ogletree highlights the goals, preparations and outcome of the extended event, as well as, his decision to retire afterwards.
PHOTO: Southernmissalumni.com
Yvonne Arnold of Hattiesburg dropped out of high school to get married in 1955. In this episode, she remembers her decision to get a General Equivalency Diploma or GED, some thirty years later. When Arnold took the GED test in 1985, she scored the highest of anyone in the Hattiesburg area. She explains how a story in the local newspaper led her to enroll at USM as a 48-year-old freshman.
Arnold continued to work fulltime while taking night classes at USM. After two years, it became increasingly difficult to get all the courses she needed at night. She recalls how her son convinced Dr. Aubrey K. Lucas to give his mother a special needs scholarship. After graduating in 1990, Arnold continued working as a USM Archivist until her retirement in 2008.
PODCAST EXTRA: Arnold grew up in Hattiesburg in the 1930s and 40s. She shares her earliest memories of Southern Miss and Dr. R.C. Cook.
BONUS: To learn more about Yvonne Arnold, check out this 2007 story from the Hattiesburg American https://www.newspapers.com/image/279342429
PHOTO: Hattiesburg American
Last week, Mississippi lost a legend of the Civil Rights Movement. Peggy Jean Connor of Hattiesburg owned a beauty shop on Mobile Street in the early 1960s. In this episode, she shares some of her memories of joining the Movement, like becoming a citizenship teacher after hearing a speech by Fannie Lou Hamer, being arrested in Hattiesburg for picketing for voter rights and spending a week in jail, and going to visit Civil Rights activist, Vernon Dahmer at Forrest General Hospital after his home was firebombed by the Ku Klux Klan in 1966.
After Mississippi’s public schools were forced to integrate in 1970, Connor enrolled her daughter in a white Hattiesburg school. She recounts the experience as a positive one.
Peggy Jean Connor passed away on January 13th, 2018
Transport pilots ferried soldiers and supplies between the Pacific Islands during WWII. While the pilots of fighter planes and bombers garnered all the glory, it was the transport pilots whose bravery kept the war going—bringing in cargo, taking out the wounded, delivering mail, escorting fighters to new locations—all while under the constant threat of attack from the enemy and mother nature. In this episode, Nevin Sledge of Cleveland, Mississippi, remembers flying his primitive cargo plane through all kinds of hazardous conditions.
Sledge shares several stories with us about the daily challenges they faced. He recalls how delaying a scheduled flight to Guam until the next morning resulted in the loss of forty wounded men. And how the US Navy construction battalion known as the See Bees, built a landing strip on that island in just ten days.
PODCAST BONUS: On the remote islands, far from US repair facilities, transport crews found creative ways to keep their planes in the air. Sledge recounts having to replace one of his wings using coconut logs and handful of tools.
PHOTO: vg-photo.com
No soldiers faced more hardships than the infantry, during WWII. In this episode, James Mulligan details his time with the 103rd Infantry Division, known as the Cactus Division, as they fought their way across Europe in the winter of 1945.
In the harsh cold, the uniforms the men depended on were barely adequate, according to Mulligan. He describes his army-issued weapons and clothing, as well as, the ready-to-eat meals known as “K-rations” and the four cigarettes each contained. During both world wars, tobacco companies provided free cigarettes to US soldiers and encouraged the families back home to send cartons of ‘smokes’ to the men as well. A practice Mulligan describes in his interview as a “life sentence.”
Mulligan made friends with several of the men he served with on the front lines. He discusses sharing a foxhole and his regret of losing contact with those soldiers after the war.
Podcast Extra: In March of 1945, Mulligan was shot in the leg during a firefight with the Germans in the Upper Rhine Valley. He shares his memories of the hospital in Dijon, France where he was still recovering when Germany surrendered.
PHOTO: euchmh.com
Growing up in the Delta, Gail Goldberg celebrated all the traditional Jewish holidays with her family. In this episode, she describes some of the foods associated with certain holidays such as Chanukah, Rosh Hashanah and Passover and why some foods are forbidden.
Since marrying into the Goldberg family and moving to Greenwood in the late ’70s, Gail and her mother-in-law have worked together to make sure the Jewish traditions are not forgotten. She reflects on how family recipes and practices have evolved as their family has grown.
Of all the Jewish holidays Gail Goldberg’s family observes, Rosh Hashanah is her favorite. She discusses the weeks of planning required to feed all the family and friends who come to celebrate.
PHOTO: Wiki Commons
Growing up in Ruleville, Lisa Burnett learned the basics of southern cooking from her family. In this episode, she remembers helping her grandmother make biscuits and how “Papaw” smoked meat in an old refrigerator.
Burnett moved from Ruleville to New York after college, but she still loves southern cooking. She marvels at how many New Yorkers don’t cook and how much her co-workers love her pimento cheese sandwiches and pulled pork sliders.
Now that she is an adult, Burnett helps plan and prepare the family holiday meals. She explains how three generations work together to make their Christmas Eve dinner a special event. But it’s about more than home cooking and time spent with family and friends. She also makes time to visit as many restaurants as possible, during her trips to Mississippi. Because while New York has plenty of great places to dine out, there’s no place like the South for unique eateries.
Josie Wilson and her new husband moved to Richton, Mississippi in the spring of 1915. Like so many towns built around the sawmills that sprang up during the timber boom, Richton was a small primitive place with no paved streets or sidewalks. In this episode, Wilson remembers how the townspeople were scandalized when she sat with the men at the drugstore soda fountain. When her first child was born nine months to the day they married, she was jokingly thankful the baby had not come early and further damaged her reputation.
Wilson and her husband Lemual purchased the local newspaper soon after moving to Richton. She explains how publishing the paper created connections and opportunities within the community. After Lemual developed a heart condition and was no longer able to work, Josie and her son pitched in to keep the newspaper going. She recalls bartering their printing services in exchange for her daughter’s college tuition.
In her 1973 interview, after 50 + years of publishing the Richton Dispatch, Josie Wilson looked back with pride on their accomplishments. She described how they invested their money, not in the stock market, but in their family and community.
Boe McClure grew up in the Hudsonville community in Marshall County. For decades, he and his father rented farmland from Ruth Finley, owner of the Davis Plantation in Holly Springs. Growing up in the Coldwater River basin, McClure spent a lot of time riding his horse through the woods, hunting and fishing. He remembers how the rich bottomland on Davis Plantation became unusable as beavers began to dam creeks along the basin in the mid-1960s and Miss Ruth’s decision to let nature take over. He discusses the springs that feed the Coldwater River Watershed and how the beavers have made it a haven for wildlife.
Ruth Finley and her sister, Margaret Finley Shackelford, donated their Holly Springs plantation to the National Audubon Society in 1998. McClure details the return of wild turkeys and other game to the area since the Strawberry Plains Sanctuary opened and why it’s important for people to develop a relationship with nature at an early age.
Learn more at http://strawberryplains.audubon.org
PHOTO: Mitch Robinson
As the son of a tenant farmer, Boe McClure of Holly Springs would help his father preserve meats in the family smokehouse. In the episode, he explains how to smoke a ham and remembers how good the final product tasted. Before the days of refrigeration, people would can foods in glass jars to keep them from spoiling. McClure recalls how his family would make their own sausage and can some of it for an easy breakfast.
Sorghum is a type of sugarcane used throughout the South to make molasses. McClure describes the sorghum milling process and how his mother would serve the molasses on biscuits.
PODCAST BONUS: McClure’s family grew peanuts on their farm as a dietary supplement for themselves and their dairy cows. He discusses feeding the peanut vines to the cows at milking time and how his mother would parch the nuts to use in baking.
PHOTO: Horse-powered sorghum mill- http://tnhomeandfarm.com
Like many of their friends and family, McComb natives Glover May and his twin brother Eddie, went to work for the Illinois Central Railroad at the McComb maintenance facility, in 1942. Their father, Glenn May was the boiler foreman in the locomotive shop. Nicknamed “The Storm” by his workers, who would call out “All right, y’all straighten up, here comes the storm,” when he walked into the shop, their father was a strict, task-oriented, company man. In his 2006 interview for the McComb City Railroad Depot museum, Glover May recounts how he and his brother worked seven days a week for 32 cents per hour, with no days off. Even so, his father thought nothing of making his sons work all night to finish a job or to fill in for a sick employee for no extra pay. “He was tough, Glenn May was tough. He was a railroad man, sure was.”
In this episode, Glover May takes us through his 43-year career with IC. He recalls their first job, testing the water in the steam locomotives to see if the boiler needed cleaning. When the May boys were promoted to positions in the boiler shop, their father became their supervisor. May remembers how his dad would try to treat the men’s minor injuries to keep from filing an accident report.
After a train derails, specially-trained crews work until the wreckage is cleared and the tracks repaired. May discusses how he and his brother would cook for such a crew, in a rolling kitchen car. When a railroad maintenance crew is dispatched to the scene of an accident, they stay until the job is done. Glover and Eddie always made sure their crew had lots of good food at every meal. According to May, after the twins retired on August 1, 1985, the kitchen car was retired as well, the end of an era in the age of fast food.
PHOTO CREDIT: McComb City Railroad Depot Museum, http://mcrrmuseum.com/
Mississippi author, Willie Morris, was living in Austin when he was offered a job as Editor of Harper’s Magazine. In this episode, he recalls his decision to move to New York and the magazine’s reputation at that time. When Morris took over as editor in 1967, circulation and revenues were down. He discusses the challenges of overseeing an older staff and his strategy to turn things around. Morris assumed he would be able to continue his career as a writer, even while working as an editor. He explains why the demands on a New York editor’s time made it impossible for him to write.
Willie Morris looks back with pride on his time as the Editor of Harper’s. He reflects on the distinguished authors and journalists who contributed to the magazine’s successful return to its former glory and the role he played.
PHOTO: copyright David F. Morris.
Kent Wyatt’s dad became the Delta State football coach in 1945, when Wyatt was 10 years old. In this episode, he recalls how their entire family lived in the Men’s dormitory while all the boys were off fighting in WWII. After the war was over, enrollment numbers spiked as returning veterans took advantage of the GI Bill. Wyatt discusses how the older men would play tricks on the young freshmen and sophomores.
Having attended the Delta State Demonstration School as a child and later, Cleveland High School, it was only natural that Wyatt would pick Delta State when it was time for college. He remembers playing basketball and becoming a cheerleader to spend time with the girl he liked. In 1956, the Delta State men’s basketball team won the regional tournament and advanced to the Nationals as Wyatt and his fiancé, Janice, tried to make time for a wedding and honeymoon between quarters. After postponing the honeymoon and preparing to compete in the Nationals in Kansas City, they were devastated when the Governor forbid them from participating because they might have to play against racially integrated teams.
PODCAST BONUS: Dr. Kent Wyatt served as President of Delta State University from 1975 until 1999. He reflects on how the school has grown since he first moved to Cleveland.
The U.S. Navy’s Construction Battalions, known as the Seabees, built roads and airfields across the Pacific Theater during WWII. In this episode, James Smith recalls his service with the Seabees beginning in 1943. Smith shares his memories of training with the Marines and the trip through the Panama Canal on the first large ship he ever saw. He also discusses how the Seabees would distill their own bootleg whiskey and his unconventional way of doing laundry aboard their small transport ship.
PODCAST EXTRA: Smith’s last assignment as a Seabee was repairing an airfield on the recently-liberated island of Okinawa. He discusses the Okinawans’ history with the Japanese and the devastating cost of “liberation.”
In 1950, Dr. Sam Spinks began teaching school in Jones County, Mississippi. In a career spanning thirty-five years, he worked to expand the curriculum available to high school students. From his first job as a teacher at Soso and later as the Superintendent of Hattiesburg Public Schools, he developed innovative programs to help children from all backgrounds prepare for life after school.
In this episode, Spinks recalls how he used to take his eighth classes on educational trips at the end of each school year. He explains how HPS developed the State’s first “Alternative School” to help kids with behavioral problems avoid expulsion, hired the first staff psychologist and expanded the special education program.
As times change and maintaining discipline becomes more of a challenge, Spinks feels it is not the students who have changed, but rather, the environment in which they are being raised. He reflects on how that negatively impacts their behavior and recalls one Alternative School success story. He also identifies two trends: one he considers to be a positive for public schools and one negative.
PHOTO: By Woodlot - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=21544903
Founded in 1941, Church Women United is an ecumenical group with local chapters across the US. In this episode, Jane Schutt of Florence, Mississippi, recalls how the group's progressive stand on racial equality caused many chapters in the South to fold. Schutt served as state president of Church Women United from 1960 to 1963. She describes the group’s national program for racial reconciliation introduced by the Methodist members called “Assignment Race” and the daunting task assigned to the Mississippi delegation.
In 1962, Schutt was appointed to the Mississippi Advisory Committee to the US Commission on Civil Rights. Later, when she was named chairperson of the Advisory Committee, her name began appearing in national and local news stories. Schutt explains how that exposure made life difficult for her husband and children. She also remembers the support she received from the Episcopal Church and Church Women United.
Jane Schutt received many awards including the Robert F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr. Award, an Honorary Degree of Doctor of Humanities from the Prentiss Institute, the Mississippi Religious Leadership Conference Award, and the Church Women United’s Valiant Woman Award.
PHOTO: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=5888013
Born in 1906 in Himera, Indiana, Esther Stanton was just 14 years old when she began playing piano at the local nickelodeon. These were the days of silent movies, when musicians set the mood for the flicking images on the big screen. In this episode, she explains how live music was used to enhance the movie-going experience before “talkies” came along.
It was this experience that prepared Stanton for a career as a professional pianist. Along the way, she met several famous entertainers, like Red Skelton, one of the most beloved comedians of the Twentieth Century, who grew up in nearby Vincennes, Indiana. Stanton recalls playing piano for Skelton in home talent shows and discusses his meteoric rise to fame.
When WWII erupted, Stanton joined the Women’s Army Auxiliary Corp or WACS, serving as director of the female dance band. When the WAC became part of the regular army, Stanton chose not to reenlist because of the limited opportunities being offered them. After leaving the WAC, Stanton formed an “all-girl” jazz band with several of her former band-mates. She credits the band's popularity to the shortage of male musicians during the war.
PODCAST EXTRA: While touring with her band in the 1940s, Ester Stanton met, and became friends with, popular pianist and showman, Liberace. She remembers his friendly demeanor and devotion to his mother.
In 1954, as half of a performing duo with her husband, Stanton moved to the Mississippi Gulf Coast. She played and performed until 1966, when she retired in Biloxi.
Lawrence Semski was the Biloxi City Attorney when Hurricane Camille struck on August 18, 1969. In this episode, he recounts how the city government struggled to provide basic services after the storm. After Camille devastated the Gulf Coast, offers of assistance poured in from around the world. Semski remembers how Biloxi Mayor Danny Guice’s professional contacts were the first to arrive with aid.
Next, according to Semski, hundreds of professional contractors descended on Biloxi looking to make some quick money. He explains the process of screening and monitoring these companies to prevent fraud and waste.
Semski characterizes the days following Hurricane Camille as bringing out the best and worst in people. He describes the storm as an equalizer that kindled a spirit of determination to recover and rebuild.
PHOTO: Wiki Commons
Dr. Paul Cotten enrolled at Southern Miss in 1954 with the idea of being a choral director. In this episode, he explains how that led him to a career in music therapy for the treatment of the intellectually challenged. In 1960 Cotton started a music therapy program at Ellisville State School. He describes the how music was used to develop motor skills, affect mood and instill confidence.
One of the major challenges the mentally impaired face is being isolated from the rest of society. Cotten recalls how the Ellisville State School choir helped ease racial and intellectual segregation.
PHOTO: William Carey University http://www.wmcarey.edu
Vernon Dahmer was a Hattiesburg businessman and civil rights activist who helped blacks register to vote. Dahmer’s house was riddled with bullets and firebombed by the Ku Klux Klan on the night of January 10, 1966. Holding off the attackers while his family escaped out the back of the house, Dahmer’s lungs were damaged by the flames and he died the next day. After confessing to Dahmer’s murder, one of the Klansmen agreed to turn state’s evidence against the rest. Buck Wells served as a juror in one of the trials. In this episode, Wells discusses why Dahmer’s efforts put him at odds with the Ku Klux Klan despite being well-liked within the community. He recalls some details of the crime and how the district attorney built an ironclad case.
Prior to the Civil Rights Movement, all-white juries rarely convicted whites of crimes against blacks. Wells explains how their jury drew inspiration from a higher power to reach a guilty verdict. After the jury voted to convict the defendant, the names of the jurors were published in the newspaper. Wells describes the harassing phone calls, as well as, words of support.
PHOTO: Hattiesburg American – Ellie Dahmer holds photo of her late husband
During the first part of the Twentieth Century, Mississippi experienced a timber boom as Northern business interests bought up huge tracts of virgin pine trees and began harvesting the wood with little regard for the future. All that remained when they left, were fields of stumps as far as the eye could see and unemployed timber workers.
When the Hercules Powder Company opened a plant in Hattiesburg in 1925, they brought jobs and a renewed sense of hope to the area. The company put men back to work digging up the seemingly endless supply of stumps and limbs the sawmills left behind to extract the resin the wood contained. The resin was then processed and shipped around the world for use in the manufacture of a variety of products.
In 1925, Buck Wells’ father went to work for the Hercules plant in Hattiesburg. In this episode, he remembers how the town struggled during the Great Depression and the way Hercules looked out for its workers. When he turned 16, Wells went to work for the company, himself, harvesting stumps. He recalls how clear-cutting had devastated the land and how Hercules turned those stumps into gold.
Prior to World War II, Germany and Japan were important customers for the Hercules Plant in Hattiesburg. Wells explains how the loss of that business hurt the local economy until America entered the war. The boom that followed would grow the company into a giant of industry, and continued until the end of the 1950s, when tree stumps became increasingly hard to find. Wells discusses the company’s cost-cutting efforts and how the move to management led him to a second career. He retired from Hercules in 1980, after 45 years with the company.
Founded in 1889, the Neshoba County Fair is the largest campground fair in the nation. In this episode, Mac Alford discusses his family’s long history with the fair beginning with the story of how his grandparents built their first fair cabin in the early 1900s. According to Alford, the early fair cabins were primitive structures built with reclaimed materials. He explains why the cabins require yearly maintenance and recalls how his father enjoyed the work.
Alford began coming to his family’s cabin when he was just a toddler. He recounts his earliest memories and the family food traditions that made their time at the fair so special. One of the traditional entertainments at the fair is harness horse racing. Alford remembers how his family would travel to different events to watch their friends compete.
One of Alford’s favorite things to do at the Neshoba County Fair is to sit on the front porch of his family’s cabin. He describes the peaceful mornings there and the joy of watching friends and former students pass by.
PHOTO: http://www.neshobacountyfair.org
Judge Harvey Ross grew up in Clarksdale, Mississippi, in the 1920s when racial segregation was absolute and unquestioned. After college, Ross joined his brother’s law firm and represented many black clients. During this time, his own views on race and segregation evolved. As demand for civil rights began to grow, a Japanese Episcopal priest, Daisuke Kitagawa, came to Clarksdale to help ease racial tensions. In this episode, Ross remembers the meetings Kitagawa hosted between white and black community leaders and how those meeting laid the groundwork for future projects.
Ross was served in the State House of Representatives from 1948 to 1956. During that time, the White Citizens Council was formed by Robert “Tut” Patterson, to maintain segregation in the South. Ross recalls the group’s initial popularity and their office in Greenwood.
Coahoma Opportunities, Inc. was organized in 1965 with grant money from a Community Action program, set up by the Kennedy administration. Ross discusses the challenges of dealing with the all-white county board of supervisors. And he looks back with pride at the positive effect that C.O.I. has had on the entire community.
Hattiesburg restaurateur and author Robert St. John had been majoring in Communications when he took a job managing a small delicatessen. In this episode, he recalls how that experience lead him to a career. While working at the deli and as a waiter, St. John returned to college, studying Hospitality Management, where he preferred to spend his time designing restaurants. He opened his first one in the late 80s, the Crescent City Grill where he began to establish a reputation as a chef and food writer.
After 29 years in business, Robert St. John knows what it takes to be a successful Hattiesburg restaurateur. With five unique restaurants, currently in operation and another opening soon, he discusses what makes his home town special and how to give customers what they want. He also describes two of his newer dining concepts and the process of creating them.
Whenever St. John is on the road, he always seeks out locally owned places to eat and shop. He believes these one-of-a-kind businesses are what gives a town its unique identity.
PHOTO: Hattiesburg American
Lunch counters and cafeterias have long provided time-strapped Americans with fast, affordable food. In this episode, restaurateur and author, Robert St. John discusses the evolution of Hattiesburg dining, beginning with three early Hub City eateries and why they were close to the train station. He also recalls the Frost Top, a franchise fixture from the 50s - 70s, all the times he ate there and what made the Frost Top so special.
Throughout the 20th Century, large companies and boarding houses provided plate lunches for hungry workers. St. John describes some of Hattiesburg’s favorite lunchrooms and their “meat and three” menus. For hungry shoppers, the department store lunch counters provided a ready respite, before eventually being replaced by mall food courts. St. John remembers some of Hattiesburg’s department store food fare and hanging out at the Cloverleaf Mall.
PODCAST EXTRA: Jimmy Faughn, an early Hattiesburg restaurateur, operated several eateries including The Collegian, Le Faughn’s, and the Sea Lodge. St. John reflects on Faughn’s reputation as the fine dining patriarch of Hattiesburg.
PHOTO: Coney Island Café in the same location since 1923.
As the cost of a college degree soars and the debate between a classical versus career-oriented curriculum rages, corporate recruiters are beginning to recognize the value of a Liberal Arts degree in the business world. In this episode, Donald Drapeau recalls his interest in History and the decision to attend Southern Miss.
After receiving an undergraduate degree from USM, Drapeau studied Economic History at West Virginia and the University of Pennsylvania. He explains how that experience landed him a job with the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. Focusing on Financial History led Drapeau to became a successful currency trader. He details his work with the International Monetary Market and using supercomputers to spot trends.
Drapeau looks back fondly on his undergraduate days at Southern Miss. He remembers how lunch with President Emeritus Aubrey K. Lucas led him to establish an annual Liberal Arts Symposium at USM and explains how the spirit of cooperation within the university has inspired him to give even more.
Growing up in Rosedale, Mississippi, Stanley Ferguson’s house was surrounded by cotton fields. In this episode, he remembers watching the airplanes fly overhead and his decision to become a crop-duster.
In the early days of crop-dusting, the airplanes were usually small, re-purposed military surplus. Ferguson describes how crop-dusting equipment has grown in size, complexity, and price. He also explains how crop-dusters have adopted new methods to increase efficiency and quality.
Podcast Extra: Even though cotton production has evolved over time, some aspects of farm life remain unchanged. For those who didn’t grow up next to a cotton field, Ferguson defines the term “Boll Wars.”
PHOTO: By Stefan Krause, Germany - Own work, FAL, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=28262700
Richard Giannini began his professional career as a sports information director, first at the University of Florida and later at Duke University, where he produced a weekly sports TV program. That experience landed Giannini a job with the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) producing the ABC College Football Highlights show in 1976. In this episode, he recalls those primitive days of sports television production and the grueling schedule he maintained.
Broadcast television afforded college football limited nationwide exposure. Giannini discusses how ESPN changed longstanding gridiron traditions by increasing the amount of primetime coverage available. By offering live college football—first on Thursday nights and later Tuesdays and Wednesdays as well, smaller schools could reach new audiences never before possible. However, these new opportunities came at a cost.
With so many sports networks vying for content, college football teams have more opportunities to be seen on TV than ever. Giannini reflects on the hazards of overexposure versus broadcast revenue. He explains how the trend to schedule more weekday games forces families to watch games instead of attending them. This trend, combined with higher ticket prices and streaming internet access, can mean smaller crowds, even as the number of viewers continues to grow.
Richard Giannini served as the Southern Miss Athletic Director from April 1999 – Dec. 2011.
PHOTO: http://www.collegesportssolutions.com/the-css-team/richard-giannini
The Battle for Guadalcanal, known as Operation Watchtower was the first major offensive by Allied Forces against the Nation of Japan during WWII. Willie Hammack served on the crew of the U.S. Navy destroyer Sterett (DD-407) during the Battle for Guadalcanal. In this episode, he recalls their mission to support the Marines on the islands while fighting off the Imperial Japanese Navy.
During the Third Battle for Savo Island in WWII, half of Hammack’s shipmates were killed or injured. As the night battle raged on Hammack describes assisting the ship’s doctor, despite being wounded himself and holding a friend’s hand as he died. He remembers the fierce ship-to-ship fighting and the advantage radar gave the US Navy. After the battle was over he recounts the 20+ burials at sea and the welcome back they received from the Pacific fleet when they reached Pearl Harbor.
PHOTO: By U.S. Navy, photographed from a USS Chenango (CVE-28) aircraft. - Official U.S. Navy photo 80-G-321653 from the U.S. Navy Naval History and Heritage Command, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1991079
William Locke was living in the Gulfport Naval Home in 1999, when he shared his memories of Pearl Harbor with us. In this episode, he recalls with pride being assigned to the battleship U.S.S. Pennsylvania, in 1939, the flagship of the Pacific fleet. He remembers how they were sent to Hawaii for a three-month training mission at the Pearl Harbor Naval Base, a place they had heard of, but knew little about.
That three-month assignment stretched into two years and Locke was waiting for their return trip stateside, at which time he would be discharged and on his way home. History had other plans.
Locke recounts the events leading up to the “Day which will live in infamy.” How he and a friend left the ship that Saturday to watch a University of Hawaii football game. He recalls waking up the next morning as Japanese dive bombers began to attack the fleet. During the battle, Locke looked on as the low-flying enemy planes relentlessly attacked anything that moved. He describes feeling helpless and relates how a shipmate’s body saved him from an exploding bomb.
After the attack, Locke compiled damage and casualty reports for the Navy. He explains how the U.S.S. Pennsylvania’s trip to dry dock for routine maintenance the day before, saved them from a torpedo, but how claims from the Japanese of sinking what they thought was the Admiral’s ship, lead his parents to think he was dead for ten days. He also discusses the horrible things he witnessed and why his memories still haunt him today.
The Council of Federated Organizations or COFO, was organized in 1961, to promote voter registration in Mississippi. In this episode, Benton County, Mississippi native Ernestine Scott recalls joining the group as a teenager. She also remembers one civil rights worker arrested for attending a basketball game.
Prior to the Voting Rights Act, election officials used reading comprehension tests to prevent blacks from registering to vote. Ernestine Scott describes how they worked to prepare for the test.
Growing up in Benton County, Mississippi in the 1950s, Ernestine Scott had limited contact with white people. Her father would shield his children from visitors to their farm to protect them. Her first impressions of the outside world and the role of African-Americans in it came from television programs of the day. In response to depictions of blacks as porters and maids and personified by such characters as Amos and Andy, Scott’s father would tell her that black people were better than that and someday, whites would understand the need to show them in a better light.
In this episode, Scott shares her memories of that time, like being chastised by a white man for drinking from the wrong water fountain, how her mother warned her of the need to be careful when speaking to a white person, and her father’s prediction for a better future. She also recalls riding 12 miles on an overcrowded bus to reach the county’s one black school each day.
PHOTO: Benton County courthouse
Ocean Springs native Jai Johnny Johanson got his first big break as a professional drummer in 1966 when he joined Otis Redding's band. Over the next couple of years, he played for several big names including Percy Sledge, Joe Tex, Johnny Jenkins and Clarence Carter, but by 1968, found himself struggling to make ends meet. Johanson was about to leave the south and move to New York to pursue a career in Jazz when he heard of a young guitar player named Duane Allman, looking to form a new band. The two men were soon joined by bassist Barry Oakley and that trio would serve as the foundation for the Allman Brother Band.
In this episode, Johanson shares his memories of that time including the phone call he got from Cadillac Henry about joining Otis Redding’s band. He recalls going to see Percy Sledge at the Apollo and how he got the nickname, Jaimoe. Finally, he discusses what made Duane Allman such an exceptional musician and the legacy of the Allman Brothers Band.
Photo Credits: Carl Vernlund
Born in 1948 in Montezuma, Kansas, Stanley Giesbrecht was the fifteenth of seventeen children. His grandparents were Russian Mennonites who escaped religious persecution by immigrating to Canada where they joined a group who had left the Church’s general assembly to follow the teachings of a Mennonite reformist named John Holdeman. That group became the Church of God in Christ, Mennonite or Holdeman Mennonites.
Giesbrect moved to Brooksville, Mississippi as a young man, searching for a place where he could live the quiet life of a Mennonite farmer. In this episode, he explains the difference between Holdeman Mennonites and other Mennonites. He recounts how their preacher convinced him to serve the Church as a teacher at the Southaven Mennonite School, and explains why they don’t believe in education beyond the eighth grade.
Podcast Extra: According to Giesbrecht, the Church doesn’t allow its members to vote, participate in politics or serve in the military. He recalls how he worked in a hospital for two years during the Vietnam War to fulfill his obligation to the nation.
PHOTO: Canadaalive.wordpress.com
Growing up in a small town fosters feelings of community through shared experiences. In this episode, Georgia Taylor shares her memories of Macon, Mississippi during the 1930s, 40s, and 50s. She recalls the government-issued coupon books used to ration commodities during WWII and how her mother would buy groceries one day at a time. It was a time when people didn’t lock their doors and grocery stores would delivery your food and even put it in the refrigerator for you.
As teenagers in a small town, Taylor and her friends found ways to pass the long summers, together. She recounts the good times at the Dreamland Theater, dances at the American Legion Hut, getting sunburned at Choctaw Lake, and trips to her grandmother’s farm. One of Taylor’s favorite places was Farris Brook’s Book Store. She recalls buying ice cream there and how the children would sit on the floor and read comic books.
When Choctaw Indian Chief Cameron Wesley was arrested for murder in 1939, the story made national headlines. Taylor discusses Wesley’s two trials: the first in a Mississippi court and the second under Choctaw Tribal Law.
The Korean Conflict began in June of 1950, when North Korea invaded South Korea. Aubrey Freshour of Noxubee County joined the Army in October of 1951, as the war was heating up. In this episode, he shares his memories of that time like how his basic training got off to a rough start, the long journey from San Francisco to the front lines, and the importance of wearing dry socks during the harsh Korean winters.
During his sixteen-month deployment, Freshour often experienced times of loneliness and uncertainty. He credits his creator and letters from home with giving him the strength to make it though and shares with us the full experience from beginning to end.
PHOTO: Boston.com
As the son of a Noxubee County sharecropper, Aubrey Freshour learned to be self-sufficient at a young age. During harvest time, he and his six siblings would pick cotton after they got home from school. Then it was time to do the chores and finish their homework by the light of a coal-oil lamp.
In this episode, Freshour recalls how his family grew their own food and cured their own meats. In the 1940s, living in the country meant finding creative ways to have fun. He remembers how they would swim during the summers, hold impromptu dances and spend New Year’s Eve serenading the neighbors.
As a teenager, Freshour looked for opportunities to make extra money. He remembers helping to build a new highway near his house and the primitive roadbuilding equipment they used.
Photo: Mississippi Dept. of Archives and History
As the son of a WWII Marine fighter pilot, Hardy Stennis of Macon, Mississippi was determined to follow in his father’s footsteps. In this episode, Stennis discusses his military career spent as a combat pilot during the 1950s & 60s. Determined to see the world, he requested to be stationed in Suga, Japan immediately after graduating flight school. At that time, regulations required that new graduates be assigned to a stateside training squadron, but somehow Stennis was granted his request. He remembers how a veteran pilot named Trigger Long took him under his wing and gave him the chance he needed.
According to Stennis, there were plenty of ways for a young pilot to get into trouble in Japan in those days. He credits the fatherly advice of a major who encouraged him to stay away from wild living and stay in shape if he wanted to excel as a fighter pilot. It was the major who convinced Stennis to try out of a local rugby team in Yokohama.
Stennis goes on to detail his involvement in the Vietnam War. He remembers a mission to destroy a ferry in Laos, wiping out a large group of North Vietnamese soldiers attacking the Fifth Marines, and an altercation afterwards with an overbearing reporter.
PHOTO: Virtavia.com
Ernest Potter boarded a troop ship bound for Italy on September 5, 1944, the same day his daughter was born. In this episode, he shares his memories of receiving the news a month later and meeting boxing legend Joe Louis. He also describes the luxurious accommodations of his first post and the primitive conditions of his second.
Working an air traffic controller with the Allied Forces, Ernest Potter’s group supported the British 8th Army. He discusses how much tea the British drank during the course of a day, how the Germans would shell their positions at night and recounts a couple of opportunities he had to aid a young Italian girl and a German POW.
As the son of a Choctaw sharecropper in the early 1950s, Hubert Wesley had limited opportunities to further his education beyond the basics. In this episode, he recalls how a Missionary Baptist preacher, Willie Nix and his wife Ethel brought him from Mashulaville to Birmingham. The couple took him into their home and found him a job at a local service station. Her brother, Charles Wells, an accountant with Hayes Aircraft Company, began tutoring young Wesley and teaching him the skills required to land a good paying job.
It was Wells’ determination to instill confidence in Wesley that led him to suggest they apply to be contestants on Strike it Rich, a controversial TV gameshow that pitted people with hard-luck stories against each other for the chance to win $500. Wesley describes their trip to New York City to compete on the gameshow in March of 1954. His story touched the nation and donations and job offers poured in, afterwards.
Wesley accepted a job with Hayes Aircraft on Wells’ recommendation and details his career with the company until his retirement at the age of 55. His story is remarkable for the way people responded to his earnest efforts at self-improvement.
Hubert Wesley was only five when his family left the Choctaw reservation and became sharecroppers. In this episode, he shares his memories of how they came to live in Noxubee county and the hard times they endured. As the son of a Choctaw sharecropper, Wesley worked year-round, cutting timber and chopping cotton. He recalls the primitive lifestyle and the spirit of cooperation it fostered within the Choctaw community.
After Wesley’s family harvested their crops each fall, they were paid to help the white farmers. He explains how the Choctaws were treated differently from their white coworkers and recounts paying ten cents for a ride to Macon and sitting with black customers at the cinema.
Photo: Mississippi Dept. of Archives and History
Mr. F.L. Mills of New Augusta, grew up during the Great Depression of the 1930s. In this episode, he recalls how his father made sure their friends and neighbors had enough food to eat. As the son of a yeoman farmer, Mills learned to make do with hand-me-down shoes and homemade toys, but even through the worst of times, he remembers the family always got new clothes for Easter.
During the 1930s, farmers depended on credit provided by furnish merchants until their crops could be sold. Mills recalls a humorous story about one shopkeeper in New Augusta who apparently had selective hearing.
When Mills’ father died from a stroke in 1935, the family learned that he had mortgaged the farm to help out his relatives. The family ended up losing the farm and suffered great financial hardship. Mills discusses his decision to run away from home at the age of 16 and join the Civilian Conservation Corps.
PHOTO: Life Magazine
Becky Stowe, of Lucedale, is the South Mississippi Director of Forest Programs for the Nature Conservancy. In this episode, she explains how they work to restore biodiversity to their longleaf pine preserves, the important role fire plays in controlling the underbrush in a longleaf forest and how foliage lies dormant, waiting for the opportunity a fire creates.
Maintaining a longleaf forest through prescribed burnings, improves habitats for birds and wildlife. Stowe reveals how animals avoid being harmed when the underbrush is burned away. She also discusses how the Nature Conservancy works with Camp Shelby to protect its wildlife and natural resources and why they call gopher tortoises the chicken McNuggets of the forest.
Extended conflicts in the middle east have meant extended deployments for our troops. Time spent away from home, often in combat situations, can be stressful for soldier and family alike. In this episode, Brigade Commander Trent Kelly discusses a variety of challenges faced by the modern military family. Since joining the army in 1985, Kelly has been deployed to Iraq multiple times. He shares how growing up in Union, Mississippi, his family and his church inspired him to serve, the periods of adjustments that soldiers and their families face once they are reunited, and why it is so important for them to have a core support group of family and friends.
Additionally, Kelly offers his prospective on the needs of our veterans, including an overhaul of the VA medical system and problems related to PTSD or Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Learning to recognize the symptoms of PTSD has taught him that the soldiers who need treatment the most are the least likely to ask for help.
In 1969, two professors from Millsaps and Tougaloo, Jim Loewen and Charles Sallis, decided to write a Mississippi History textbook with the help of their graduate students. Mississippi: Conflict and Change was considered a ground-breaking textbook when it was published in 1974. Despite receiving universal critical acclaim, the book was banned from use in Mississippi classrooms by the State Textbook Purchasing Board.
In this episode, Dr. Jeanne Middleton Hairston, a member of the team of graduate students who assisted in writing the book, discusses the felt need for a more inclusive narrative in teaching Mississippi history. She also recalls their efforts to convince the State to reconsider its ruling and the decision to file a lawsuit against the Board.
Podcast Extra: Thirty-five years after winning their lawsuit against the State Textbook Purchasing Board, Hairston reflects on the judge’s ruling and the importance of history in making Mississippi a better place to live.
Prior to desegregation in 1968, black students in Ocean Springs, Mississippi attended Keys High School. In this episode, Jeanne Meggs remembers the dedicated teachers there and how they pushed her to succeed. She also recalls how the schools were separate, but not equal when it came to resources. And she explains how issues still arose as to the treatment of black students, even after the schools in Ocean Springs integrated.
Even so, Meggs looks back favorably on her childhood in Ocean Springs. Despite the turbulent social upheaval of the 1960s, the one constant she recalls, was the caring and charitable nature of the people who lived there. Since retiring, Meggs has returned to Ocean Springs. She describes it as a community with a historically progressive outlook. Finally, she reflects on how growing up there gave her the confidence to achieve her goals.
PHOTO - msmohp.com
Sidney Land of Los Angeles joined the U.S. Navy in 1952 after graduating high school, so he was well into his military career by the time he came to Vietnam in the mid-60s. He eventually became a patrol officer on a PBR (patrol boat river) working to disrupt enemy supply lines along the upper Saigon river. Because of his experience and interest in Vietnamese culture, he became an advisor for several of the South Vietnamese boat crews that patrolled alongside the U.S. Navy crews.
In this episode, Land discusses how he earned the respect of the Vietnamese by learning their culture, recalls being the guest of honor at a funeral for a Vietnam boat captain, and recounts a moonlight river battle with the Viet Cong that landed him and two of his crew in a MASH unit.
This interview was conducted in 2002 at the U.S. Naval Home in Gulfport, MS that Hurricane Katrina destroyed in 2005.
Photo: Aad Born, Flickr.com
In 1938, two aspiring young writers, Greenville native Shelby Foote and his best friend Walker Percy, drove to Oxford in search of legendary author William Faulkner. Percy refused to get out of the car, but Foote walked up to the front door of Rowan Oak, knocked and introduced himself. Thus began a friendship that would last until Faulkner’s death in 1962.
In this episode, Foote describes Oxford’s native son as a gracious and interesting host and yet a deeply unhappy man who struggled with drinking and depression. Someone who was a deep thinker and yet preferred the company of the common man over the intellectual – a hunting story over a critical analysis of his work.
Foote concludes by sharing what, in his opinion, makes Faulkner such an exceptional writer and relates a humorous story about one of his famous binges.
Irene Smith was 17 years old when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. As her older brother prepared to go off to fight for his country, Smith began to search for some way she too could serve during this time of national crisis. When the women’s branch of the U. S. Naval Reserve, known as the WAVES (Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service) was established in July of 1942, she went to the recruiting office to enlist, but was turned away because the minimum age at that time was 20.
In this episode, Smith recalls biding her time until she met the age requirement by going to business school, working nights in a factory and picking up shifts at the local five and dime. When she was finally old enough to join, Smith trained as a mechanic. She explains that although women were allowed to perform many important jobs during WWII, old sexist attitudes remained. Smith details how gender bias affected her role as an aviation machinist’s mate. She also looks back fondly at the Chief Petty Officer they called Pappy Vaughn.
For many of us, family holiday traditions become cherished childhood memories. In this episode, Robert St. John recalls the Hattiesburg Christmas Parade, his family’s traditional Christmas Eve meal, the annual shopping trip to New Orleans and Maison Blanche’s perennial snowman, Mr. Bingle.
Family Christmas traditions cover everything from how the tree is decorated to when the presents are opened. St. John remembers his Christmas mornings growing up and reflects on how couples blend old traditions together to form new ones.
Season’s Greetings from Mississippi Moments!
PHOTO CREDIT: Mr. Bingle in the Krewe of Jingle parade. (Photo: Julie Dermansky) GoNOLA.com
The term “comfort food” is used to describe those dishes that remind us of home and family.
In this episode, Randy Yates co-owner of the Ajax Diner in Oxford discusses his idea of comfort food. He shares his memories of dishes his mother prepared for the family growing up as well as the wide variety of foods they enjoyed at the Neshoba County Fair every year.
When Yates and his business partner opened the Ajax Diner in Oxford, they decided to offer a quality plate lunch. He discusses what the average college student wants, the large variety of home-style dishes they offer and explains why the term “comfort food” is no misnomer.
After graduating pharmacy school, Louise Lynch and her husband purchased a drugstore in her hometown of Waveland. In this episode, she discusses a variety of topics including her time at Ole’ Miss during WWII, the challenge of being accepted as a pharmacist by those who knew her as a child, and issues related to civil rights.
When Lynch’s husband passed away in 1963, leaving her to raise seven daughters alone, she found comfort, continuity and invaluable assistance within the tightknit community. Lynch passed away on July 12, 2016 at the age of 93.
No one has more of a passion for good food than Hattiesburg’s own Robert St. John. As a food writer and restaurateur, St. John has found the recipe for successfully translating his love of cooking into a successful career. Through the popularity of his eateries, cook books and food columns, one readily sees his complete understanding of the southern palate. An understanding he credits to his upbringing.
In this episode, St. John discusses his Hattiesburg roots and how his family’s Thanksgivings have changed through the years. He remembers his grandmother as a great cook and hostess. And he explains how the smell of a roux still reminds him of Thanksgivings at her house.
Many of the recipes St. John prepares on Thanksgivings today have been passed down from his mother and grandmother. Even so, he still manages to add his own touches.
Podcast extra: Even though he knows he could do a lot of business on holidays such as Thanksgiving and Christmas, St. John feels it’s more important for his employees to be at home with their families on those days.
Happy Thanksgiving from Mississippi Moments.
Growing up in Cataula, Georgia, Helen Grant was always involved in sports. In this episode, she remembers her parent’s unwavering support through high school, college, and beyond. Helen Grant began her college career at Berry College in North Georgia. It was there she met Coach Kay James, who encouraged her to play volleyball and softball, in addition to basketball. When James took a job at Southern Miss after Grant’s freshman year, Grant decided to come along the ride.
Before Kay James came to Southern Miss, women’s basketball had been largely ignored. Grant describes how Coach James built up the team and generated excitement. After graduation, Grant remained active in sports, first as coach and later as an administrator. She credits Coach James for giving her a chance and looks back with pride on her role in building up women’s sports at USM.
Helen Grant was inducted into the Southern Miss Sports Hall of Fame in 1993.
Keith Coursey of Hattiesburg was trained to be an industrial forester—learning how to grow trees like any other crop. Now a prescription forester for the De Soto National Forest, he explains how prescription forestry requires a much broader scope of knowledge.
The clear cutting of Mississippi’s longleaf pine forests during the period between 1870 – 1930, radically altered our state’s ecosystem. After the longleaf forests were clear cut, loblolly pines were planted in their place because they were easier to cultivate and reached maturity faster. In this episode Coursey details the new plan to restore our biodiversity, discusses how fire helps the longleaf flourish and how the two species battle for dominance.
As a machine gunner in the U.S. Army during WWII, Robert Leslie survived some of the bloodiest battles of the European Theater. In this episode, he shares some of those memories that still haunt his dreams. He recalls his company’s first battle to take Saint Dié, France in November of 1944 and how his soldiers were saved from a booby-trapped roadblock by a herd of pigs.
Later, as the Allied Forces pushed across the Siegfried Line, a defensive wall along Germany’s western border, Leslie endured bitter cold, deprivation, and the anguish of losing so many of his fellow soldiers to the horrors of modern warfare.
The podcast ends on a high note as he remembers the 761st Tank Battalion, the first armored combat group comprised of African-Americans. Even whites from the segregated South recognized the bravery and skills of these tankers and Leslie credits them with saving his life on more than one occasion.
Art Cissell became a professional drummer in St. Louis during the Big Band Era. In this episode, he remembers the St. Louis music scene of the 1930s & 40s. Cissell began drumming at the age of five when his father gave him a real snare drum to pass the time while quarantined with the measles. He joined his first Big Band in 1936 at the age of 16. Cissell describes working full time during the day and playing the drums, nights and weekends.
Even though the country was racially segregated during the Big Band Era, musicians often crossed color lines to play together. Cissell recalls sitting in with some of the most famous musicians of the day and playing the St. Louis Harlem Club until the sun came up.
After years of playing in Big Bands, Cissell took a job at Keesler Air Force Base as an electronics instructor. He recounts how he and other Gulf Coast musicians formed The Star Dusters in 1968.
Photo: Cab Calloway, FSU World Music Online.
Imogene Borganelli of Greenville graduated from Ole’ Miss with dreams of becoming a medical technician. “My father had been a superintendent and my mother had been a teacher and I said, I did not intend to teach school. I didn’t want to starve to death.” It was the chance to coach girls’ basketball at Shaw High School in 1950 that lead her to become a teacher, anyway. In this episode, she remembers when her team beat the team of her friend – coaching legend Margaret Wade.
The Mississippi Humanities Council was founded in 1972 with a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities. Borganelli details the first Scholar-In-Residence Program. Borganelli served on the Mississippi Humanities Council for six years. She looks back with pride on her time with the Council and reflects on its importance to the state.
Podcast Extra - Dr. Cora Norman was the founding Executive Director of the Humanities Council and served on it for 24 years. Borganelli describes her friend as the epitome of the what is good about the Humanities.
To celebrate Rosh Hashanah, this week’s MSMO features Carolyn Katz discussing her Jewish grandmothers. She begins by sharing her memories of how the small Jewish community in Kosciusko would always gather to celebrate traditional holidays like Rosh Hashanah.
Katz then recalls her great grandmother, Helene Mayer, a Jewish immigrant from Germany, who ran a boarding house in New Orleans to support her children after the untimely death of her husband. Katz remembers her as a matriarch who was loved by many.
During the summers growing up, Katz would often travel by train from Durrant to New Orleans to visit her grandmother. She remembers Grandmother Carrie as fun-loving and untraditional except when it came to her Jewish faith.
Katz’s mother, Edna, quit school at the age of 16 to open her own stenography business in New Orleans. She describes how Edna adjusted to small town life in Kosciusko.
Yoset Altamirano grew up in Tegucigalpa, Honduras. After graduation, she spent five years teaching music at a private school, but felt frustrated that music education was not emphasized more in her native country. In this episode, she recalls trying to instill an appreciation of music in her students and in their parents as well.
Altamirano soon received a scholarship to attend university but because music was not offered as a major, studied marketing instead. She still made time to perform in plays and opera and while working on a production of an opera by Verdi she met her husband who was a classical musician studying at the University of Southern Mississippi. After they married in 1998, she travelled with him to Hattiesburg where she auditioned for the choir and was awarded a scholarship.
According to Altamirano, studying music in the United States was a great opportunity. At the time the interview was conducted in 2002, she related feeling torn between staying here and returning to Honduras.
As a third generation fisherman, Clyde Brown grew up hunting and fishing on the Gulf Coast. Even as he pursued a career with International Paper, he worked to preserve the natural resources of the Gulf and protect the interests of fishermen. In 1982, Brown worked to dredge out an access canal into Bayou Heron after it became filled-in through disuse. He recalls how they raised the funds for a landing to make Bayou Heron accessible for everyone.
Due to his interest in preserving our marine resources, Brown was appointed to the Gulf of Mexico Program for Fisheries. He describes his work with the program and how his desire to establish a reserve in Jackson County led the Grand Bay National Estuarine Research Reserve or NERR. Brown credits his wife’s pecan pie for sealing the deal.
Clyde Brown was awarded NOAA’s Environmental Hero Award in recognition of his thirty-year commitment to coastal conservation. He looks back on the occasion with humor and humility.
Sank Powe of Mound Bayou became the head baseball coach of Cleveland High School in 1971, one year after school desegregation. In this episode, he recalls the resistance he encountered both from white parents and the black community. As a coach of high school boys and girls for twenty-five years, Powe developed a coaching style that he describes as a mixture of enthusiasm, motivation and fear.
Looking back on his career, Powe points with pride to the impact he has had on his students and the importance of chemistry between a coach and his players. He also explains his philosophy of walking the walk in all aspects of life.
As Hurricane Katrina churned across the Gulf of Mexico in late summer of 2005, Steve Grimm of Picayune was busy attending to the daily challenges of running Highlands Community Hospital (then Crosby Memorial Hospital). While the storm ravaged the Gulf Coast on the morning of August 29, he and his staff tried to save medical records and equipment as the roof blew off the building.
In the episode, Grimm describes the situation they faced the morning after including, no security, only backup generators for power and shortages of food, fuel and other basic necessities of life. He explains how they began to pick up the pieces and prepare for the next time even as they struggled to return to something close to normalcy.
According to Grimm, lessons learned from Hurricane Katrina will not be wasted. He is proud of how his hospital staff stood up to adversity and confident that they will be better prepared moving forward.
Prior to the Voting Rights Act of 1965, African-Americans across the South were denied the right to vote through the use of poll taxes, literacy tests and other tactics of suppression. In 1964, David Kendall was a 20-year-old Indiana college student. In this episode, he recalls coming to Mississippi to participate in the voter registration drive known as Freedom Summer.
Over the course of that summer, Kendall would be jailed multiple times. He shares his memories of that first arrest and being introduced to the best cheeseburger in Holly Springs. In preparing for Freedom Summer, Civil Rights workers received extensive training in a variety of tactics, but he explains how growing up on a farm proved surprisingly useful in helping to gain the confidence of black farmers in the Delta.
Image: Voter Registration Holly Springs, McCain Library & Archives, USM
Thad “Pie” Vann was head football coach at Southern Miss from 1948 until 1968, racking up an impressive 19 winning seasons and two national championships. But in this episode, we learn that coaching was not his first choice.
Growing up in the small town of Magnolia, Vann wanted to play professional baseball more than anything. It was his high school football coach that encouraged him to go to college before trying out for a minor league team. During his four years at Ole’ Miss, Vann excelled at football and baseball, hoping to play in the big leagues after graduation. He credits Coach Pete Shields for helping him prepare for a different career path.
Vann was still considering major league baseball after graduating college in 1929, but jumped at the chance to coach football at Meridian High School because of a desire to help his younger sister to attend college. It was while he was at Meridian, USM Coach Reed Green asked him to come to Southern Miss as an assistant. Eventually, he became head coach and achieved national recognition over the next twenty years.
Pie Vann was inducted into the Mississippi Sports Hall of Fame in 1971 and National Football Foundation Hall of Fame in 1987.
After graduating college in California, Dolphus Weary returned to Mendenhall while job hunting.
In this episode, his wife Rosie Weary recalls their decision to join the Mendenhall Ministries. She describes how the Mendenhall Ministries established a 150 acre farm to teach their young people a good work ethic and explains how the food they grow benefits the entire community.
The programs developed by the Mendenhall Ministries have been designed to address specific needs within the community:
- When local African-American children needed constructive recreational activities, it was the Mendenhall Ministries that found the solution.
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In the early 1970s, The Mendenhall Ministries recognized a need for their own medical clinic. She recounts how they met that need.
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As Mississippi schools integrated in 1970, black parents realized the children were not as prepared as their white counterparts. Weary discusses the formation of the Genesis One School.
Weary concludes by pointing with pride to their many success stories. To learn more about the Mendenhall Ministries, go to http://www.mendenhallministries.org .
The Illinois Central railroad and eight affiliated Harriman lines had traditionally dealt separately with each craft union (boilermakers, blacksmiths, etc.) giving the companies an unfair advantage during contract negotiations in the minds of the unions. When the unions formed a "System Federation" in June of that year, the companies refused to recognize the group and began preparing for a system-wide strike.
Harry Marsalis was a seventeen year old machinist apprentice working at the Illinois Central railroad maintenance shop in McComb when the strike began on September 30th. In this episode, he describes how the company prepared in advance of the strike by building walled compounds and hiring northern strikebreakers. According to Marsalis, when the strikebreaker train arrived in McComb three days later, 100 strikers responded to the rock-throwing strikebreakers by shooting the train cars to pieces before the train would escape to New Orleans. Reports of 30 dead and 100 wounded strikebreakers were denied by the company
Marsalis describes how the town became an armed camp as martial law was declared by the governor, complete with hundreds of state militiamen, machine gun towers and searchlights around the company offices.
After two long years the strike was considered a failure and many of the strikers including Marsalis were forced to leave town looking for work.
Julius Lopez of Biloxi graduated high school in 1926 without any career plans beyond a goal of attending Tulane. In this episode, he explains his decision to attend Loyola University instead.
When legendary coach Clark Shaughnessy came to Loyola in 1927, Julius Lopez was the third string quarterback. He describes how he went from third to first in just one game and was thereafter “under Shaughnessy’s wing.”
As quarterback for Loyola, Lopez had many fellow Mississippians as teammates. He remembers the spirited games they played against Ole’ Miss in 1927 and ’28 and Loyola’s 1928 season opener against the Fighting Irish of Notre Dame.
Joseph Wroten of Greenville was elected to the Mississippi House of Representatives in 1951. During his three terms in office, his progressive views on issues like civil rights often put him in opposition to the rest of the legislature, so much so that he was dubbed “The Great Dissenter” by the Memphis Commercial Appeal.
In this episode, Wroten reflects on Washington County’s history of Progressivism. He discusses the Mississippi State Sovereignty Commission—created by the legislature in 1956 to promote continued racial segregation—and why he first supported and then opposed the agency’s formation.
Wroten details how his liberal views often made him the target of threats and hate speech and how his support for the admission of James Meredith to Ole’ Miss cost him a fourth term in office.
PODCAST EXTRA: As a minister’s son, Wroten grew up Methodist in segregated Mississippi. He remembers how the United Methodist Church sought to lead by example during the Civil Rights Movement.
In preparation for the Invasion of Sicily, a key first step for the liberation of Europe during WWII, the 82nd Airborne Division traveled by boat to the North African city of Casablanca in the spring of 1943 to prepare and train. In this episode, General Elmo Bell of Wiggins recalls the hot, arid countryside and being greeted by the Red Cross.
On the night of July 9th, 1943, U. S. Army paratroopers parachuted behind enemy lines on the tiny island of Sicily. Separated and alone, Bell recounts the harrowing events that followed as he attempted to find and regroup his scattered unit. His memories of that night and the following day are graphic and disturbing.
After 15 years under fascist rule, the reactions of the Sicilians to Allied forces were mixed. Bell describes the generational divide of the local population and the large number of political prisoners they liberated.
Warning: this episode includes graphic descriptions of combat!
photographer: Lt. Longini, U.S. Army Signal Corps - National Archives and Records
In 1942, Brigadier General Elmo Bell of Wiggins was working as a contractor, building barracks for soldiers at various military bases around the South. At that time, he had a low opinion of the Army and so when he came to Hattiesburg, it was with the intention of joining the Marines.
In this episode, he recalls how an Army recruiter convinced him to become a paratrooper and shares his memories of Paratrooper Jump School. He discusses how the Airborne Infantry attracted a special breed of soldier and why some of the strongest candidates washed out of the program.
PODCAST EXTRA: As WWII progressed, the equipment Paratroopers used evolved to meet the challenges they encountered in actual combat. Bell discusses some of the many hazards they faced.
Eugene Chadwick was forever tied to Mississippi sports at the age of two when his father was hired as the Athletic Director for Mississippi A&M (now MSU) in 1909. In this episode, he remembers the days when the entire Athletic Department consisted of his father and one assistant and there was one small facility for all outdoor sporting events: Hardy Field.
After playing football and baseball for MSU, Chadwick’s first job was coaching Greenwood High School’s football team. He looks back fondly on their undefeated season in 1930 when they were only scored on once the entire year for a season tally of 405 to 6. He also distinguished himself coaching for Laurel in 1945 and is credited for bringing the Split-T formation to Mississippi.
Chadwick served as the Head Coach and Athletic Director at Delta State from 1947 to 1960. He rebuilt the Athletics Program after WWII and led the football team to its first undefeated season in 1954.
Chadwick was inducted into the Mississippi Sports Hall of Fame, as well as, the MSU and Delta State Halls of Fame.
In March of 1942, the first African-American armored combat unit was formed at Camp Claiborne, Louisiana. Viewed by army brass as more of a novelty or public relations tool, the 761st might never have seen combat were it not for General George S. Patton who requested they be placed under his command. In this episode, James Jones of Laurel discusses the history of the 761st tank battalion. Jones was serving at a replacement depot outside of Paris when he assigned to the 761st as a replacement. He recalls being trained to operate a tank just five miles from the front and how the European populace reacted to seeing black soldiers.
On December 16, 1944, Germany launched a major counteroffensive through the Ardennes Forest in an effort to cut off Allied supply lines. Jones recounts the often overlooked but vital role the 761st played in the Battle of the Bulge.
Born the son of a poor Aberdeen tenant farmer in 1901, Guy Bush had little to look forward to beyond life behind a plow. The one thing he could do really well is pitch baseball. In this episode, he recalls pitching for local teams to earn extra money while a student at the Tupelo Military Institute and how that led to a job pitching for a Greenville minor league club in the old Cotton States League.
Bush was soon traded to the Chicago Cubs for $1,000 and a gallon of corn whiskey in 1923 starting a 17 year career in the majors that introduced the country boy to the big city. Now one of the highest paid players in baseball, he was able to pay back all who helped him along the way and give his family a financial stability they had never known before.
In this extended podcast, the “Mississippi Mudcat” discusses highlights from his time in the majors, like being the last man to pitch to Babe Ruth.
After the attack on the Naval Base at Pearl Harbor in 1941, America declared war on Japan. In this episode, Laurel native, Doris Barwick recalls how their community responded. Young men, some not even out of high school, volunteered for service by the thousands and soon found themselves on the front lines in Europe and the Pacific.
As a result of intense fighting during WWII and later the Korean Conflict, many of these soldiers suffered from battle fatigue, known today as PTSD, for years afterwards. To treat the lingering effects of PTSD, they often turned to alcohol.
Doris Barwick remembers her husband’s frequent nightmares and describes how he overcame his addiction. After getting sober himself, Jim Barwick became a drug and alcohol counselor and spent his remaining seventeen years helping others.
Image: 2,000 Yard Stare by Thomas Lea, c 1944 Life Magazine
Ace Cleveland served as the sports information director for USM from 1955 to 1986. In this episode, he discusses some of Southern’s most famous sports figures including basketball coach Lee Patrick Floyd, football and baseball legend Bubba Phillips, NFL Hall of Fame punter Ray Guy, and assistant football coach, Clyde “Heifer” Stuart.
John Childress joined the Navy Seals in 1968. In this episode, he recalls training teams of mercenaries for raids into North Vietnam. As a result of his efforts, the Viet Cong placed a bounty on Childress. He explains how a bomb left on an ammo pile outside his office nearly got him.
Childress also discusses how the Viet Cong charged Vietnamese businesses protection money during the war and in a podcast extra describes a raid his team conducted on a VC prison camp.
Carl Walters was born in Laurel, Mississippi in 1904. In this episode, he recalls life growing up there and covers a variety of topics including the Lauren Rogers Museum of Art (which opened in 1923 as a memorial to Lauren Eastman Rogers), as well as, the town’s leading families and their connection to the timber industry.
Walter’s best friend growing up was a boy named James Street, author of Tap Roots and The Biscuit Eater. He discusses his famous friend’s career as a newspaper man and novelist.
Carl Walters of Laurel landed his first newspaper job in the 1920s working as a printer’s assistant. In this episode, he recalls how his love of sports led him to become a sports writer. Later, Walters began working for the Meridian Star. He discusses how the Meridian paper broke new ground by being the first to segregate the sports news into its own section. Walters became the first sports editor for the Jackson Daily News in 1946.
Walters reflects on his career as a sports editor and columnist with pride and the innovations we take for granted today, such as the Fall Football Preview Guide. Walters was inducted into the Mississippi Sports Hall of Fame in 1993. You can learn more by visiting their website. http://msfame.com/hall-of-fame/inductees/carl-walters-sr/
When Don Frutiger moved to Hattiesburg in 1964, he was surprised by the size of the LGBT community. In this episode, Frutiger shares his memories of a time when being gay was still considered a crime. He also discusses how a police raid on the Forrest Hotel ended in tragedy.
By the 1970s, there were several bars in Hattiesburg that catered to the LGBT community, but according to Frutiger, police were still monitoring the community well into the 70s & 80s. He explains how one bar protected their customers.
NOTICE: This episode of the Mississippi Moments podcast contains frank and explicit language. Listener discretion advised.
Starkville native James “Cool Papa” Bell played Negro League Baseball from 1922 to 1950. In this episode, he looks back fondly on the grueling schedule of long days and nights on the road with few amenities for little pay.
Until 1947, blacks were not allowed to play major league baseball, but Bell discusses how they would play and often beat the major league teams during winter season baseball in Mexico and other South American countries.
Baseball broadcasting legend Walter “Red” Barber was born in Columbus, Mississippi, in 1908. In this episode, he recalls his humble beginnings and taking his family to see the beautiful homes there after becoming successful.
Barber began working at the campus radio station while in college as a way to earn extra money. He soon realized he wanted a career in sportscasting. Barber was just starting out when he met fellow Mississippian, Dizzy Dean. He shares his memories of the famous pitcher. As a play-by-play sportscaster, Barber was driven to be the best. He claims learning about each man on the team before the game allowed him to “talk with his eyes.”
In a 40 year career calling games for the Cincinnati Reds, Brooklyn Dodgers and New York Yankees, Barber was famous for his colorful vocabulary and distinctive catch-phrases like "Sittin' in the catbird seat," "Walkin' in the tall cotton,” and "Slicker than boiled okra.” In a podcast extra, he discusses the inspiration for a couple of the more famous ones.
Roscoe Jones of Meridian grew up watching the news with his grandmother. He credits her for inspiring him to get involved with the Civil Rights Movement. Jones was 16 years old when he joined the Meridian chapter of the NAACP Youth Council. In this episode, he shares his memories of meeting Civil Rights workers Mickey and Rita Schwerner in the spring of 1964.
Schwerner, James Chaney & Andrew Goodman were killed in Neshoba County on June 21st, 1964. Jones recalls begging Schwerner to take him along for the ride. The deaths of the three men taught Jones to avoid publicity whenever possible. It wasn’t until the release of Mississippi Burning that he decided to speak up about his time in the movement.
After playing football for Southern Miss, P.W. Underwood returned to Hattiesburg as an assistant coach in 1963. In this episode, he remembers the team ranked number 1 in defense, three years out of four.
When Underwood was named head football coach for Southern Miss six years later, he knew some changes needed to be made. At that time USM was known as The Generals and the mascot was a character named General Nathan after Confederate General Nathan Bedford Forrest. That year Underwood signed Willie Heidelburg, the first black player for a major Mississippi school and felt it was time to find a new mascot and establish some new traditions. He recounts the programs and processes he put in place to accomplish those goals.
After a humiliating loss to Ole’ Miss the year before, USM was given no chance of winning their 1970 rematch. Coach Underwood recalls how the Eagles were able to beat the odds.
In 1963, Pete Johnson’s uncle, Paul B. Johnson, Jr, ran for Governor of Mississippi. In this episode, he discusses how his father managed his uncle’s campaign and the strategy they successfully employed. He also recalls his uncle's unflappable demeanor.
Because of term limits in place at that time, Gov. Johnson was unable to run for a second term and decided to run for Lt. Governor, instead. That year, Pete Johnson campaigned with his uncle. He shares some humorous stories of the characters he met as they went around the state like “Stiff” McCaffrey and “Blowtorch” Mason.
PHOTO: Moncrief Collection - Miss Dept. of Archives & History
F.W. Bishop was born on a farm near Shaw, Mississippi in 1897. In this episode, he recounts how as a boy, his job was to chase bears out of the cornfield. He remembers a steady diet of smoked bear meat. Growing up, Bishop worked a variety of part-time jobs to make ends meet. After high school, he married and spent his life in Cleveland. He discusses opening the town’s first filling station and being elected mayor.
Doug Smith grew up in Hattiesburg during the 1950s. In this episode, he recalls how his mother inspired him to join the Civil Rights Movement. He discusses such topics as the March on Washington, Freedom Day in Hattiesburg, voter registration drives and being arrested 32 times. Smith also shares his memories of how his mother came to have the first integrated funeral in Hattiesburg and of running for his life through the woods of South Mississippi with fellow activists.
PHOTO: McCain Library & Archives, USM
Retired Justice Reuben Anderson was the first African-American appointed to the Mississippi Supreme Court. In this episode, he recalls growing up during the Civil Rights Movement.
When Anderson enrolled at Tougaloo College in 1960 he dreamed of becoming an Civil Rights attorney. He remembers the campus as central to the Civil Rights Movement in Mississippi. Anderson was the first African-American to graduate from the University of Mississippi Law School in 1967. He describes the challenges black students faced at that time.
As a young attorney in the late 60s, Anderson litigated school desegregation cases across the state.
During WWII, women took jobs traditionally held by men. Bonnie Stedman of McComb began working for the railroad at the age of 17. In this episode, she shares her memories of working nights in remote railroad offices around Mississippi and Louisiana, relying on a toy gun protection and catching a ride on a troop train to get back home.
In a podcast extra, Stedman remembers when the dairy strike of 1945 turned violent, resulting in broken cameras and spilled milk.
PHOTO: Livinghistoryfarm.org
Bernard Tessman and Karl Heimburg worked for Dr. Werhner von Braun in Nazi Germany on the V-2 rocket program. After WWII, 118 rocket scientists were brought over from Germany to work for the US Army. In this episode, Tessman and Heimburg remember those early days launching V-2 rockets in White Sands, New Mexico and the decision to locate the Redstone Arsenal in Huntsville, Alabama.
After President Kennedy announced the goal of putting a man on the moon by the end of the decade, the decision was made to build a rocket test facility in Hancock County, Bernard Tessman led the design team. He recalls the swampy conditions of the Pearl River basin.
In a podcast extra, Heimburg explains why the decision to build the Hancock County facility was based on unrealistic expectations. Today, the isolated location of the Stennis Space Center allows for the testing of larger engines.
Samuel Olden had just graduated Ole’ Miss in the Spring of 1941 with a Masters in History when he saw a notice posted on a bulletin board that the State Department was seeking candidates for service in South America. When the Japan bombed Pearl Harbor seven months later, he was stationed at the legation in Quito, Ecuador.
After serving in the Navy during WWII, Olden returned home to Yazoo City. He recalls being invited to join a new government agency called the Central Intelligence Agency in 1948. In this episode, Olden discusses his first field assignment spying on the Russians in Vienna and why he finally decided the life of a spy wasn’t for him.
Coach David Dunaway grew up in Tylertown during the Great Depression. In this episode, he recalls how the town became his substitute family after his parents split up. Dunaway worked all through school to support himself and still found time to participate in sports. He credits the guidance he received from his coach and teachers for his decision to pursue a career in coaching/teaching at the junior high level.
Dunaway graduated high school in 1944 at the age of 17. He remembers playing for Mississippi State in the first college football game he ever saw, alongside State football legend, Shorty McWilliams.
PHOTO: Old postcard of the Tylertown High School
Steeped in tradition, the holidays are a source of vivid childhood memories for many. This week's episode is a compilation of some of our favorites: three Mississippians from very different backgrounds share their stories of that special time of year.
Lou Mallory of Natchez grew up in South Georgia, the daughter of a sharecropper. She remembers having little money at Christmas, but never feeling poor.
As a girl, Ellen McCarley would ride the train from Port Gibson to Vicksburg to go Christmas shopping with her mother. She recalls her mother’s Christmas parties as having something for everyone.
Charles Wright would travel with his grandmother each Christmas to their family gathering in Bude. He describes the large spread of food and the atmosphere of Love.
Happy Holidays from the Mississippi Moments family to you and yours!
PHOTO: Robert C. Waller collection, USM Archives
Marcelle Bienvenu grew up in Saint Martinville, Louisana. In this episode, she discusses her family’s passion for cooking and how Chef Paul Prudhomme introduced the world to Cajun cuisine. Bienvenu was working at Commanders Palace restaurant in New Orleans when they hired Prudhomme. She recalls his “Trinity” of spices.
Bienvenu is a columnist with the Times Picayune and has published several cookbooks. She also teaches cooking classes and courses on culinary traditions of the American South.
Podcast Extra: Bienvenu explains how which part of Louisiana you’re from determines the way you cook Creole food.
PHOTO: WDSU.com
Kris Gianakos of Meridian comes from a large Greek family. In this episode, he discusses his favorite way to prepare leg of lamb. Lamb is a staple of Greek cooking. For his family, it was a dish usually served during the holidays. He also describes avgolemono soup, a traditional Greek chicken soup and explains why it always reminds him of home.
PODCAST EXTRA: According to Gianakos, wherever he travels, he runs into other Greeks eager to share their traditional foods. As examples he cites two Greek-owned restaurants in Memphis and Oxford.
PHOTO: Business2community.com
Glenn Hughes is the Extension Forestry Professor at Mississippi State University. In this episode, he discusses the importance of the Longleaf Pine to our state’s history.
Up until 1890, harvested trees were transported by teams of oxen. Hughes explains how advances in technology led to the clear-cutting of our pine forests. He also reveals South Mississippi's connection to America’s most famous battleship – the USS Constitution –commissioned in 1797 and known as Old Ironsides.
PODCAST EXTRA: Early in our state’s history, pine tree sap was harvested for a variety of uses. Hughes defines the term “naval stores” and explains its importance.
Fewell Thompson was born in Hattiesburg in 1891. In this episode, he recalls how, as a child, he frequented the home of his neighbor, Captain Hardy and his wife, Hattie Hardy, the town’s founder and namesake.
Thompson’s father had a horse and mule business in downtown Hattiesburg in the early 1900s. He discusses how his father would have the livestock shipped by train from Saint Louis and how people would come to town for supplies and spend the night camping in the "wagon lot" on Main Street.
During WWI the US Cavalry still rode horses into battle. Thompson remembers serving in the Army’s Veterinary Corps and the first time he tried to give a horse ether.
Hattiesburg’s role as a transportation hub earned it the nickname “The Hub City.” In a podcast extra Thompson recalls the many railroads that crisscrossed the town.
In 1962, James Meredith attempted to become the first African-American to enroll at Ole’ Miss. In this episode, Ken Fairly, then, a Hinds County Deputy, discusses being selected to be part of Governor Ross Barnett's security detail when the Governor traveled to Oxford.
Fairly describes how Barnett and his advisors conspired to stop Meredith from attending Ole’ Miss by arresting him en route to Oxford on trumped up charges. During the standoff between the Governor and the Kennedys, Fairly recalls having a front row seat to history.
PODCAST EXTRA: As protesters continued to pour into Oxford, Fairly remembers being ordered to quietly return to Hinds County, just hours before the riots broke out.
AP PHOTO
On the evening of October 11, 1973, Charles Hickman and Calvin Parker were fishing the Pascagoula River when they had a close encounter with a UFO. In this episode, Hickman describes being taken aboard an alien spacecraft!
After filing a report about their abduction they returned to their jobs at Ingles Shipyard. Hickman recalls not being prepared for the media circus that followed.
Hickman and Parker were questioned repeatedly by authorities and examined by the medical staff at Keesler Air Force. In a podcast extra, Hickman recounts the chain of events.
The lives of Charles Hickman and Calvin Parker were forever changed after that night in October of 1973. Hickman gave numerous interviews and wrote a book about his experience. Parker attended UFO conventions and started his own television production company in 1993 called UFO Investigations. Charles Hickman passed away at the age of 80 on September 9, 2011.
In 1965, George Hall of Hattiesburg was an Air Force reconnaissance pilot stationed in Thailand. In this episode, he recalls the day in September his plane was shot down over North Vietnam. Hall spent the next seven and a half years as a prisoner of war. He describes life at the infamous Hanoi Hilton and the torture he endured at the hands of his captors.
When he was finally released in 1973, it took time for Hall to readjust to life in Hattiesburg after so long a POW. He remembers being shocked by the price of a hamburger.
Unlike many Vietnam veterans, Hall returned home to a hero’s welcome. He discusses playing mental golf to pass the time and his discomfort with being called a “War Hero.”
In 1997, USM professor Andrew Wiest began teaching a class on Vietnam. In this episode, he recalls looking for ways to make history come alive for his students and the unexpected results of those efforts.
After meeting Vietnam veteran John Young, Wiest was inspired to write The Boys of ’67. He details the writing process and the book’s impact on the men of Charlie Company and their families.
In 2014, the National Geographic Channel premiered The Boys of ’67, a documentary based on the book. Wiest explains how the project came about and the challenges it presented.
The documentary received Emmy Award nominations in four categories. In a podcast extra, Wiest discusses the prospect of winning an Emmy and what it means for the men of Charlie Company.
After the fall of South Vietnam in 1975, the Communists seized private property and issued new currency. In this episode Thao "Kim" Pham of Ocean Springs recalls how her mother traded all of their old money for gold so her husband and of nine of their twelve children could escape from Vietnam and start a new life.
Pham recounts how they used the occasion of her grandmother’s funeral to slip out of the country and escape by boat to Indonesia. She describes the standing-room-only conditions on the boat and how her father bribed their way into an Indonesian refugee camp where she spent the next year and a half missing her mother and wondering what would become of them.
It was almost two years before Pham was able to get word to her mother that their family was alive and well. Now the owner of several successful businesses in Ocean Springs, Pham discusses the mutual respect and admiration she and her mother share in a PODCAST EXTRA clip.
PHOTO: Mylive007.blogspot.com
For thousands of years Native Americans used fire to manage the forests of South Mississippi. In this episode Ecologist, Tate Thriffiley explains why this practice was good for the longleaf pines and the entire ecosystem.
By 1930, virtually all of the longleaf pines in Mississippi had been harvested. Thriffiley describes the mistakes made in replanting the DeSoto National Forest and explains why a host of State and Federal agencies have teamed up with conservation groups to promote the planting of longleaf pines in Mississippi.
PODCAST EXTRA: Keith Coursey is the Prescription Forester on the DeSoto National Forest. He recounts the history of the Forest Service and its evolving attitude towards fire.
PHOTO: South Carolina Dept of Natural Resources
CNN sent correspondent Kathleen Koch to Mobile, Alabama to ride out Hurricane Katrina. After the storm, when she was finally allowed to travel to her hometown, Bay Saint Louis, Mississippi, the level of devastation and suffering she witnessed was overwhelming.
In this episode, Koch describes feeling intensely conflicted between the detachment her job required and the desire to cast aside her role as a reporter and do anything possible to alleviate the suffering she encountered. She and crew decided to use their time off the air to search for the missing and help survivors.
After Hurricane Katrina, South Mississippi residents came together in a spirit of cooperation and self-reliance. Koch recalls a resourceful group of young people she met at their unauthorized shelter and a mad dash to Wal-Mart to bring them much needed supplies.
John Hairston was the Chief Operations Officer for Hancock Bank in Gulfport, when in Fall of 2005, Hurricane Katrina threatened the coast. In this episode, he remembers preparing for a hit, but predicting a miss.
When Hancock Bank's corporate headquarters was wiped out, all of the bank’s records and computers were destroyed. Hairston explains how they were able to transfer all of their operations to Chicago within four days. Hairston recalls handing out tens of millions of dollars to anyone with an IOU and giving a new meaning to the phrase "money laundering."
George Bass was the Long Beach Fire Chief when Hurricane Katrina struck the Mississippi Gulf Coast in 2005. In this episode, he remembers meeting with his men in the final hours before the storm and how he assured them that they would be okay. Bass describes how he and his fellow firemen hunkered down as the winds from Katrina threatened to bring the station down around them. He also explains how they fanned out looking for survivors even before the storm had passed
Afterwards, it was time for the cleanup to begin. Bass recalls feeling overwhelmed by the enormity of the task before them.
In August of 2005, Angelia Gray was the Food and Beverage Director of a Hattiesburg hotel. In this episode, she explains how she and the rest of the hotel staff prepared for the arrival of Hurricane Katrina as the hotel began to fill up with evacuees. Gray recalls riding out the storm and caring for their guests.
After Katrina was over, Gray had to cook for the all the guests. She explains how she was able to feed so many people without electricity or water.
Of that experience, Gray remembers the spirit of cooperation among most of the guests and the bad behavior of a few.
Tommy Longo was Mayor of Waveland when Hurricane Katrina struck the Gulf Coast in August of 2005. In the episode, he remembers the city before storm and the devastation after.
As Hurricane Katrina made landfall in the early morning hours of August 29th, 2005, Longo and his family took shelter in the Waveland command post. He recalls the group’s struggle to survive as the floodwaters rose.
Longo was born and raised in the city of Waveland. He discusses how Hurricane Katrina has changed the he thinks about his home town. He also recalls their efforts to convince everyone to evacuate the area and how he convinced one lady to leave her cats.
Photo Credit: photosfromkatrina.com
In 1983, a hazardous-waste disposal company attempted to build a toxic waste dump in the town of Shuqualak in Noxubee County, Mississippi. In this episode, Martha Blackwell describes how local citizens organized to fight back and were able to have a five year moratorium placed on chemical disposal sites in Mississippi.
In 1991, after the moratorium expired, plans were announced to construct three toxic waste facilities in Noxubee County. Blackwell recalls how she learned about a hazardous-waste dump to be constructed on her neighbor’s land. She details how their group fought to keep these facilities out of Noxubee county and why they felt that having three high capacity sites would lead to waste from across the country being brought to Mississippi for disposal.
In a podcast extra, Blackwell credits the Choctaw Indians with preventing the plans to construct a dump site on reservation land.
Charlie Barrett is the former Mayor of Shuqualak (Sugar Lock). It this episode, he recounts the story of how his great grandfather donated the land for the train station. He also recalls how the farmers would bring their cotton to be ginned on Saturday mornings and stay all day.
As a boy, Barrett knew all of the merchants in Shuqualak. He remembers one who would speak to him in Choctaw. Years later, Barrett, now a young business owner himself, struggled to make ends meet until one day, an old merchant made him the offer of a lifetime.
Photo credit: hickoryridgestudio49.blogspot.com
John Ellzie Carr joined the Tupelo Police Department in 1921 and served as the town's chief of police from 1925 until 1952. In this episode, Dudley Carr remembers his father’s natural talent for law enforcement. He recalls the city’s primitive jail and even more primitive alarm system.
In 1932, the infamous bank robber, Machine Gun Kelly held up the Citizen’s National Bank of Tupelo. Dudley Carr explains how the robbery inspired the city to buy its own Thompson submachine gun.
In a podcast extra, Carr looks back with pride at his father’s legacy and what it’s meant to his own career.
Emma Foret was the wife of a Navy hospital corpsman. In this episode she recalls their life together and how she and the children coped with her husband’s absence.
She also discusses the special bond between the Navy and Marine Corp and how the wives of these servicemen depended on each other.
PODCAST EXTRA: Even in times of peace, conflicts can arise at a moment’s notice. Foret remembers her husband’s role in two such events and how the Navy kept the families informed.
Mary Louise Tarver was born in 1918 on Elm’s Court Plantation in Natchez. In this episode, she recalls her Uncle Will’s garden and his prickly relationship with her mother.
Growing up on a farm taught Mary Louise Tarver to enjoy simple pleasures. She remembers riding horseback to the Homochitto Swamp to spend the day fishing.
For Mary Louise Tarver, farm life meant learning to be self-sufficient. She describes how her mother would use apple peels to make vinegar, and use the vinegar to make pickles.
PODCAST EXTRA: During the Great Depression, some schools began serving students a hot lunch using food items provided by government. Tarver recalls how the lunch lady did the best she could with what she had on hand.
At the beginning of the Twentieth Century, Italian emigrants were encouraged to come to the Mississippi Delta to farm. In this episode, John Bassie of Bolivar County shares his family’s story of coming to America and how they taught him to love their adopted country.
For those Italian emigrants who made a home in the Mississippi Delta, the Fourth of July was always a big deal. Bassie recalls how his family celebrated with lots of eating and singing. He remembers those Independence Day celebrations as a cultural melting pot of food, music, and fun that involved the entire community.
Photo: Digital Public Library of America
Dr. Rodney Bennett was named President of The University of Southern Mississippi on February 7, 2013. In this episode, he discusses how he felt when an EF-4 tornado decimated the campus three days later.
Bennett was happily serving as Vice President of Student Affairs at the University of Georgia when he was selected as USM’s 10th President. He recalls accepting the position with a sense of purpose.
The morning after the tornado struck, Bennett addressed the 900 students, faculty and staff that had gathered to assist with the cleanup. He remembers searching for the right words to say on the ride over.
Podcast Extra: Bennett credits USM’s recovery since the storm to loyal alumni like Chuck Scianna. He stresses the importance of graduating eagles returning to the nest.
Stone Barefield of Hattiesburg ran for the State House of Representatives in 1959. In this episode, he remembers his campaign committee and the only speech he ever wrote. He also discusses the days before televised debates, when politicians relied on “stump speeches” to get their message to the voters.
Running for state representative of Forrest County meant doing a lot of walking. Barefield remembers meeting good folks and eating good food.
According to Barefield, South Mississippi was not being fairly represented in those days. In this podcast extra, he discusses House Speaker Walter Sellers and the fight for reapportionment.
In later years, Barefield pushed legislation for the establishment of the Longleaf Trace fittness trail, a rails-to-trails conversion of 41 miles of abandoned railroad track between Hattiesburg and Prentiss.
Prior to 1936, Highway 49 was a narrow, twisting, gravel road. In this episode, Chrysteen Flynt of D’lo, recalls learning to drive on Old 49 back in 1922.
For years, Flynt served as the unofficial historian for the town of D’lo. She notes that the rocky banks of the Strong River there were home to a water-driven sawmill as well as a meeting place for the Choctaws.
The origins of the name D’lo have always been a source of debate for residents and visitors alike. Flynt, attempts to set the record straight.
The D’lo’s largest employer was the Finkbine Lumber Company. In this podcast extra, Flynt remembers the YMCA the company built for the town and the silent movies that played there.
On September 29th, 1915, a category four hurricane made landfall near Grand Isle, Louisiana, killing 275 people. In this episode, Jim Kelly of English Lookout recalls the town’s largest employer and the aftermath of the storm. He remember how the factory used to produce crushed oyster shells by the trainload and how the hurricane changed all that.
Kelly was 10 years old when the hurricane destroyed the school and most of the homes in English Lookout. He explains why he wasn’t able to return to school until two years later.
In this Podcast Extra, Kelly describes how they would unload oysters from the schooners and roll them in railcars into the factory steamers.
Bill Barnes of Jackson joined the Coast Guard the day after the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. In this episode, he recalls his time in the Pacific spent aboard a Patrol boat. Barnes also describes the process of arming and testing the new craft before heading out to sea.
After serving two years in the Pacific Theater, Barnes returned stateside for a new duty: helping develop rescue methods still used by the Coast Guard today.
Podcast Extra
At the beginning of the war, the Coast Guard didn’t have enough uniforms, weapons or even beds for the influx of new recruits.
Barnes recalls going to extremes to try and keep warm.
Gene Stork, of Moss Point, began working as a commercial fisherman in 1954. In this episode he recalls being part of a “mother boat” crew and how they worked together to catch fish.
He also discusses how Coastal fishermen would try to avoid catching redfish over a certain size because the larger fish are the egg layers. Stork feels the increased popularity of blackened redfish in Louisiana led to overfishing.
Stork learned how to fish for flounder through years of experience. He remembers wading for miles through the shallow waters of the Gulf trying to catch the elusive fish.
In a Podcast Extra, Stork talks about how during the winter months, his attention turned from fish to oysters. He describes how he gathered oysters and how he and his wife would clean and shuck them by the gallon.
The BP Oil Spill of 2010 generated stress and financial hardships throughout the Gulf Coast fishing industry. In this episode, Daniel Nguyen of the Mary, Queen of Vietnam Community Development Corporation discusses how that stress affected the Vietnamese Fishing Community.
After the BP Oil Spill, Congressman Joseph Cao formed a rapid response team to assist the Vietnamese fishing community. Team member Tuan Nguyen recalls those hectic days of community service and the cities they visited.
While BP hired many out-of-work fishermen to assist with the clean-up following the oil spill of 2010, some Vietnamese fishermen were left out due to the language barrier. Peter Nguyen explains how he assisted those fishermen to find work during the recovery.
Podcast Extra:
Tuan Nguyen recounts with pride, the ways the rapid response team assisted, not only the Vietnamese community during the months following the oil spill, but the entire Gulf Coast.
On April 20th, 2010, an explosion aboard the Deepwater Horizon drilling platform, in the Gulf of Mexico, led to the largest crude oil spill in history. In this episode, commercial fisherman Peter Floyd recalls being confident that the Gulf Coast would survive. Joe Jewell of the Mississippi Dept. of Marine resources discusses the “triple threat” faced by Coastal fishermen.
After Hurricane Katrina, Crab fisherman Louie Lipps opened his own seafood restaurant in Frenier, Louisiana. Five years later, the BP oil spill brought a whole new set of challenges to the Gulf Coast seafood industry. Lipps remembers how his business was affected.
Podcast Extra
According to Peter Floyd, optimism is trait inherent in all successful fishermen. He feels that dire predictions in the media did more harm to the seafood industry than the spill itself.
For decades the Illinois Central Rail Road Maintenance Shop was one of the largest employers in McComb. In this episode, Ray Ward remembers signing on as a shop apprentice back in 1953. Ward recalls working in the car shop and the assembly line-like manner they used to rebuild the cars.
In order to save money and improve safety, Illionois Central offered cash rewards for employee suggestions at its McComb Maintenance Shop. Ward describes how the program worked and some suggestions he made for his job.
Podcast Bonus: When he wasn’t working, Ward loved riding horses. He relates how one late night ride turned into a practical joke on his co-workers.
MPB is currently conducting their Spring funding drive during which time there will be no Mississippi Moments aired. New episodes of Ray Ward discussing his years with the McComb railroad maintenance shop will begin airing the week of April 20th and the podcast will drop that morning. Thank you!
Prior to the development of passenger jet planes, Americans travelled by train.
In this episode, Sam Page remembers when the Panama Limited came through Summit, Mississippi for the first time.
Years later, as ticket agent for the Illinois Central station in McComb, MS, Sam Page recalls being a very busy man selling tickets to destinations near and far. He discusses how many Mississippians rode The City of New Orleans to visit family members in Chicago, St. Louis and other northern cities.
The streamlined passenger train known as the Green Diamond ran from Chicago to St. Louis until 1947, when it was moved to Mississippi and renamed the Miss Lou.
Sam Page reminisces about riding the Miss Lou from McComb to New Orleans.
PODCAST EXTRA: Page discusses his time with the railroad and the people who depended on the trains for transportation like legendary baseball pitcher Dizzy Dean.
PHOTO: The Illinois Central Green Diamond later moved to Jackson, MS and renamed the Miss Lou.
Before there was Whole Foods, there was wild foods. As a young man, Alonzo Brandon of Port Gibson, hunted in order to help feed his family. In this episode he describes how he would outsmart the squirrels that tried to hide from him.
After working all day, Alonzo Brandon would often go coon hunting. He recalls waiting until dawn some nights for a treed coon to finally come down. He also discusses his weapon of choice, the 22 caliber rifle.
Brandon’s family raised hogs as an additional source of protein. In this podcast extra, he remembers how the hogs would also hunt to supplement their diets.
Dan McDaniel grew up in Bude, Mississippi. In this episode, he discusses why the town’s barbershop was central to the lives of so many. He also recalls the sawmill work whistle and the men walking home for lunch.
Today, most of us take indoor plumbing for granted. McDaniel remembers when plumbing was a luxury.
Because lumber was transported by train, all sawmill towns were connected by rail. McDaniel explains that back then, passenger trains were the most common way to travel.
Photo Credit: Gil Hoffman Collection
Family history is our personal connection to the past. In this week's episode, Ethel Patton D’Anjou of Claiborne County tells the story of her great grandfather’s escape from slavery. She also shares the tale of how her great grandmother, a native American was spared from the Trail of Tears by her birth parents and ended up in Mound Bayou.
PODCAST EXTRA: Alcorn University was founded in 1871 to educate the descendants of former slaves. Ethel Patton D’Anjou recounts her grandparent’s decision to come to Alcorn and open their own business. She hopes that her family’s history continues to provide inspiration for generations to come.
In 1918, F.S. Wolcott began using Port Gibson as Winter Quarters for his Rabbit Foot Minstrel Show. In this episode, Jimmy Allen explains why Wolcott’s show was different from other Minstrels. He also describes how a typical minstrel show operated.
As a bookkeeper in his father's Port Gibson car dealership, Allen had first hand experience dealing with Wolcott. He learned that when it came to Wolcott, the squeaky wheel got the grease.Wolcott eventually formed a partnership with his competitor, F.C. Huntington. In this podcast extra, Allen recalls how that partnership led to a warrant for Wolcott’s arrest.
This month marks the ten year anniversary for Mississippi Moments and it coincides with new schedule and format changes. Since its debute, MSMO has been 4 1/2 minutes in length and aired on MPB Think Radio each Tuesday and Thursday at 12:30 pm. Because of changes to the amount of local break time set aside by NPR at the bottom of the noon hour, MPB asked us to change to a 90 second format Monday through Friday, so shorter program aired more often.
Our solution to this new challenge had been to produce three related episodes per week, each containing one audio clip, instead of one episode containing three clips. The three episodes are played in rotation Mon-Fri and are also combined to make one podcast episode that is virtually identical to the old format.
To streamline the process, we at the Center for Oral History have taken over the final production of the episodes from MPB. The advantage being that we can now add bonus clips to the podcast. In the past, the 4 1/2 minute format meant that some of the best material wound up "on the cutting room floor" as they say. Listeners are now instructed by Bill Ellison at the end of each broadcast episode to visit MississippiMoments.org "to hear more." It also allows us to post the podcast episode the same week that the broadcast episodes air - so no more having to wait for weeks to listen to the podcast of an episode that caught your attention!
We are excited about the new changes and we hope that you, our loyal listeners are excited as well. We can promise you that the best is yet to come because we have barely scratched the surface of this amazing collection! Thank you.
Mardi Gras has been celebrated in Biloxi since 1883. In this episode, Jerry O’Keefe remembers the excitement of attending the parades as a boy in the 1930s. Later, as a young father in the 1940s, O’Keefe shared his love of Mardi Gras with his children.
After being elected Mayor of Biloxi in 1972, O’Keefe realized the city’s Mardi Gras fundraising system needed to be overhauled. He explains how that was accomplished and why Mardi Gras remains so important to the city's identity.
During WWII, most African-American Soldiers served in support units away from the front lines. All that changed during the War in the Pacific where because of the close proxmity of the conflict, black soldiers found themselves fighting shoulder to shoulder with their white counterparts. In this episode, Lee Spearman of Bay Springs remembers the only objective was to stay alive.
Journalist Ernie Pyle reported from the frontlines in Europe and the Pacific during WWII. Spearman was there when Pyle was hit by enemy fire.
Rowan Clark of Bude was 16 years old when he got his first job in 1924. In this episode, he recalls being a water boy and delivering ice for the local icehouse. Like so many others left unemployed by the Great Depression, Clark rode the rails looking for work. He describes his journey across the country chasing rumors of job opportunities.
Clark was finally offered a job washing cars in New Orleans…at service station that was actually a front for rum runners!
For Randy Yates, the Neshoba County Fair was a family tradition. In this episode, he explains why the fair was so important to his grandparents. One of the most vivid memories for Yates was the endless variety of food the fair had to offer.
According to Yates, no one worked harder to prepare for the Neshoba County Fair than his grandfather. He remembers it being a year-long labor of love.
Jackson has always enjoyed a wide selection of choices when it comes to dining out. In this episode, Randy Yates discusses the important role Greek restaurateurs played in Jackson’s culinary history. Yates began working for Primos Northgate restaurant as a college student. He remembers the large crowds and the places the staff would go between shifts.
After Primos, Yates took a job working at Scrooge’s. He credits owner Bill Latham and Don Primos for teaching him some important job skills.
Today, Randy Yates is co-owner of the Ajax Diner, on the Square, in Oxford.
The Center for the Study of Southern Culture at the University of Mississippi was established in 1977. Its mission was to investigate, document, interpret and teach about the American South. In this episode, Ann Abadie recalls the Center’s first public event. Abadie also discusses the Center’s most ambitious project: The Encyclopedia of Southern Culture. She explains how one section of that publication inspired them to form the Southern Foodways Alliance.
No study of Southern Culture would be complete without the Blues. Abadie remembers how Bill Ferris, the Center’s first director, brought Living Blues Magazine from Chicago to Oxford.
Jim Anderson became the director of the First Regional Library, a five-county-library system based in Hernando, back in 1972. In this episode, he discusses the history of Mississippi’s oldest regional library.
According to Anderson, the level of cooperation that exists between the state’s public, academic and special libraries is the result of programs sponsored by the Mississippi Library Commission. He looks back fondly on his thirty-six years with the First Regional Library. It’s a choice he recommends to young people searching for a fun and interesting career path.
One of the star attractions of the New Orleans World’s Fair in 1984 was the space shuttle Enterprise. In this episode, Christine Harvey, a photographer at the Stennis Space Center, recalls documenting the shuttle’s journey from Mobile Bay to the Port of New Orleans.
Harvey’s job was to ride a tugboat out to Algiers Point and photograph the arrival of the shuttle. It was an assignment that left her a little…queasy.
For Harvey, the arrival of the Enterprise was an emotional moment and one that she’ll never forget.
Growing up in Dixie Springs, Paul Ott Carruth had two great passions: the Great Outdoors and making music. So it came as a shock when in 1967, Carruth learned that hardwood trees around the Leaf River were being intentionally poisoned. At the time, Carruth was gaining recognition as a singer on a Hattiesburg TV show. He decided to combine his love of music and his love of nature to save those trees.
In this episode, Ott discusses how this decision led to a life devoted to protecting Mississippi's natural resources through songwriting. He also talks about his long association with the State Game and Fish Commission.
Paul Ott Carruth’s weekly radio and TV show Listen to the Eagle continues to celebrate and promote The Great Mississippi Outdoors.
In 1970, the Mississippi State Legislature passed the State Antiquities Act to preserve Mississippi historic sites and buildings for future generations. In this episode Elbert Hilliard, Director Emeritus of the Mississippi Department of Archives and History discusses the significance of the Antiquities Act.
Hilliard recalls their first preservation project and how in 1983, the Antiquities Act was amended to reflect the lessons learned in thirteen years of administering the law.
Hilliard points with pride to the many preservation successes made possible by the State Antiquities Act.
Lou Mallory of Natchez grew up on a small farm in the Red Hills of Georgia. In the episode, she recalls how the family barely survived raising cotton, but were happy none the less.
She explains that her father used to make syrup from sugar cane as a way to earn extra money. She remembers eating a lot of syrup when there was not much else.
Mallory learned to sew her own dresses out of necessity. She became a seamstress as an adult and her tailor shop was a Natchez fixture for 45 years until she retired in 1998.
(photo of sugar cane mill: The Florida Center for Instructional Technology, Univ. of South Florida)
Evelyn Gandy of Hattiesburg came from a politically active family. In this episode, she discusses her decision to consider a career in politics at an early age.
From 1947, when she was elected to the Mississippi House of Representatives, to 1959 when she became the first woman elected to statewide office as treasurer, Gandy always tried to make whatever office she held more responsive to the people.It was a philosophy she carried from her position as Insurance Commissioner to when she was elected the first woman Lt. Governor in 1975.
Gandy credits her success in office to a desire to work with others and a respect for her predecessors.
Evelyn Gandy passed away on December 27, 2007.
After being nominated and passed over seven times for induction into the Pro Football Hall of Fame, former NFL punter, Ray Guy, was used to waiting by the phone. In this episode, he explains how the eighth time promised to be different.
Ensconced in his New York hotel room on Super Bowl weekend, Guy found himself sitting by the phone once again, wondering if this would finally be the year he got the call.
Ray Guy was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame on August 2nd, 2014. He continues to work for his alma mater, Southern Miss.
William Ray Guy came to Hattiesburg, MS to play football for Southern Miss in 1970. As punter for the Golden Eagles, Guy’s kicks were known for their distance and pinpoint accuracy.
In this episode, Guy discusses his decision to play for USM. He also explains why for him, strategy was just as important as power.
In the 14 seasons Guy punted for the Oakland Raiders, the term hang-time was coined to describe his high, booming kicks. He discusses why they were so high and the time he hit the Super Dome TV screen.
Ray Guy became the first punter to be inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in August of 2014.
Chinese American, Professor John P Quon grew up living in the back of his family’s store in Moorhead, Mississippi. In this episode, he recalls slipping off and exploring the downtown area at a young age.
Every member of the Quon family was expected to help out in the store. Quon remembers learning how to make change at the age of five.
Eventually, the Quon family decided to buy a home in Moorhead. He explains how an anonymous letter led his father to purchase a cotton farm instead.
In 1964, Dr. John P. Quon was a student at Ole’ Miss when he proposed to his college sweetheart, Freida Seu. Both were from Chinese-American families living in the Delta. In this episode, Quon recalls the traditional engagement negotiations that followed.
Quon describes the logistics involved in planning a wedding with an expected attendance of 1,200 family and friends. He walks us through the day’s events including the wedding ceremony and reception, as well as the banquet and traditional tea ceremony.
King Evans was a teenager, living with his family on the Vickland Plantation in Nitta Yuma, Mississippi, during the Great Flood of 1927. In this episode, he recalls how the water continued to rise after the levee north of Greenville broke on the morning of April 21st. Evans also remembers the thousands of people displaced by the floodwaters and the desperate lengths they went to for shelter.
Racial tensions flared as mistreatment of blacks was reported in other places, but according to Evans, whites and blacks worked together in Sharkey County to insure fair distribution of food.
In 1966 the faculty at the Mercy Hospital College of Nursing in Vicksburg recognized the need for a second nursing baccalaureate program in Mississippi.
This group of Catholic nuns, led by Dr. Elizabeth Harkins, was determined to establish a College of Nursing at USM. In this episode, retired instructor Jean Haspeslagh remembers Harkins as a force to be reckoned with.
Haspeslagh explains how Harkins designed the College of Nursing’s Graduate program to be unique and cutting edge.
After her retirement in 1980, Harkins continued to serve as Dean Emeritus until her death in 1997. Haspeslagh recalls that Harkins signed her last grant for the Sister’s of Mercy the day before she passes away.
Construction began on the new USM College of Nursing building in July, 2014.
The Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party was organized in 1964 as an alternative to the then-all-white Mississippi Democratic Party.
The MFDP, after holding a statewide election open to people of all colors, sent its delegates to the 1964 Democratic National Convention in an attempt to be recognized as the legitimate representatives of the State.
In this episode, Dr. Aaron Henry of Clarksdale remembers the long bus to Atlantic City, New Jersey and the crowded accommodations the delegates endured.
After impassioned speeches by Fannie Lou Hamer and Dr. Martin Luther King, President Lyndon Johnson offered to seat two of MFDP delegates with the Illinois delegation. Henry discusses they decision to decline that offer.
He also explains that even though they were not seated at the 1964 convention, their efforts lead to the reform of the Democratic Party.
In 1964, as SNCC coordinators trained volunteers for the Mississippi Freedom Summer project, three others, Chaney, Schwerner and Goodman traveled to Philadelphia, MS to investigate a church burning.
In this episode, Cleveland Sellers recounts how he and seven other coordinators went in search of those three when they went missing. Sellers describes the extraordinary lengths their group went to, to avoid being spotted as they searched for their friends.
After several days of searching through woods and empty buildings in the dead of night, Sellers’ group was forced to abandon their search.
The bodies of Chaney, Schwerner and Goodman were eventually found on August 4th, 1964.
After attending a Freedom School as a high school student in the summer of ’64, Charleana Cobb of Blue Mountain was inspired to become active in the civil rights movement. In this episode, she recalls promoting a speech being given at her church by civil rights activist Fannie Lou Hamer. Cobb remembers the thrill of hearing Hamer speak that night and the shock of being told that the church had burned to the ground the next morning.
That December, college students from Oberlin, Ohio came to Blue Mountain to rebuild the church as a project called Carpenters for Christmas. Cobb recalls how members of the community reacted to the sacrifice these Oberlin College students made in giving up their Christmas holiday.
After attempting to register to vote, Fannie Lou Hamer was forced to leave the plantation where she had lived and worked for 18 years. In the episode, she explains how she became active in voter registration and the challenges they faced.
Prior to passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, Mississippi required voters to pass a literacy test and pay a poll tax in order to vote. Hamer recalls how she passed the test and the first time she was able to vote.
Hamer went on to become a leader in the Civil Rights movement and her speech at the Democratic National Convention in 1964 touched the nation. She reflects on her time in the spotlight and the friends she made along the way.
Fannie Lou Hamer passed away on March 14th, 1977.
In 1962, Fannie Lou Hamer was a sharecropper’s wife, living on a plantation in Ruleville, Mississippi. In this episode, she recalls the first time she tried to register to vote.
After leaving Indianola, the bus carrying Hamer’s group was pulled over by state and local law enforcement. She describes how they were forced to return to Indianola to face an assortment of trumped up charges.
Later that same day when Hamer returned home, the owner of the plantation confronted her about attempting to register. She describes how she was forced to leave her home of 18 years that very night for refusing to withdraw her registration.
The plantation owner's harsh treatment of Hamer led her to become an inspirational figure in the Civil Rights movement.
In 1964, Larry Rubin of Tacoma Park, Maryland came to Holly Springs to help black Mississippians register to vote. In this episode he explains how the state used literacy tests and intimidation to keep blacks from voting.
A key goal of Freedom Summer was to register enough Freedom Democratic Party voters to have their delegates seated at the 1964 Democratic National Convention. Rubin recalls the drudgery of knocking on doors and the thrill of watching the convention drama unfold on TV.
Rubin also reflects on the violence and intimidation that black Mississippians endured in order to secure the right to vote.
In July of 1964, Sandra Adickes came to Hattiesburg to teach in a “Freedom School” as part of a civil rights campaign known as Freedom Summer. The Freedom Schools were intended to help black children overcome the disparity of education in Mississippi’s segregated school system.
In this episode, Adickes remembers her arrival and a 4th of July party sponsored by civil rights activist, Vernon Dahmer. She also describes a typical day in the Freedom School and how on the last day of Freedom School, the students decided to try and integrate the Hattiesburg Public Library.
In June of 1964, a campaign was launched to educate black Mississippians and register them to vote. In the episode, Gloria Clark, a school teacher from Massachusetts, recalls riding a bus to Memphis to prepare for her role in the campaign called Freedom Summer. Clark remembers being assigned to Holly Springs and her initial reaction to that assignment.
On June 21st, three civil rights activists James Chaney, Michael Schwerner, and Andrew Goodman disappeared after being released from a Neshoba County Jail. Their bodies were found two months later. Clark explains how their disappearance affected her.
Like many Jewish children in the South, John Levingston of Cleveland, Mississippi attended kindergarten at a Christian church. In the episode, Levingston remembers how that led to some confusion for him.
Growing up in a Reform Congregation, Levingston did not participate in some traditional Jewish practices. He recalls his decision to learn Hebrew and have a bar mitzvah in his late thirties.
The once thriving Jewish population of the Delta has dwindled as younger generations have moved away. Levingston explains why he chose that as the topic of his bar mitzvah talk.
This summer marks the 50th anniversary of Freedom Summer—a time when black Mississippians worked with northern students to confront Jim Crow and claim their rights as citizens. To commemorate this Freedom struggle, we are combing the collection to bring you a series of Mississippi Moments that explore Freedom Summer from a variety of perspectives: from organizers to volunteers to yes, even law enforcement.
In this episode, we hear from Charlie Capps. While Capps would later go on to a distinguished career as a Mississippi legislator, in spring of '64, he was the newly-elected sheriff of Bolivar County. As an elected sheriff in a county where few blacks could vote, he was the first line of defense of Mississippi’s segregated order. He recalls the fear, apprehension and resentment many in the white community felt as civil rights workers came to Mississippi to upend the Jim Crow system of racial segregation.
Ray Pittman of Hattiesburg joined the Marines in 1942 as a demolition man. In this episode, he describes a typical demolition team and the dangerous jobs they performed.
Pittman’s team suffered heavy casualties during some of the worst battles in the Pacific theater. He recalls how a spare pistol saved his life on the island of Iwo Jima.
Pittman also remembers the day his friend Maxwell was killed while they were on a recon mission and how their actions prevented an ambush by the Japanese.
This D-Day, as we pause to remember our soldiers who fought so valiantly on the beaches at Normandy, let us also consider those brave men who were fighting on the other side of the world with this--our 400th episode of Mississippi Moments.
(the picture is of a Marshall Island enemy block house blown up by Ray's team)
George W. Owens of Pontotoc was a member of the Mississippi House of Representatives in 1936 when he met Icey Day, the state’s first blind legislator. Six years later, Owens helped Day pass legislation to establish the Mississippi Industries for the Blind.
In 1946, Owens began working as a vocational counselor for the M.I.B. In this episode, he recalls their humble beginnings and looks back with pride at how their efforts helped remove the stigma associated with blindness.
During his 20 years as a Rehabilitation Consultant and 30 years as a member of the Lions Club, George Owens worked to better the lives of the blind and visually impaired. He passed away on March 3rd, 1975.
Ellen McCarley grew up in Port Gibson, but sent summers with her family in rural Claiborne County. In this episode, she recalls helping her mother load the car with food and supplies for the weekly trip to the old homestead.
Much of their time was spent at a favorite swimming hole on Bayou Pierre creek. McCarley remembers catching rides there on her uncle’s Model T and eating tomato sandwiches.
Although conditions were primitive by today’s standards, McCarley explains that summers in the country provided her with simple pleasures and cherished memories.
In the 1930s, Nathan Jones of Russum provided for his family by raising cotton part of the year and cutting timber the rest of the time. During hunting season, Jones and his brothers would also supplement their incomes by selling animal pelts. For them, it wasn’t hunting for sport, it was hunting for survival.
In this episode Jones explains how they would ship the pelts to St. Louis for export to Germany. He discusses the effect that war and changing weather patterns affected the fur trade.
Libby Hollingsworth grew up in Leland, Mississippi, but spent summers with her grandparents in Port Gibson. In this episode, she remembers the quiet routine of reading, crafting, afternoon visits and long evening walks they kept during those summers. According to Hollingsworth, the lifestyle of Port Gibson residents in those days was peaceful and orderly.
Years later, Hollingsworth moved to Port Gibson with her husband. She explains that while life there isn’t so orderly anymore, much of the peacefulness remains.
Gulfport native John C. Robinson moved to Chicago and became a pilot after graduating from the Tuskegee Institute in the early 1920s when blacks were considered incapable of grasping the principles of aviation. He did this by taking a job as janitor of the Curtis Wright Flight School and earning the respect of one of the instructors. After graduating, he stayed on as an instructor and helped other Africian-Americans enter the field. He later convinced his Alma Mater to open a flight school--thus paving the way for the Tuskegee Airmen of WWII.
In this episode, Gulfport writer Thomas Simmons shares stories of Robinson that he gathered in eight years of research for his book: The Brown Condor-The True Adventures of John C. Robinson.
Wendell Taylor of Gulfport became a Methodist minister in 1937. In this week's episode, he discusses Gulfside Assembly, a retreat for black Methodists located in Waveland.
Gulfside was founded in 1923 to provide spiritual, educational and recreational facilities to African-Americans who were denied access elsewhere because of segregation. Taylor remembers the outstanding church leaders who were educated at Gulfside.
In 2005, Gulfside Assembly was completely destroyed by Hurricane Katrina. Plans to rebuild the historic site are pending.
Reverend Harry Tartt grew up in North Gulfport in the 1920s. In this week's episode, he explains that at that time, the black community accepted segregation as a fact of life. Tartt recalls being made aware of lynching at a young age and how it was used to control the black community.
It was only after Tartt moved to Chicago to attend college that he began to see that there was a world beyond the Jim Crow system. He remembers feeling frustrated when he returned home with this new sense of awareness.
Martin Huggins grew up on the family farm in the Biggersfield community near Rienzi. In this episode, he shares his memories of Grandpa Huggins including his remarkable way with the livestock.
This episode has it all: car-surfing goats, the dreaded cane of justice and 12 year old chauffeurs--you know, typical farm life.
Alfred Brown, Junior, grew up in the historic Soria City neighborhood of Gulfport during WWII. In this episode, he describes how his father sold fish in their back yard for extra money.
Brown remembers how Soria City residents took pride their neighborhood and looked out for each other.He recounts how his father would often give away fish to those in need.
(photo is of the Soria City Lodge, recently restored)
The Center for Oral History has proudly preserved the stories of hundreds of US veterans.
In this episode, B-24 bomber pilot C.R. Cadenhead of Greenville recalls his crew of 'misfits' and a much welcomed escort by those Southern gentlemen, the Tuskegee Airmen.
When Willie Cox of Pas Christian was discharged from the Army in February of ’67, he planned to live in the Washington DC area. In this episode, Cox explains how an unexpected job opportunity changed those plans.
The Civil Rights movement brought increased job opportunities for African-Americans. Cox recalls how two of his co-workers became the first black train engineers.
After three years as a switchman, Cox applied for a job as an engineer. He recalls how persistence and an engineer shortage led to the opportunity of a lifetime.
Willie Cox retired from railroading in 2002, after 35 years on the job.
After leaving the Army, Charles Dubra became a longshoreman in Gulfport. He recalls how an injury on the job led him to go into business for himself. He also explains how he made the transition from entrepreneur to teacher.
David Hall began attending the Thirty-third Ave Elementary School in Gulfport in 1935. There were no buses for black school children then. He recalls how the teacher would help the children warm their hands on cold mornings. He also remembers one teacher who would buy lunch for students who were hungry.
The Civilian Conservation Corps was a public works program for single, unemployed men, between the ages 18 and 25, during the Great Depression.
In 1936, Taylor Howard of Gulfport, dropped out of school to help support his family. He recalls his decision to join the CCC and describes the work he performed in the Desoto National Forrest and elsewhere as a member of the CCC.
As the Seventh of fourteen children, Jimmie Jenkins of Gulfport was always looking for ways to make money. He and his brother caught and sold crabs door to door as kids. Later, Jenkins worked in the kitchen of the Edgewater Hotel. After returning from the Army, he returned to kitchen work shucking oysters at Fairchild's Restaurant and finally working at Carl's Beef Bar- home of the "famous Wheel Burger."
In 1964, a group of young professionals in Jackson began thinking about forming their own theatre company. James Child discusses the decision to open the New Stage Theatre.
Child also recalls the challenge of finding a place to stage their productions with practically no money to spend and shares his memories of the opening night of New Stage Theatre’s first production: Who’s Afraid of Virginia Wolfe on January 25th, 1966.
L.T. Martin of Smithdale, grew up on his family’s farm in Franklin County. In this episode, he shares the history of the “old home place”.
Martin recalls how his father would grow cotton each year with the help of tenant families and how his role in the family business evolved over time.
In addition to being a farmer, Jeremiah Barnett was also a traveling minister. Laurel native, Lounett Gore describes her father’s ministry and his style of preaching.
After WWI, Barnett helped establish churches across Mississippi. Gore recalls her father’s skills as an orator and organizer and how as she got older, she would travel with her father and help out by teaching hymns to the new congregation.
Thomas Gonzales, Sr. was born and raised on Delacroix Island. He recounts how his family came to the area.
Gonzales also explains how his father and grandfather taught him to fish the Gulf using traditional methods brought over from Spain and why fishing was more than a way of life—it was freedom.
Ruthie Mae Shelton grew up on her family’s farm in Marshall County. At the age of nine, she began helping tend their cotton crop. Shelton recalls how her uncle would plant the cotton seeds.
Picking cotton by hand is physically demanding. Shelton remembers how the cotton bolls would sometimes prick her fingers and how “stinging worms” would cause welts.
Through trial and error, Shelton learned not to pack too much cotton into her sack before emptying it. And by the time she was 18, Shelton could pick 200 lbs. per day.
Born in 1885, Charlie Ainsworth of Hattiesburg began cutting trees as a teenager in the Piney Woods. Despite the long hours of difficult labor, he recalls that the logging crew would sing while they worked.
Logging was dangerous work and many men lost their lives. Ainsworth remembers how his last saw partner was killed by a falling tree.
Cut logs were hauled to the sawmills by train. Ainsworth details how he helped lay the tracks for several of the logging companies in South Mississippi.
Tom Brumfield and M.R. Reeves of McComb began working for the railroad in 1941. They explain how their family and friends influenced thir decision to become firemen shoveling coal into the massive steam locomotives.
Railroading has always been a dangerous business. Reeves recalls the time a locomotive he was on hit a car and went off an embankment.
With no work and no prospects at home, many men decided to travel for free by freight train looking for work during the Great Depression. Jim Kelly was a railroad telegraph operator in the 1930s. He recalls the large number of migratory workers or hobos that passed through English Lookout.
Hobos were always looking for their next meal. Kelly remembers how one made off with a prized watermelon.
Life on the road was especially tough during the winter. Kelly explains how he used to help the hobos when the temperatures dropped.
Easter Weekend of 1979, the Pearl River flooded, displacing some 17,000 families in the Jackson area alone. Ray Pope was the Jackson Police Chief at that time. He recalls the tireless efforts of his officers to warn those in the path of the flood.
With so many driven from their homes, there were concerns that widespread looting would take place.
Pope expresses his opinion of why looting wasn’t a big problem. Pope also remembers how police officers used their own personal boats as well as those loaned to them by private citizens to patrol and protect the flooded streets of the city.
Elbert Seal was born in 1892 in Harrison County. He recounts how his mother began homesteading land in Carnes, Mississippi after the death of his father. After serving in World War I, Seal felt restless back on the family farm. He recalls how he and his cousin went to Kansas for a while to help harvest wheat.
In the early 1900s, several Southern states made it illegal to transport cattle across state lines in an effort to eradicate cow ticks. Seal describes how they would purchase herds of cattle in Alabama and “bootleg” them across the state to sell in New Orleans.
Elbert Seal passed away in August of 1974.
Charles Grant began his career teaching in a one room school house in Basin, Mississippi during the Great Depression. He recalls what it was like to be a “faculty-of-one” at White’s Creek African-American school.
Grant remembers the effort that went into improving and expanding the tiny school. The school’s success was not without growing pains. Grant details the reluctance of some school supervisors to provide supplies and transportation for black students.
In 1962, Mississippi College graduate Clifford Charlesworth went to work for NASA. He remembers training to become a Flight Dynamics Officer at the Johnson Space Center.
As part of the flight control team for the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo space programs, Charlesworth learned the importance of teamwork.
In the early days of the space program, it was important to maintain radio contact between the astronauts and Mission Control. Charlesworth recalls two astronauts who didn’t have much to say.
Larry Dykes was sheriff of Jones County in 2006. He describes a mysterious phone call he received in May of that year that led to a meeting with then President George W. Bush aboard Air Force One.
In this episode, Dykes recalls some of the things he learned while touring the President’s home away from home, the President’s casual demeanor and the photo op afterwards.
As the sons of Holiday Inn founder Kemmons Wilson, Spence, Bob, and Kemmons, Jr. were expected to follow in their famous father’s footsteps. In this episode, Memphis native Kemmons Jr. discusses how the three brothers divide the duties of the diverse corporation.
Like their father, all three sons are veteran pilots. Bob Wilson details how they combined their love of flying with their experience in the hospitality industry.
In 1979, Kemmons Wilson retired from Holiday Inn. Two years later, he brought that same innovative spirit to the vacation resort industry. Spence Wilson explains.
In 1968, Tom Johnson of Memphis became a corporate trainer for Holiday Inn. He remembers the company’s commitment to quality training at all levels and the decision to locate their new state-of-the-art training facility, Holiday Inn University, in Olive Branch, Mississippi.
By the late 70’s it was clear that the Olive Branch facility was larger than necessary. Johnson details how that extra space was used to generate money for the company.
On Friday, August 26th, 2005, Tropical Storm Katrina passed over South Florida and entered the Gulf of Mexico. As the storm rapidly strengthened to a category five hurricane, Phyllis Genin of Bay St. Louis, MS began to prepare. In this extended version of the radio broadcast, Genin describes how she and her family rode out the storm in a small downtown office building. She also expresses the shock that they felt when they were finally able to survey the damages.
Anne Hall Wagoner Norris began working for Holiday Inn as a secretary in 1960. She recalls how the small Memphis company provided many educational opportunities for its employees. With the training Norris received, she was able to advance in the field of Public Relations and obtain her pilots license which she used to compete in the women's air racing team sponsored by Holiday Inn. Her extensive travel during thirty-two years with the company took her to more than thirty foreign countries.
In 1910, O’Neal Chambers was born in Lorman, Mississippi. The son of a farmer, he recalls helping his father clear the land with a cross-cut saw.
Growing up on a farm meant that there was always work to be done. Chambers remembers Sunday as the one day to relax and play. He also talked about how he used to accompany his father to Cohn Brothers’ cotton gin and general store in Lorman and describes a suit his father bought for him there.
Leakesville native, Dr. John Allums was teaching at the University of Georgia in 1951 when the Korean War began. He recounts making the transition from college professor to Air Force Intelligence Officer. He also explains how he worked with representatives from various government agencies to prepare reports for the president.
On May 1st, 1960, a US U2 spy plane was shot done by the Soviet government while on a mission to photograph Russian military bases. Allums discusses why he feels that President Eisenhower made a mistake when he publicly acknowledged the U2 program.
Created in 1956, the Mississippi State Sovereignty Commission was a state agency set up to hinder the progress of the civil rights movement through public relations and intelligence gathering.
Erle Johnston of Forrest was promoted to director of the Sovereignty Commission in 1963. In this frank and detailed interview he describes how he used informants to spy of various civil rights groups. Johnston claims as desegregation became unavoidable, his role shifted from investigator to mediator.
The Sovereignty Commission, a sad chapter in our state's history, was disbanded in 1977 and its files ordered sealed for fifty years. Johnston explains why he feels that the files should have been destroyed.
In 1989 the Sovereignty Commission files were ordered unsealed and can be viewed online through the Mississippi Department of Archives and History.
Renowned Gulf Coast artist, Walter Anderson spent the late 1930s in and out of hospitals for the treatment of severe depression. His oldest daughter, Mary Anderson Pickard remembers how her father taught himself to draw again. Pickard also recalls her father’s love of nature and history and how he shared that love with his children.
Anderson never achieved much notoriety in his lifetime. In this extended version of the original broadcast, Pickard discusses getting to know him again long after his death in 1965 through the collection he left behind.
Anderson’s collection is on display daily at the Walter Anderson Museum of Art in Ocean Springs.
Wirt Yerger of Jackson is considered to be the founder of the modern day Republican Party in Mississippi. Swan Yerger recalls how his brother became the state party chairman in 1956.
In this extended version of the original episode, Yerger explains how the party gained a foothold in the formerly Democratic state and why it took so many years for the Republican Party to become accepted at state and local levels.
William “Si” Redd was born in Union, Mississippi in 1911. The son of a share cropper, Redd dreamed of becoming an attorney until he got his first pinball machine and realized that coin operated amusements were his true calling.
Redd eventually became the distributor for Bally Manufacturing. He explains how his experience with pinball machines led him to modernize the slot machine industry. As video games became popular in the early ‘80s, Redd recognized their potential for the gaming industry and in 1980 founded International Game Technology. His biggest innovation was to develope video poker machines that flush-mounted directly into casino bars which he recognized as wasted space.
Known as the “King of Video Poker,” Si Redd was inducted into the Gaming Hall of Fame. He passed away in 2003. Pleased enjoy this extended version of the original broadcast.
In 1960 and ’63, Dr. Gilbert Mason, Sr. and a group of black citizens attempted to integrate Biloxi’s beaches by wading into the water together. Mason recalls how the final wade-in was delayed by the death of civil rights leader Medgar Evers. Mason also recounts how the protestors were treated after being arrested.
Convicted of trespassing, the group appealed the decision in county court. In this extended version of the original broadcast episode, Mason remembers learning of the death of President Kennedy while waiting for the Judge’s ruling.
A movie based on Dr. Mason’s story is currently in production.
June 12th marks the 50th anniversary of the death of Mississippi civil rights activist Medgar Evers. To mark the occasion, we have excerpts from the COH interview of Dr. Gilbert Mason, Sr. of Biloxi. Mason recalls Evers as a tireless leader who was always on the road going wherever he was needed. In this extended version of the broadcast episode, Mason relates in vivid detail the tensions resulting from acts of violence, threats and other forms of intimidation by those wishing to maintain the system of segregation.
The murder of Evers and other civil rights leaders only served to harden the resolve of those involved in the struggle for equality that "we shall overcome."
In 1961, J.C. Fairley was elected president of the Hattiesburg chapter of the NAACP. He remembers being warned of the danger of accepting such a high profile position by another civil rights leader, Medgar Evers.
John Frazier made a highly publicized attempt to become the first African-American to enroll at the University of Southern Mississippi in March of 1964. Fairley recalls accompanying Frazier to the USM campus and the welcome they received. He also explains how they successfully integrated 90% of Forrest County’s hotels and restaurants in just one day.
June 12th marks the 50th Anniversary of the death Medgar Evers. Mississippi Moments salutes the brave Mississippians who stood up for what was right during that turbulent time. Please enjoy this extended version of the original broadcast episode.
In 2005, Joseph Hammonds of Sand Hill was serving in Iraq with the 150th Combat Engineer Battalion. He remembers searching for stockpiles of weapons and the danger posed by improvised explosive devices or I.E.D.s.
Hammonds recalls earning a Combat Action Citation for surviving an I.E.D. attack while on patrol in the spring of that year. He reflects on the heavy price paid by tank crews who often took the lead in convoys.
While in Iraq, Hammonds’ grandfather passed away and he was denied leave time to attend the funeral. He explains how missing that funeral possibly saved the lives of his friends.
Senator Theodore Smith of Corinth was elected to the Mississippi House of Representatives in 1936. He recalls the push to establish a state highway program and marvels at the number of highways that the state managed to pave for $40 million.
According to Smith, many backroom deals were struck at the King Edward Hotel. He reflects on how the center of power shifted from the Governor’s Office to the Legislature during his political career.
Hattiesburg native, Robert St. John opened his first restaurant, The Purple Parrot, in 1987. He explains his decision to have multiple dining formats in the same building.
St. John has authored seven cookbooks and his weekly food column is syndicated in thirty newspapers. In this extended version of the original episode, he discusses how his love of traditional Southern cooking, seafood and Creole cuisine has shaped his own cooking style and how Southern cooking has evolved in the past twenty-five years.
When Frank Forsyth of Foxworth watched the lone B-29 bomber fly over the camp where he had lived as a POW for three years, he was unaware that it was carrying a nuclear bomb in its belly. Soon after the bomb was dropped on the nearby town of Nagasaki, he was set free to wander the country. In this extended version of the radio broadcast, Forsyth recalls the shock of seeing the completely destroyed city. He also talks about returing to the USA before re-enlisting in the Marines.
Happy Memorial Day from Mississippi Moments.
Dr. James Moye of Laurel was a bomber pilot during WWII. He remembers the day his B-24 was shot down over Austria and how he and his crew were captured by the Germans.
In this extended version of the radio broadcast, Moye details the highly organized intelligence gathering operations conducted by the British prisoners. He also recounts his three harrowing escape attempts.
This is an entertaining episode and a good way to reflect on the sacrifices made by our troops during WWII as Memorial Day approaches.
Hunter Kimbrough, of Bay St. Louis, was 13 when he met his brother-in-law: noted writer and social activist, Upton Sinclair. He remembers Sinclair as nice, but a little eccentric.
In this extended version of the radio broadcast we hear many interesting details about Sinclair's dealings with the famous Russian director Sergei Eisenstein.
Kimbrough also tells the story of the day that he and Sinclair were arrested for trying to make a speech.
Gulf Coast resident Hunter S. Kimbrough met many important Mississippians during his lifetime. He recalls his family’s long association with Mrs. Jefferson Davis
Kimbrough also met Judge Hardy and Captain Jones, the founders of Hattiesburg and Gulfport.
He describes Mississippi Governor and Senator Theodore Bilbo as a political opponent and family friend.
In April of 1974, Hattiesburg native General Sidney Berry was appointed Supervisor of the U.S. Army’s West Point Military Academy. He recalls the job interview with General Creighton Abrams and how that meeting affected his tenure at the Academy.
In 1975, Congress authorized the admission of women to West Point. Berry discusses overseeing the transition and how the West Point Code of Honor was put to the test during a cadet cheating scandal.
In 1881, Laz Lopez opened the South’s first seafood factory in Biloxi. Julius Lopez, Jr. recalls his grandfather’s rags to riches story.
At its peak, Lopez-Elmer was the largest seafood packer in the country. Lopez discusses the company’s glory days.
Since it's founding in 1963, the Hattiesburg Clinic has grown in size and reputation. Dr. Geoffrey Hartwig discusses how they have been able to attract so many physicians to Hattiesburg and what it has meant to South Mississippi. It's an interesting story made even more so in this extended version. Enjoy!
For over thirty-five years, Wade Guice served as the Harrison County Director of Civil Defense. His first office was a small trailer powered by an extension cord. During his time in that position, he is credited with saving countless lives during several tornados and hurricanes including Camille. Please enjoy Guice's story in his own words in this extended version of the original broadcast.
On January 23rd, 1968, the USS Pueblo, a Naval Intelligence ship was seized in International waters by the North Korean Government. Reverend Rodney Duke of Lake, Mississippi was serving as a communications technician aboard the Pueblo at the time. For the next 334 days Duke and the rest of the crew endured over 200 interrogations. He remembers the physical and psychological torture and the effect it had on him. This extended version contains more graphic detail than the broadcast version.
Jim Kelly of Pearlington, grew up in the nearby town of English Lookout. He recounts how English Lookout got its name and how lumber companies used schooners and tug boats to carry harvested timber down the Pearl River to Gulfport.
The logging towns that sprang up along the Pearl River often had no roads and depended on boats for mail, supplies and transportation. Kelly remembers the mail boat of Captain Boardman that ran from Logtown to English Lookout.
In the mid-1960s, Mississippi began the process of desegregating its public schools. Winston Fairley of Gulfport recalls transferring to a previously all-white school in Hattiesburg after finishing the eighth grade.
As the son of a local civil rights leader, Fairley felt a sense of duty to represent his people and make his father proud. Even so, he remembers the move left him feeling isolated within his own community.
Jewish holidays are traditionally associated with certain foods. Gail Goldberg of Greenwood discusses some of these dishes. She explains why, as the Jewish population of Greenwood has declined, holiday traditions have become even more important. Goldberg also details the tremendous amount of effort that goes into preparing for the family’s annual Rosh Hashanah celebration.
In 1999, Erik Robert Fleming became the fiftieth African American to enter the Mississippi legislature in the modern era. He discusses why he became interested in becoming a politician. Fleming also comments on race relations within the legislature and the need for coalitions.
In 1963, Charles Dunagin was hired by newspaper publisher Oliver Emmerich to be the editor of the McComb Enterprise-Journal. He recalls the turbulent summer of 1964 and his paper’s efforts to report the racial violence.
Dunagin also recounts the bombing of civil rights workers that summer and how his own family was threatened with the same fate. Enjoy the extra details in this extended version of the original.
During the Big Band Era, Dances were an important social activity for young people. Frances Joyner of Tupelo recalls her first dance and staying out all night.
Organized dances had unique customs and vernaculars. Joyner explains the terms Check-In List, Stag Line, No-breaks and Specials. Joyner also remembers dancing on the roof of the Peabody Hotel in Memphis.
Please enjoy this extended version of the original broadcast.
The Great Depression of the 1930s left millions of Americans unable to support themselves or their families. As a teenager, Lillie McLaurin of Hattiesburg remembers the time she encountered a soup line. She relates how the experience changed her priorities.
McLaurin recalls how her father would give some of his shifts at work to others with less seniority and a certain grocer who gave away food to those in need. Please enjoy this extended version of the original broadcast.
For many growing up in Mississippi, cold weather meant that it was hog-killing time. Charles Wright of Natchez remembers sneaking late night snacks from his grandmother's smoke house.
Wright recalls his family's Christmas gatherings as a time filled with a lot of food and a lot of Love.
Happy Holidays from the Mississippi Moments family to your family!
Jessie Turner of Natchez discusses his family's tradition of hunting and cooking wild game and how it evolved from an economic necessity to a sport that fosters friendship and community.
He explains how to cook a wild hog in the field and his two favorite methods for cooking raccoon in this extended version of the broadcast episode.
Songol Arslan of Jackson grew of in Ankara, Turkey. She describes a traditional Turkish diet and discusses some dishes are served during the holidays.
Of all of the dishes that Arslan prepares for her American friends, they love her carrot salad the most. She reveals how it's made.
Kenneth York is the Tribal Historian for the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians. He discusses traditional Choctaw sources of carbohydrates as well as the soups and stews that the Choctaws prepared in clay pots over an open fire. York also describes the wide variety of game that Mississippi Choctaws enjoyed barbequing.
Delores Ulmer of Jackson is a second generation Lebanese-American. She discusses Kibbeh, a traditional Lebanese meat dish and how to prepare sasuf, which is a wheat salad now known at tabouli.
According to Ulmer, preparing food together is a Lebanese tradition that makes the work more fun and brings the family closer. Please enjoy this extended version of the original radio broadcast
In the past eight years, the number of Mississippi Farmer’s Markets had doubled from around 30 to over 60.
Andy Prosser with the Mississippi Department of Agriculture and Commerce discusses the benefits of supporting local Farmer’s Markets. He explains how his department certifies and supports the formation of Farmer’s Markets.
Many low income Mississippians have limited access to fresh produce. Prosser details how the State’s voucher program provides them with healthy food choices.
In books like North Towards Home and My Dog Skip, Willie Morris drew upon memories of growing up in Yazoo City for inspiration. He recalls his family’s long history in Mississippi and how summertime boredom often led to mischief. Morris reflects on the education he received in the Yazoo City Public School system. He remembers the influence one teacher had on his decision to become a writer. Please enjoy this extended version of the original radio broadcast.
During WWII, items needed for the war effort created shortages of consumer goods. Parnell McKay of Pass Christian recalls a scarcity of paper, fuel, and apartments.
Fearing attack by the Germans or Japanese, civilian observation posts were set up along the Gulf Coast. As a high school student, McKay volunteered as a spotter. He remembers the day he spotted a U-boat.
McKay also reveals how liquor laws were ignored to “service” the servicemen.
On June 6th, 1944, Allied forces stormed the beaches of Normandy, France. Cmdr. Rip Bounds of Hattiesburg piloted his Utility Landing Ship onto Utah Beach carrying 25 tons of ammunition.
Bounds remembers endless days of ferrying men and equipment to the beach and carrying the wounded away. He gets emotional when he recounts the efforts of the Red Cross Ladies to give comfort to the wounded warriors.
In this extended version, we hear many more details including his meeting Churchill, Montgomery and Patton.
Dr. Dollye Robinson has had a distinguished career as a Professor of Music Education at Jackson State. So it was only natural that she would join the Mississippi Arts Commission.
Robinson details the efforts of the Arts Commission to find funding for various programs statewide and presents an eloquent defense for the continued support of the Arts and Humanities in our schools.
In 1947, a Mississippi association of African-American teachers decided to pool their resources and sue the state for pay and benefits equal to that of their white counterparts. After Gladys Noel Bates agreed to be named the plaintiff, her contract was not renewed and she and her husband were unable to find work as teachers anywhere in the South.
In this extended version of last week's radio broadcast, hear details of how the group was able to keep news of the pending suit secret and how she was isolated from her peers after it made national headlines.
Mrs. Bates passed away on Oct. 15th, 2010 in Denver, Colorado where she enjoyed a long and successful career in public education.
Here is a favorite of ours from June 2009, featuring Southern Miss coach and first full-time Athletic Director, Reed Green.
On November 9th, 1965 a power outage plunged New York City into darkness during rush hour. Clarksdale native, George Falls was in a helicopter with Holiday Inn founder, Kemmons Wilson when the lights went out. He recalls the ride back to New York City in total darkness and the way people made the best of a bad situation. This extended cut gives many more details than the original radio version.
In August of 1954, the first franchised Holiday Inn opened for business in Clarksdale, MS. George Falls, then a senior in high school, recalls the excitment and feelings of pride shared by the entire town.
After college, Falls went to work for the fledgling company. As a member of the Franchise Department, he witnessed Holiday Inns' metamorphosis from a small southern chain into an industry giant. Please enjoy the bonus material in this extended cut.
Margaret Loesch, of Pass Christian, earned her degree from The University of Southern Mississippi in political science, but it was in children's television that she made her career. Starting as a typing clerk at ABC in 1971, Loesch quickly rose through the ranks to become head of children's programmnig at NBC. She developed many classic kid's shows including The Smurfs, GI Joe, Transformers, Power Rangers, and Muppet Babies. This is the first MS Mo podcast episode that has been extended from the original broadcast length of 4 1/2 minutes. We hope you enjoy the bonus material!
Jimmy Havard played football for Southern Miss from 1958 to 1962. He recalls making the freshman cut in the summer of ’58.
In 1961, Havard set a record for the longest punt return in Southern Miss history. He remembers that play and Roman Gabriel, the famous North Carolina State quarterback who tried to stop him.
Years later as the coach for Petal High School, Havard kept a pre-game superstition he got from Coach Vann.
During WWII, Mississippi Southern College (Southern Miss) discontinued its football program. After the war, Coach Thad “Pie” Vann combed the South looking for new players.
Vann recalls the decision to leave the Gulf States Conference and how an undefeated season in 1958 led to national recognition.
Vann served as head football for Southern Miss from 1947 to 1968. He notes how the growth of the program matched the growth of the school.
Pie Vann was inducted into the Mississippi Sports Hall of Fame in 1971 and into the College Football Hall of Fame in 1987. He passed away in September 1982.
Growing up in Greenville, Deloris Franklin developed a love of the Blues at an early age.
After college, Franklin would often go see live music. She reminisces about the best venues in Greenville and of sitting next to a young singer named Tina Turner.
Working with the Mississippi Action for Community Education, or MACE, allowed Franklin to put her love of the Blues to good use. She remembers one project called the Blues Mobile.
Patty Carr Black began designing exhibits for the Old Capitol Museum in Jackson in 1970. She recalls the decision to focus on Mississippi’s cultural heritage.
In 1974, the Smithsonian Institute asked Mississippi to be the featured state for that year’s Folk Life Festival. Black explains how that experience brought positive national attention to the state and a new pair of friends for her.
Black details some of the Folk Life exhibits and events that have been produced by the museum and why they are important to all of us.
As a college student in North Carolina, Ann Abadie grew to love the writings of William Faulkner. She discusses her decision to move to Faulkner’s home town of Oxford.
Visitors to Oxford frequently requested tours of Faulkner’s home and other sites of interest. Abadie explains how this led to the first William Faulkner Conference in 1974.
That first conference was planned as an intimate gathering of a few Faulkner faithful. Abadie says that no one expected such a huge response or that it would become an annual event.
Lt. General Mickey Walker of Jackson was awarded a Silver Star during WWII and later served in the Far East Command during the Korean War. He recalls rising through the ranks to become chief of the National Guard Bureau during the Reagan administration.
After retiring, Walker became president of the Camp Shelby Military Museum. He explains how the museum got its start.
Mickey Walker passed away in 2007, at the age of 83.
General Emmet H. "Mickey" Walker of Jackson served as a platoon leader with the 95th Infantry Division during the battle for the French city of Metz as well as several other major battles in the European Theater during WWII. He received Bronze and Silver Stars and went on to serve with distinction as Chief of the National Guard Bureau under President Reagan. He recalls the Battle for Metz and a young man from McComb who played the piano.
Happy Fourth of July from your friends at MPB and the Center for Oral History & Cultural Heritage!
From the beginning, seafood fueled the growth of the Gulf Coast economy. Retired fisherman Walter Ross discusses the early days of the seafood industry.
Oyster processing plants in Biloxi used steam to make shucking the oysters easier. Ross recalls fondly the smell of the steam coming from the many large factories.
When he was thirteen, Ross began working part time in the factory where his mother worked. He remembers being much too slow to keep up with the women.
William Thiroux (pronounced T-rue), of Ocean Springs, has been catching crabs for over thirty years. He recalls a thriving industry and a plentiful supply.
In an effort to protect the crab population, Mississippi made it illegal to catch female sponge crabs, a move Thiroux says has decimated the state’s crab industry. He feels that by allowing the harvest of only male crabs, the law has had a negative impact on the crab population.
In 1967, Chris Ethridge, of Meridian, was twenty years old and working as a bass guitar player in Los Angeles. He recalls how a mutual friend put him in contact with country rock legend, Gram Parsons. Ethridge and Parsons, together with Chris Hillman of The Byrds, went on to found country rock band, The Flying Burrito Brothers.
Four years later, in 1973, Gram Parsons died of a drug overdose in Joshua Tree, California. Ethridge explains how the final wishes of Parsons led to one of the most bizarre incidents in the history of Rock-n-Roll. Ethridge discusses the legacy of the Burrito Brothers and the legend of Gram Parsons.
Chris Ethridge passed away on April 23rd, 2012, at the age of 65.
Did you know that all of your favorite MSMO episodes are available for download for free through iTunes? If you have an iPhone or iPad, it's easy peasy to take us with you. Just open your music player, select 'more', then 'podcasts' and search for Mississippi Moments. And while you're there, please take a moment and write a review! Thanks and happy listening!
Prior to the advent of the modern supermarket, people had their produce delivered by
local grocers and street vendors. Helen Rayne of Natchez recalls how her grandmother would shop for food.
Rayne details how her grandmother would buy whole milk and use it to make other dairy products.
She also remembers the fun her grandparents had on wine bottling day.
From an early age, Chris Ethridge of Meridian was interested in music. He recalls how his father’s job affected that interest and how his love of Hank Williams’ music eventually led him to the bass guitar.
In a career spanning close to five decades, Ethridge performed and recorded with Willie Nelson, Jackson Brown, Linda Ronstadt and was a member of the Flying Buritto Brothers along with Gram Parsons and Chris Hillman. Chris Ethridge passed away on April 23rd, 2012, at the age of 65.
Jai Johanny Johanson (pronounced Jay Johnny) learned to play the drums while growing up in Ocean Springs. He remembers playing clubs in Gulfport while still in high school.
Through contacts made while playing around Jackson State, Jai Johanny landed a job as drummer for Otis Redding. He explains how that led to a spot in Percy Sledge’s band.
By 1969, Jai Johanny had a new stage name. That year, Jaimoe (Jay Moe) would help
form a new band with an unknown guitar player named Duane Allman.
After Hurricane Katrina, the decision was made not to re-open the Gulfport harbor to commercial fishermen. William Stewart discusses the impact this has had on the fishing industry.
According to Stewart, being able to sell directly to consumers is vital to many fishermen’s survival. He expresses his frustration on this and on the outlawing of gill nets. Stewart feels that the truth about gill nets has been obscured. He explains why gill nets are actually superior to other types of fishing.
Eugene Stork of Pecan, Mississippi, spent many years as a commercial fisherman. He recalls the pleasure of harvesting oysters, and how his wife would help him process his catch. He also describes the proper way to shuck an oyster.
Betty McGehee of Natchez recalls growing up on several plantations in Louisiana that were managed by her father.
She details the difference between tenant farmers and day hands. McGehee also explains how the lack of transportation made tenant farmers dependent on the plantation store for supplies.
Jackson County resident Wesley Stork learned to fish from his father during the 1930s. He recalls the back-breaking work and how his father caught and sold terrapins to make ends meet.
In 1948 Stork began working for Clark Seafood. He recounts his 39 years with the company and how changing laws affected the industry.
Growing up in Jamaica, Raymond Brown learned to cook traditional island foods from his mother. He recalls his decision to open a Caribbean-style restaurant in Biloxi.
Offering a wide variety of Caribbean foods in his restaurant, Brown explains how he combines traditional island recipes with Southern style. He uses fresh ingredients and traditional cooking techniques to assure his customers guilt-free dining.
Father Peter Quinn was the priest of Hattiesburg’s only black Catholic Church, Holy Rosary, during the Civil Rights movement. Taking a leadership position in the movement made him a frequent target. He was protected by a group called the Deacons of Defense.
Quinn recalls being shot at as he left Vernon Dahmer’s house one evening. He also recounts when Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. took a nap at his home ten days before his assassination.
In 1966, Father Peter Quinn was a young priest at Hattiesburg’s Sacred Heart Church. When he was asked to become the priest for the community's black parish, he soon found himself involved in the Civil Rights movement. Quinn explains how as spiritual leader, he was called on to calm the community’s young people after Dr. King’s assassination.
Having the right mixture of fresh water and salt water is crucial for growing oysters. Clyde Brown recalls how community leaders in Jackson County increased oyster production.
It is not flooding but pollution that has affected the oyster reefs in Jackson County. For that reason Brown fears that they will not receive assistance like other coastal counties. He also explains the differences in harvesting techniques.
Reecy Dickson decided to run for Superintendent of Education of Noxubee County in 1975. She recalls her decision to run for a position that had only been held by white males.
Dickson was eight months pregnant when she was campaigning for the office of Superintendent. But, that didn’t stop her from going door to door or registering new voters
Our coastal wetlands are an important natural resource for a variety of reasons. Jennifer Buchanan of the Mississippi Department of Marine Resources discusses how they affect the seafood industry. Buchanan explains why the waters of the Mississippi Sound are brown, and why that’s a good thing.
For many Mississippians, family recipes are cherished keepsakes. Lisa Burnett of Ruleville remembers cooking with her family and a favorite cookbook. Burnett recalls both her grandparents, George and Tina Burnett, were excellent cooks. She describes a typical Friday night growing up in Ruleville and her Papaw’s unusual smoker.
In 2009, Burnett published her own cookbook of family recipes called Cooking on the Quiver River. She explains how the project came about.
After building the first four Holiday Inns in Memphis, Kemmons Wilson teamed up with Mississippians Wallace Johnson and Bill Walton to begin selling franchises.
Mike Sturdivant, of Glendora, was a recent Harvard graduate in 1956. He recalls meeting Wilson and opening his first Holiday Inn in Meridian. Soon Sturdivant and his former college roommate, Earle Jones, began opening Holiday Inns across the state. He remembers how the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 affected their business.
By 1976, when Studivant sat down to reflect on twenty years in the business, their company, Mississippi Management was operating over 2000 hotel rooms.
Today, MMI of Flowood. operates over 100 properties throughout the southeast.
Over the years, commercial fishermen and conservationists have often viewed each other as adversaries.
Peter Floyd of Pascagoula has worked as a commercial fisherman and a turtle researcher. In a recent interview, he explains how he sees things differently.
Floyd explains how a life-long interest in herpetology, the study of reptiles and amphibians, led to a second career as a turtle researcher.
Floyd sees in the Gulf, an abundant variety of marine life. He feels that over-regulation of the fishing industry is costing the state millions in lost income.
Founded in 1876, P&J Oyster Company of New Orleans was the oldest continually-operating oyster business in the United States. In June of 2010, owners Al, Sal, and Blake Sunseri were forced to close after the B.P. oil spill.
Blake Sunseri describes how the French Quarter would awaken to the sounds of oyster shucking.
Al Sunseri explains that oyster shucking has always been done by immigrants. He laments having to lay off long-time employees. He marvels at the out-pouring of support for their company as they look to the future.
P&J Oysters can be found online at Oysterlovers.com.
After the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in 2010, British Petroleum established a program to compensate those affected. Roscoe Liebig, a shrimper from Pas Christian, says that program was poorly administered and rife with fraudulent claims.
Liebig has noticed that young people are no longer choosing a career in the shrimping industry. He wonders about the future of the industry.
By the 1950s, the Catholic Church was actively supporting racial equality and integration. The Honorable Gerald Blessey, former Mayor of Biloxi recalls how growing up Catholic influenced his decision to become politically active in college.
While attending Ole’ Miss as an undergrad, Blessey witnessed the riot sparked by the enrollment of the school’s first black student, James Meredith. Later, as a law student, he assisted Civil Rights activists during the 1964 Freedom Summer.
For Frank Parker of Biloxi, fishing is a family tradition. He discusses the importance of the seafood industry to the Gulf Coast way of life. Due to the Deepwater Horizon oil spill of 2010, Mississippi shrimpers have had to travel farther from home to catch shrimp. Parker details how he has turned this to his advantage.
Norman Yandell of Long Beach has been fishing all of his life using the skills he learned from his step dad.
He recounts how he started making and selling his own brand of fishing lures called “Norm Bait.”
Yandell can be found most Saturdays at the Biloxi Maritime and Seafood Museum teaching folks how to make fishing nets. He recalls how the local firemen used to spend their spare time making nets.
Jerome Myles of Natchez began working in radio at a young age. He recalls how a job shadowing program in high school led to a 30+ year career in broadcasting. He discusses the importance of “being yourself” on the air.
For over 27 years, Leo Welch has hosted a Gospel music TV show on WO7BN in Bruce, MS. He discusses his early career as a Blues musician and the switch to Gospel.
The Mary Queen of Vietnam Community Development Corp. was established in 2006 to assist area Vietnamese-Americans after Hurricane Katrina. Known as the CDC, they were called on once again to assist the Gulf Coast Vietnamese fishing community after the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill.
Here is our gift to you, our loyal listeners: 30 minutes of our annual Roots Reunion Show recorded live Saturday, December 3rd at the historic Saenger Theater in downtown Hattiesburg. The show features traditional music from Mississippi and the surrounding area. This month's show included bluegrass byour house band, The Patchwork String Band, the traditional music of Doug and Rhonda Webb, Irish folk singer Jim Flanagan, Jazz by Heather and the Monkey King, and more bluegrass by Delta Reign. You can get a CD of the entire show FREE with your paid membership to the Center for Oral History and Cultural Heritage by going to http://www.usm.edu/oral-history/become-member .
Historic Mobile Street in downtown Hattiesburg was for many years the hottest strip for live music outside of Bourbon Street in New Orleans. It was on Mobile Street in 1947 a young guitarist named Tommie Pruitt began a career that has lasted 64 years and counting.
Pruitt recalls learning to play on a homemade guitar and how his father earned money as a street musician.
Taken from an interview provided by the Mississippi Arts Commission's Folklife Archive.
In the early sixties, NASA decided to construct a rocket engine test facility in Hancock County.
Lee Paul of Bay St. Louis was part of a team of engineers sent to test how the noise would affect the surrounding area. He recalls the massive horn they used and the community’s reaction to the tests. Paul also recounts how area wildlife inspired the names of some of the roads.
As a boy in Nesbit, Kenny Brown had a hard time learning to play the guitar. That changed when blues legend, Mississippi Joe Callicott, moved next door.
Years later, Brown befriended another blues legend, R.L. Burnside. Brown recalls playing with Burnside and his first trip to a juke joint.
Brown also demonstrates the difference between the Hill Country blues of North Mississippi and the Delta blues. This interview courtesy of the Mississippi Arts Commission's Folklife Archive.
In 1894, a group of African American men from the Bay St Louis area formed the One Hundred Members Benevolent Debating Association. In 1922, the Association constructed a meeting hall as place to conduct fundraising events. Known as the Hundred Men Hall, it became a regular stop for many of the greatest musical acts of the day.
Walter Biggins and Anna Kline are newly weds from Jackson brought together by a love of Mississippi foods and culture. They detail how an article Kline was writing on ways to prepare watermelon became an annual party. The couple also belong to a "Soup Club", a group of friends that meet regularly to share good food and conversation.
As a boy, Hattiesburg resident, Jimmy Swan dreamed of performing on the Grand Ole Opry. He tells the story of how he ran away from home at the age of 13 and a young man he met named Hank Williams.
Randy Yates of Oxford is co-owner of the Ajax Diner on the Square. He recalls growing up in Jackson and the restaurants that influenced his decision to go into food service. He also details the foods offered at the Ajax Diner and why he feels it's important to have a wide variety.
Elsie McWilliams of Meridian loved to write plays for her church's you group, but had never tried to write a song. That changed after she received a phone call from her famous brother-in-law, country singer, Jimmie Rodgers
When Monica Williams flad her home city of New Orleans, after Hurricane Katrina, she decided to make Jackson her new home. Soon, Williams became the cafeteria chef for Saint Therese Catholic School. She discusses adapting her traditional New Orleans dishes to meet the nutritional needs of the children.
After not playing guitar for many years, John Arnold was inspired to by the re-release of Jimmie Rodgers' catalog in the mid-sixties. He began performing Rodgers' music across the state for fairs and other events.
For Greek Americans, traditional foods provide an important link to culture and family. Kris Gianakos recalls a recent family reunion and the role that food played at the gathering. He also details how Greek foods are combined with traditional American foods during the holidays.
As the son of an army officer, Julian Brunt of Biloxi, was exposed to different cultures and foods at a young age. He recalls a dinner party his mother gave for some German friends while in Europe.He also remembers his first Barq’s root beer and soft shell crab poor boy. When writing about food for the Sun Herald or other publications, Brunt likes to include stories that tie a particular dish to its parent culture.
Retired Lt. General Russell Honoré lead the recovery operation in his home state of Louisiana and Mississippi following Hurricane Katrina. He discusses his decision to make Camp Shelby his base of operations. Honoré points with pride to the recovery that’s been made in the years following the storm. He has decided to go on a personal crusade to help establish a culture of preparedness in the U.S.
Born in 1900, LeGrand “Doc” Capers witnessed many changes to his home town of Vicksburg. These included changes in technology, commerce and transportation. Capers recalls the first phonograph and the fire station next door.
Capers also describes a visit to the Vicksburg Cotton Exchange.
Sarah Carter of Greenville, was 10 years old during the great flood of 1927. She remembers watching the waters rise as people searched for a place to keep their livestock.
Carter recalls the decision to remain at home during the flood as boats became the only means of transportation.
Following WWII, advances in modern farming methods meant fewer jobs for rural Mississippians. In response, the Tupelo Community Development Foundation was formed to bring industrial jobs to Lee County. Harry Martin of Tupelo explains. Martin also details how the Community Development Foundation unified the efforts and resources of the cities with those of the rural communities.
Before the advent of the self-service filling station in the 1970s, there was the full-service gas station. Here, uniformed attendants pumped gas, checked your car’s fluids, and even washed the windshield.
James and Ruby Wentworth of Meadville operated such a station during the 1940s. She recalls the demands of being a working wife and mother.
In 1955, director Elia Kazan came to Beniot, Mississippi to film the Tennessee Williams movie, Babydoll. Kazan hired several locals to play small parts in the film. Brodie Crump, of Greenville, describes the character he played and his mother’s reaction to his new job. Crump also recalls some of the actors he met while filming and upsetting a member of the crew.
During WWII, Japanese-Americans were forced to live in “relocation” camps by the government. Despite this harsh treatment, many of them served with distinction in the armed forces. Herbert Sasaki recalls coming to Camp Shelby to join an all Japanese-American combat unit. Sasaki explains the purpose of the 442nd Regimental Combat Team and reflects on the heavy cost the 442nd paid in becoming on of the Army’s most decorated combat units.
In December of 1941, with war in the Pacific looming, a series of Naval Construction Battalions were established. Known as Seabees, they were responsible for building the bridges, airstrips, roads and buildings needed by our troops. Dr. Patrick Gill of Macon, Mississippi explains how he became a Seabee. He remembers the hot and difficult conditions of the Philippines.
Like many blues musicians, Willie Jordan of Rose Hill, was taught how to play by family members. Jordan discusses the impact music has had on his life and the universal truths contained within the blues.
Blues Musician, Melvin Stacks of Picayune, recalls growing up poor and talks about his early influences. He also discusses his vocal techniques and the importance of warming up.
Broadcasting pioneer, Jobie Martin, was discouraged from playing sports as a child by his mother. He recounts the remarkable story of how he began playing football for Jackson State University (then Jackson College) at the age of 40--a feat that earned him a place in the JSU Sports Hall of Fame!
After working in Chicago for twelve years as an assistant pathologist, Jobie Martin came home to Mississippi to help his mother. He details how a job at the Gulfport Airport led to a remarkable career in broadcasting.
In 1976, Dorothy Moore of Jackson hit #1 on the R&B charts with the song Misty Blue, two years after it was recorded. She discusses her upbringing and how it affected her career.
For many people, music is a family tradition. Blues guitarist Vasti Jackson of Hattiesburg recalls how family influenced his decision to play the blues. He also discusses growing up in McComb with neighbors like Wakefield "Big Moody" Coney.
In this final look at Jerry Clower's 1973 interview with the Center for Oral History, Clower discusses the difference his step father made in his life. He also talks about having fun without a lot of money.
Before the advent of refrigeration, farmers relied on a variety of innovative methods for preserving meat. Boe McClure of Marshall County describes how they used to smoke hams in their smoke house. McClure also recalls how his mother preserved sausage using fertilizer bags and home canning.
Rev. John M. Perkins became involved in the civil rights movement after returning to Mississippi in 1960. He recalls being arrested in Mendenhall in 1969. After the arrest of Perkins and his young parishioners, people from around the county converged on the jail. Perkins marks this incident as the beginning of the civil rights movement in Simpson County.
The Civil Rights movement forced many Mississippians to rethink some long held attitudes. Humorist Jerry Clower speaks candidly about how his experiences and faith altered his views on race.
You can now enjoy Mississippi Moments on the go with our new Android App. It is available for download through Google's Android App Store for the low one-time price of $1.99. With over 260 episodes and counting, you can enjoy hours of entertaining and educational audio clips from The Center for Oral History's enormous collection. We will be including additional content exclusively for the MS Moments App, so don't miss out. Download it today!
For many years, farmers and share croppers relied on credit supplied by furnish merchants. Humorist Jerry Clower of Liberty, Mississippi explains how this early lending system functioned and the history of the expression "making groceries."
In the early 20th Century, Mississippi’s fledgling cattle industry was plagued with tick fever. By 1929, it was obvious that something must be done to fight the state’s tick infestation. McComb newspaper publisher John O. Emmerich recalls how this new program was met with violent opposition.
Long time newspaper publisher G.O. Parker of Magee reflects on his early career and on the colorful history of politics in Simpson County.
For many years after the repeal of Prohibition, Mississippi remained a ‘dry’ state. Rev. John Perkins of New Hebron recalls how his family made ends meet by selling moonshine whiskey. He explains the difference between ‘homebrew’ and ‘moonshine.’
Hundreds of volunteers travelled to Mississippi in 1964 to teach basic literacy to African Americans during the Civil Rights Movement. One of those volunteers, Sandra Adickes, shares her initial impressions of Hattiesburg.
Adickes also recalls a trip to the Hattiesburg Public library with six African American students in the first attempt to integrate the city’s library.
Dorothy Nunnery of Brandon worked as a nurse at the VA Hospital in Jackson for 32 years. She recalls her time at the Jackson Infirmary Nursing School during WWII. She also recounts her first encounter with bed bugs.
Built in 1918 between Mendenhall and Magee, the Mississippi State Tuberculosis Sanatorium provided care and isolation for those afflicted with this terrible disease. Dorothy Nunnery of Brandon recalls living on the grounds of the Sanatorium during the 1930s. Nunnery also explains the purpose of the Preventorium and remembers a family who came to stay.
Former Mississippi Supreme Court, Armis E. Hawkins, served as a district attorney in Chickasaw County in the early 1950s. He looks back on his early career.
Mississippi Supreme Court Justice, Armis E. Hawkins, joined the service in June 1942 with ambitions of becoming an officer. The Marine Corps had other plans. Hawkins recalls his service during WWII.
The first African American Mississippi Supreme Court Justice, Reuben Anderson, remembers the racial climate of 1960s Mississippi. At Tougaloo College, he was inspired by the activism around him. He looks back on his career and his beginnings as a civil rights lawyer.
Senator Thad Cochran nominated Mississippi Supreme Court Justice Michael Mills for a Federal Judgeship in 2001. Mills recounts a getting phone call from the Oval Office. Justice Mills’ confirmation hearing before the Senate was just two days after 9/11. Mills remembers the patriotism and resolve of Americans to overcome the tragedy in the immediate aftermath.
One of Justice Michael P. Mills’ fondest memories from his tenure on the Mississippi Supreme Court was his friend and colleague Justice Michael Sullivan. He shares some of his favorite memories of his friend.
Retired Mississippi Supreme Court Justice Robert Sugg has fond memories of his days on the bench. He remembers of some of his fellow judges. Sugg also recounts a fishing trip with fellow justice Francis Bowling.
Retired Mississippi Supreme Court Justice Robert P. Sugg wanted to be a pilot during WWII. He recalls how a perforated ear drum prevented him from serving. He discusses his early career.
In World War II, all-black combat units such as the Tuskegee Airmen gained widespread recognition for their service. However, most black soldiers served in support units away from the front line. Lee Spearman of Bay Springs describes the frustration of being assigned to such a unit. Spearman details the close proximity of the Pacific island battles and the death of American war correspondent, Ernie Pyle.
Many stories surround the naming of the town of D’Lo. Long-time resident Chrysteen Flynt attempts to set the record straight. She also shares her memories of growing up there.
Many Italian immigrants settled in the Mississippi Delta bringing their culture and traditions with them. John Bassie of Cleveland, MS recalls how his family celebrated the 4th of July, Italian style.
Growing up during World War II, Lynn Cartlidge of Hattiesburg found plenty of ways to earn money as a boy. He talks about his paper route, which ended up taking him to Camp Shelby.
Lee Davis of Hattiesburg shares his memories of growing up in a large and fun-loving family. He recalls practical jokes and holiday moments shared with loved ones.
This September marked the fifth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina. George Schloegel of Hancock Bank and now Mayor of Gulfport, discusses being prepared for the next disaster. He reflects on the real lessons of Katrina.
Greg Osaneha is a Nigerian who immigrated to the United States. He talks about what led him to leave his home.
Osaneha explains what he feels are the strengths of the United States.
During WWII, the war with Japan was fought over tiny islands most people had never heard of. Truman Ellis of Jackson recalls joining the Navy and his time in the Pacific.
In World War II, Alton Patterson’s unit was days from invading Japan when the country surrendered. He remembers the Japanese prisoners of war and his complex feelings toward the atomic bomb.
For Ellen McCarley of Port Gibson, some of her most cherished childhood memories are of Christmas. She recalls how her mother made the season special.
During the early 20th Century, Biloxi was home to more than a dozen seafood processing plants. Retired fisherman Tommy Schultz, Jr. recalls how each plant had its own unique work whistle.
Gordon Nanney reflects on the 50 + years he spent helping to bring electric power to the people of Mississippi.
In 1963, Dr. Gilbert Mason led a group of African-Americans into the waters of Biloxi beach. This wade-in, to protest the ‘whites only’ rule of the day, was met with violent resistance from white citizens and the police. Ethel Clay remembers how the youth got involved in the wade-ins and the measures taken for their safety. Clay reflects on the cost of standing up for civil rights and the progress that we’ve made as a nation.
This spring marked the 50th anniversary of the first of the Gulf Coast wade-ins. Back then, most Mississippi beaches were for whites only. During one of these wade-ins, Dr. Gilbert Mason led a group of African-Americans into the segregated waters of Biloxi beach. What followed was one of the bloodiest race riots in Mississippi history with 71 arrested and dozens injured.
A small boy at the time, Le’Roy Carney recalls using the railroad tracks to flee the riot. Carney also explains how the black community in Biloxi organized themselves to boycott those responsible for the violence at the beach.
Earnest Batiste, a US Army veteran and civil rights activist, remembers growing up during hard times. He describes the sacrifices made by his mother to put food on the table. Batiste reflects on the progress we’ve made and the difficulties of explaining that time period to a younger generation.
An army requires daily deliveries of food, ammunition and other supplies. Mark Whitney of Natchez recalls working as a naval supply supervisor in Vietnam. As a supply supervisor, Whitney learned that the locals were much smarter than the Americans assumed they were.
Former Mississippi Supreme Court Justice Roy Noble Lee was interested in the law from an early age. Lee reflects on this and the courtroom atmosphere of 1920s Brandon, Mississippi. Justice Lee also recounts getting the opportunity to try his first criminal case, at the age of 19.
Today’s Tree farmers like Charles Barge of Noxubee County must always look to the future. Barge tells how he began investing in the future by planting new trees and why it is important to do so. He recounts how the Conservation Reserve Act has led to greater opportunities for hunting and recreation.
Tree Farmers are landowners who voluntarily manage their woodlands for the continuing growth of forest crops. Charles Barge of Noxubee County discusses how things have changed since his father began tree farming in 1941. He explains how poor forestry practices led to disease and infestations in the past like the Southern pine beetle invasion of the 1960s.
In 1935, Sam Alman Jr. moved from Arkansas to Gulfport to start his own soda bottling company. His son, Sam Alman III recounts the story and discusses the early days of his family's soda business.
Sun Herald columnist Kat Bergeron has spent decades researching the history and folk lore of the Mississippi Gulf Coast. She debunks three popular myths about the Gulf Coast.
With the end of the Vietnam War came an influx of Vietnamese refugees to the United States. Biloxi businessman Richard Gollott discusses the impact these refugees had on the Gulf Coast seafood industry. A story made even more poignant by the pending Gulf oil spill disaster.
The Civil War left many on both sides emotionally scarred. Libby Hollingsworth of Port Gibson recalls the hardships endured by her great grandfather, Kell Shaifer as a rebel soldier.
Hollingsworth recalls how a letter from a Yankee soldier after the war changed Kell Shaifer’s life. She also reflects on the healing effect an unlikely friendship had on many.
After cotton is picked, the cotton fibers, called lint, must be separated from the seeds in a process known as “ginning.” James Gray went to work for the Torrey Cotton Gin in Port Gibson as a young man. He explains the cotton ginning process and the importance of doing it correctly.
Ethel Patton D’Anjou of Alcorn recounts the story of her grandparents’ decision to leave the family farm in Carlisle in the late 1800s and journey to the newly opened Alcorn College.
In the early days of automobiles, learning to drive was an adventure. As the son of the local Ford dealer, James Allen of Port Gibson learned to drive at a young age. Allen recalls how different the Model T was from other cars. He also remembers how his father taught a local rancher to drive his first car.
By the 1960s, railroads had lost much of their freight hauling business to trucks. Ray Ward of McComb recalls how track maintenance suffered as a result. As a car man, Ward’s job was to re-track derailed cars and locomotives. He explains how he was able to do this with a crew of only two men.
As World War Two raged on, women helped keep the trains rolling back home. Bonnie Stedman of McComb remembers the work as difficult and dangerous.
During World War Two, women took jobs traditionally held by men. Bonnie Stedman of McComb began working for the railroad in 1943 at the age of 17. She recalls the dangers and rewards of working long hours in remote locations.
The civil rights movement brought increased job opportunities for African Americans. Paul Leonard describes how work changed for black employees of the McComb Railroad Shop. Leonard remembers the first two black employees of the McComb shop to become engineers.
The advent of Diesel-electric locomotives was a vast improvement over the steam engines they replaced. John Balser worked as a machinist at the McComb Railroad repair shop. He recalls the pride that the steam engineers took in their locomotives. Balser also details how much more efficient the new Diesel engines were than their steam predecessors.
Working on the railroad was always been hard, dangerous work. Woodrow Addison of McComb recalls the frequent derailments he experienced during his 38 years with Illinois Central.
Woodrow Addison worked for the Illinois Central Railroad shop in McComb for 38 years. He worked first as a brakeman and then, a conductor. Addison contrasts the duties of the two jobs. He also discusses the advantages of diesel over steam power.
Many memorable movies have been made in Mississippi. Edna Joseph of Natchez worked for the Mississippi Film Commission finding local talent for these productions. Being involved with several film projects showed Joseph that movie stars are just regular people.
Growing up on a farm, Natchez resident Alonzo “Duck” Irving learned many things from his mother. He discusses the food they grew and how he has benefited from his mother's wisdom.
After the Civil War, the lands of many Mississippi Plantations were farmed by share croppers. Alonzo “Duck” Irving of Natchez recalls growing up on such a plantation.
Today, modern supermarkets offer convenient one-stop grocery shopping. But, Ruth Colter of Natchez recalls the days of street vendors and small corner grocery stores.
For thousands of troops during World War II, their journey began with a trip to Mississippi for training. Ruth Colter of Natchez remembers helping to entertain those young men. As a member of the service group Military Maids, Colter helped to organize local dances for the troops.
Long-time Natchez resident Henrietta "Lou" Mallory worked in the downtown area for over 45 years. She discusses the changing face of Natchez through such topics as the introduction of fast food and gaming. She also expresses her love of the city and hopes for the future.
Long-time Natchez resident Henrietta "Lou" Mallory recounts the events that brought her to Natchez in the late 1940s. She also reflects on 45 years as the owner of Lou's Tailor Shop and the love she feels for her adopted city.
F. L. Speights of Ripley, Mississippi, devoted his life to education. He recalls helping to start the first black high school in Ripley as well as his memories of school integration during the 1960s.
In August of 1964, forty Freedom Schools were set up in Mississippi in support of the Freedom Summer civil rights project. Gloria Clark, a first grade teacher from New Bedford, Massachusetts, explains her decision to come to Mississippi and participate.
Palmer Foster of Tupelo was introduced to Scouting as a teen in his home town of Ripley. He recalls his time as a Boy Scout and as the first African American Boy Scout executive in Mississippi.
Idalia Holloway of Holly Springs began farming at an early age. Besides growing crops like cotton and sorghum for cash, her family grew all of their food as well. Holloway recalls how her father would mill the sorghum into juice and cook it down to make molasses. She also discusses cooking on a wood-burning stove.
In 1965, Raylawni Branch and Elaine Armstrong were the first African-American students to enroll at The University of Southern Mississippi. She reflects on her experiences as a student and on her career as an Air Force officer and as a nursing instructor.
Raylawni Branch recalls her experiences as a civil rights activist and as one of the first African-Americans to attend The University of Southern Mississippi.
In the 99 year history of The University of Southern Mississippi, no one has had a greater impact on the athletic program than Bernard Reed Green. When Green came to the school in 1930, football games were still being played in the city park. He discusses how the program evolved during his time as a player, as head football coach, and as USM’s first full-time director of athletics. (photo of Line coach Thad "Pie" Vann and Bernard Reed Green)
University of Southern Mississippi graduate student, Isaac Gang, immigrated to Jackson, Mississippi, from post-war Southern Sudan in 1995, several years before the "Lost Boys" of Sudan made their journey to the U.S. He discusses fleeing war and genocide, assisting the Lost Boys in their transition, enjoying the simple modern luxuries, and the importance of giving back. (photo of Isaac Gang at the University of Juba, July 2007)
George Taylor discusses the Rural Electrification Act and what it meant to the lives of thousands of Mississippians. He also tells the story of how the various electrical co-ops banded together to form the South Mississippi Electric Power Association and the challenges they faced.
Hattiesburg resident Charlie Ainsworth recalls helping to construct the hundreds of sawmills that sprang up across the state during the early part of the 20th century.
Joe Berryman, Buck Wells, and Hugh Clegg fondly recall hometown entertainment during the days of the silent film.
Purser Hewitt, Sam Alford, and E. G. McDavid recall the spirited personality and oratorical skills of the controversial U.S. senator and Mississippi governor from Pearl River County.
Presidential Citizens Medal recipient Oseola McCarty remarks on her lifetime of work as a washerwoman and the legacy she created at The University of Southern Mississippi.
Joseph Wroten, Erle Johnston, and Gilbert Mason recall the creation and influence of the Mississippi State Sovereignty Commission during the civil rights movement.
Jack Pace, James "Jaybird" Smith, and Reverend F. E. Sellers reminisce about southern breakfasts, squirrel stew, and homemade syrup.
Mississippi artists Kay Allen, Jennie Lee Gorton, and Berdie Steve share how identity is discovered and revealed in the folk art forms of quilting, painting, and basket weaving.
Mississippi musicians Melvin Stacks, Roger Smith, and George Cecil McLeod reflect on the centrality of music in their lives. (photo of singing school students at Greenwright School in Monroe County, 1913)
Johnny Balser of McComb remembers how he parlayed skills learned as a railroad worker into support for the Allied effort in Europe during the Second World War.
Belzoni native Thomas Turner reflects on the origins and colorful life of gypsies who mule traded near his home in the early 20th century.
Mrs. Lamar Hennington, Charles Ainsworth, and Ben Earles reminisce about the days of the gigantic longleaf pine and how an industry altered the land and its people.
Gene Taylor, Reilly Morse, and Diane Peranich shed light on some of the obstacles and issues that surfaced after the storm was over. (photo of Congressman Gene Taylor, on right).
Tish Williams, Bill Stallworth, and Kurt Brautigam represent the power of determination to survive and conquer in the aftermath.
Michael Hewes, Rachel Williams, and Reverend Lee Adams share similar feelings about the overwhelming power of the storm.
James Harris Jr. and Dr. John Douglas Jr. recall their youthful days buying snacks and swapping stories at the ole country store.
Kenneth O. Williams and Legrand Capers speak of the legacies of the Civil War in Mississippi.
Legrand Capers and Libby Hollingsworth share fond memories of attending traveling variety shows of the early 20th century.
Harry Guin, A.D. Kellar, and Ken Cashion explain how the Stennis Space Center evolved and changed the face of the Mississippi Gulf Coast.
Chinese Americans Vera Penney Gong, Luck Wing, and John Wing discuss their experiences living outside of a black and white racial identity during segregation in Mississippi. (photo of students of the only all-Chinese school in Bolivar County, 1938)
Legendary Red Sox Hall of Famer, Boo Ferriss, shares the most memorable experiences of his baseball career, while noting the value and importance of education.
Jobie Martin reminisces about his early career and entering unchartered territory as the first African American to host his own television show in Mississippi.
Korean War veteran Sidney Berry recalls the harsh reality of killing enemy soldiers. Rodney Duke describes the torture he endured as a prisoner of war.
Kenneth and Jason York discuss the history of the Choctaws and contemporary challenges of retaining their traditional values and culture.
Evelyn Gandy speaks about serving the people and breaking barriers for women during her distinguished legislative career.
Mississippi writer Willie Morris entertains with recollections of a youthful prank, meeting with Robert Frost, and lunch in Greenwich Village.
Shelby Foote and Bell Wiley reminisce about the literary skill and eccentricities of their friend and colleague William Faulkner.
Novelist and historian Shelby Foote discusses his approach to writing, opinion of Jefferson Davis, and friendship with William Faulkner.
Reid Dunn Jr., Sarah Carter, and Brodie Crump recall firsthand the most destructive flood in U.S. history.
Lanier Phillips and Lee Spearman recall blatant discrimination back home after returning from military service in World War II.
African American Lee Spearman recalls an unexpected ride with the KKK during the days of segregation.
Sister-in-law Elsie McWilliams remembers the legendary father of country music, Jimmie Rogers.
Comedian Jerry Clower muses about growing up in rural Mississippi and entering show business.
Vietnamese American Dat Duong relates the difficulties of growing up in Vietnam as a mixed-race child of the enemy.
Sandra Adickes, Unita Blackwell, and Fannie Lou Hamer relate their experiences forging a new path as civil rights activists for SNCC in Mississippi.
Clem Maples and William Redd share their experiences during the Great Depression when jobless men nicknamed "hoboes" rode the rails in search of work.
Gulf Coast residents Vincent Creel, Roland Weeks, and George Schloegel discuss the pros and cons of legalized riverboat gambling.
Author Minor Ferris Buchanan sheds light on Theodore Roosevelt's famous black bear hunt in the Mississippi Delta.
Fred Clark Sr. describes the experiences of those who attempted to integrate interstate bus travel in 1961. (photo of Mr. Clark)
World War II veteran Lloyd Smith and Vietnam veteran Thomas Collins III remember the brutality of life during captivity.
Amzie Moore and Florence Mars relate the tension in Mississippi in 1955 surrounding the murder of 14-year-old Emmett Till and the subsequent trial.
Long Beach resident David bul Garang recalls fleeing war as a young boy in his native Southern Sudan, then immigrating to Mississippi after years in a refugee camp.
Reflections from Fred Clark, William Joel Blass, and James Meredith himself on testing the laws of integration at Ole Miss in 1962.
Reuben Anderson and Ernestine Talbert recall the resistance to school integration in the early 1970s and the challenges it posed for African American students.
Jimmy Swan, J.P. Coleman, and Thomas McNeese reminisce about Mississippi's prohibition days.
Charles Evers, Aaron Henry, and Claude Ramsey remember the courageous life and tragic death of Medgar Evers, first field secretary of the Mississippi NAACP.
Rims Barber, R. Jess Brown, and Aaron Henry recall the Freedom Summer volunteer effort in 1964 to assist African Americans in registering to vote.
Veterans Henry Eason, Jesse Broadus, and Julian Feibelman recall the meager training, gas attacks, and novelty of Europe in the First World War.
Veterans Julius Chambliss, George Thornton, and Samuel Abbott describe the challenges and horrors of fighting Japanese forces in the Pacific.
Vietnam veterans Richard Murchison, John Young, and Thomas Collins III relate their impressions of war as young soldiers in a far away place. (photo of Sergeant John Young in Vietnam, 1967 - on left)
World War II veterans William Pace, Patrick Carr, and Gen. Elmo Bell each recall personal experiences of the war, from the Normandy invasion to the Battle of the Bulge.
Mississippi musicians Wakefield "Big Moody" Coney, Sam Chapman, and Melvin Stacks share their feelings about the blues. (photo of Big Moody Coney)
Charles Hickson and Calvin Parker describe their encounter with a UFO while they were fishing near the Pascagoula River in 1973.
Lamar Gray of Gulfport, Elizabeth Brewton of Vancleave, and John Mason of St. Martin reflect on the impact of the storm.
John Mason of St. Martin and Barry Jones of Gulfport describe their narrow escape as Hurricane Katrina ravaged the Gulf Coast.
Fannie Lou Hamer speaks about her involvement with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and advocacy for African American voting rights in Mississippi. (photo of Ms. Hamer holding sign)
State representative Alyce Griffin Clarke relates her experiences as the first African American female legislator in Mississippi.
Mary Anderson Pickard and William Anderson, children of famed Gulf Coast artist Walter Anderson, recall their father's demeanor and his admiration for ecology. (self-portrait of Walter Anderson)
John G. Anderson and Leif Anderson, children of famed Gulf Coast artist Walter Anderson, remember their father's devotion to the Gulf Coast. (photo of Walter Anderson with one of his pots, 1934)
William J. Simmons, M.W. Hamilton, and Erle Johnston recall both the influence and organizational faults of the White Citizens Council in Mississippi. (photo of White Citizens Council operative on right with camera at voting site)