Written by Malcolm White

By the time I moved to Jackson in the spring of 1979, just in time for the Easter Flood, I had already lived in Washington D.C., Los Gatos, California and New Orleans.  I committed to a one year contract for a job offer I simply could not refuse.  My plan was to get a good year’s experience and sock some money away before heading back to NOLA where a job offer to return to my old restaurant team and my idea of southern, global culture awaited. For a lot of reasons and thirty five years later, I’m still here.  If I had to name three, I would say opportunity, love and comfort are the most obvious, but Eudora Welty, Margaret Walker Alexander, William Winter, Willie Morris, Sam Myers, Cassandra Wilson and Charles Evers were a few more.

My best friend Michael Rubenstein made sure I met all the right people and touched all the essential bases in that first year. The music scene was ripe and the community was ready to enjoy a good gathering.  I felt free and empowered, untethered and boundless.  I worked hard and took chances and the climate suited my clothes. And it was home of the great southern, Greek-American “comeback sauce”.

When I presented B.B. King, Mose Allison, John Lee Hooker, Big Joe Williams or Dr. John, Ray Charles or John Prine, people came and supported those shows. I called for a parade and people showed up in costumes, ready to march.  I opened clubs and restaurants and people came to eat and drink.  I met every writer who came to Lemuria or The Book Worm and attended every lecture and concert from Allen Ginsberg at Tougaloo to Ace Cannon at Pop’s Around The Corner to James Brown at the Masonic Lodge.

And when I called my brother Hal in 1985 and told him I had the lease on the old GM&O Freight Depot in downtown, he packed his bags and we started construction on what would become Hal & Mal’s, now 30 years and two generations in the making.  And this place we created, would become the organic gathering place of the Jackson we envisioned, a place to eat local food, to hear traditional music and to celebrate our home, our town, our culture.

Rich, diverse, urban and rural, Jackson is an enigma and an oasis.  “Diddy Wah Diddy”, Willie Dixon would say, “ain’t no town, ain’t no city, just a little place called Diddy Wah Diddy”.

Jackson: photographs by Ken Murphy is available now for purchase. To order a copy, call Lemuria Books at 601.366.7619 or visit us online at lemuriabooks.com. Please join us and photographer Ken Murphy in celebrating Jackson tonight at 8:00 at Hal and Mal’s. 

Written by Ron Chaney (better known as Chane), who is the creative director of Fondren After 5 and owner of Swell-O-Phonic, Soma, and Studio Chane in Fondren. 

Jackson is in many ways a hidden gem of creativity.  I started realizing this years ago when our store started promoting all-age rock shows.  There were always new bands popping up in an endless fashion.  Today as a shop owner and the creative director of Fondren After 5, I am more certain than ever that there is a growing strength of creatives in Jackson.  I feel Jackson is now a fertile resource  that brings many artists back from other places where many had escaped to learn.  Now many are back bringing knowledge and inspiration from other big cities and the artist revolution is happening – Yes, in Jackson Mississippi.  I am proud to be from here because JXN is now a never-ending supply of the same inspiration that I used to have to chase elsewhere.

Join us tonight at Fondren after 5! We will have tents set up in front of Fondren Corner and Brent’s Drugs. Don’t miss this amazing Jackson event!

Jackson: photographs by Ken Murphy is available now for purchase. To order a copy, call Lemuria Books at 601.366.7619 or visit us online at lemuriabooks.com. 

Almost two years ago I came to work at Lemuria. On my second night of work we had a HUGE event celebrating the release of the book My Bookstore, and long time friend of the store Barry Moser joined us to read the essay he wrote for the book about Lemuria. I remember sitting in Dot Com, which was packed to the gills, beer in hand (you could drink at WORK?), marveling at how much this community swelled with pride to think that their bookstore was featured in the list of greats. I think that’s what got me more than anything: the ownership that our community feels towards Lemuria. It’s no longer just John’s bookstore, it’s yours.

You’ve seen us through multiple locations, an awful recession, what feels like hundreds of John Grisham releases, and the fight to make room for ourselves on the Internet. I can’t tell you how often you come up to the front desk to buy a newspaper or to pick up your First Editions Club book and tell me with a look of satisfaction on your face, “I grew up in this store. I remember shopping at Lemuria when you were still in The Quarter”.

So many independent bookstores all over the country have had to close their doors over the past two decades, and I believe it is a fate that we have escaped because of YOU. Because for so long you’ve believed that this store is important, that we have a positive impact on the community, and because you so value the significance of reading and supporting authors.

So I’d like to take the time today, a HUGE day for our bookstore, to say thank you. Thank you for investing in us, and for giving me the best two years of my professional career. Thank you for coming to signings for first time authors- authors who have now won Pulitzer Prizes and National Book Awards. Thank you for encouraging us and sticking with us during the two year process of publishing our book on Jackson, and thank you, thank you, thank you for your continuing patronage.

It is my pleasure to officially invite you all to an open house in Banner Hall tonight at 5:00, featuring the official release our new book, Jackson: Photographs by Ken Murphy. Ken will be joining us to sign the book in Lemuria, and Banner Hall will be rocking and rolling into the night. You can expect live music from Sam Mooney and Abigail Osteen , a pop-up art gallery from Art Space 86, $1 beers in Lemuria, and general good cheer towards our great city. We owe so much of this to you.

Written by Hannah

Jackson: photographs by Ken Murphy is available now for purchase. To order a copy, call Lemuria Books at 601.366.7619 or visit us online at lemuriabooks.com. 

Steve Yates is winner of the Juniper Prize for his 2013 collection Some Kinds of Love: Stories (University of Massachusetts Press). In 2010, Moon City Press published Morkan’s Quarry: A Novel, and will follow it in 2015 with The Teeth of the Souls: A Novel.

I moved from the Ozarks to begin work in Jackson in 1998 at University Press of Mississippi. My favorite vista in Jackson is in the long courtyard leading to the Education Research and Development Tower (University Press of Mississippi takes up half that tower’s fifth floor). In that courtyard are six raised concrete bays in which reside the six most beautiful crape myrtles in all of Jackson. These bays abut Jackson State’s Universities Center and its Information Services Library on the east and dazzle the offices and back lobby of Mississippi Public Broadcasting to the west as the trees lead northward in a royal road of pink, olive green, mottled amber, and shredded taupe to the nine-story edifice of the Paul B. Johnson Tower. The best time to view them? In the resultant sauna following a morning, summer rain. The bark along the trunks always seems to be shedding in reptilian fashion, and rainwater flows in crystalline rivers along the exposed red and orange inner flesh. Pools of water, whole miniature nullahs accrue and tremble. And above you the boughs arch low, pendant with dripping, candy pink blossoms backed by light green struts and shot through with bright yellow stamen. Crape myrtles did not thrive and were never properly valued in the chilly, hilly Ozarks. When I have sent home via Facebook photographs of these six majestic canopies, my hillbilly correspondents and confreres have been mystified as to what sort of trees these could possibly be. They ask if I am on business in Borneo or on a holiday in Haorangi. Even in winter, the bare silver webs and mad chandeliers these giants raise up to the cold ivory and bureaucratic tan of the office tower make for a brilliant meditation and somehow suffice when I pine for snow and a touch of ice.

Jackson: photographs by Ken Murphy is available now for purchase. To order a copy, call Lemuria Books at 601.366.7619 or visit us online at lemuriabooks.com. Please join us in celebrating Jackson on August 5th at 5:00 in Banner Hall!

As I read Janna Hoops’ very fine interview with William Ferris about his book and work, located on the “Mississippi Books” page in the Sunday Clarion Ledger, I became moved to write about our Jackson newspaper.

I’m not sure how many cities, especially in the South, have a weekly “Real Book” section in their local newspaper. Few, I suspect. However, our city and statewide newspaper makes such a statement showing care and concern for Mississippi’s literary presence and heritage.

Over the last 1 1⁄2 years, under the guidance of Steve Yates, of the University Press of Mississippi, and Annie Oeth of the Ledger, a legitimate Bookpage has grown. Mississippi Bookstores report weekly sales of our state’s top reads. Book signings happening all over the state are also listed. Jana’s interviews are thoughtful, with a variety of questions that are precise and revealing. Lisa Newman’s short, concise and interesting column features the unusual aspects of Mississippi writing, publishing and book collecting. It’s a rare weekly treat and I suggest her work is unique for any community newspaper in the USA.

How lucky we are to have this well-earned page by the folks mentioned above. For over 30 years, I’ve requested in every way for the Clarion Ledger to support our writers. With this statewide page we have the opportunity to feature not just our locals but all the fine authors that visit our state. Oddly, in my opinion, with the “Mississippi Books” page, Gannett has made our paper more local than it has ever been before.

What’s next for the “Mississippi Reads”? I hope interest and support grows. Mayhap more type and space can be added for our literary happenings. Can we hope for 2 full pages and photography?

My dream paper: Has a Sunday section each week featuring “Books and Blues”. A combined effort to support, encourage and advertise Mississippi’s Culture featuring the realities of reading and music.

Written by John

Jackson: photographs by Ken Murphy is available now for purchase. To order a copy, call Lemuria Books at 601.366.7619 or visit us online at lemuriabooks.com. Please join us in celebrating Jackson on August 5th at 5:00 in Banner Hall!

Written by Coleman Lowery

If you grew up in Jackson in the 1940’s and 1950’s you thought the city had only two parts, one was North Jackson with the main drag of North State Street and the other was West Jackson with main drag of West Capitol Street.

The number 2 bus went from downtown out to North State to Council Circle, where it turned around and went back down North State to Capitol Street and West Capitol. It then turned at the city limits where West Capital became Clinton Blvd and the bus went back downtown.

North Jackson people went to Bailey Junior High and West Jackson people went to Enochs Junior High and we hated each other. The Bailey-Enochs annual football game was the highlight of the year. Little did I know then that 20 years later I would fall in love and marry I.C. Enochs’ great granddaughter!

In the 10th grade, we all came together at Central High School and became classmates and good friends. Built in the 1920’s, CHS had a military fort architecture style and an outstanding faculty. Generations were taught math by Miss Spann and Mrs. Latta, English by Miss Breland, Miss Hutchinson, Miss Musselwhite, and Mrs. Russell. Speech was taught by Miss Patton, Latin by Miss Johnston, and French and Spanish by Miss Tizon. Biology by Mrs. Harris and Physics and Chemistry by Miss Fletcher, History by Mrs. Sykes, Miss Ruff and Chief Taylor, and Miss Carter and Mr. Weems were the counselors. There were many other great teachers but these are the ones that I had and knew. For many years the principal was Mr. McEwen and his assistant was Mr. Holiday, who later became principal. The Big Eight Football championship was brought in many years by Coach Doss Fulton.

After school every day we went to Primos on Capitol Street where the fried cinnamon rolls were a dime and then we boarded the bus with our school tokens, which were 2 for a nickel and went home.

Central High School is now closed but in a great example of historic preservation the building is now the office for the State of Mississippi Department of Education. The CHS alumni association is very active to this day and each May has a picnic in the front yard of the building which is still well attended by all the graduating classes; and memories of being a CHS Tiger are shared and laughed over.

Jackson: photographs by Ken Murphy is available now for purchase. To order a copy, call Lemuria Books at 601.366.7619 or visit us online at lemuriabooks.com. Please join us in celebrating Jackson on August 5th at 5:00 in Banner Hall!

Written by Vijay Shah

From Ohio, I never thought that I would visit Mississippi, let alone live here. But last summer I took a promotion at the University Press of Mississippi in Jackson!

Upon my move here from Illinois, where I also worked in publishing, Mississippi was commemorating the fiftieth anniversary of Medgar Evers’ assassination, the New York Times ran a positive travel account of Jackson, and Mayor Lumumba was just taking office. Indeed, within my first few weeks here, I attended the inaugural ball. It felt like everything was converging with my arrival.

Since then, I have delved into the local arts’ scene. I attended Faulkner’s literary festival in Oxford, and literally live around the corner from Eudora Welty’s house. Besides Faulkner and Welty, I have been finding out about all their literary precursors and successors from Mississippi, including Jesmyn Ward and Kiese Laymon.

At Gallery One, near Jackson State, I checked out Mississippi native John Jennings’ vivid illustrations of blues musicians. Downtown, Jackson’s own Scott Crawford exhibited an imaginative vision of his city in Legos. Despite the issue of gentrification that we must confront, I remain excited about all the artistic activity in the Midtown neighborhood. There the laid-back club Soul Wired offers quite a creative venue.

Over the last year, I have also learned much about segregation and civil rights. Upon the fiftieth anniversary of the March on Washington, I attended a panel of valiant Mississippians who risked travel to the capital for that historic event. Sure, I could have heard those potent testimonies elsewhere, but somehow it felt more meaningful here. Even today I have witnessed dedicated local people struggling mightily for justice.

Actually, I have been working with some advocates who are trying to improve public transit in Jackson. I could not believe that JATRAN’s buses halt at seven p.m., for this limit seems unhelpful to workers with later schedules and inconvenient to young adults and others who simply want to enjoy the city at night. So we intend to extend the service into the evening. Actually, I managed to raise the issue in the recent mayoral campaign. As a result, I feel very involved in Jackson, such a powerful feeling!

I have met some fine drivers and passengers on the bus, learning a lot more than if I had merely driven around in my own car. When telling people that I ride the bus, they look at me like I have a hole in my head. Yet, I believe that Jackson needs much better public transit truly to become a city of the future.

Despite the many regional differences, somehow Jackson reminds me of my native Cleveland as neither are destination cities. During my first year in Mississippi, a veritable southern adventure, I have mainly heard about how Jackson is changing, for the better. This process of becoming reminds me of that children’s story about the caterpillar that miraculously turns into a butterfly. Will Jackson ever transform into that splendid butterfly? Only we will determine if that Monarch will ever fly skyward.

Jackson: photographs by Ken Murphy is available now for purchase. To order a copy, call Lemuria Books at 601.366.7619 or visit us online at lemuriabooks.com. Please join us in celebrating Jackson on August 5th at 5:00 in Banner Hall!