University Press of Mississippi – Page 4

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By Carter Dalton Lyon. Special to the Clarion-Leger Sunday print edition (May 20)

On this Pentecost Sunday, when believers mark the arrival of the Holy Spirit that empowered the apostles to go forth and proclaim the good news of the Gospel, we would be well served in examining the words of one of God’s more modern-day disciples, Reverend Will D. Campbell. It has been nearly five years since Brother Will’s passing, but his wit and wisdom are as needed now as they have ever been.

Even if you are familiar with Rev. Campbell or one of his seventeen books, I would encourage you to revisit them. Thankfully, the University Press of Mississippi has just published new editions of his two memoirs: Brother to a Dragonfly, which first came out in 1977 and contains new forewords from longtime friends Jimmy Carter and John Lewis, and Forty Acres and a Goat, which was first published in 1986.

The books chronicle Rev. Campbell’s life from his upbringing in Amite County, Mississippi, to his time as a pastor and mentor to civil rights activists, though they are really books about who we are and how we relate to others, whether they are family members, friends, adversaries, or yes, a goat. During an era in which he shaped historical change, he is more interested in explaining how we are shaped by the personal bonds with those around us and how vital it is to seek out those connections.

Few books could justifiably be called game-changers, but Brother to a Dragonfly was one for me when I first read it in college. It covers his formative years through the height of the civil rights movement as he became, in his words, a self-satisfied white southern liberal. You meet those, like his grandfather, the son of a Confederate soldier, who introduced him to the idea of nonviolence. From the first sentence to the last, you get to know Joe, the titular protagonist who was troubled but was ever the supportive critic, constantly pushing Will to truly evaluate his motives within the movement.

The murder of a friend, Jonathan Daniels, provided the moment of clarity for Rev. Campbell. He had spent his adult life in a state of self-assured sophistication, but now realized that in seeking racial justice, he had been overlooking the true nature of the tragedy, that poor whites—the murderers of activists like Daniels—were part of the tragedy, too.

Forty Acres and a Goat is a companion memoir that develops on the lessons from Brother to a Dragonfly and extends them in time as he returned to a rural home, this time to a farm outside of Nashville, Tennessee. We meet Jackson, the goat and gatekeeper to the draft-dodgers and other non-conformists who visited or found refuge in the Campbells’ company.

We also meet his black friend T. J. Eaves, a relationship that spans the book and is framed by the fracturing of the movement itself, as the calls for Black Power collided with the commitment to nonviolent inter-racialism. Rev. Campbell never gave up on the project of the Beloved Community, even fashioning his own version in microcosm of what his friends called the Church of the Forty Acres and a Goat on his farm.

One can read these books for their value as eyewitness accounts into this era, but they should also be read because Rev. Campbell is a great writer and an incredible storyteller. He is hilarious, as in the time he and his classmates have to submit fecal samples as part of a New Deal program to eradicate hookworms, or the time he stepped to a lectern for his opening speech during a televised debate over the death penalty, and simply asserted, “I just think it’s tacky,” and then sat down.

Ultimately, the books offer appropriate reflections on this day of Pentecost, when all tongues and races were together at the Christian church’s inception.

Carter Dalton Lyon is the author of Sanctuaries of Segregation: The Story of the Jackson Church Visit Campaign and chairs the history department at St. Mary’s Episcopal School in Memphis, Tennessee.

Story of Cat Island resonates in prose, photographs

By Guest Author

On May 24, 2018

In Nature, Southern Culture

By Don Jackson. Special to the Clarion-Ledger Sunday print edition (May 20)

Southern storytelling is a beautiful art form. Through the ages it has been the glue that has bound us across generations. Although facts are always subject to questioning, the truth is always there. It becomes a shared truth that gives us strength and meaning within a framework of profound identity, and as a people with a common heritage.

Such is the wonder and the power of Discovering Cat Island by John Cuevas. It gives us the story of a unique and fascinating place on the Mississippi Gulf Coast, and of the people who have been part of its history. It brings us light and shadows, and allows the reader to fill in the colors, both in prose and in photography.

This is not a scholarly work created for academics, although it is rich in information and required extensive research. Rather, it is a story that will hold the reader transfixed, with wonderfully-written, almost poetic, prose. A word of warning here… Do not sit down with this book unless you are prepared to sit where you are for at least a couple of hours. You will not be able to put it down. You very likely will read the entire text in one sitting. I certainly did.

Typically I consider books like Discovering Cat Island as coffee-table books that allow one to leisurely pick up the volume and thumb through the photographs… easy to pick up… easy to put down. They provide opportunity for light, transient entertainment. They’re on the table as fillers, just there as something to do, while other things are going on. Interruptions don’t matter. Accordingly, I’m more inclined to spend time with the photographs in such books than I am with their text. Rarely will I even bother with the text.

But with Discovering Cat Island, it was just the opposite. The photography was excellent. But it was the text that kept me spellbound. I’m not sure why, but I broke my rule and started reading the text when I first got a copy of this book.

Once I did that I could not take time to look at the photographs as I desperately turned the pages to get beyond the photographs and to where the story continued.

Only afterward did I go back to look at the gorgeous black and white photography of Jason Taylor. And when I did this, those photographs provided rich seasoning for the story I’d just read. The echoes of the story reverberated deeply within me as I went page by page, slowly catching the spirit of each one of Taylor’s masterpieces.

I strongly suggest that this be the sequence for future readers of this book. Start with the story. But, don’t just read the story. Listen to it! After you’ve heard the story then, as it resonates within you, go back through the book and let the photographs etch this powerful story deeply into your heart.

It is, after all, your story too. Soon thereafter you will realize that this story must be shared with those near and dear to you… with a daughter, son, grandchild, or good friend… together in a porch swing, or out under a live oak, or in front of a fireplace, or wherever your special place may be.

Cat Island is and has for been for generations such a special place for so many people. So, why not just go there with that special someone and share the story there, together. Become part of that story, right there where it all happened and is happening. Pass it along through the tumbling generations for whom, in their hearts, the Deep South and its Gulf Coast is home. It really doesn’t matter whether or not you live here. Cat Island is part of your story. Come discover it.

Donald C. Jackson is the Sharp Distinguished Professor, Emeritus at Mississippi State University. He is Past President of the American Fisheries Society, Past President of the Mississippi Wildlife Federation, and has worked extensively with fisheries resources along the Mississippi Gulf Coast. He is the author of three collections of outdoor essays: Tracks, Wilder Ways and Deeper Currents.

Signed copies of Discovering Cat Island are available at Lemuria’s online store.

Author Q & A with George Malvaney

By Guest Author

On May 13, 2018

In Biography/Memoir, Southern Culture

Interview by Jana Hoops. Special to the Clarion–Ledger Sunday print edition (May 13) and digital web edition

George Malvaney was a high-spirited child whose teenage years (like so many) often found him engaging in reckless behavior—fighting, drinking, and once even taking a snake to school.

While he always knew his greatest love was for the outdoors—hunting, fishing, exploring and adventure-seeking—he was certain of one thing in his life: he hated school. He dropped out during his junior year at Murrah High School and predicted he was on a “a wild and reckless stretch that would end badly.” He was right—except that it wasn’t the end.

cups up The unlikely story of this Jackson native lives up to the title of his debut book, Cups Up: How I Organized a Klavern, Plotted a Coup, Survived Prison, Graduated College, Fought Polluters and Started a Business.

For a man who literally wrote the book on what not to do—and ended up not only surviving, but succeeding—he pulls off a truly hopeful tale of what it took to come out on the other side. He wrote the book, he says, to encourage and inspire others who may need a spark of hope to overcome their own challenges.

After you dropped out of Murrah High School your junior year, you joined the Navy and wound up being honorably discharged for organizing and leading a Ku Klux Klan unit on your ship. How and why were you drawn to the Klan?

That’s a good question. I get asked that a lot. I was 19 years old. At this point, 40 years later, it just doesn’t make sense to me. What would have made me do that? I don’t see why I did it. Apparently, it must have been an emotional decision. It certainly couldn’t have been logic. It was a bizarre, crazy thing. It was probably the influence of (Klan leader) Bill Wilkinson, (a friend of a friend). I did it, I own it, and I’m not proud of it.

In 1980, after your Navy experience, you fell in with Dannie Hawkins, a man you described as your “new friend and mentor,” who convinced you to join his group plotting to invade the Caribbean island of Dominica and replace the government with a right-wing, anti-Soviet regime. What was this group’s ultimate goal, and why did you decide to join their cause?

George Malvaney

There was a lot of debate as to the real reasons behind it that I was not aware of at the time. One was that they wanted to use it as a point for a cocaine smuggling ring. I never heard any of that. There must have been some ulterior motive. I was just out of the military, very patriotic, and naïve. To me it was more of an anti-Communist move to replace a government with Castro leanings to one that was more in line with American values. In hindsight, adventure and an emotional influence definitely played into it.

When the Dominican invasion plan was averted by the FBI before it ever started, you were arrested and sentenced to four years in prison, which was reduced to 18 months. Tell me about how your time in prison changed your beliefs about racial differences.

It didn’t actually change my beliefs at the time—that took years, but it started me thinking about it. When a prisoner named Leon asked me to write letters for him at the Atlanta Penitentiary, it kind of intrigued me. He was in for murder. He wanted me to write to his mother, but he didn’t want anyone to know, so he would whisper to me. He would tell me what he wanted to say, and I could feel the emotion in his voice. I couldn’t write it down the way he was saying it because he had a very limited vocabulary, but I knew what he was trying to say, so I put it in my own words.

I realized that, here’s this black guy—in for murder—and what he wanted to say was the same thing as my letters to my own family. I could see that there was good in this guy, too—lots of bad things, but, good things, too.

There were two fellow prisoners I wrote several letters for, and another I think I only wrote one letter for. The letters were very similar. Leon got a letter back from his mother and asked me to read it to him. It was clear that she was functionally illiterate herself, but I paraphrased it for him because what I knew she was trying to say.

I was in a unique situation. Here I was with black convicts opening up to me with their personal feelings. These were hard case convicts, trying to get their feelings out. It gave me a different perspective.

Tell me about how the decisions you made while in prison would change the path of your future forever.

I tell people that my time in prison was a wonderfully terrible experience that I would not ever want to repeat under any circumstances but would not trade for anything. It was one of the most valuable experiences of my life.

I was in prison because I made irrational and reckless decisions that were going to end badly. It wasn’t until my first day in federal prison in Tallahassee, Florida, that it struck me. I had a four-year sentence. I asked myself a lot of questions. How was I going to spend the next four years? Do you want to spend the rest of your life in prison? How are you going to improve? I made a very concerted decision my first day in prison: I was going to keep my head held high and get through this.

I had been making bad decisions to get to the point I was in. I didn’t how and where this would lead, but I decided my life as a convict would be done when I got out. I did not want to be involved with criminal activity, ever, when I was released.

I was in prison with murderers, bank robbers, drug dealers, kidnappers. They would become my friends, the people I was hanging out with, my peers, but I did not want to be influenced by them. It was a mental challenge. I really focused on keeping a positive mental attitude that I was going to be a better person.

When I was in the penitentiary in Atlanta, I spent months in my cell all day with almost nothing to read. I was self-examining myself. I had literally hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of hours to think about it. I looked at where I had gone wrong. I knew the Klan had been a bad decision. I knew I had to get away from those people. I decided I was going to go to college and get an education because I really wanted to become something—I didn’t know what, but it would be anything but a criminal.

After your release from prison, you went on to graduate from college and build a career based on your degree in environmental studies. Why did you choose this field?

I had thought about law school. I had seen what I thought were real injustices in prison. I wanted to try and address that, to seek some prison reform. But I came to the realization that even if I got accepted to law school, the fact that I was a convicted felon meant that I may not be able to practice law.

I had another passion, and that was the outdoors. I remembered one time, as a boy, standing on the banks of the Pearl River that went through my grandfather’s land in Hopewell, south of Jackson. An industrial plant had discharged large amounts of sulfuric acid and killed thousands of fish. I recall standing there with my father and watching dead fish float down the river for hours. It made me very sympathetic to environmental causes.

Briefly explain your role in the cleanup efforts of the BP oil spill along the Gulf coast in 2010.

I was the chief operating officer for a company that was BP’s prime contractor in Mississippi. Early on in the response effort (April 2010), I was called into some meetings with Gov. (Haley) Barbour to examine initial information pertaining to the oil spill. Mississippi didn’t have a lot of expertise in large oil spills, and I kind of became the go-to guy for Gov. Barbour and his staff. There was a big push politically to use Mississippi companies and Mississippi laborers, and I was managing 4,000 people from all over, and a $400 million budget.

The well was plugged on July 15. We saw very little oil on the mainland after that, but the barrier islands had really taken the brunt of the oil, so there was a long-term cleanup. I was able to help local mayors, supervisors and local officials, and I know I made a positive difference for Mississippi.

Tell me about your support of Big House Books, and how you found out about it.

I was at the 2016 Mississippi Book Festival and was coming out of the Authors’ Alley tent and noticed a booth that had a logo with a prisoner behind bars looking out. I saw the sign that said, “Big House Books.” They wanted to show me a loose-leaf binder filled with letters from convicts asking for book donations, but I told her I already knew what they said. I had once been locked in a hole starving for something to read. It really brought me back in time—it was an odd feeling. I dropped a $100 bill in their jar that day, and I’ve continued to support them ever since.

Please explain the title of your book.

That phrase, “cups up,” made a huge impact on me. I remember my first day in the Federal Correctional Institute in Tallahassee in July 1981. It was stifling hot. I could hear voices. They kept getting closer and closer. There was a rattling noise. I was thinking, “Why in the hell am I here? How did I get here?” They were getting closer and I was asking myself “What have I done? How am I gonna get out of here?” Then all of a sudden, a prison orderly was in front of me with a cart, and I realized I was supposed to hold my cup up for coffee. I remember having this dialogue with myself. It was a really powerful, life-changing moment.

Why did you decide to write this book, and what do you hope it will accomplish?

The Sun-Herald newspaper (in Biloxi) called me during the BP crisis. They had heard about my story and wanted to write an article about me. I did not want to do that article. I didn’t have anything to hide, but it was terrible timing. I was afraid it would all blow up in my face and distract from the BP effort.

It came out on the front page and I was just waiting for the worst—but I heard nothing but positive comments. What I heard over and over and over was “How did you go from that to leading and coordinating this massive response and dealing with the highest officials in the state?” I also heard “You need to write a book,” and I would just say that it would take a long time. But it got me thinking about it.

Part of what I wanted to do was recognize that a lot of people are having a difficult time in life, and it’s good to hear about others who have had tough times and pulled through it. I wanted to say, “Be positive, keep focused, learn what you can from it.” I wanted to give them inspiration and hope.

George Malvaney will be at Lemuria on Tuesday, May 15, at 5:00 p.m. to sign and read from Cups Up. Malvaney will also speak at the History is Lunch at the Craig H. Neilsen Auditorium at the Two Mississippi Museums on Wednesday, May 16, at 1:00 p.m.

‘Southern Splendor’ explores the restoration of pre-Civil War homes

By Guest Author

On May 9, 2018

In Southern Culture, Southern History

By Jordan Nettles. Special to the Clarion-Ledger Sunday print edition (May 6)

In Southern Splendor: Saving Architectural Treasures of the Old South (University Press of Mississippi), historians Marc R. Matrana, Robin S. Lattimore, and Michael W. Kitchens celebrate pre-Civil War homes across the American South. The authors document stories of these homes, with chapters devoted to Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Kentucky, and Tennessee. The book includes 391 pages and over 275 photographs that showcase the beauty of the historic houses. Selected because of their architectural styles and restoration stories, the nearly fifty homes in Southern Splendor have overcome all types of hardships, from natural disasters and vandalism to abandonment.

The walls of every pre-Civil war home have witnessed a myriad of stories, and Southern Splendor captures many fascinating ones. There are accounts of the slave labor that allowed the houses to be built, the lives of the wealthy owners and their families, the tragedies that pressed the homes toward destruction, the restorations that saved them, and the cultural and economic roles the homes now play. These narratives make the homes feel like dynamic characters of history rather than static pieces of the background.

The detailed descriptions of the exterior and interior features are interesting and establish the book as a must-own for any fan of Southern architecture. Accompanying these descriptions are breathtaking photographs of the grand homes. Flip to almost any page, and you’ll find the image of an imposing portico and columns or of an interior room, complete with a striking chandelier and ornate furniture.

As the book notes, the homes of Southern Splendor are “survivors.” Countless other colonial and antebellum homes have not been as fortunate. The authors insist that by letting historic homes deteriorate, we lose vital pieces of the past and irreplaceable resources for understanding our nation’s history. The intersections between these homes and history are extensive.

The book features several homes whose former occupants, such as Thomas Jefferson and Jefferson Davis, are tightly woven into the fabric of American history. Then, there is the strikingly significant Whitney Plantation, a monument and museum of slavery that deals unflinchingly with the South’s difficult history and ensures that the horrors of slavery are never forgotten.

Most of the homes in Southern Splendor are well cared for and open to the public, so it’s hard to believe that many of them were nearly lost forever. Words like “disrepair,” and “dilapidated” are associated with even the most magnificent houses. Without the work of concerned individuals, communities, and organizations, the homes in this book may not exist today.

There’s something exciting about seeing a familiar location celebrated in a book. I have visited the House on Ellicott’s Hill in Natchez and Arlington House in Virginia and enjoyed reading about their histories and architecture. Residents across the South will likely find familiar homes in Southern Splendor. Equally enjoyable is discovering new gems. My personal favorite discovery was Laura House, a unique creole plantation in Louisiana that was run mostly by women.

Southern Splendor brings the included homes to life and makes a solid case for the importance of preservation and restoration. While admiring the beautiful houses, readers will likely find several new destinations to add to their bucket lists.

Jordan Nettles is a graduate of The University of Southern Mississippi and the Columbia Publishing Course in New York.

‘Delta Epiphany,’ on RFK’s Mississippi visit, raises questions anew

By Guest Author

On April 30, 2018

In Politics, Southern History

By Jim Ewing. Special to the Clarion-Ledger Sunday print edition (April 29)

Ellen B. Meacham’s book, Delta Epiphany: Robert F. Kennedy in Mississippi, lives up to its title as a detailed recounting of the former U.S. senator and presidential candidate’s visit to the Magnolia State in April, 1967.

delta epiphany But it goes far beyond a simple retracing of his steps here and his return to Washington that resulted in massive changes in federal food programs for the poor.

For starters, Meacham recounts the context of the times that saw riots in the nation’s largest cities as racial segregation and economic inequality ran rampant in the land, as the civil rights movement was moving turbulently forward, buffeted by murders and assassinations.

She sketches the major players in the national debate, not only Robert Kennedy, but the legacy of his slain brother, John F. Kennedy, and Lyndon Johnson, who was trying to implement a War on Poverty, even as a shooting war in Southeastern Asia itself was taking a bloody toll and spurring protest.

She offers a Mississippi-centric view, naming the local players, including such well-known personas (considered moderates) as Congressman Frank Smith, journalist Bill Minor, political stalwarts William Winter and J. P. Coleman, and their complicated relationships with their sometimes foes, Wirt Yerger, Ross Barnett and Sen. James O. Eastland, among others.

On a lighter note, she even details the seating arrangements of the dinners, the hostesses, and guests of the entourage as Kennedy visited, making Epiphany a holistic, personal, textured, vivid, almost surreal memory of the time.

Kennedy’s trip was spurred by a confluence of factors, including the complexities of concern over the North’s urban ghettoes and the South’s Great Migration of blacks fleeing Jim Crow and dwindling jobs in the South.

Not the least of those influences, she reveals, was the young Marian Wright (who later married one of his aides, Peter Edelman, and founded the Children’s Defense Fund). Wright operated out of a cramped office above a pool hall on Jackson’s Farish Street. It was her assertion to Kennedy that people were literally starving in Mississippi. She implored him to see for himself.

He did.

In Cleveland, as shown by graphic, heart-rending photos, Kennedy found a family of 15 living in a shack. He asked a nine-year-old boy what he had eaten that day and he replied, simply, “molasses.”

Though it was afternoon, and he had only eaten that morning, his grandmother said, “I can’t hardly feed ’em but twice a day.” And then, the evening meal would only be more syrup, and bread.

It got worse. He saw people living in a shack with only a hole in the floor for a toilet. Their street was mud. For heat was a woodstove burning whatever they could find. With no furniture, their bed was a mattress on bricks. A child lying on it had open sores.

“Children, even babies, were near starvation in the heart of the richest country in the world.”

Meacham chronicles the visit by an American political icon only one year before his assassination, but she goes beyond that, revisiting the region and finding poverty still more than twice that of the rest of the nation; high school dropout rate 43 percent; 70 percent of births to single mothers; infant deaths among the highest.

Even food insecurity remains the second highest nationally. Some 208,530 people “have to choose between paying bills or buying food.”

Epiphany is a moving portrait of a wrenching time in the history of America, the South, Mississippi. It captures an enduring moment of national shame but still begs the question: Has society progressed so much since then?

Or, have we lost our way.

Jim Ewing, a former writer and editor at The Clarion Ledger, serves on the governing board of the USDA’s Southern Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education (SSARE) program. He is the author of seven books, including Conscious Food: Sustainable Growing, Spiritual Eating.

Ellen Meacham will be at Lemuria on Tuesday, May 1, at 5:00 p.m. to sign and read from Delta Epiphany: Robert F. Kennedy in Mississippi.

Campbell’s ‘Conversations’ probes heart of Christianity

By Guest Author

On April 12, 2018

In Religion, Southern Culture

By Jim Ewing. Special to the Clarion-Ledger Sunday print edition (April 1)

University Press of Mississippi has produced one its most fascinating books in years with publication of Conversations with Will D. Campbell.

A collection of interviews with Campbell over the course of nearly 40 years, the book edited by retired Jackson lawyer Tom Royals is thought-provoking, humorous, outrageous, and delightful—like Campbell himself.

conversations will campbell Campbell, an Amite County native, died in 2013, but his impact remains. He got his preaching certificate at age 17 at East Fork Baptist Church, and prized it above all his awards and degrees—including one for divinity from Yale.

He first distinguished himself as chaplain at the University of Mississippi, 1954-56, leaving after being threatened for his tolerant racial views. He became a staff member of the National Council of Churches and worked closely with such luminaries in the civil rights movement as Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.

Afterwards, he attracted a celebrated following—including much of the country music scene in Nashville—publishing more than a dozen books and writing prolifically in magazines and journals.

Called alternatively a “renegade bootleg preacher” or a preacher without a church, he was reviled and celebrated by both liberals and conservatives—sometimes by both at the same time—immortalized by a cartoon character named Will B. Dunn and dubbed variously the “Aquinas of the Rednecks” and “the conscience of the South.”

As Conversations fleshes out, his theology goes to the heart of Christianity. His was a uniquely Southern Christian spirituality grounded in the Protestant tradition of direct relationship with God and personal connection with Christ. It requires honesty, humility, acts of faith, self-doubt, open-mindedness, and willingness to disobey rules when they conflict with conscience.

He was focused on the miracle of grace, extended to all people, from liberal firebrands to KKK. He believed it was his duty to “witness” to all sinners, which he said, included everyone. He remonstrated his beloved Baptist church for straying from its early roots as a revolutionary pillar of liberty and individual conscience to become a rules purveyor with its own orthodoxies and proscriptions.

Yes, he was an iconoclast, following only what he believed “Mr. Jesus” and his Gospel would approve.

A few nuggets from “Conversations” include:

Jesus “didn’t say which prisoners to visit—black or white—guilty or not guilty—which sick, which poor to bring good news to, deserving or undeserving.”
“I believe that our Lord was among the most antireligious ever to come along, for He came breaking the rules, smashing idols, tearing down structures, and proclaiming freedom from all such. And rules, crusades, and structures are the stuff religion is made of, whereas Jesus came proclaiming deliverance.”
“Love of country is not the same as love for God.”
“The blacks and whites worshiped together until the Civil War…. (if) the church had managed to stay as a nonracial institution, I think it would have made a great deal of difference.”
“I never rejected Mississippi.…You can’t grow up in that atmosphere and environment and not, I think, have that as long as you live. Even in your denying of it is affirming it.”

It was my honor to visit with Campbell at his Mt. Juliet, TN, farm shortly after the 1986 publication of his book 40 Acres and a Goat. At the time, I was an editor at the old Jackson Daily News, and we spent an afternoon talking about all things Mississippian. I was in awe.

Reading Conversations is just like sitting on the porch with him.

Jim Ewing, a former writer and editor at the Clarion Ledger, is the author of seven books including his latest, Redefining Manhood: A Guide for Men and Those Who Love Them.

‘Artful Evolution’ provides lively history of Hal and Mal’s

By Guest Author

On April 11, 2018

In Southern Cooking, Southern Culture, Southern History

By Sherry Lucas. Special to the Clarion-Ledger Sunday print edition (March 4)

Art, culture, community and family are the vines that wind through The Artful Evolution of Hal & Mal’s (University Press of Mississippi), a project that pairs Malcolm White’s words and Ginger Williams Cook’s illustrations with engaging results. Much like the iconic eatery, bar, and live music institution at its heart, it entertains at the outset and sustains in the long haul.

artful evolution Hal & Mal’s is not one story, but many, and the book sheds a warm and witty light on the background and influences that fed into this cultural outpost in Jackson’s downtown. Of all those vines, family clings the strongest with tendrils in every story of the boys who grew up in Perkinston and Booneville, lost their mother young, and held the love of father, stepmother, brother, grandparents, relatives and friends close.

Brothers Hal and Malcolm White opened Hal & Mal’s Jan. 8, 1986, and it became the capital city’s hub. It’s the junction where food, music, song, dance, words and art met, mixed, mingled, likely had a drink or two and got along famously.

Author White shares the major tenets of Hal & Mal’s business philosophy: (1) embrace art, culture and creativity as a strategy, not an afterthought; and (2) the more we give, the more successful we are. Anyone who has patronized Hal & Mal’s over the decades knows the result: a lively, generous atmosphere that boosted the best our state offered.

White’s vignettes—on red beans and rice, comeback sauce, the genius of Sambo Mockbee, Willie Morris’ bowling trophies, the Tangents, Albert King and the Autograph Wall, to name a few—share the essence of their subjects with a deft, authentic touch. An attractively breezy layout, like the happiest hours at Hal & Mal’s, works as well for dropping in, as it does for digging in for the night.

These are fine tributes, all—done with a clear eye, a fond gaze, an occasional wink and the fine appreciation of a good story. Nuggets pull you deeper into the Hal & Mal’s lore, such as the logo inspired by Smith Brothers Cough Drops, the St. Paddy’s Parade start in a snarl of rush-hour traffic, and how to start a literary stampede. “My Brother the Ampersand,” about brother Brad White, is a delight.

You can get lost in the photos on the walls at Hal & Mal’s. The same goes here as each self-contained jewel opens a window to the soul of this venerable spot. Cook’s artwork captures that ineffable lure with a sure, loving hand.

Hal White died in 2013. “Hal’s Recipe Cards,” illustrated with those index cards stained and worn with age and use, touches deep, and his younger brother Malcolm’s reference to “these pieces of folk art” speaks volumes about family, nurturing, legacy and love. He includes Hal’s daughter Brandi White Lee’s words, “the smell in those cards captures the cooking bliss … embedded into all his hugs.” For anyone who misses Hal’s soups nearly as much as they miss his presence at the end of the bar, it’s enough to pull your hand to the page for a rub.

Hal & Mal’s fed the soul as well as the belly of Jackson, with concerts and events and fundraisers and festivities that brought the creatives together for a good time and often, a better tomorrow — with a good meal in-between.

As chef and restaurateur Robert St. John notes in the foreword, Hal & Mal’s is a classic. He waxes eloquent about the killer gumbo and best roast beef sandwich east of the Mississippi River. I’ll single out the catfish po-boy as the best on either side of that river.

Doubtless, readers will bring their own stories to this table, nudged by a mention or memory, or Cook’s evocative art, into their own personal reverie. Because if you ever went there, ate there, drank there, danced, partied, mourned, celebrated, fund-raised, hell-raised or simply gathered there, Hal & Mal’s became a part of your story, too.

Sherry Lucas is a freelance writer covering food, arts and culture in Jackson. She is a long-time Hal & Mal’s patron.

Signed copies of The Artful Evolution of Hal & Mal’s are available at Lemuria’s online store.

Author Q & A with Malcolm White

By Guest Author

On March 12, 2018

In Southern Culture

Interview by Jana Hoops. Special to the Clarion-Ledger Sunday print edition (March 11)

While Malcolm White describes Hal & Mal’s as “a place where art is made, music plays, and folks gather to share community, and celebrate t he very best of Mississippi’s creative spirit,” a good friend puts it another way, calling it simply “the most talked-about upscale honky-tonk in all of Mississippi.”

White’s salute to the more than three decades of success at the iconic establishment he and big brother Hal opened in 1985 is The Artful Evolution of Hal & Mal’s–a 130-page tribute filled with brief, but loaded, character essays of milestones, food profiles, character sketches, ghost stories, musical acts, and an inside look at the chaotic debut of the now-legendary Hal’s St. Paddy’s Day Parade–along with many, many glimpses of heartfelt family history.

The stories are brought to life in the University Press of Mississippi publication with distinctive watercolors rendered by Jackson native Ginger Williams Cook, who said her mission was to create “a sense of place and connection” to the restaurant’s and family’s “storied past and present.” Describing Cook as a “stunning artist,” White said her contributions to the book “made it the artful project that it is.”

Opening in what Robert St. John describes in the book’s foreword as “a B-location on South Commerce Street inside an old warehouse next to the railroad tracks,” the eatery and arts galleria has thrived, earning itself a spot in the elite category of what St. John calls Jackson’s “classic” restaurants.

It was the childhoods on the Gulf coast, combined with years of working in iconic kitchens in New Orleans, that would bring White and brother Hal to a shared dream of opening their own place someday. That “someday” has become nearly 35 years of family and friends serving up not onky regional food favorites with “a nod toward the Gulf of Mexico,” but a healthy helping of live blues, jazz, and rock music, sprinkled throughout with original works of art.

Malcolm White

White, now on his second stint as executive director of the Mississippi Arts Commission (with a turn at leading the state’s Tourism Division in between), is involved with South Arts, the Mississippi Blues and Country Music Trails and Downtown Jackson Partners.

“I have lived a long and abundant life,” he said, pointing out that he has “managed to amass almost 13 years in the public arena to bookend my 30-plus years in the private sector.”

His previous book, Little Stories: A Collection of Mississippi Photos, was published in 2015.

Tell me about the condition the 1927 warehouse was in when you and Hal leased the property in 1985, and why you chose that unlikely location as the site of the restaurant you had dreamed of opening together.

The building was 95 percent abandoned and dysfunctional. There was no plumbing; it had ancient electrical capacity and was in deplorable condition. It was technically unoccupiable and cost us close to $500,000, in 1980s dollars, over the first couple of years to get it up to code.

We chose downtown Jackson because we believed in Mississippi, our home, and the predication that all centers of population revitalize, and it’s only a question of when, not if. Hal and I used to joke about if we would live to see the vision we had come to pass. I’m still hopeful.

You mention in The Artful Evolution of Hal & Mal’s that “59 percent of hospitality businesses fail within three years of their founding.” What has been the secret to Hal & Mal’s success?

I point out in the introduction of the book that our business philosophy was to include art, culture, and story in the plan and not make it an afterthought; and that we adhered to the sacred axiom that the more money you give, the more you make. And finally, we have always sought inclusion and looked for ways to serve others along the way, like Jeff Good, Robert St. John, Myrlie Evers, and William Winter.

Your book highlights memories of key events, people, and circumstances that have made up the restaurant’s success. Why was it important for you to document the journey of both your family life alongside that of the restaurant that is now an institution in downtown Jackson?

Because the two are inseparable. Our family is the business, and the business tells much of our family story. We actually think we are more than a downtown Jackson institution, we fell we represent a regional, as well as an American enterprise story.

It’s interesting that you’ve been blessed with not only culinary skills, but a love of art and community, a strong entrepreneurial spirit, and the gift of writing. How would you say all of these skills have come to shape your vision for–and the success of–Hal & Mal’s?

The vision for Hal & Mal’s, like the book itself, was shaped over many years of pondering and preparing. Hal and I started talking about this dream when we were in our 20s and didn’t even live in Jackson. We even bought a building in downtown Hattiesburg, the Walnut Street Pharmacy, in the very early 1980s, with the idea of locating there. But fate put us a little further north after I accepted a job in 1979 to come to Jackson. Further, I started collectin ghte Hal & Mal’s decor, furniture and decorations back in the mid-1970s while living and working in both Hattiesburg and New Orleans.

Sadly, your partner and brother Hal White died in 2013, suddenly but only shortly leaving the future of the restaurant in question. Explain what happened that soon made it evident that Hal & Mal’s would survive and continue to thrive.

When Hal died in 2013, I was uncertain that we could or would carry on, but our staff and family rallied and insisted we continue. I had just accepted the job as tourism director and had made a decision that I could no longer work the hours and endure the physical demands of the restaurant and late-night music scene. But here we are, 33 years later, still serving our aunt’s gumbo and Hal’s magical soup concoctions.

You say in the book that Hal & Mal’s is, in some ways, “not just a bar and restaurant, we’re a creative outpost in downtown Jackson,” and it’s obvious that art and music have played important roles in the restaurant’s success. Could you elaborate?

Providing a place for community to gather and break bread is biblical, and paramount to the success of great places. When food and drink, arts and culture are presented side by side in a public house, community is sustained and encouraged. Hal & Mal’s is perhaps the first example of what the creative economy and creative placemaking is all about in Jackson and in Mississippi.

Certainly, there are other examples of this, but in the book and in the programming and continuation of the business, we demonstrate the “how” of such an enterprise and proposition. In many ways, we have shown by example how communities revitalize, sustain, and prosper. If that sounds boastful, then so be it.

At the end of the book you tell readers, “No one knows what the future may hold”–but what would you like to see for Hal & Mal’s going forward? How could it continue to evolve?

We will continue as long as we are able to make a small profit, add to the quality of life and see improvements in our community. We hope to purchase the building in the next few months–after 35 years of paying rent to the state–and begin a renovation of the property.

Since the Hal’s St. Paddy’s Parade and Festival is such a big event and is right around the corner (Saturday), would you also comment on how it has contributed to the evolution of Hal & Mal’s?

Sure. Most people think, mistakenly, that Hal & I started the parade together and that Hal & Mal’s was there in the beginning. Not so. I started the parade–thus the original name, “Mal’s”–in 1983 when I was booking music, producing events, and starting my own company, Malcolm White Productions. I designed the first parade to start at CS’s and end at George Street in a “pub crawl” format. However, as it began to unfold I evolved into thinking more of a traditional parade going downtown, starting at CS’s and ending at George Street.

CS’s dropped out after the first year and George Street, where I worked from 1979 to 1983, became the beginning and ending location. Later, I moved it to the Mississippi State Fairgrounds and finally to Hal & Mal’s in 1986, where it is based today. Hal didn’t join the fun until 1984–though he was living and working in Columbus–when we started the O’Tux Society, our first marching krewe. Hal then moved to Jackson in 1985 when we started Hal & Mal’s.

The parade is an important annual event for both Hal & Mal’s and the city of Jackson as well as teh state. It has an economic impact of $10 million annually on the local economy and enjoys a national reputation as one of the largest and most original St. Paddy’s parades in the country. It is generally associated with Hal & Mal’s and that helps with our brand and our iamge of a place where people meet for arts and culture, and fun and festive occasions.

Malcolm White and Ginger Williams Cook will be at Lemuria on Wednesday, March 14, at 5:00 to sign copies of The Artful Evolution of Hal & Mal’s.

Author Q & A (Telling Our Stories)

By Guest Author

On February 14, 2018

In Civil Rights, Southern History

Interview by Jana Hoops. Special to the Clarion-Ledger Sunday print edition (February 11)

The recent opening of two of Mississippi’s premier museums, coinciding with the state’s Bicentennial celebration in December 2017, was a landmark event in the Magnolia State’s recognition of and salute to its history.

Like all states, Mississippi’s past includes not only its memories and accomplishments but its challenges and struggles, as well–along with a bright hope for its future. And, fortunately for those who want to actually bring home an insightful reminder of their experiences while visiting the new Museum of Mississippi History and the Mississippi Civil Right Museum in downtown Jackson–there’s a book for that!

The University Press of Mississippi, working with the Mississippi Department of Archives and History, have published Telling Our Stories, a comprehensive “companion book” that highlights the people, places and dates of events (the good and the bad) that are emphasized in the museums and have shaped our culture today

Three MDAH staff members who are serving in vital roles in the museums and have been instrumental in the publication of Telling Our Stories share their thoughts below on the role that the museums and this book will play in Mississippi’s journey to a vibrant future.

AMANDA LYONS

Amanda Lyons is assistant to the MDAH director and served as managing editor of Telling Our Stories. Originally from Louisiana, she graduated from Belhaven College with a Bachelor of Arts degree in history and now lives in Jackson.

How did the Telling Our Stories book project come about, and why? What is the overall purpose of this book?

We approached University Press of Mississippi about publishing a companion book to the museums a few years ago. They loved the concept! Telling Our Stories celebrates the opening of the museums on the occasion of our state’s bicentennial. It’s also a beautiful souvenir for our visitors and is available in the Mississippi Museum Store.

In the introduction to the book, civil rights leader Myrlie Evers and former Mississippi Gov. William F. Winter remind us that “No state has more stories to tell than we do.” How does this book, and the museums, reflect that sentiment?

Mississippi is full of storytellers. The book and the museums draw on this rich tradition with quotes, oral histories, and primary sources. As much as possible, we wanted each person to tell their own story, in their own words. We also encourage visitors to record their own story before they leave.

The writers of the book’s foreword, former Gov. Haley Barbour and former attorney and judge Reuben V. Anderson, describe the museums as “the largest classrooms in the state,” and they reflect positively on the statewide impact they will have in Mississippi and beyond. What do you expect that impact to be?

School buses filled with children pull up at the museums every day! We want every child in Mississippi to visit the museums at least once during their K–12 years, and we are raising funds for an endowment for school visits. People of all ages will learn more about where they come from–and where they are going–at the museums. One man was amazed to see his grandfather, a civil rights activist, featured in the exhibits. Here, we can discover new facets about ourselves and how our stories fit into the complex tapestry that is Mississippi.

Museum of Mississippi History

PAMELA JUNIOR

Pamela Junior is director of the Mississippi Civil Rights Museum. A resident of Jackson, she is a graduate of Jackson State University with a degree in education.

Mississippi’s civil rights story has been long and complicated. While it may have a way to go, much progress has been made. How does the museum reflect that story, and what do you think (or hope) remains to be accomplished in Mississippi on the civil rights front?

The stories of the Civil Rights Era are complex, but Mississippi has done something that people thought couldn’t be done. Mississippi has reconciled its differences by making sure that all content in this museum is truthful!

What I know will happen is conversation–conversation about race relations. What I hope for is that people will be honest enough to share their inner thoughts, to tell the truth and face the problems regarding race so that we can get to the next level of making Mississippi the best it can be. Right now, we have done the spectacular, and that is building the civil rights museum in Mississippi–ground zero during the Movement.

Could you share an overview of the contents of the museum (its layout, major exhibits, etc.)? What have been some of the most popular displays?

The Museum is laid out chronologically and forms a circle that can be approached from either side.

There are eight galleries in total. The first, “Mississippi’s Freedom Struggle,” gives the history of Africans coming here through slavery and includes the Civil War. Gallery two covers Reconstruction and explores the flowering of African American communities and the passage of Jim Crow Laws. This gallery also contains the first of the monoliths that appear throughout the museum and lists the names of all the people known to have been lynched in Mississippi.

“This Little Light of Mine” is a large central space to stop, reflect on what you’ve seen, and to rest as the music of the Civil Rights Movement plays. An interactive sculpture hangs from the ceiling surrounded by pictures of the heroic women and men of the Movement.

The “Closed Society” gallery highlights the return of African American soldiers from World War II, the “separate but equal” doctrine, and the murder of Emmett Till. “A Tremor in the Iceberg” tells of the young people joining the Movement and the assassination of Medgar Evers. The “I Question America” gallery focuses on the work of Fannie Lou Hamer, Bob Moses, Aaron Henry, Ed King, and others, and contains an original film on the murders of James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Mickey Schwerner.

Mississippi Civil Rights Museum

“Black Empowerment” tells the story of the marches, sit-ins, and other protests that were continuing, changes in public education, and the murder of Vernon Dahmer. The final gallery–“Where do We Go from Here?”–examines the election of African Americans to political office across the state and gives visitors a chance to reflect on the courage of the many people who died for a cause greater cause than themselves–and what they might do to make things better today.

Why is this museum and its message so important to Mississippi?

Our message is of hope and racial healing. Out state has some of the greatest people and the greatest minds. We must put our heads together and fight the demon of racism. We have more in common than we have differences.

RACHEL MYERS

Rachel Myers, director of the Museum of Mississippi History, has lived in Jackson for 10 years. She earned her Bachelor of Arts degree in religious studies from Brandeis University and her Master of Arts in museum studies from Johns Hopkins.

The opening of these museums came as Mississippi marked its bicentennial–a history that the Museum of Mississippi History and this book examine through, among other things, our state’s role in conflicts and wars, survival during the Great Depression, its economic swings, racial strife and progress, and its accomplishments in sports, music, storytelling, writing, crafts, and the arts. How does the Museum of Mississippi History play an important role, as historian Dennis Mitchell puts it, in “sharing our stories, clearing away myths, and inspiring and children and grandchildren’?

Our role is to inspire the exploration and appreciation of our state’s history by presenting an honest representation of Mississippi. Visitors will find stories that resonate with their experiences, but we hope they’ll also find new and surprising ways of looking at our state and its many stories.

This museum is a place that elicits stories. I’ve enjoyed watching families reflecting on the history of their communities and sharing stories passed down over generations. The experience of seeing an artifact or a film or standing in a recreated historic site can facilitate conversations that strengthen our identity and challenge perspectives.

Some students find it hard to engage with lessons about history. What would you say are some of the exhibits/displays at the museum that may win them over? Are there some things that patrons may be surprised to see?

With four original films, dozens of digital interactives and immersive scenes, and more than 1,600 artifacts, the museum is designed to capture the attention of a wide range of visitors.

Students have been excited to walk through time and peek into the different living spaces of Mississippians throughout history, investigate their artifacts, and hear their stories. Visitors are often surprised by the size and scale of this museum, the amount of history we are presenting, and the range of voices that are highlighted and uplifted in the exhibits.

The book tells us that Mississippi’s story has evolved as history has recorded the presence of its first native peoples, followed by Europeans, Africans, and later people from Germany, Russia, Poland, Slavonia, Italy, Lebanon, China, and others. How do we see the impact and the accomplishments of such diversity of our people reflected in our state today?

To me, the story of Mississippi is one of the most fascinating in our country. We see here on the local scale our national themes of people from different groups and places coming together to form something greater than themselves.

Our theme of One Mississippi, Many Stories celebrates all those who have shaped and defined our state–and continue to do so today.

The hours and admission for the Mississippi Civil Rights Museum can be found here. The hours and admission for the Museum of Mississippi History can be found here. Telling Our Stories can be purchased at the museums’ store, or from Lemuria Books and its online store.

Pioneering conservationist Fannye Cook was truly a Mississippi hero

By Guest Author

On November 30, 2017

In Nature, Southern History

By Jim Ewing. Special to the Clarion Ledger Sunday print edition (November 27)

For many outdoors enthusiasts in Mississippi, Dorothy Shawhan’s book Fannye Cook might be described as one about the most influential person you never met.

The term “hero” is often overused, but in this case, Cook lives up to the label, as Shawan details.

Approximately 150,000 people (mostly children) annually stream through the Mississippi Museum of Natural Science, says former director Libby Hartfield, who contributed to the book. And that is directly due to Cook, who founded it and served as its director until her retirement in 1958.

Of import to hunters, fisherfolk, birders, conservationists, and others, however, Cook was instrumental in creating what is now the Mississippi Department of Wildlife, Fisheries, and Parks.

Her impact goes even beyond that.

As Shawhan describes, Cook, a graduate of what is now Mississippi University for Women, began her lifelong study and promotion of Mississippi’s natural resources in 1926. The wildlife population in Mississippi—including its most popular game species—was threatened by lack of habitat, overhunting, and overfishing.

“The forest resources that had covered 95 percent of the state in 1800 were practically gone by 1930,” Shawan reports.

Cook, with the help of the federal Depression-era Works Progress Administration, conducted a comprehensive plant and animal survey in Mississippi that she designed. Traveling across the state speaking to local groups and schools, she spearheaded a successful effort for public education and scientific research of wildlife resources.

The results of her efforts were twofold:

After her pushing for seven years, the state Legislature approved creation of a state game and fish commission in 1932 to regulate and conserve natural resources;
To house the enormous data she amassed, she was instrumental in opening the state’s first natural science museum in 1939 for the survey’s “28,732 fish, reptiles, birds, plants, amphibians, and mammals collected.”

It was an incredible turnaround in the public’s appreciation and support for habitat that lives on today.

Subtitled “Mississippi’s Pioneering Conservationist,” the book delves into the obstacles that stood in Cook’s path both personal and professional, as a woman in a “man’s” field, as well as her achievements and friendships along the way.

It’s full of recognizable names, including author Eudora Welty, with whom she lived as a boarder in Welty’s Jackson home, and Aldo Leopold, considered by many the father of wildlife ecology in the United States, with whom she collaborated.

Cook serves as a role model not only for women, but for all who have a dream and are willing to work tirelessly to achieve it.

Cook’s work and memory live on with the museum, the state’s largest, that now houses more than 1 million scientific specimens, along with creation of the 2,600-acre Fannye Cook Natural Area in Rankin County soon slated to open to the public. It’s the brainchild of Wildlife Mississippi, which also helped underwrite this book.

Shawhan, a Delta State University professor, died during course of writing the book and the manuscript was completed by Marion Barnwell, professor emerita at Delta State, and Hartfield. It’s a fascinating account of a most extraordinary Mississippian.

Jim Ewing, a former writer and editor at the Clarion-Ledger, is the author of seven books, and serves or has served on numerous state, regional and national boards involving wildlife conservation, forests, agriculture and food.

Marion Barnwell and Libby Hartfield will be at Lemuria to sign and read from Fanny Cooke on Sunday, December 3, at 11:30 a.m.

Tag: University Press of Mississippi (Page 4 of 5)

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Author Q & A (Telling Our Stories)

Pioneering conservationist Fannye Cook was truly a Mississippi hero

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