“This is our street,” said Peggy Seaton. “This is my people’s land. We got to take it back. It’s time!”

Seaton, like many others who attended last weekend’s Juneteenth celebration on Farish Street, hope that someday Farish Street will operate as it did in the early 1900’s.

After Jim Crow laws forced racial segregation across the South, Farish Street became “the black mecca,” one of the most progressive communities of black-owned businesses and homeowners for a period that lasted into the 1970’s.

A resident of Jackson, Seaton says she’s witnessed businesses open and close in the Farish Street district.

“I try to shop out here. I hope people can find the money they need to come put their businesses back out here,” said Seaton.

Juneteenth is the oldest known commemoration celebrating the annulment of slavery in the United States. This year, the city of Jackson and other partners decided to host the annual celebration on Farish Street.

Ashley F. G. Norwood, Mississippi Today

Right: Keyana Hawthorne watches as dancers take the stage at the Juneteenth Festival on Farish Street.

Keyana E. Hawthorne is co-founder of Legacy Builders, Inc., a non-profit organization that partnered Saturday’s event. The organization focuses on empowering communities by providing knowledge, resources and support.

“We’re doing a parade this year, because we want to expose all of the different facets that we as a people have in our community,” said Hawthorne. “We are business owners, we are artists, teachers and dancers.”

Hawthorne hopes the festival will unify and educate citizens about black history and culture.

David Mosley, also known as D-Meezy, is the co-founder of Respect Our Black Dollars, an organization that promotes black entrepreneurship, buying from black business and economical and consumer literacy in the black communities. Mosley is also a community coordinator for the Juneteenth and Kwanzaa celebrations in Jackson. The festival began with a demonstration of libations lead by Mosley.

Ashley F. G. Norwood, Mississippi Today

David Mosley, also known as Mr. D-Meezy, raises the microphone as the crowd shouts names of ancestors during the libation ceremony.

“You ever heard the brothers on the corner say, “I’m a pour out a little liquor?” That’s a form of libations. A space at a table where they had an empty seat, a little food and a little drink is another form of libations. All that is, is the honoring of your ancestors. Typically water and plant are used. The water being the source of life and the plant being the representation of the growth of life,” said Mosley.

Mosley held the microphone toward the crowd as persons would shout the names of the deceased. Mosley would repeat each name and pour the water into the plant as the crowd responded, “ashe” which means “so be it.”

Libations is something that is very ancient and important to African-American people, said Mosley.

“It is the constant regeneration of energy. As human beings we must remember that, so we don’t recreate the errors and in fact can uplift the greatness. That’s the purpose of libations.”

More than 30 registered black businesses set up tents to promote health and wellness, sell clothing and beauty supplies, paint faces and sell specialty foods.

Ashley F. G. Norwood, Mississippi Today

Tierra Williams, owner of Pesto’s Vegetarian Cuisine and Catering, taking an order at the Juneteenth Festival on Farish Street.

Tierra Williams, the owner of Pesto’s Vegetarian Cuisine and Catering, uses all organic products. Alizeti pesto, Swahili for sunflower, is her specialty.

“We are trying to make people healthier one meal at a time,” said Williams.

Williams is also a member of Respect Our Black Dollars and hopes that Pesto’s could expand into a grocery store. The festival allowed her the opportunity to network with other black business owners.

Hawthorne added, “I hope to be able to circulate the money within the black community. All of our vendors are black-owned. The only way we will elevate financially is if we work together.”

Hawthorne described the festival on Farish Street as a “family reunion.”

“I’ve seen so many of my old classmates and coworkers with their families. That’s a good thing … That’s a good thing,” said Seaton. She makes an effort each year to support the city’s Juneteenth festivals and programs for herself and also for the upbringing of her son.

Ashley F. G. Norwood, Mississippi Today

Maxwell Seaton, 3, of Jackson

“I want him to love everybody, but it’s also my job as a parent to teach him how to love himself for his skin color. To bring him out here to see people of color doing something amazing, I feel like it’s my duty,” said Seaton.

This story is our weekly ‘Sip of Culture, a partnership between Mississippi Today and The ‘Sip Magazine. For more stories like this, visit The ‘Sip’s website.

Nashville might get credit for being the hub of the country music industry, where the deals are made and records are cut, but the music itself doesn’t always come from Music City. A lot of times, the music comes to it.

Country music’s roots begin farther south along the Natchez Trace Parkway, across two state lines and deep into Mississippi, where the organic, traditional music of Appalachia intersected the rural blues music of the Delta.

Tourists and residents can discover the origins of this enduring American music on the Mississippi Country Music Trail, a series of 30 marked sites that celebrate the art form’s genesis with Jimmie Rodgers in Meridian and continue through its evolution and commercial peaks. The trail started June 1, 2010, with a marker celebrating Rodgers’ contributions. Each marker has a short biography of the performer being honored or a description of the significance of a particular place, as well as photographs of people, places and memorabilia.

“It’s our cultural story that sets us apart,” says Malcolm White, executive director of the Mississippi Arts Commission. “(It’s important to) tell our cultural story through music, literature, the arts, culinary, civil war, civil rights — all these huge components that we lay claim to.”

White has worked on the historic trails initiative as a member of the Mississippi Blues Commission and as former director of Visit Mississippi, the tourism division of the Mississippi Development Authority. He also was part of the first group to attempt the blues trail project in the 1980s under Gov. Ray Mabus, although it never was funded and eventually dissolved. Gov. Haley Barbour established a new effort in the 2000s that led to the current blues, country music and freedom trails.

“In the beginning it was just about marking things,” said White. “Then it began to be about making creative corridors and communities where people would show up to do one thing and end up doing 10 things.”

The Mississippi Blues Trail brought together more than 200 historic sites across the state under one constellation, putting a narrative to Mississippi’s legacy in blues music and its cultural impact. Attractions such as the B.B. King Museum in Indianola and the Grammy Museum Mississippi in Cleveland, as well as Ground Zero Blues Club in Clarksdale, expand upon the narrative that Mississippi is the birthplace of American music.

Music Mississippi

People gathered for the unveiling of the Mississippi Country Music Trail’s 30th marker, honoring Faith Hill, on Dec. 19, 2015, in Star.

On the heels of the success of the blues trail, an advisory board put together a commission of scholars including Barry Mazor, author of the biography Meeting Jimmie Rodgers, to draft a list of names and events for the Country Music Trail’s initial 30 sites, which included famous performers Faith Hill, Tammy Wynette, Charley Pride, Conway Twitty and more from every corner of the state.

The trail aims to trigger more music tourism and invigorate the state’s creative economy, and that idea appears to have legs. Site preparation and construction of the Mississippi Arts & Entertainment Experience are underway in Meridian. The 58,000-square-foot facility, located two blocks from “father of country music” Jimmie Rodgers’s Country Music Trail marker, will tell the state’s artistic history through immersive, media-driven, interactive exhibits and events.

AP Photo/Tina Fineberg

Marty Stuart, left, and His Fabulous Superlatives perform at the 35th Annual Mississippi Picnic in New York’s Central Park June 14, 2014.

White gives much of the credit for getting the Country Music Trail project done quickly to Philadelphia, Miss., native and performer Marty Stuart, whose personal collection of 20,000 country-music memorabilia pieces makes up a large portion of the displays at the Country Music Hall of Fame in Nashville.

“He took it on as a personal project,” says White. “He’s such a historian of country music that he went before the Legislature and really pushed hard to build the Country Music Trail.”

Stuart, a country music historian and archivist since his days in Johnny Cash’s backing band, also helped bridge the span between his home state, where many of the genre’s pivotal performers and songwriters grew up, to Nashville, where Mississippi-raised songwriters such as Paul Overstreet and Craig Wiseman moved to make their mark on the industry.

When Stuart, White and Mac McAnally, a Nashville songwriter and director of Jimmy Buffett’s Coral Reefer Band, set out to commemorate the contributions Mississippians have made to country music with a trail marker in Nashville, they ran into roadblocks everywhere they went. They were told that it would never happen. But they had a plan and a crucial ally.

The trio recruited Craig Wiseman, another singer-songwriter with deep roots in Mississippi but wide branches in Music City, who happened to own a building on Music Row, the heart of the city’s music business.

“When I went to talk to Craig about putting a marker on his property, he was all for it,” says White. “He allowed us to place a marker on Music Row that talks about everything from Elvis Presley to Jimmie Rodgers, Tammy Wynette and all the great Mississippians who came to Nashville to make their mark.”

From left, Malcolm White, Craig Wiseman, Mary Margaret Miller White and Americana Music Triangle founder Aubrey Preston stand in front of the Nashville marker.

White noted that the goal wasn’t to get anyone to move from Nashville, but to tell a fuller version of Mississippi’s story.

“We’ve always seen this trail as a way to honor Mississippians and tell our story,” said White. “We have blues markers in Los Angeles, Chicago, France and all over the world, because the blues is a global phenomenon, and so is country music.”

For information on the Mississippi Country Music Trail, including views of the trail markers and maps, visit mscountrymusictrail.org.

The Markers:

• Ben Peters, Hollandale
• Bob Ferguson, Philadelphia
• Bobbie Gentry, Greenwood
• Carl Jackson, Louisville
• Charley Pride, Sledge
• Chris LeDoux, Biloxi
• Conway Twitty, Friars Point
• Country Music Comes of Age, Meridian
• Elsie McWilliams, Meridian
• Elvis Country, Tupelo
• Faith Hill, Star
• Hank Cochran, Isola
• Hoyt Ming, Ackerman
• Jerry Clower, Liberty
• Jesse Rodgers, Waynesboro
• Johnny Russell, Moorhead
• Leake County Revelers, Sebastopol
• Mac McAnally, Belmont
• Marty Stuart, Philadelphia
• Moe Bandy, Meridian
• Narmour and Smith, Carrollton
• Nashville, Nashville, Tenn.
• O.B. McClinton, Senatobia
• Paul Overstreet, Vancleave
• Rod Brasfield, Smithville
• Smith County Jamboree, Polkville
• Sparta Opry, Sparta
• T. Tommy Cutrer, Osyka
• Tammy Wynette, Tremont

This story is our weekly ‘Sip of Culture, a partnership between Mississippi Today and The ‘Sip Magazine. For more stories like this, visit The ‘Sip’s website.

Melanie Thortis / © The 'Sip

Mississippi actor Morgan Freeman

Hear that famous voice and you expect something wise.

Morgan Freeman can explain the intricacies of Hinduism, which he’d learned amid his worldwide ramblings — he’s made recent trips to Guatemala, Jerusalem, Egypt and India. But, deep-voiced and resonant, he admits there’s no lesson at all.

“It’s their thing,” he said. “Not mine.”

It’s just a little piece of trivia to recount.

*

Freeman’s intellect is sharp and sometimes contradictory: he is clear-voiced and opinionated, but he does not want to be the “voice of God.” He called that an old joke — and a tiring one.

Melanie Thortis / © The 'Sip

Morgan Freeman smiles as preschool students walk the hallway of Charleston Elementary.

Freeman recently visited an elementary school library in Charleston, Mississippi — his home now, or at least his resting point between his journeys. Here he likes to “cave up,” he said.

With one stoplight, one grocery store and around 2,000 people, nearly half of whom live below the poverty line, it’s a strange home for a world-renowned star. But he’s called it his safest place — and, in another contradiction, a place that has no assets.

“We’re trying to build assets,” he said, lifting his hands to indicate the bright books on the surrounding shelves. “This is the best shot.”

Freeman knows the dismal facts. Mississippi’s education system is perpetually ranked as one of the nation’s worst; based on recent ACT scores, only one in eight high school graduates is fully prepared for college. For black students, who make up 85 percent of the public-school students in Tallahatchie County, where Charleston is situated, that number drops to 1 in 30.

“It just didn’t sit well,” Freeman said. “Moving back home, I just couldn’t stand the idea of living in a state that was that stupid.”

Freeman attended elementary and high school in Mississippi, and remembers a better education.

“Even though we were segregated, we still had a really terrific system,” he said. “I could quote Chaucer, I could quote Shakespeare — I still can. That’s what we had to learn.”

In high school in Greenwood, he sang in the glee club, argued on the debate team, and played in the band, traveling to compete with other schools. He won his first acting award, a statewide prize for a one-act play, as a 12-year-old.

Since he moved home 25 years ago, he’s given widely to arts and education organizations.

“But if you don’t have a really targeted focus, you can get lost in such a broad vision,” his daughter, Morgana Freeman, said.

Melanie Thortis / © The 'Sip

Morgan Freeman stands inside the Charleston Elementary gymnasium with his daughter Morgana Freeman, who runs the actor’s Tallahatchie River Foundation.

Three years ago, when she took over his philanthropic organization, the Tallahatchie River Foundation, she sharpened its mission. She wants to overhaul early childhood education in Tallahatchie County. She wants students to “thrive by third grade.”

The research is clear: investing in effective pre-kindergarten can save money — as much, in some studies, as $12 for every dollar spent. But experts bemoan the state’s perpetually low funding.

In 2014, Mississippi paid for statewide pre-kindergarten for the first time — but just $3 million, enough to affect about 6 percent of Mississippi’s 4-year-olds. A national literacy test that year showed that two-thirds of the state’s kindergarteners were not ready for school. Small, rural counties like Tallahatchie face some of the steepest challenges.

The Tallahatchie River Foundation aims to help such counties support their children. Their first move was to launch TELA, or Tallahatchie Early Learning Alliance. The organization supports community efforts to provide holistic assistance to young children in the county — training for excellent early childhood educators, resources to local schools and childcare providers, and support for new parents.

Morgana — who calls herself a city girl — said that after early efforts, she had to learn a key lesson: You need to listen before you can make change. Now that idea is built into the foundation’s five-year plan, which launched in June. She wants community itself, rather than the foundation, to take ownership of TELA.

“The foundation is built on collaboration,” she said. “No one can do this work alone.”

“Listen to her,” her father said, rising jokingly, as if this were the final word that need be said. Listening is a role that suites Freeman just fine. Despite his commitment to education, when asked if he has a vision for the ideal classroom, again he demurred.

“Give it to the experts,” he said. “I’m not an expert on any of this. I just happen to have some money.”*

He didn’t always. Born in Memphis in 1937, Freeman moved from community to community as a child — from Mississippi to greater Chicago and back. After high school, he turned down a drama scholarship to Jackson State University, thinking it couldn’t lead to Hollywood. Aiming simply to get out of the state, he joined the U.S. Air Force.

But he soon realized he preferred the movie version of the military to the real thing. So, in 1961, 11 years after winning his statewide prize, he caught a Greyhound bus to Los Angeles. While attending dance and acting class, Freeman worked clerical jobs. He tried his luck in New York, too, where between auditions and Broadway gigs, he kept up a stream of temp jobs.

“There were a few times where I thought, ‘OK, I’m going to spend the rest of my life doing whatever I happened to be doing to eat,’” he said. “Even after my career had gotten what I had thought was a good, firm foothold, I had to say, ‘OK, my 15 minutes are up, now what?’”

When he was nearly 40, his luck turned: he landed a role on The Electric Company, a Children’s Television Workshop program for kids who had aged out of Sesame Street.

It was not a role he relished; those years were tough in their own way, marked by drinking and divorce. But he had money and a career.

Finally, in 1987, nearly 50 years old, he scored a role in Street Smart. His performance earned critical raves. Within two years he starred in Glory and Driving Miss Daisy, launching a nearly unbroken series of acclaimed performances. Since, he’s won an Academy Award, a Screen Actors Guild Award, and a Golden Globe; he is the fourth-highest grossing actor of all time.

It took years, hard work and life lessons, but finally, suddenly, Freeman arrived.

*

A short inventory of 78-year-old Freeman’s recent filmography: he’s played a government scientist seeking to save the world; a U.S. senator; the speaker of the House and eventual U.S. vice president; and an all-powerful wizard. In a commercial that aired during the United Nations climate talks in Paris last year, Freeman spoke as the voice of the Earth. In 2003’s Bruce Almighty, he became our Hollywood stand-in for God.

No wonder he seems to have lessons to teach. But that voice, like so much in his life, is the result of hard work. Early on, he practiced speaking slowly, enunciating his final consonants, shedding his Southern accent and deepening his tone.

But, Freeman does use his voice to guide. The foundation has just rolled out a messaging campaign, with Freeman as narrator, pitching Mississippians statewide on his daughter’s key idea — students must “thrive by third.”

And in a six-part documentary which aired on the National Geographic channel in April, he shared, as the title puts it, “the Story of God.” It was for this project that Freeman, acting as producer and narrator, recently traveled the world.

On the subject of God, Freeman said he wants to make clear that he is not an atheist.

“Write that down,” he said. “Morgan Freeman believes in God.”

What he does believe, though, is idiosyncratic: he identifies with Zoroastrianism, an ancient Persian religion little talked about outside of history class.

He held up his hand to tick off its three key principles, seemingly fuzzy and warm: good thoughts, good words, good deeds.

“That’s all that life requires of you,” he said with a mischievous glint in his eye. “After that, have babies and die.”

*

At one point, noting that the biggest employer in Tallahatchie County is a prison, Freeman’s voice dropped, almost mournful.

“I don’t think that’s helpful,” he whispered. “I really don’t.”

Melanie Thortis / © The 'Sip

Charleston, Miss., is actor Morgan Freeman’s “safest place.”

He’s at his most open when he speaks of his adopted home state. At one point, he called it special. Why? What makes Mississippi different, he replied, is the way we are stuck in the Confederacy. He enunciated that final word with mock grandeur.

“Y’all lost,” he said. “That’s over, that’s done with.”

The state flag, the last in the nation to retain the Confederate saltire, is not a symbol of heritage, as many argue, he said.

“No, it’s, ‘You all are not welcome here.’”

Of course, Freeman still came. He said he had a “quiet epiphany” while visiting his parents in the early 1980s, just as his career was beginning to rise.

“I’ve always had this sense of, ‘Ah, OK, just relax. I’m good.’”

Melanie Thortis / © The 'Sip

Charleston, Miss., in the Delta is where Freeman goes to relax between projects.

In a town like Charleston, he said he can go to the grocery store and no one will follow wielding cell phones.

Morgana shook her head. “Yes, they do.”

“I haven’t seen them,” Freeman replied.

His daughter is right. Cell phones did appear on a recent trip home for Freeman. It was after a ribbon-cutting ceremony for a new wellness center in town that Freeman and his daughter attended. A woman in the lobby made giddy plans to get that selfie with a man who was her favorite actor, as she told her friends.

Freeman smiled politely, then, photo done, said goodbye to his daughter, and climbed alone into a gleaming black sedan. His 160-acre ranch was somewhere in these hills. And, Freeman seemed eager to head home — to, perhaps, cave up in his safest place.

This story is our weekly ‘Sip of Culture, a partnership between Mississippi Today and The ‘Sip Magazine. For more stories like this, visit The ‘Sip’s website.

RAYMOND — On the first day of August nearly 35 years ago, MTV was launched on television with the words “Ladies and gentlemen, rock and roll.”

About one month later, Betty Butler Strachan opened the doors to the Little Big Store with a goal to give people access to the music that was taking the world by storm.

Melanie Thortis / © The 'Sip

Little Big Store owner Betty Strachan is seen framed by one of the thousands of vinyl records sold in her store in Raymond. 

“There was such a renewed interest in the rock and roll scene — the music, the clothing, everything,” Strachan said. “But we didn’t know what was going on here, we didn’t have access and you didn’t know what was happening in other parts of the world or country with music until MTV. It was different than it is now.”

Strachan had always wanted to own a business and first tried her hand at a crafts store.

“The crafts didn’t go over so well, so I started buying records and reselling them,” she said. “That just took off like crazy.”

Three and a half decades later, the Little Big Store is housed in Raymond’s historic train depot that was built in 1889 just off East Main Street and operated until the 1970s.

The inside is filled — almost to the ceiling — with all kinds of music paraphernalia. From vinyl records, tapes and CDs to posters, T-shirts, jewelry and gifts.

“It takes up all the space in the depot, so it’s a lot of stuff,” she said.

A vintage Coca-Cola machine, as well as a wide array of record and cassette players, stirs nostalgia at the Little Big Store.

The Little Big Store is reminiscent of an older record shop, with a vintage Coca-Cola machine at the front door and the smell of burning incense wafting throughout the building. Rows upon rows and stacks and stacks of records and 8-tracks fill the building. Stickers and posters cover the walls, and books and cassette tapes are among the thousands of other items.

“It’s unusual. It harkens back to the old-time music stores before things went so digital,” Strachan said. “It’s like the old record stores from the 1970s with posters all over the wall — just the way things used to be.”

And, though the Little Big Store started on the heels of a rock and roll phenomenon, today it carries a diversified collection.

“I started in rock and roll, and then I branched out into everything else,” Strachan said. “We have everything — literally — from gospel to heavy metal and everything in between. And we have lots of everything, not just a little.”

And the customer base differs just as much as the selection.

“Our customers are young, even little kids, older people, locals and lots of tourists,” Strachan said. “It’s virtually everyone.”

Once, Leslie Hawkins, a woman who sang with Lynyrd Skynyrd wandered in and sat behind the counter all afternoon telling stories of her own music career and that of her father’s with Hank Williams Sr. Another time, Strachan had a feeling one of her customers was “somebody.” She was right.

“He just had an aura about him, so I said ‘You’re somebody, aren’t you?’ and he said ‘Well, I don’t know about that, but I used to play with Jerry Lee Lewis and Johnny Cash a bit.’”

In addition to run-ins with fascinating customers coming in and out of the shop, over the years Strachan has also seen a change in the musical platforms that sell the best.

“My vinyl is making a huge comeback. I sell very few CDs,” she said. “It’s a huge retro thing that has happened, and everyone wants vinyl.”

But the renewed love and popularity of vinyl was a trend Strachan didn’t predict ahead of time.

Melanie Thortis / © The 'Sip

There’s a large selection of country music at the Little Big Store.

“The whole record thing surprised the heck out of me — the fact that every day people are going back to vinyl,” she said. “I’ve thought and thought, and I think, with digital music, you get the sound. But when you put a record on, it’s like the sky opens up and the sound is so different and so real.”

With the surge of passion for vinyl lately, business is good — so good, in fact, that Strachan is now open seven days a week.

“We did that at the beginning of the year,” she said. “Business is good, and we want to be here for everybody.”

A place like the Little Big Store is quite different from digital download stores today. In that old train depot, holding a record in hand is important, and the physical aesthetics of the album can set it apart just as much as the sound.

“You don’t get any artwork with a download. You don’t know who played what. You know nothing about the music, and people want to know about the music,” Strachan said. “You’ve got something you can hold in your hand that is real.”

This story is our weekly ‘Sip of Culture, a partnership between Mississippi Today and The ‘Sip Magazine. For more stories like this or to subscribe to The ‘Sip, visit The ‘Sip’s website.

“Barbecue” isn’t a verb to Brad Orrison. It’s not something you do. And it goes far beyond what ends up on a paper plate next to potato salad and baked beans.

“When you think of your favorite barbecue, it’s not just the flavor and texture of the meat, it’s also where you were at that point in your life,” said Orrison. “It’s a family affair, and it takes time.”

Melanie Thortis / © The 'Sip

Pulled pork sandwich, pasta salad and homemade potato chips are served daily at The Shed BBQ & Blues Joint in Ocean Springs.

With The Shed, the Ocean Springs barbecue and blues joint Orrison founded in 2001 with his siblings, Brooke and Brett, he staked his vision of barbecue nirvana — part juke joint, part restaurant with a family picnic vibe — and ran with it.

Serving up pecan-wood smoked baby back, spare and full-rack pork ribs, as well as brisket, sausage, chicken, pulled pork and a spread of sides and desserts, The Shed’s menu is stacked for fans of Southern barbecue.

The Shed now claims a season of its own Food Network reality show. They’ve also racked up a nationally distributed sauce and rub line — and perhaps drawing the most pride, the 2015 Grand World Championship title from the Memphis in May World Championship Barbecue Cooking Contest — in just 15 years.

The roots of The Shed go back to the communal food-and-music experiences Orrison had as an Ole Miss Student in the ’90s when he and friends would tear up Highway 4 through Marshall County to attend Junior Kimbrough’s Sunday night jams.

“My first overnight cook of large, primal cuts of pork was at Junior’s,” Orrison said. “I got a lesson in cooking, music and life at the juke joints, especially Junior’s. You’d pay a dollar to get in and watch R.L. Burnside and Junior Kimbrough, Kenny Brown, everybody. I knew there was a place where I was welcome, where anyone was welcome. It was like a huge family reunion.”

Although things could get dicey at the real juke joints as the evenings wore on — the refrigerator at Junior’s, he remembers, was chained shut and padlocked, and they’d have to open it every time someone wanted a beer — the experience stuck with him and informed his philosophy for The Shed.

“I wanted people to have that same perpetual smile,” Orrison said. “There’s music, things to look at on the walls, nice people having fun, dancing and enjoying barbecue and food and camaraderie. But I wanted to do it in more of a family atmosphere. Live music [at The Shed] is always free and wraps by 9 or 10 o’clock at night, so the kids can enjoy it.”

Melanie Thortis / © The 'Sip

The Fontenot family from Mobile, Ala., eats lunch near the water at The Shed BBQ & Blues Joint in Ocean Springs.

The eatery’s kitschy, trash-as-treasure aesthetic appeal comes honestly. Orrison found his inspiration in college, where he would spend his free time searching for thrifty finds along the roadsides and in dumpsters. Every semester, students moved in and out, leaving behind furniture and personal belongings for the taking. Some of the corrugated tin he collected made its way to The Shed, but less obvious finds also helped the cause.

Orrison would sometimes pay $50 to go into derelict houses before demolition, mostly looking for kitchen appliances and building materials. In one house, he came across a large collection of old vinyl records. He didn’t know the value of what he had, but it came in handy later when they needed money to open The Shed. He placed an ad in the local Penny Pincher classifieds offering the lot of 3,000 albums for $3,000.

“This collector bought them as soon as she laid eyes on them,” said co-founder and chief financial officer Brooke Lewis. “Being an avid collector, she knew what she had. She sold one of them for like $4,500 — an Elvis Presley 45 rpm promotional record. But we needed that money to open. That $3,000 bought our opening meat inventory. It was a win-win.”

The sense of family at The Shed extends beyond bloodlines. Although the restaurant took on more than seven feet of water during Hurricane Katrina, it reopened within two weeks. The work brought stability to The Shed’s 50 employees and their families.

“We tried to keep the spirits up as much as we could,” said Lewis. “Ninety-nine percent of The Shed employees lost everything, including myself. We felt it was our duty to get open as quickly as we could to protect our crew members. They needed income.”

The crew members kept their heads down, “slinging ‘cue” as she says, and worked until December, when The Shed took a month off for Christmas — with pay. Many of them used that time to finish cleaning up their homes and help each other’s families get on with life.

Melanie Thortis / © The 'Sip

The Shed BBQ & Blues Joint

But where Katrina brought the community to its knees, the fire that consumed most of the original Shed structure in 2012 brought it together. The “remodeling,” as Lewis described it, drew barbecue friends from around the country as well as local folks to help rebuild. The kitchen they operate today served a different purpose in the original restaurant, and overall the new Shed gravitated farther back from the road around the lean-tos and pieces that weren’t destroyed.

The ShedHeds, the joint’s loose community of loyal customers, also got involved. With many of Brad’s original reclaimed treasures gone, ShedHeds brought pieces from their own homes to help decorate the new space.

Melanie Thortis / © The 'Sip

The Shed BBQ & Blues Joint

“We reached out and said, ‘Bring your stuff! Bring your tacky chandelier out of the attic, bring your old license plates,’” said Lewis. “We love seeing people come in and say, ‘See that license tag there? That’s mine.’ Or, ‘See that piano? I played on that as a child, and I didn’t have any use for it so I brought it here to The Shed.’

“It lets the community know that The Shed is their home. Even though it may look to the blind eye like a bunch of random things, that’s not the reality of it. Every piece of décor at The Shed has a story.”

Through flood and fire, the family has grown the original 330-square-foot Highway 57 establishment, which opened with six bar stools and a pair of two-top tables, into a franchise brand.

Despite the growth, Orrison and company haven’t lost sight of the original vision. The menu hasn’t changed much. They still have fun and push through the hard times happily. And some of those musicians Brad met at the juke joints in the Hill Country, folks like Cedric Burnside and Lightnin’ Malcolm, stop by to entertain regularly.

“Every week since we’ve been open, we’ve had at least two blues bands, and it’s always been free,” Orrison said. “It’s over a million bucks when you do the math. That’s our way of saying this is where it came from. It all started on that blues record collection.”

Michael Crook

Richard Grant

Richard Grant’s Dispatches From Pluto: Lost and Found in the Mississippi Delta has been the best-selling book in Mississippi for the past eight months. Grant, who grew up in London and now lives in Jackson, has written four books of non-fiction and articles for Smithsonian magazine, The New York Times and Garden and Gun. This is his first article for Mississippi Today.

Apprehension gripped Oktibbeha County last year as its two school districts prepared to consolidate. The west and east county high schools, both small, failing, and over 90 percent African American, were closed down, and their students enrolled at Starkville High, a much larger, wealthier school with a good track record in academics and athletics.

“A lot of people were predicting a huge white flight from Starkville High into Starkville Academy when the county kids arrived,” says Rex Buffington, executive director of the John C. Stennis Center for Public Service Leadership, who chaired the consolidation commission.

William Widmer

Principal David Baggett processes tardy slips for students at Starkville High School.

Others feared turf wars and gang violence. “County kids and parents were worried about ‘inner city kids’ and how bad they were,” says David Baggett, the principal of Starkville High. “In the city, they worried about rough and tough county kids. There were going to be 10 fights a day, that’s what I kept hearing.”

Aside from the occasional scuffle, there has been no violence between the two groups. And instead of white flight, the opposite has occurred. Forty six white students have left Starkville Academy and another private Christian school and enrolled in the Starkville-Oktibbeha Consolidated High School, which is now 67% African American.

“A generation ago, that wouldn’t have happened,” says Buffington. “It’s still a work in progress, but we see real potential here for the long-term health of our community.”

Since 2012, Mississippi lawmakers have approved consolidation of 13 school districts in the state, cutting the total number from 152 to 139. Proponents of consolidation, such as Lt. Gov. Tate Reeves, argue that it’s a way to spend less money on administrative costs and get more money into classrooms where it counts. Consolidation generally has been opposed by local communities, who are attached to their schools and the jobs they provide.

“In most cases, we’ve seen one poor, struggling, overwhelmingly black school district merged with another to save money, with no resulting improvement in academic performance and fewer savings than expected,” says Jake McGraw, an education specialist at the William Winter Institute for Racial Reconciliation. “But Starkville-Oktibbeha is different. It’s the first time a failing district has merged with a successful one, and it’s the only merger between districts with significantly different racial compositions.”

The great disparity between the Starkville and Oktibbeha County school districts can be explained by forced desegregation and white flight in the 1960s and 1970s.

Stennis Center for Public Service Leadership

Rex Buffington led the effort to consolidate the Starkville and Oktibbeha County school districts.

“When integration came, the districts were realigned, so the white suburbs were included in the city school district,” says Buffington of the Stennis Institute. “The county district was left nearly all black with a very low tax base. It was terribly unfair.”

Over decades, the Starkville city schools became racially mixed, enjoying good parental support from blacks and whites and a healthy tax base. Whites who didn’t like the mix usually sent their children to Starkville Academy. Meanwhile, the county school district struggled badly, routinely receiving D and F performance grades from the Mississippi Department of Education and running into financial problems. It was taken over twice by a state-appointed conservator, most recently in 2013 after it failed 29 of the 30 accreditation standards.

For many in Starkville, particularly at Mississippi State University, the county school district was a source of shame and embarrassment. Buffington describes it as “a blight on our county, a burden when it came to attracting talented faculty at the university and a hindrance to economic development.”

The state legislature first attempted consolidation in the late 1990s, but the Oktibbeha County superintendent and school board members pulled out of the deal. There was talk of consolidation for years afterwards, but no action, and no enthusiasm from the county school district. Then, in 2013, state lawmakers passed a bill forcing the two school districts to consolidate. In 2014, the legislature ordered consolidation to take place prior to the 2015-16 school year.

William Widmer

Students Lakendrea Young (left), Eric Lowery, and Chandler Cunningham experiment in the robotics lab at Starkville High School.

“I think they wanted to achieve a success,” says Buffington. “Consolidation is popular among legislators, at least on the Republican side, but it really hadn’t produced any successful results yet. We had the advantage of a successful city school district. And we had Mississippi State University wanting to be part of the solution, which was another huge advantage.” MSU is partnering with the school district to build a new school on campus for grades 6-7.

Most Mississippi school districts facing consolidation don’t have these advantages, but they still can learn important lessons from what happened here, says Buffington.

“The most important thing is for local people to take charge of the process and shape the outcome,” he says. “We met for nearly a year and worked through all kinds of ideas in public hearings and Twitter town hall meetings.”

There were long discussions about the children who lived closer to schools in adjoining districts. It seemed logical to enroll them there, but this idea gained little traction.

“There was something unifying about the decision to take care of all the kids in our district, because the county kids felt that the city didn’t want them,” says Buffington. “At every stage, we tried to increase opportunities for county children and also benefit city children. From those discussions came the idea of partnering with Mississippi State.”

Nonetheless, the process was fraught with distrust and worry.

“I was in favor of consolidation, but I still felt extremely apprehensive when it started to actually happen,” says Cheikh Taylor, the father of two children in the merged school district. “I didn’t want the experiment to happen on my kids’ time. I didn’t want the uncertainty.”

William Widmer

Distress gave way to success for Haley Ward, a former West Oktibbeha High School Student.

Seventeen-year-old Haley Ward dreaded the idea of moving to Starkville High.  At West Oktibbeha High, eight people were in her class, and only 100 at the school.

“Everybody knew everybody, it was all friends, aunties, cousins,” she says. At Starkville High, she would enter a class of 31 in a school of 1,500 students where she knew almost no one. “There were rumors we were going to be mistreated,” she said. “My parents were really upset.”

Ward, however, has thrived under the increased academic pressure at her new school and is now looking forward to college.

“The change has been hard, but it’s the best thing that could have happened to me,” she says.

William Widmer

Jackoby Jones works out in the weight room with Starkville High football coach Ricky Wood.

For Jakoby Jones, 16, moving to Starkville High has meant a better education, a chance to shine in the football team and the very real possibility of a football scholarship to MSU.

“If I was still at East Oktibbeha, the right people would never have seen me play,” he says. In its first semester as a consolidated high school, with Jones on the team, Starkville-Oktibbeha won the state football championship, which added to the aura of success at the school. It also won the regional robotics championships and is one of only two schools in Mississippi to make the College Board’s AP District Honor Roll.

Jamie Jones moved his two children from Starkville Academy to Starkville High before the consolidation process was completed.

“There were courses at Starkville High that weren’t offered at the academy, and that was my main reason,” he says. “That’s important to other parents who’ve made the switch, but not all of them. The big thing, of course, is that it’s free.”

Rex Buffington says the public high school offers a better education than the academy, especially for students preparing for college.

“But it’s still hard for some parents to make the switch and that’s their choice,” he says. “Those that do choose the high school know it’s the best thing to do for their kids, I think, even if they have to overcome some prejudice to do it.”

Representatives of Starkville Academy did not respond to requests for comment on consolidation.

With 46 white students entering unexpectedly, plus 250 from the county school district, the biggest challenges have turned out to be logistical. On the wall of Principal Baggett’s office, a massive flow chart indicates how the school and its transportation system have been reconfigured. Overcrowding is now a serious problem, not in the classrooms but the hallways. Gridlock sometimes happens at an intersection known as Malfunction Junction.

William Widmer

Starkville High’s classroom building

Keith Coble, a member of the school board, thinks that a new building is needed and that consolidation may end up costing more than it saves.

“The net savings from closing the two high schools is $2 million, which is a drop in the bucket,” he says. “The county facilities are now underutilized, because they’re in the wrong place. And we need a $20 million building right now.”

Nevertheless, nearly everyone involved has been surprised at how well the consolidation has gone.

“Starkville is the place to be right now,” says Cheikh Taylor. “As a parent, I’m thrilled by the quality of the education here. All the anxiety we went through as a community, all the apprehension and rumors, it wasn’t worth it.”

Humorist Harrison Scott Key’s first Neshoba County Fair experience had all the makings of the “wait’ll-you-hear-this” essays that landed him a successful book and wide accolades for his live performances, which are far more akin to stand-up comedy than a typical book reading.

While Michael Dukakis stumped for the crowd, a 13-year-old Key, preoccupied with a funnel cake, found himself an accomplice in trolling the Democratic presidential candidate. Though it was innocent — someone handed him a sign; he dutifully waved it, along with others, at the hapless candidate — it was an inadvertent show of support for the Republican rival, George H.W. Bush.

Key’s trips to the fair as a kid were full of those experiences, marked by a fascination with this spontaneous city and bookended by hot car rides from Puckett to Neshoba County that left him pining for one of those little houses with air conditioning that lined the concourses.

This year, he’s upgrading to one of those plywood shacks as he guests on the Thacker Mountain Radio show, Saturday at 7 p.m., along with musicians Leo “Bud” Welch and The Amelia Eisenhauer Band at the Pavillion. Thacker in Neshoba will air Aug. 13 at 7 p.m. on Mississippi Public Broadcasting.

“When I was a kid, I didn’t get it,” said Key, author of The World’s Largest Man: A Memoir. “I couldn’t wrap my head around how people had these homes they only live in for one week a year. It’s still hard to describe. Like, ‘Imagine there’s a place in the middle of nowhere where once every summer they bring a Ferris wheel and a Gravitron, and everybody stays for a week.’ It’s sort of emblematic of the entire state of Mississippi, which is also difficult to understand unless you see it.”

Courtesy of Thacker Mountain Radio

A crowd enjoys a live performance of Thacker Mountain Radio at the Neshoba County Fair.

Known for its horse races, classic car show, food and old-fashioned fan-waving politickin’, the “Giant House Party” hosted Thacker Mountain Radio’s first show outside of its Oxford home base in 2008, a traveling tradition that has grown to include communities such as Ocean Springs, Laurel and beyond.

“We have made it a priority to expand and grow the traveling side of the show,” said executive producer Kathryn McGaw. “It’s great to expose people to the show, and it offers opportunities to folks around the state to hear great music and literature.”

Host Jim Dees hangs much of the show’s success on the efforts of McGaw, whose show tonight will be her last with Thacker Mountain, and Lyn Roberts, the neighbor and Square Books manager who recruited him in 2000 to fill-in host the show, which is broadcast statewide on MPB.

“It sounded like fun,” said Dees. “I knew the house band, the guys who originally started it, and thought I would give it a whirl until they could find somebody to do it. They never found the guy, so I guess I’m the permanent interim.”

Since the beginning, the show’s format has included a musical guest and an author, although in the early days the program was rougher, less produced and tended to lean toward music, with interludes and segues provided by The Yalobushwackers.

The show’s mission of celebrating and exposing the world to the diversity of the South remained intact even as it began to travel the state in the mid-’00s. Traveling shows are more of a challenge than performing for the hometown crowd, admitted McGaw, if only because the staff tries to make a big statement when it hits the road.

Courtesy of Thacker Mountain Radio

Thacker Mountain Radio musicians perform to a packed house at the 2015 Neshoba County Fair.

“Putting together a successful show means talent that’s going to make you have goosebumps, straighten up in your chair or stand up and dance,” McGaw said. “When we’re able to achieve that roller coaster of emotion in 60 minutes, that makes you feel something. When you experience that with a roomful of strangers, when you come out the other end you’re not strangers anymore.”

One of Dees’ favorite memories of performing the show at the fair occurred that first time. Jim Dickinson, the legendary producer and session musician whose sons are Luther and Cody of the North Mississippi Allstars, played piano alongside blues guitarist Jerry Lee “Duff” Dorrough and The Yalobushwackers.

Dees stepped away from the stage, something he rarely does, to try to catch a breeze during the interlude. As the band leaned into Down in Mississippi, he experienced the show as a spectator and for once could fully appreciate the experience live, not a jumble of memories.

Courtesy of Thacker Mountain Radio

Thacker Mountain director Kathryn McGaw looks on as musicians perform at the 2015 Neshoba County Fair.

“A lot of times when you’re doing these things, you’re so in the moment you don’t step back and see the moment,” he said. “But it hit me how cool this is. We’ve got a great radio show, these musicians I love are playing this song and the place is packed.”

The opportunity to appear on Thacker Mountain is a fulfillment of sorts for Key, who grew up listening to the live radio variety show Prairie Home Companion and was an instant fan of Thacker Mountain. As a graduate student in theater at the University of Mississippi in the late ’90s, he even brushed against potential radio-star fame when he ran into one of the show’s early hosts at a bar.

“I remember meeting this guy [Tom Arriola] and doing all of my animal sounds and sound effects,” remembered Key. “I tried, basically, at a bar, to convince this man that I should be the host because I could do so many sound effects.”

Blame it on Prairie creator and host Garrison Keillor.  After a lifetime of listening to the show, Key equated radio entertaining with the myriad of sound effects used.

“I remember I did my elephant, my helicopter, my seagull — I had just perfected the seagull — and my baby crying from another room.”

Now, two decades later, he’ll have his chance to impress the powers that be.

“We exchanged numbers and I ended up quitting the acting program and leaving Mississippi. So I feel like after almost 20 years, I’m finally going to be on the show. It’s a big deal for me.”

This story is our weekly ‘Sip of Culture, a partnership between Mississippi Today and The ‘Sip Magazine. For more stories like this or to subscribe to The ‘Sip, visit The ‘Sip’s website.

Tucked behind some trees at the intersection of Moody Street and Greymont Avenue lies a diamond in the rough for the city of Jackson. Two old poles mark the unassuming entrance to a five-mile strip of former railway that once carried the GM&O Railroad. Only the gravel slag remains, but some Jackson residents have been chasing a dream of turning it into an urban oasis for walkers, runners and cyclists.

“I used to run along the railway when I was a student at Millsaps College back in the ’90s,” said Jackson attorney David Pharr. “It’s a beautiful place. It’s always been canopied by trees and bushes but even more so now that trains no longer run. In the winter, there’s a perfect view of the Capitol building that you can’t see through the leaves the rest of the year.”

While serving on the Greater Jackson Chamber Partnership in the early 2000s, Pharr and Jackson cardiologist Clay Hays talked about running and cycling on the multi-use trail in Ridgeland and wanting to create one in Jackson.

“We initially observed the trails were developing in the suburbs around the city, and a doughnut was forming,” Pharr said. “We really wanted to get the first trail in Jackson, and in my observation, Jackson didn’t have one because they never asked for one.”

Maggie Ingram / © The 'Sip Magazine

Clay Hays, left, stands with David Pharr on the former GM&O Railway, the proposed site of the Museum to Market Trail in Jackson.

With the former railway in mind, Pharr and Hays took on the challenge to bring their dream of a trail to life. In 2011, they received a $1.1 million federal grant through the Mississippi Department of Transportation to create what has been dubbed the Museum Trail. Under the umbrella of Vision 2022, a broad-sweeping plan for growth in a wide range of areas including economic development, arts and culture, education, health and research, they formed the Regional Trails Committee. Private donors as well as BlueCross/Blue Shield of Mississippi, the Greater Jackson Chamber Partnership and Jackson Heart Clinic have helped match funds. The group has also been working closely with the City of Jackson, which will maintain the trail once it is built.

“I think it’s a very nice project and extremely well-used funds,” said MDOT’s Central District Transportation Commissioner Dick Hall. “I want to emphasize that this is not money we could use to fill a pothole. This is specially set aside for local governments to use for transportation projects other than those on the highway.”

The five-mile trail will begin at Lakeland Drive at the Mississippi Agriculture Museum and Mississippi Sports Hall of Fame and will run along Riverside Drive in front of the Mississippi Children’s Museum and Natural Science Museum. The trail will run under Interstate 55 at Waterworks Curve and pick up at the former railroad, backing up to the Belhaven and Belhaven Heights neighborhoods, ending at the High Street Farmers’ Market.

“There will be entrance points throughout the trail,” Hays said.

The committee expects a late 2017 opening and, although work is underway, the trail is not usable until a bridge can be repaired and a water main line is moved. The City of Jackson will advertise for bids for the water line on Aug. 30. Once completed, trail construction is expected to begin spring 2017. The Regional Trail Committee plans to eventually connect the city and suburbs through a network of trails.

“The museums are already a great part of Jackson that are working, and something like a trail, and eventually a trail system, could take this momentum to the next level of success,” Pharr said. “These trails are like the modern park. It builds community.”

“We’ve seen studies that show 20 percent of people who live within three miles of a trail reported an increase in exercise after the trail was built,” Pharr said. “Where you build these trails, people get healthier. We’ve also read studies that show an increase of $10,000 in home value for homes in communities with multi-use trails.”

Many trail organizers in other cities report an added economic boost.

“Bike shops and restaurants immediately come to mind when I think of the future for this trail,” Hays said. “But this is the perfect place for 5K races and things of that nature.”

Sean Cupit, co-owner of CrossFit 601 South, is hopeful for that type of phenomenon once the trail is built.

“Most of the workouts here don’t include long runs, but I really do think the more traffic on that trail will be great for us and for our members who do like to run,” he said. “It’s going to attract people already interested in getting fit, so it’ll be a tremendous benefit.”

A community organization called the Jxn Trailblazers has hosted clean up days in the spring and winter to clear overgrown foliage and pick up trash.

“One of the great things has been seeing groups working together to get this done,” Pharr said. “We’ve been through three mayors since we started this, and all have been supportive. We’ve been working for years to turn this old rail bed into a gem for the city.”

Hays said that he now sees the city through the lens of trail making.

“I can’t help it,” he said. “When I’m driving around the city, I imagine how we could build an overpass across a busy street or how we could use an old sidewalk as a route. I’m a self-proclaimed trail nerd.”

Additional Trail Info:

To see a map of current and proposed bike and pedestrian trails, visit http://gis.cmpdd.org/transportation/Bikeways and http://www.cmpdd.org/maps.

To join Jxn Trailblazers or to find out about clean up days, visit http://jxntrailblazers.com.

The Mississippi Museum of Art and Tougaloo College are teaming up for a new Art and Civil Rights Initiative.

This move comes as a precursor to the opening of the Mississippi Civil Rights Museum in Jackson in December 2017, the nation’s first state-funded civil rights museum.

The partnership will combine the art collections of both institutions in order to “meet the teaching needs of the college and the culture needs of the community” in order to foster community dialogue and interpretation about past and present civil rights issues, said Dr. Beverly W. Hogan, president of Tougaloo College.

“A liberal arts African American college in America struggles everyday for survival,” said U.S. Rep. Bennie G. Thompson, referring to Tougaloo.

Thompson recalls growing up with no access to art and creating art. An alumnus of Tougaloo, it wasn’t until he attended the private historically black college that he experienced the activism and interpretation of art and art culture.

“We don’t have the appropriations like others, but we have an ongoing education program that must move forward,” he added.

The initiative received a $395,000 two-year grant from the Henry Luce Foundation. Under the direction of a shared staff position between the two institutions, the initiative will continue to seek funding, increase scholarship opportunities for students, teach students, and develop exhibitions for the community.

The goals of the initiative is to develop the following:

• A series of four exhibitions over the next two years, rotating between the two institutions and exploring artistic perspectives on the Civil Rights movement 
• A series of lectures and workshops, featuring nationally recognized scholars, to accompany each rotating exhibition
• A gallery guide, explanatory text panels, and other accompanying exhibition interpretive tools
• An annual, paid internship program supporting four Tougaloo College students who will work for the Tougaloo Art Gallery and the Museum
• A documentation and digitization for Tougaloo College’s art collection

“Tougaloo College has a rich history of civil and social activism, and we’re honored to embark on this journey with them. The college’s incredible art collection – which the museum first showcased in 1978 as part of its inauguration – provides additional resources and storylines to support cultural exchange and national dialogue at this important moment in American history,” said Betsy Bradley, the director of the Mississippi Museum of Art.

Melanie Thortis

Rick Cleveland

Today we celebrate the Magnolia State’s rich tradition of literary excellence at the Mississippi Book Festival at the Mississippi State Capitol. Seems a good time to reflect on how our state’s literary and athletic excellence often has intertwined.

It has never ceased to amaze this writer how such a small, relatively poor state has for so long spawned the world’s greatest entertainers, authors and sports heroes. Many times, those latter two have meshed. What I mean is this: Many of our most remarkable writers wrote first of sports.

Willie Morris

Tonight, we will have the Willie Morris After Party at Duling Hall. Willie, my dear friend, has been gone from of us 18 years this month. And still I remember well how many times he told me, “Rickey, you know, I am really an old sports writer at heart.” Author of North Toward Home and The Courting of Marcus Dupree among other classics, Willie wrote with knowledge, humor and compassion about sports. He first wrote professionally as a 13-year-old reporter for the Yazoo Herald. And he loved to tell the story about how in his first baseball game story, he managed to quote from Keats’ Ode on a Grecian Urn, while omitting the game’s final score. His short story – The Fumble – should be required reading for all Mississippi high school students.

Taking part today is author Curtis Wilkie, who covered wars, the White House and eight presidential elections for The Boston Globe, but, at age 12, he first covered the Summit Bulldogs for The Summit Sun. Interestingly, Curtis reported on games in which he was involved. Says he, “I probably was not a great sports writer back then, but I was most assuredly a better writer than athlete.”

Richard Ford

Jackson’s own Pulitzer Prize winner Richard Ford, a proud Murrah High School grad, wrote sports for The Hoofbeat, the Murrah newspaper. Later, he wrote for the now defunct magazine Inside Sports, before penning some of the most acclaimed novels of the 20th and early 21st centuries. His breakthrough novel? Why, The Sports Writer, of course.

David Halberstam, though not a Mississippi native, did some of his first writing at the West Point Daily Leader, where he wrote sports as well as news. Much later he would tell me of his astonishment at the passion involved in those small-town, Mississippi football games. Halberstam, another Pulitzer winner, wrote famously not only of the Vietnam War and the Civil Rights movement but also of Michael Jordan, Bill Walton, Ted Williams and Bill Belichick among other sports luminaries.

Photo Courtesy of the Mississippi Book Festival

John Grisham addresses the crowd of the inaugural Mississippi Book Festival in 2015.

John Grisham has sold more books than Mississippi has produced world-class athletes, which is saying something. John often intersperses sports books with his best-selling legal thrillers. (If you haven’t read Calico Joe or Bleachers, treat yourself.) Grisham will tell you he became first a lawyer and then an author only because he wasn’t capable of reaching his real goal, which was to be a Major League baseball player. Boo Ferriss famously cut Grisham from his loaded Delta State baseball team when John could not hit a curve ball and told him, “John, I think you better get with the books.” Grisham did.

Just goes to show, Boo always knows best.

Rogelio V. Solis, AP

Gov. William Winter

Mention of the late, great Boo Ferriss brings to mind the fact when when Ferriss walked off the mound after his last game at Mississippi State and before his meteoric Boston Red Sox career, the sports writer who interviewed him was none other than William Winter, future governor and an author in his own right. Said the man widely hailed as the most progressive governor in Mississippi history, “All I ever really wanted to be growing up was a sports writer.”

Mississippi Today

Curtis Wilkie

We could go on and on, but you get the idea. In Mississippi, superb writers often honed their craft writing about sports. Wilkie, one of the most renowned reporters in 20^th century U.S. journalism, was asked if this is a coincidence. He does not believe that it is.

“In sports what you’re covering is essentially conflict and conflict is the essential ingredient in any good book whether it’s fiction or non-fiction,” Wilkie said. “Sports is existential in that it’s happening at the moment. The outcome is not known. You don’t know what the hell is going to happen. As a writer, that’s especially appealing and, I think, good training.”

Sounds about right to me.

William Faulkner: Mississippi’s most acclaimed novelist also wrote for Sports Illustrated.

Your faithful correspondent rose early Saturday morning to write about celebrated Mississippi authors who wrote first about sports, usually for newspapers. It seemed the proper time with Saturday’s Mississippi Book Festival at the State Capitol.

Melanie Thortis

Rick Cleveland

So later in the day, I was working at the Mississippi Today booth on the Capitol grounds when a visitor remarked that he had read my piece, and then he asked: “Did you know William Faulkner wrote sports on at least two occasions for Sports Illustrated?”

Why, no, I didn’t. I had no idea.

This was in 1955, seven years before the most celebrated of Mississippi authors died, six years after he won the Nobel Prize in Literature and the same year he first won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. Faulkner was awarded the Nobel for “his powerful and artistically unique contribution to the modern American novel.”

In accepting the Nobel, Faulkner famously closed with: “I believe that man will not merely endure: He will prevail. He is immortal, not because he alone among creatures has an inexhaustible voice, but because he has a soul, a spirit capable of compassion and sacrifice and endurance. The poet’s, the writer’s, duty is to write about these things. It is his privilege to help man endure by lifting his heart, by reminding him of the courage and honor and hope and pride and compassion and pity and sacrifice which have been the glory of his past. The poet’s voice need not merely be the record of man, it can be one of the props, the pillars to help him endure and prevail.”

Sports Illustrated, by far the most literary of sports magazines, thought it a novel idea to have the world’s most renowned novelist, from down in Mississippi, come to New York and write about ice hockey. The magazine also sent him to Louisville to cover the Kentucky Derby.

The idea was novel, indeed.

Of the Derby, Faulkner wrote: “Only a little over two minutes: one simultaneous metallic clash as the gates spring. Though you do not really know what it was you heard: whether it was that metallic crash, or the simultaneous thunder of the hooves in that first leap or the massed voices, the gasp, the exhalation – whatever it was, the clump of horses indistinguishable yet, like a brown wave dotted with the bright silks of the riders like chips flowing toward us along the rail until, approaching, we can begin to distinguish individuals, streaming past us now as individual horses – horses which (including the rider) once stood about eight feet tall and 10 feet long, now look like arrows twice that length and less than half that thickness, shooting past and bunching again as perspective diminishes, then becoming individual horses once more around the turn into the backstretch, streaming on, to bunch for the last time into the homestretch itself, then again individuals, individual horses, the individual horse, the Horse: 2:01:4/5 minutes.”

Wow.

And of an NHL contest at Madison Square Garden, Faulkner penned: “Then it was filled with motion, speed. To the innocent, who had never seen it before, it seemed discorded and inconsequent, bizarre and paradoxical like the frantic darting of the weightless bugs which run on the surface of stagnant pools. Then it would break, coalesce through a kind of kaleidoscopic whirl like a child’s toy, into a pattern, a design almost beautiful, as if an inspired choreographer had drilled a willing and patient and hard-working troupe of dancers — a pattern, design which was trying to tell him something, say something to him urgent and important and true in that second before, already bulging with the motion and the speed, it began to disintegrate and dissolve.”

Wow. Again.

Having once been a sports editor, I eagerly read Faulkner’s sports stories with equal parts enjoyment and with an editor’s eye. As for the latter, I noticed: In the hockey story, Faulkner omitted the score. In the Kentucky Derby story, he did not say which horse won. Obviously, that wasn’t what mattered where he was concerned.

Nevertheless, his words not only endure, they do prevail.

• • •

You can read the stories in their entirety by clicking on the links below:

Faulkner writes hockey.

Faulkner writes the Kentucky Derby.

Kelsey Davis, Mississippi Today

Students load a Cleveland School District bus last week outside of the new Cleveland Central High School.

CLEVELAND — The Cleveland School District has seen a dip in enrollment — mostly from the loss of white students — as it begins the first year under a federal desegregation order.

The overall numbers are small, representing about 2 percent of last year’s district enrollment.

Graphic by Alex Rozier, Mississippi Today

Concerns about white flight from the district was one of the reasons cited by the school board in its initial efforts to challenge the federal judge’s order. But the district dropped appeals last spring and school opened last week with a consolidated Cleveland Central High School and a consolidated Cleveland Middle School.

Overall district enrollment declined by 79 students to 3,414 compared to 3,493 in August last year, enrollment numbers provided by the school district show. Overall, 135 fewer white students are attending the schools this year.

Around this time last year, 619 were enrolled at Cleveland High School and 362 were enrolled at East Side High School, bringing the high school enrollment total to 981.

Graphic by Alex Rozier, Mississippi Today

Since merging the two and forming Cleveland Central High School, the enrollment total this year is 922 — a decline of 59 students. Enrollment figures show there are 71 fewer white students at the high school level this year.

Superintendent Jacquelyn Thigpen said the school board had not yet had the chance to dissect the numbers, which should solidify by September.

“I can’t answer where [the students] have gone. We have students who move. Some went to private schools, some went out of state, some went to other districts. I can’t account for where they are,” Thigpen said. 

Related: Cleveland Central High opens new era for school district

She also said that as long as the district is made up of about 70 percent African American students and 30 percent white students that it would be on target to to have the same racial breakdown in 2017 as it did in 2016.

Graphic by Alex Rozier, Mississippi Today

Figures from this August show that 838 (24.5 percent) of the 3,414 students now enrolled are white. The August 2016 enrollment numbers show that 973 (27.9 percent) of the 3,493 students then enrolled were white.

In May 2016, a federal judge ordered the two schools to merge, handing down the decision after 62 years of litigation which was triggered by a desegregation lawsuit brought against the Bolivar County Board of Education in 1955.

Though the district argued it had done everything it could to comply with the court’s orders throughout the legal battle, the judge ruled that the district still had not successfully integrated and that the middle and high schools must merge.

At the time of the order, Cleveland Central High School was comprised of roughly 60 percent African-American students and 40 percent white students. All but one student at East Side High School was African-American.

Cleveland School District initially fought the decision, but eventually acquiesced.

Enrollment data shows a steep drop off in students registered with Cleveland School District after the court’s decision was announced.

Total enrollment dropped from 3,663 students in May 2016 to 3,208 students in August 2016, an overall loss of 455 students. Enrollment gradually gained throughout the 2016 school year though, bringing the total number of students enrolled up to 3,502.

A slight dip in enrollment again occurred between May 2017 and August 2017, showing 88 fewer students had registered.

“That we lost students at all, that’s a concern. It’s just something we have to deal with,” Thigpen said. “We just educate the ones we have. We know that parents have choices. They made those choices. If we get students in seats, we teach those students.”

A Mississippi school district may say “no thank you” to welcoming an international exchange student into its high school this year, but it’s unclear whether they can legally do so.

After a negative experience with a company that facilitated foreign exchange student placement into high schools years ago, the Choctaw County School District decided to no longer accept these students.

So when Stephanie Outlaw, the local coordinator for foreign exchange student facilitator CCI Greenheart, secured a host family in Choctaw County for a Brazilian exchange student and reached out to the school district about enrolling the student shortly before the school year started, she was met with pushback.

Superintendent Glen Beard said the school board changed its policy to protect the district from liability.

Choctaw County School District

Choctaw County Superintendent Glen Beard

“Several years ago we had a lady that was getting exchange students, (and) she was basically stealing from those students,” Beard explained. “So, if we had been signed on as partners (with that company), we could be held liable. That’s why the district doesn’t want to get back into that situation.”

He also said the board was presented with the idea at the last hour shortly before the school year started, and that the school board felt it needed more information before making a decision.

The district asked Outlaw whether it would receive additional funding from the state for the student, but because district’s funding is based on the prior year’s average daily attendance, that answer is no. Officials also had questions about whether an international exchange student would take state tests and whether his or her scores would be counted towards the district’s accountability grade.

According to MDE, foreign exchange students are required to be included in accountability calculations like any other student unless the school or district successfully appeals their inclusion.

The student would come to Mississippi on a J-1 visa, a non-immigrant visa category for people approved to participate in work-and-study based exchange visitor programs. The students come either on a scholarship or their parents pay their way, and host families participate on a volunteer basis, though they do receive a small tax deduction for hosting.

But the school year is already in full swing, and until the company has secured a spot for the student, she cannot make the trip from Brazil.

Outlaw and Carole Arbush, CCI Greenheart’s Regional Manager for High School Programs, say the district could easily vet their company, which is a designated sponsor of the U.S. Department of State for three J-1 exchange visit programs, including for high schools. The company also requires local coordinators to complete a detailed application that includes a host family application and “extensive criminal and background check” of every member of the household over 18 years old, Arbush said.

Stephanie Outlaw

Stephanie Outlaw, second from left, with her family. From left to right, son Lane Outlaw, husband Brian Outlaw, daughters Cheyenne and (second row, left to right) Haleigh Outlaw, and international exchange student Olatz from Spain.

Outlaw, who lives in Kosciusko and has hosted exchange students that attended the public schools there, said she did not feel that the school board was open minded when she and a member of the potential host family went to the August meeting.

“I didn’t feel like we were very welcomed there because they are so closed to the idea. What happened to them was a very bad situation … but that was a long time ago,” she said.

The school board postponed the decision until the district could receive more information, Beard said. Although it was originally set to be revisited at the board’s next regular meeting in September, a special called meeting was scheduled this week for Friday.

The district’s hesitance to accept the student raises questions about their legal ability to do so. In their residency verification policy, it appears the district simply removed the foreign exchange student requirement from the model State Board of Education policy that provides guidelines to all school districts.

The State Board of Education’s residency verification policy outlines several exceptions for students living with adults other than parents or guardians to be able to qualify as a resident in the school district. As long as the adult can provide documentation proving their residency and an affidavit stating his or her relationship to the student, “students enrolled in recognized exchange programs residing with host families” should be recognized to establish residency, the document states.

According to the same policy, school districts must receive approval from the State Board of Education if they adopt a policy that deviates from theirs.

When asked whether that approval was granted, Beard said he was unable to answer because it preceded his time at the district. Calls and emails to school board attorney Kevin Null were not returned.

When reached by Mississippi Today, the Mississippi Department of Education said it could not comment on specifics without knowing whether the district received approval for the policy change in the past. However, “Based on accountability standards, school districts are expected to comply with state law and the State Board of Education policy on enrollment requirements,” spokeswoman Jean Cook said.

Since the school board meeting, Outlaw tried a different route to secure the student’s education. She reached out to the local private school, French Camp Academy, but found that while the school just obtained the certification to enroll and house three international exchange students this year in its dorms, the school wanted to wait until next year to accept more students.

Outlaw said in the meantime, she is waiting on the outcome of the Friday school board meeting and will also be meeting again with officials at French Camp in January to discuss the possibility of placing students there in the 2018-2019 school year.

“I did not expect to run into some of the problems that I’ve run into. This is just a lot of ignorance,” she said, noting the positive experience Kosciusko schools had with international students.

“I would just think that because the majority of kids in the high school setting are never going to go to a foreign country and meet anyone … It’s a cultural experience if not anything else,” she continued.

“I’m the first person that really got the boogie goin’. Everybody now is boogie-this and boogie-that — but I am the original. And the word comes from Boogie Chillen. When Boogie Chillen first came out, everywhere you went you would hear that, ’cause that was a new beat to the blues then. And that was the boogie. And then it laid dead for years and years and then I revived it …”

— John Lee Hooker, 1979 interview with Living Blues magazine

John Lee Hooker’s Boogie Chillen reached No. 1 on the R&B charts in February 1949 and, with its “new beat,” it launched one of blues’ most remarkable, resilient and singular careers.

A one-chord paean to simple pleasures that mixed traditional and modern sounds, Boogie Chillin’ resonated with the sensibilities of many contemporary African Americans who, like the then Detroit-based Hooker, had left the Deep South for a new life up North. Nearly 70 years later, the appeal of Hooker’s music has hardly waned, and his inimitable sound and his iconic cool persona continue to symbolize blues authenticity.

Hooker has been honored via multiple Mississippi bicentennial celebrations, including coordinated exhibits at Grammy Museum Mississippi in Cleveland — John Lee Hooker: King of the Boogie opened Aug. 22 — and the Delta Blues Museum in Clarksdale — John Lee Hooker: Endless Boogie opened in late July. Both are being staged in tandem with the Fourth Annual International Conference on the Blues, Oct. 1-3 at Delta State University, which will have a John Lee Hooker theme.

Photo by Will Jacks

John Lee Hooker: King of the Boogie will be on exhibit through Feb. 18, 2018, at Grammy Museum Mississippi in Cleveland.

Hooker was born on a farm 10 miles southeast of Clarksdale, near Vance, on Aug. 22, 1917, one of 11 children of Minnie and William Hooker. He got his first guitar from his sister’s boyfriend, Tony Hollins, a recording artist whose Crawlin’ King Snake would later provide Hooker with his second hit and whose Traveling Man Blues Hooker would later record as When My First Wife Quit Me.

The main inspiration of his sound, though, was his stepfather, Will Moore, who never recorded.

“I’m doin’ it identical to his style,” Hooker once said of Moore, a native of Shreveport who had performed with Charley Patton.

Hooker decided early on that sharecropping wasn’t for him, and by his mid-teens he left home for good, stopping in Memphis and Cincinnati before settling in Detroit in 1943. Hooker initially worked day jobs, playing at house parties and clubs in Detroit’s Black Bottom district on the weekends. His first real recording session in late 1948 yielded Boogie Chillen, which was leased to Los Angeles’ Modern label.

“The thing caught afire,” he recalled in Living Blues. “It was ringin’ all around the country. When it come out, every jukebox you went to, every place you went to, every drug store you went, everywhere you went, department stores, they were playing it there.”

Hooker continued to produce hit after hit, including I’m In The Mood, Hobo Blues and Crawling King Snake, and avoided contractual restrictions by recording for various labels under aliases — the relatively transparent John Lee Booker, John Lee Cooker and Johnny Lee, as well the more arcane sobriquets Birmingham Sam and His Magic Guitar and Little Pork Chops.

Photo by Paul Natkin / Getty Imges

John Lee Hooker

Hooker’s ability to find so much work owed much to his rare ability to improvise new and high quality songs on demand, and the breadth of his recording legacy is expressed through the release of more than 100 albums. Hooker’s predilection for label hopping ended, temporarily at least, in 1955, when he signed with the Chicago-based label Vee-Jay, for whom he recorded, among others, the 1956 hit Dimples.

In the latter ’50s, Hooker became one of the first bluesmen to benefit from the emergent folk/blues revival, appearing at the 1960 and 1963 Newport Folk Festivals, recording albums for folk-oriented labels and gigging on the coffeehouse circuit. These new audiences also were interested in buying his older recordings, which were readily repackaged as “authentic folk blues.”

After a 1962 tour of Europe with the American Folk Blues Festival, Hooker became a frequent guest in the United Kingdom, staying for extended tours, recording with the Groundhogs in 1964 and drawing the attention of the rock crowd after the Animals had a hit with Boom Boom, originally recorded by Hooker for Vee-Jay in 1962.

With the collapse of Vee-Jay in 1965, Hooker returned to label hopping, but he was now largely recording albums instead of singles. In 1971, he gained the attention of the American rock audience when he recorded the album Hooker ‘n Heat with the band Canned Heat. Despite his continuing power as a performer, Hooker’s career declined during the ’70s, though he gained renewed attention in 1980 with his appearance in the Blues Brothers, performing outdoors on Chicago’s famed Maxwell Street.

His career rebounded in 1989 with the success of his album The Healer, which paired him with younger admirers, including Bonnie Raitt, Robert Cray, Los Lobos, Carlos Santana and fellow Mississippian and friend Charlie Musselwhite.

Over the course of his last decade, Hooker became a wealthy man, selling millions of records, appearing in high-profile commercials for Lee jeans and Pepsi and commanding top dollar for his performances with his Coast to Coast Blues Band. Hooker’s increased celebrity coincided with the growing prominence of the blues in popular culture, and he arguably became the blues’ most recognizable icon. In his expensive suit, hat and dark glasses, attire he also donned while at home, Hooker stood as regal and the epitome of cool, a man Miles Davis called “the funkiest man alive.”

Hooker, who remained quite vigorous in his frequent performances, died in his sleep on June 21, 2001, at his home in Los Altos, Calif. He’s fondly remembered by his friends for his style, humility, generosity, love of family and friends, passion for baseball (he was an avid Dodgers fan) and as a ladies’ man whose charms captivated the women and left men in awe.

Photo by Danny Clinch

Blues musician Charlie Musselwhite

His close friend Charlie Musselwhite recalled, “He was always the same John Lee as the first time I met him. His outlook, his personality, his character, his humor, the way he looked at things, he was always John Lee.”

One of Musselwhite’s favorite stories about Hooker concerns his famously laid-back nature. Hooker had promised to overdub a part for a musician’s album, but kept putting him off until they finally agreed that they could record at Hooker’s home.

“So this guy comes over there one day and knocks on the door and this girl answers the door and says, ‘Well, John’s in the bed watching TV.’ So they go back there … and John never even gets out of the bed. He’s layin’ there with his shades on watchin’ the ballgame and they turn the sound down on the TV and hold the microphone to him and put the headphones on him. And they played the cut and he does his part and they leave and he never even raised up. So that’s being pretty relaxed. And that’s also gettin’ things to work out the way you want it to.”

Scott Barretta is a writer and researcher for the Mississippi Blues Trail and an adjunct instructor in sociology and anthropology at the University of Mississippi

Ole Miss athletics

Matt Luke speaks Monday at his first Ole Miss game week press conference as head coach.

It is the biggest, most difficult step in sports – a leap, really, from being an assistant coach or a coordinator to being the boss, the head coach.

Matt Luke makes that step Saturday at Ole Miss when the Rebels open the season against South Alabama. And he knows well his biggest challenge.

“It’s going to be emotional. This is something I’ve been thinking about for a long time,” Luke told reporters Monday at his first game week press conference. “… I’m very, very excited. That’s going to be one of my biggest challenges this game is controlling my emotions. To be a very efficient and organized head coach and not let my emotions get to me. But I’m excited and prepared for it.”

Melanie Thortis

Rick Cleveland

I covered Luke when he was a player at Ole Miss, at first a walk-on and then a team leader, a center who was like a coach on the field. He was, to say the least, a fiery, emotional player.

Says his former teammate Deuce McAllister, “After some games, Matt was hoarse. He could barely talk because he had yelled so much. You see head coaches pace on the sidelines? Matt was pacer as a player. He was up and down the sidelines.”

I’ve watched Luke grow as an assistant coach, first as a grad assistant under David Cutcliffe and then under several different head coaches, taking on more responsibilities with each job.

As an assistant coach, he was a hands-on, very vocal, in-your-face teacher and coach. His players never had to guess how he felt. He made sure they knew. You won’t find many offensive line coaches who hide their emotions, and Matt Luke certainly wasn’t one.

Said McAllister, laughing, “The Ole Miss players may hear some language they didn’t hear from Coach (Hugh) Freeze.”

That may be, but now Luke has to be the eye in the storm – the calmer general, rather than the excitable sergeant. He won’t be making suggestions, he’ll be considering the suggestions of others.

“You have to manage the clock, you have to manage timeouts, field goals and when to go for it,” Luke said. “If I am going to go for it, I need to be able to let (offensive coordinator) Phil Longo know that on second down if he’s got two downs,” Luke said. “Just being able to manage the clock and be an efficient head coach and making good game day decisions.

“I think you have to be in the game to do that, and I don’t think you can be all emotional and running around,” Luke continued. “I think I can be into the game and be a motivator, but I want to make sure I’m making good decisions, helping out the defense, helping out special teams – do we want to go for a block, or do we want to be punt safe? Just the little things that make you a very efficient and good head coach.”

The best head coaches often are the best delegators. They surround themselves with good coaches and then let them coach. But they also must know when to reel in their assistants. It requires a deft touch and a real sense of how to handle people. Some are good at it and, frankly, some aren’t.

LSU head coach Ed Orgeron will tell you now that he didn’t delegate well at Ole Miss in his first head coaching assignment. Of all his mistakes – and there were many – the worst might have been trying to do too much, not letting his assistants do their jobs.

“I wasn’t ready,” Orgeron said recently. “I did the things I did as a defensive line coach and was very successful with over the years. It didn’t work at Ole Miss.”

Orgeron has pledged to be different at LSU. We shall see. LSU is the job he has always wanted.

The same is true at Ole Miss of Luke, who knows this is his big chance at his alma mater. There is talent in the program, albeit mostly on the offensive side of the ball. In many ways, the 2017 season is like a test drive. If he handles the new responsibilities well – if Ole Miss wins some games – he could become the permanent head coach.

He begins his head coaching tenure the same way he began as a player at Ole Miss – that is, on probation, short of scholarships and under a bowl ban. He saw how Tommy Tuberville handled it and handled it well. That’s got to help Matt Luke in what he now faces at Ole Miss.

Kelsey Davis, Mississippi Today

Panelists at the University of Mississippi Technology Summit discuss the state’s future in the industry on Wednesday.

OXFORD — During a discussion Wednesday about recent advancements in technology and infinite opportunities for more growth came a sobering reminder.

The Federal Communications Commission reported in 2016 that 34 percent of Mississippi residents had no option for fixed, high speed broadband. In rural parts of the state, the percentage jumped to about 60 percent of residents without access.

“That’s the highest percentage of any state in the country,” said Nicholas Degani, senior counsel for the Federal Communications Commission.

Leaders from across the nation gathered for the second University of Mississippi Technology Summit to discuss challenges the state faces and prospects for growth within the technology industry.

Kelsey Davis, Mississippi Today

Sen. Roger Wicker addresses the University of Mississippi Technology Summit on Wednesday.

The summit was spearheaded by Sen. Roger Wicker, R-Miss., hosted by University of Mississippi Chancellor Jeffrey Vitter and moderated by James Barksdale, president of Barksdale Management Corp.

Keynote speaker James Clark, founder of Silicon Graphics and two other multi-billion dollar software companies, began the summit by telling the story of those companies’ inceptions. All were conceived long before the internet as we know it today existed.  

“It was such a big deal that I was doing something so crazy as to put money into the internet. Everyone knew you couldn’t make money on the internet. It was a madhouse in those days,” Clark said about Netscape, a company he founded in 1993, whose first product was the web browser.

Barksdale was president and CEO of Netscape Communications Corporation from January 1995 until the company merged with AOL in March 1999. 

The prospect of making a successful commercial entity doing anything related to the internet was unheard of, Clark added.

“No one believed it could happen,” he said.

Clark and other panelists discussed how Mississippians can ready themselves for technological advancements, and on the flip side, how the lack of basic internet access in some parts of the state limits people’s access to health care, education and job opportunities.

“If you don’t have broadband access today that creates a serious opportunity gap,” said Ryan Harkins, director of state affairs and public policy for Microsoft.

The challenge of bringing broadband to rural Mississippi primarily has been economic. Fewer people to pay for the service means higher prices, though Degani noted that technological advancements will help bring down those costs.

Lawmakers hesitating to bring tech opportunities to rural areas for fear of eliminating jobs also has added to the lag.

“From a state legislative standpoint, a lot of times there’s tension associated with embracing technology that can improve outcome and save costs because personnel is a huge component of how your taxpayer dollars are used. Legislators are very cautious to adopt technologies if they think it’s going to result in job losses,” said Rebekah Staples, public policy adviser for the office of Lt. Gov. Tate Reeves.

To push the tech industry forward, Staples recommended, leaders should articulate to law and policy makers the benefits of trading off personnel for technological advancements.

Other panelists mentioned that although personnel cuts might be made upfront, job growth would be the ultimate result of furthering technology in the state. 

“We understand that there’s going to be likely job losses in the traditional sense, but with all of the innovation and emerging technology that we’re seeing today, it’s going to create new jobs. Whether it’s maintaining the network or operating machines and robots in factories or learning how to update the algorithms that are powering the machine learning,” said Olivia Trusty, a professional staff member of the U.S. Commerce Committee.

Jim Barksdale is a member of Mississippi Today’s board of directors and a financial donor to Mississippi Today.

Rogelio V. Solis, AP

Sons of Confederate Veterans and other groups parade on the grounds of the state Capitol in Jackson, Miss., Tuesday, Jan. 19, 2016, in support of keeping the Confederate battle emblem on the state flag. The public display of Confederate symbols has come under increased scrutiny since June, when nine black worshippers were massacred at a church in South Carolina.

Action this week at the U.S. Supreme Court makes clear that debate over the Mississippi state flag has reached national proportions never seen before.

After many years of debating the state flag in Mississippi, two national civil rights groups filed briefs in support of a lawsuit Grenada attorney Carlos Moore filed.

In addition, the nation’s highest court has requested more information from Gov. Phil Bryant, who is named as a plaintiff in the suit, which questions whether the state of Mississippi should fly its current flag – the last in the nation containing the Confederate battle emblem.

The request comes as the nationwide debate over Confederate symbols – including flags, building names and monuments – rages.

Tucker-Moore Law Group

Carlos Moore, a Grenada attorney and municipal judge pro tem in Clarksdale

Moore, whose case has been rejected by two lower courts, said through his attorney that this week’s Supreme Court request indicates the Mississippi flag case is at the very least on its radar.

“The Supreme Court, because it can only take a very small number of cases, has to figure out which cases are going to have impact on the country as a whole,” said Mike Scott, a Philadelphia, Pa.-based attorney representing Moore. “What’s been going on in Charlottesville and elsewhere shows that there’s a huge amount on angst and tension in the meaning of these images, what they were intended to do and what message was broadcast by them.”

The lawsuit, which cites the equal-protection clause of the 14th Amendment, argues that the state flag is “one of racial hostility” and “the state’s continued expression of its message of racial disparagement” labels African-Americans as second-class citizens.

Moore also believes his cause could be bolstered now that two prominent civil-rights organizations have weighed in by filing supporting briefs.

In addition to the Southern Poverty Law Center, the Congressional Black Caucus wrote an amicus brief signed by U.S. Rep. Bennie Thompson, from Mississippi, along with fellow Reps. John Lewis, Elijah Cummings, James Clyburn and Maxine Waters.

“Declaring the racial inferiority of a subjugated people, Mississippi and the other members of the Confederacy went to war in 1861, willing to tear apart the nation in order to preserve the institution of slavery and the economic benefits it afforded their free, white citizens,” the brief stated. “The Confederate battle emblem was the rallying symbol of those who would have destroyed the union rather than acknowledge the equality, and indeed the humanity, of black people. It is a vestige of America’s darkest hour.”

Attorneys representing Gov. Bryant have cited previous cases that dictate issues such as the state flag should be dealt with by the Legislature, not the federal courts.

U.S. District Judge Carlton Reeves agreed with that point when he dismissed the original filing as did the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

The chances of any case being heard by the U.S. Supreme Court are slim. Between 7,000 and 8,000 petitions are made to the Supreme Court each year, but just 80 to 100 are ultimately heard by the court.

In the Mississippi state flag case, Grenada attorney Carlos Moore, represented by Scott, filed the request of the Supreme Court after the Fifth Circuit upheld Reeves’ ruling.

Right away, the respondents – Gov. Bryant and his counsel – had the option to respond to the petition and chronicle their defense. Since the Supreme Court typically tosses most petitions, attorneys for the state of Mississippi, following common practice, did not initially file a response.

But this week, the Supreme Court asked the state to file the response, indicating some level of interest in the case by the high court.

To date, state attorneys have not defended the state flag directly. In solidarity with arguments made thus far, the state’s response to the Supreme Court petition will likely cite previous cases and argue the case has no standing, as they did when the case was in district court.

“The fact (the Supreme Court) did ask for a response means it’s possibly a good candidate for cert (a granted petition),” Scott said. “But before they do that, they want to see what the state has to say. It doesn’t mean cert’s going to be granted. It means the court has this case identified as one of a relatively small number that it wants more information on.”

Cliff Johnson, a professor at the University of Mississippi School of Law and director of the MacArthur Justice Center, said it’s difficult to read too far into the high court’s request.

“It is certainly possible it’s just a single justice or perhaps even a single justice’s law clerk who thinks it would be helpful,” he said.”It does mean that somebody has taken note of the absence of a response and feels that a response would be helpful in determining whether (a hearing) should be granted.”

Johnson adds, of the flag issue: “It’s not DOA, but it’s not up and running.”

FLORA — In the year that The Flora Butcher has anchored a corner of Main and Carter, maybe as much information as meat has crossed its counter.

Owner/chef/butcher David Raines opened The Flora Butcher in summer 2016, concentrating on the Wagyu beef his father raises in north Louisiana. The shop has since become a go-to for those keen on premium meats and local sourcing, supplying restaurants and walk-ins with custom cuts, fresh sausages and more.

Photo by Melanie Thortis

Chef David Raines is The Flora Butcher

“It seems like I have to explain what we do here every day, at least once,” as new people drop by, Raines says. “They just want to know what Wagyu is.”

Raines’ Wagyu beef, the Japanese breed prized for its tenderness, flavor and feathery marbling, comes from the same black Tajima strain of cattle behind Kobe beef (a trademark designation by geography and strict guidelines in Japan). The breed is smaller, with less yield, making the beef more expensive to produce, but Raines’ ranch-to-shop pipeline keeps the cost down.

Questions are welcome. “It’s fun, because I get to talk cooking with a lot of people,” he says, from sharing culinary tips to giving details on the cuts. “It’s like teaching a little mini class every few minutes.

“It’s been very well-received, I have to say, when we have all the answers, because they have a lot of questions.” The Johnson & Wales grad, with an international chef career in his background, is a ready source. A novice at tri-tip? He can take out the guesswork with four different ways to cook it. Making deer sausage at home? Raines can give pointers on grinders and casings.

Photo by Melanie Thortis

Sausage available at The Flora Butcher

There have been a few surprises. “We sell a lot more pork than I would have thought,” he says. Beef bacon and beef sausage satisfy those who eschew pork. “But we get these milk-fed pigs from a guy in Wesson, Miss., that are just phenomenal, and we make our own sausage.” Between beef, pork and lamb, they’ll have 13 different kinds of sausage at any given time, as well as boudin, tasso, head cheese and their own andouille.

Ask Raines for a rundown and prepare to salivate: sage pork sausage brightened with ginger or blueberry maple pork breakfast sausage (“It just tastes like you need a pancake, like, right now!”). Beef sausage can handle stronger flavors, such as mushroom and gouda, a spicy smoked chorizo or a barbecued one with the sweet heat of pineapple and jalapeno.

Photo by Melanie Thortis

Chef David Raines talks with customers outside The Flora Butcher.

“Nobody walks out of here without a steak and then a few sausages to cook on the grill while they’re eating their steak.”

Blue plate specials won a favorite spot, too. Even with an either-this-or-that lunch option, they dish up 40-80 a day; the only seating is a few spots outside in the heat.

Pharmaceutical reps will get requests from doctors’ offices, he says, “They’ll call us and say, ‘I’m on my way, I need 20 Wagyu meatloaves.”

The Flora Butcher needed its big building, affordable in Flora, for wholesale and storage, but retail traffic has been twice what they projected. Restaurant customers extend from Livingston and metro Jackson to the Gulf Coast and dozens more in New Orleans. Raines aims to open a casual dining restaurant, with Flora Butcher meats, perhaps in Jackson or Madison soon.

Small town draw

The Flora Butcher is one more entity on Flora’s farm-to-table front, already fertile with hydroponic farm Salad Days, organic-inspired Two Dog Farms, honey-producing Mississippi Bees and more. There are local folks, too, raising goat and lamb, such as in a project with grandkids or for a catering business, Raines says. “I think we’ve attracted some of the people that are a little more adventurous culinary-wise.”

Photo by Melanie Thortis

Downtown Flora

Flora Mayor Les Childress, now in his third term, has seen growth in his town, with people relocating, kids returning to family land, folks upgrading older homes and building new ones, investors from both within and outside the community.

Photo by Melanie Thortis

Jamie Langdon and her son, Kentlee, enjoy a plate lunch from The Flora Butcher recently.

“We are the small town of Madison County,” he says, with its under-2,000 population ripe with retirees, young families and everything in-between.

“We’re kind of, in a way, still an ag community, to some degree,” he says. Many residents like living on three to five acres, with a horse or other livestock, “and have that country atmosphere.” Proximity to the fertile Big Black River Basin, plus rolling hills that make great pasture, add to the area’s natural resources.

The annual Flora Car Show downtown drove investment as well as spectatorship last year. “We actually had somebody come to the car show … and, walking down Main Street, saw a building that was for sale, and they bought the building,” he says. Optometrist Dr. Bobby Pankey now has an office on Main Street.

This year, the eighth annual Flora Car Show, held on the Saturday of Halloween weekend, could have 145-150 cars lining the street, says co-organizer Randy May at J&R Auto.

Flora’s true Main Street is a charming draw on the one hand, and the straight shot of four-lane U.S. 49 is appealing on the other. Commuters to the Nissan Plant, and in the future Continental Tire, pass through town. Mississippi 22 funnels drivers right along his historical Main Street downtown.

How many blocks is it, again? “It’s just one,” Childress says, “but it’s both sides of the road.”

Drive time

A pleasant Sunday drive of yore happens now on Saturdays for Jacksonians headed for a small-town fix and specialty shopping in Flora. Used to be, it was a ghost town, Raines says.

Photo by Melanie Thortis

A city employee mows the city cemetery grass in downtown Flora.

“When I got here, I never saw anybody wandering the streets on a Saturday, looking around, but now, you see that,” he says. “They come to Flora, they get lunch, they get some meat, we’ll put it in the cooler, they’ll walk up and down the street, they’ll go to the Corner Market, they’ll go to that little knickknack store that opened across the street … and just look around a little bit.”

Photo by Melanie Thortis

Downtown Flora

It’s one of The Flora Butcher’s busiest days. “People walk in and they’ll see their neighbor, like from right down the street. They both live in Eastover (in Jackson), but they drive out and, ‘Oh look! We’re both here at the same time!’

“It’s cool to see Main Street kind of hopping on Saturdays.”

Two doors down, artist Sanders McNeal, whose “Sow and Son” painting hangs in The Flora Butcher, is converting a former H&R Block into Studio on Main, and targeting an opening celebration in mid-December. The small-town feel, with plein air painting mere minutes away and sidewalk strollers able to look in and watch her work, “is just the kind of ambiance that you look for as an artist,” she says.

The Flora Butcher adds to the town’s culinary trend, building for years. “People visit our restaurants from everywhere,” Childress says, noting the downtown draws of Bill’s Creole and Steak Depot and the Blue Rooster. Railroad Pizza Co. on Main Street joined the mix last year, but it’s still repairing after tornado damage last April. Childress continues a list that also includes a family-owned Mexican restaurant, a Penn’s and a Bumpers. “People visit here from lunch hour from Clinton, Madison. It is a short drive, when you get to thinking about — it’s only 15, 20 minutes.”

“There’s just been good food here for a long time. People just haven’t been through to notice till recently,” says Rick Lang, at GPI Printing on Main.

“They’re starting to notice now, and a lot more folks are coming out this way.”

Photo by Melanie Thortis

The Flora Butcher in downtown Flora

Mississippi Legislature

Rep. Becky Currie, R-Brookhaven, will file a bill that would cap the State Superintendent of Education’s salary.

A legislator says she will file a bill to cap the salary of future state superintendents of education and require the Legislature to approve any raises following a report showing Mississippi’s superintendent is the highest paid in the nation.

Rep. Becky Currie, R-Brookhaven, a member of the House Education Committee, said her bill as written would cap any future education chief’s salary at $250,000. Current State Superintendent Carey Wright makes $300,000, nearly twice the national average of pay of $174,000, according to Education Week.

Part of the reason for Wright’s pay is an old law that required the K-12 head to be compensated at 90 percent of what the Institutions of Higher Learning commissioner makes. Although the Legislature did away with that law in 2011, the salary for Wright’s predecessor remained at $307,000, and Wright was hired by the State Board of Education at her current salary level in 2013.

Mississippi IHL Commissioner Glenn Boyce makes just under $360,000 annually.

“When you look at other states, we’re just far above them,” Currie said. She acknowledged progress under Wright’s tenure, such as improved test scores and graduation rates and the transitions Wright has overseen in terms of Common Core and changing federal regulations.

Kayleigh Skinner, Mississippi Today

State Education Superintendent Carey Wright

“I think she (Wright) has done a good job and gone through a lot of growing pains, our numbers are better, and I don’t want to belittle anything that she’s done,” Currie said.

Currie emphasized that the bill would not affect Wright’s pay but instead set a cap for future superintendents. She said she picked $250,000 to ensure there would be quality candidates to choose from.

“Sometimes you have to pay a little more to get the right person, but I did not realize we were so far out of line with other states with the salary,” Currie continued.

State Board of Education Chair Rosemary Aultman said she can’t answer whether she thinks a $250,000 salary would be sufficient to attract a competitive pool of candidates.

“These people who are truly transformational, who have a track record and a strong grasp of the job and who are willing to take on the job – you’re going to have to pay them and you’re going to have to pay them well,” she said. “I can’t say whether it would attract anybody or not at $250,000, but, you know, you’ve got to see a big picture here.”

Mississippi Dept. of Education

Rosemary Aultman, State Board of Education chair

Aultman, who said she was aware Mississippi was in the top five states but not the highest state in terms of superintendent salary, has questions about how determinations regarding salary increases would be made should Currie’s bill become law.

“I would question who’s going to do the evaluation and how it (a raise) would be determined, should that issue come up,” she said.

The State Board of Education currently evaluates the superintendent annually. Aultman said Wright has not received a pay raise during her time as superintendent but highlighted the strides the state has made since Wright took over.

“We’re seeing results from the investment in leadership. Fourth grade reading gains, third grade Reading Gate passages, increased graduation rates, declining drop out rates, increase in Advanced Placement enrollment, just to name a few, are all direct results of Dr. Wright’s leadership with school districts across the state,” Aultman said. “While there remains much to be done, schools are on the right trajectory.”

Senate Education Chairman Gray Tollison, who authored the 2011 bill that removed the requirement the K-12 head be compensated at 90 percent of the higher education commissioner’s salary and put the board back in charge, said it will undoubtedly be a topic for discussion in the 2018 legislative session.

“Quite frankly, though, if we’re going to look at this one (salary) we need to look at the IHL commissioner and other salaries” as well, Tollison said.

He also said removing the board’s ability to set the superintendent’s salary could have drawbacks.

“I think we have some very capable adults on the State Board of Education and they are certainly in a better position to determine the appropriate salary (for the superintendent),” he said. “You don’t want to micromanage, you want to let the state board do its job, but at the same time I understand the concern if this salary is appropriate.”

House Education Chairman John Moore said he would like to do more research on previous superintendents’ salaries before expressing any opinion on Currie’s bill.

He also said he wouldn’t want to do anything that would send a negative message to Wright.

“In my opinion she’s doing a good job and she takes a lot of heat. I wouldn’t want to do anything that would make Dr. Wright start looking at leaving Mississippi,” he said.

Wright, who began her tenure as Mississippi’s superintendent in 2013, previously worked as an associate superintendent in the Montgomery County Public Schools in Maryland and as Chief Academic Officer in the District of Columbia Public Schools. She earned her bachelor, master and doctoral degrees from the University of Maryland, College Park.

IAHS 1968 annual

The 1967 Itawamba AHS Indians broke the color line in Mississippi high school football.

Mike Justice didn’t know he was helping to make Mississippi history at Itawamba Agricultural High School in Fulton half a century ago in the fall of 1967. All Justice wanted to do was win football games.

And if new friends, such as Roy Lee Crayton, Hank Stone and Glen Clifton could help win, that was all the better. Never mind that Crayton, Stone and Clifton were African American – and Itawamba AHS football teams had always been all-white.

“Besides Coach (Ben) Jones said those guys were going to be part of the team, and what Coach Jones said back then was law,” Justice says. “You gotta understand, nobody questioned Ben Jones.”

Until 1967, white and black Mississippians played football – as they did most activities – separately. Most Mississippi high schools did not integrate until 1969. Itawamba AHS, commonly known as Fulton, was among the first.

Melanie Thortis

Rick Cleveland

Justice, who now lives in Madison, would become one of Mississippi’s all-time winning-est high school coaches, using many of the lessons he learned from Jones. That included Jones’ “fairness principle” – which simply was that the best players at every position will start, regardless of race or class or anything else.

Jones was one of the leaders who believed Fulton schools should not put off integration as many Mississippi school systems would. He wanted to embrace what he knew was the law of the land. Those who know him say he learned his own lessons about race from chopping cotton with black kids in Monroe County as a youth – and from his grandfather who counted an ex-slave among his best friends.

Until 1967, all white kids in Fulton went to Itawamba AHS. The blacks went to East High, a much smaller school that didn’t even play football.

Jones, then-Fulton mayor H.D. McGee, IAHS principal Wayne Wood (a former sheriff), East High principal T.Y. Trice, newspaper publisher Delmus Harden and Itawamba Junior College president John Crubaugh were all forward-thinking men, who believed the sooner, the better where integration was concerned. For his part, Trice supported the instant integration, even though his job of East High principal would no longer exist.

To say that not all Fulton residents agreed would be an all-time understatement. There was resistance and plenty of it, especially when they learned that the football team, the pride of Fulton, would be integrated as well. A group of white parents went as a group to voice their protest to Wood, who said he was sticking by his coach. Jones and Wood, meanwhile, met with black parents, urging them to let their children play football, despite the fact they had never played organized football before.

“To be honest, some of the black guys didn’t know how to play,” Justice remembers. “But they were great athletes and they learned fast.”

One of the new IAHS players was 10^th grader Roy Lee Crayton, a 6-foot, 6-inch, 290-pound manchild, by far the largest player on the team. Jones often ended his practice with what he called “a victory lap.” All the players would take a lap all the way around the field. Crayton didn’t make it the first day.

“Halfway around the field, Roy Lee just fell out,” Justice says. “I mean, he fell out like he was dead.”

Jones tried to coax Crayton to get up and finish the lap. He didn’t. Roy Lee stayed down until all the other players left the field.

The same thing happened the next day and the next. Finally, Jones came equipped with a baby bottle filled with milk. When Crayton fell out during the lap, Jones blew his whistle, approached the fallen player and said, “Roy Lee, you know what I’m going to do to you?”

Crayton opened an eye and replied, “You gonna yell at me and treat me real bad?”

Jones said, “No Roy Lee, I got something for you,” and handed him the baby bottle, hoping to shame him into completing his lap.

Crayton just unscrewed the bottle, put it to his mouth and chugged the milk. “Thanks, Coach, you got any more?” he said, smiling.

Ben Jones

The entire team erupted in laughter. Ben Jones always believed that was the moment his players, black and white, begin to come together as a team. The community didn’t come together quite so quickly.

As the Sept. 8 opener of the 1967 season against bitter rival Baldwyn approached, threats were made against Jones.

He didn’t flinch.

In fact, on the night of the first game, he called his players to attention before the game. He implored them to stick together. Furthermore, before the national anthem, he had them all remove their helmets and walk completely around the field. This wasn’t a victory lap; no, it was a unity lap.

“I want everybody here to see what color you all are, black and white,” Jones told them. “Don’t anybody be ashamed of what color you are because I’m not.”

Future Fulton and Jackson State star Dale Stone, whose older brother Hank played on the team, was there that night and remembers.

Hank Stone

“Coach Jones was an unusual man for those times,” Dale Stone says. “He didn’t discriminate whatsoever. He made it clear the best players were going to play, no matter what.”

Robert Clay, then a ninth grader, was there as well. Four years later, he would be the first black to start at quarterback in the Tombigbee Conference.

“Coach Jones didn’t see color,” says Clay, now a preacher in Atlanta. “He treated everybody the same and he motivated everybody. You wanted to do well for him. I know, for my part, he saw something in me I didn’t see in myself.”

The Baldwyn-Fulton rivalry was a rugged one, and Baldwyn wanted badly to spoil that historic 1967 season opener for Fulton. Baldwyn led 7-6 in the third quarter, and Jones still hadn’t played one of his black players.

With Baldwyn facing an obvious passing down, Jones sent Crayton into the game. The Baldwyn quarterback went back to pass, Crayton raised his arms as he had been taught. He deflected the pass into the hands of teammate Chuck Carpenter, who raced 35 yards for the go-ahead touchdown. Roy Lee Crayton was suddenly a hero. When Hank Stone entered the game a few minutes later, he did so to cheers.

Mike Justice

Minutes later, Justice, a fullback, broke a long touchdown run. Fulton was on its way to a 28-7 victory – and, more importantly, a successful integration of its school.

Crayton would go on to play for Itawamba Junior College, Southwest Missouri and in professional football before an injury ended his career. Justice would become one of Mississippi’s most successful high school coaches. He says he counted Hank Stone and Roy Lee Crayton, who both have since died, as close friends.

Ben Justice, Mike’s son and a football coach himself, is named for Ben Jones. Both Mike Justice and Robert Clay spoke at Ben Jones’ funeral two months ago.

Fifty years ago Friday night, the Itawamba AHS Indians made Mississippi history, doing for the first time what we now take for granted.