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Easy Money Church of God in Christ, Money, MS

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What is: Easy Money Church of God in Christ, Money, MS

What was: When Emmett Till’s body was discovered in the Tallahatchie River on Wednesday morning, August 31, 1955, plans were hastily made to have him buried in the small cemetery at the East Money Church of God in Christ—a humble black church that his Uncle, Moses Wright, pastored at.  After Emmett Till’s body was found, local law enforcement was anxious to bury the body and, they hoped, the story. Within hours of the body’s retrieval, a grave was dug here at the East Money church. Till’s great uncle Crosby Smith interrupted the digging. He arrived with a deputy sheriff and announced that Till’s mother, Mamie Till, insisted that her son’s body be returned home to Chicago. Source: https://tillapp.emmett-till.org/items/show/3

One week earlier, and while Wright and his wife Elizabeth attended Wednesday services, Till, his cousins, and two neighbors drove nearly three miles to the Bryant Grocery and Meat Market in Money, where Till had his fateful encounter with Carolyn Bryant. Ms. Bryant is alive today and has never been arrested, even though there is a warrant for her involvement in kidnapping.

Visit the Emmett Till Memory Project for more sites and stories or the Emmett Till Interpretive Center

 

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Soulsville USA, Stax, Memphis, Tennessee

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What is: Stax Records, “Soulsville USA” Memphis, Tennessee.  Its Founder, Jim Stewart, died this week at age 92.

What was: It was the late 1950s and Jim Stewart, a white Tennessee farm boy and fiddle player, co-founded with his sister the influential Stax Records  in a Black, inner-city Memphis neighborhood.  They helped build the soulful “Memphis sound” – a raw sound born from Black church music, the blues and rock ‘n’ roll. It featured strong rhythm sections, powerful horn players, and singers who could be sexy and soulful in one tune, and loud and forceful in another.

During the era of racial strife, white musicians and producers worked alongside Black singers, songwriters and instrumentalists to create that “Memphis sound” embodied by Otis Redding, Isaac Hayes, Booker T. and the MGs, Carla and Rufus Thomas, the Staple Singers, Wilson Pickett, Sam & Dave and many others. The recording produced lasting hits such as Otis Redding’s “Dock of the Bay,” Eddie Floyd’s “Knock on Wood,” Sam & Dave’s “Hold On, I’m Comin'” and “Soul Man,” and “Green Onions” by Booker T. and the M.G.s.  Stax and its affiliated record labels released 300 albums and 800 singles between 1959 and 1975, according to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

Stewart told The Associated Press in a May 2013 interview, “There was so much talent here, under circumstances that were almost considered impossible in Memphis, Tennessee in 1960, with the racial situation here. It was a sanctuary for all of us to get away from the outside world.”

Source: https://www.npr.org/2022/12/06/1140926122/stax-records-jim-stewart-co-founder-dies-92-memphis-sound?fbclid=IwAR0RbuBwf5LhMFONb2Hc5jBGuOtUjWNb_FgpBcU9XYO-29WbLx8wQuSBPMU

 

Isaac Hayes’ cadillac here

 

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The Magnolia Life Insurance Company, Mound Bayou, Mississippi

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What is: The Magnolia Life Insurance Company, Mound Bayou, Mississippi

What was: Dr TRM Howard owned the Magnolia Life Insurance Company, based in Mound Bayou.

In 1952, after Medgar Ever’s graduation and after Myrlie’s sophomore year, the couple settled in Mound Bayou, the all black town in the Mississippi Delta. Medgar became an insurance agent for Magnolia Mutual Insurance, one of the few black-owned businesses in Mississippi where a young black person could get a decent job.

Dr. T.R.M. Howard, who owned the insurance company, also founded an organization called the Regional Council for Negro Leadership. Medgar became active with this group and deeply involved with poor black people. His travels as an insurance agent gave him a close, first-hand look at their conditions, convincing him that more had to be done for black sharecroppers.  It was largely because of Howard’s influence that Evers, from 1952 to 1954, not only traveled his Delta route selling insurance, but organized new chapters of the NAACP.

The NAACP organizing travels convinced Evers that Jim Crow rendered the state a virtual closed society and that mobilizing at the grassroots level was essential for building a movement for social change. Increasingly, too, Evers saw himself in the vanguard to put an end to Mississippi’s infrastructure of segregation. Other people in the still-young Mississippi Civil Rights Movement also began thinking of Evers as a leader.  Source:  https://www.mec.cuny.edu/history/struggle-of-medgar-evers/

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Tobacco Farm Barns near Simsbury, CT

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What is: Tobacco Farm Barns near Simsbury, CT

What was: In June 1944, trains carrying 185 students from Morehouse College in Atlanta arrived in a northern Connecticut town of Simsbury.  The students had arrived to work in the tobacco fields and harvest shade tobacco, then one of Connecticut’s biggest cash crops. These fields and barns are where Martin Luther King spent time working as a 15-year-old.  He would spend 2 summers working in the fields around Simsbury.

More than just a job, this was his first exposure to the Northeast and to a society that was not formally segregated.  He attended Simsbury churches, sang with the choir, enjoyed drugstore milkshakes and attended movies at Eno Hall. He made weekend visits to the “big city” of Hartford. In a letter to his mother in June 1944 he remarked that he had eaten in “one of the finest restaurants in Hartford” and that he had “never thought” that people of different races “could eat anywhere” together.

He wrote a week earlier of going to the same church in Simsbury as white people. His new calling as a religious leader was emerging, too.  “I have to speak on some text every Sunday to 107 boys. We really have good meetings,” he wrote.  MLK later credited that time with helping him decide to enter the clergy, which, in turn, led him to join the civil rights movement. Sources: https://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/12/nyregion/martin-luther-king-in-connecticut-closer-to-a-promised-land.html

https://www.mlkinct.com/ and  Dr King in Simsbury

 

 

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Strider Academy,Tallahatchie County, Mississippi

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What is: The closed Strider Academy, a PK-12 school in Tallahatchie County, Mississippi, which operated from 1971 until 2018.

What was: The school was established in 1971 as a segregation academy to allow white parents to avoid sending their children to racially integrated public schools.  Strider Academy was named for the sheriff who investigated and obstructed justice in the murder of Emmett Till.  He went on to become a state senator. Shortly before his death in 1970, Clarence Strider donated the land for Strider Academy.

The school campus suffered two fires in two weeks in August 1977. The main building and the field house were both destroyed. The FBI was involved in the investigation.  In 1989, Greenwood public schools trustee Jeff Milman resigned after the NAACP protested his decision to enroll his children in Strider Academy instead of racially integrated public schools. Milman stated that his children wanted to attend Strider and that it was closer to his residence.

Strider Academy said it admits students of any race, color, national and ethnic origin to all the rights, privileges, programs, and activities generally accorded or made available to students at the school and that it does not discriminate on the basis of race, color, national and ethnic origin in administration of its educational policies, admission policies, tuition assistance programs, and athletic and other school-administered programs.

However, as of 2016, the school’s students were 96% white. Filings for the 2015–16 school year indicates that all seventy-two students at the school were white. Tallahatchie County is 54% black.

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Lunenburg High School, Virginia

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What is: Closed Lunenburg High School.

What was: On this site The Lunenburg Training School was founded in 1920 with support from the Jeanes Fund. In 1924, Rosenwald Funds aided in the construction of a larger school and later a shop building. More than 370 “Rosenwalds,” as they are commonly known, were built in Virginia between 1917 and 1932. They supported educational opportunities for black youth living in segregated communities throughout the South. In 1949 Lunenburg County built a new brick building that became Lunenburg High School. After the county desegregated its schools in 1969, it became a junior high school. Source: https://www.kenbridgevictoriadispatch.com/2018/04/11/book-preserves-countys-educational-history/

 

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The Abandoned Alcazar Hotel and Early Wright, WROX Radio, Clarksdale, MS

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What is: The abandoned Alcazar Hotel, Clarksdale, Mississippi

What was: The building is the second of the original hotel and was the center of social culture during the booming business days of the Delta. Advertised as the “most modern hotel in Mississippi” it was considered one of the premier hotels of the South.

Built with four stories and a glass dome on the second floor “which allowed natural light to filter through to the lobby on the first floor, where a restaurant and several other businesses were housed.  The building’s eleven storefront bays were where prominent Clarksdale businesses operated.

The Alcazar Hotel and Coffee Shop were all white restaurant and hotel (which is ironic as you will see later in the story). After the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was passed, the employees of the Alcazar Hotel and the Alcazar Coffee Shop were instructed to “refuse service to Negroes.” According to the US District Court ruling filed in November 1965, Reverend George W. Trotter III of Memphis, a black man, attempted to obtain a room at the hotel on July 6, 1964, and Mrs. Vera Mae Pigee of Clarksdale, a black woman, attempted to obtain service at the coffee shop; both were refused because of their race.

The next day, the owners closed the hotel and coffee shop to avoid serving black customers. A few weeks later on July 27, the Regency Club was founded as a whites only private club, working in conjunction with Clarksdale King Anderson for use of the hotel, coffee shop, and staff. In December 1965, the court ruled against the discriminatory practices, barring the hotel from operating in cahoots with the club.

WROX was Clarksdale’s first radio station going on the air in June 1944.  WROX broadcast from the Alcazar Hotel for nearly 40 years.  Ike Turner operated the elevator in the hotel as a pre-teen and would go on to be a DJ at the radio station.

Early Wright, an auto mechanic by trade, came to the station in 1945 as the manager of the Four Star Quartet, a gospel group that had a 15-minute Sunday morning program. Management was so impressed by Early that he was hired and became the first black disc jockey in the state of Mississippi, breaking the color line in radio in Mississippi.  Early Wright developed a dual on-air persona as “The Soul Man” when he played blues and R&B records and “Brother Early Wright” when he switched back to gospel. Early was known to have one of the longest running radio shows in America from 1947-1998.  Musicians like Elvis Presley, Muddy Waters, Ike & Tina Turner, and B.B. King performed live at WROX and were interviewed by Early Wright

 

Early Wright holding the WROX sign in the Alcazar Hotel. Photo by Panny Flautt Mayfield.

More here

Early Wright Time over on Vimeo

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The Jury Box, Sumner, Mississippi and more

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What is: Sumner, MS courthouse jury seats…Go watch Till, the movie…. opening everywhere tomorrow. Trailer here.

What was: On September 23, 1955, in a five day trial held here, an all-white male jury acquitted two other white men, Roy Bryant and J.W. Milam, of murder. The trial included missing witnesses, a sheriff proposing a conspiracy theory about whether the tortured body was really of the boy, Emmett Till, as well as lack of some key investigatory undertakings. The jury took one hour and seven minutes to reach its verdict, with one juror noting the decision could have come sooner but they were told to take some extra time to make it look good, so they went and bought some sodas. There were rumors of “reminders” and “threats” from the local white citizen council about the jury knowing its’ duty. The trial transcript and all of the evidence in the trial disappeared over the years. Years later (early 2000s) the FBI re-opened the case. They found the lost transcript.

I have a series of images related to the Emmett Till story collected here

Whoopi Goldberg on the movie. Review, Till grippingly reorients American Tragedy.

Bryants grocery store today…it sits beside a perfectly restored gas station

Where they had dug a shallow grave and hoped to bury the story

Where Moses Wright Lived and the kidnapping took place

The shed of torture

supposedly the bridge where the body was thrown away…with a gin fan hung tied. around the neck with barbed wire…as if killing and torture/lynching was not enough

Bryants Grocery

The Shed of Torture of a 14 year old boy

The shed…walk in and hear the screams of Mama…

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The Webb Mississippi Train Station

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The story of the fierce Mamie Till Mobley started here in Webb, MS and a train north as part of the great migration.  Will you check out the movie, opening this friday, everywhere?

What is: The Webb, MS train Depot. Webb, Mississippi

What was: Mamie Till Mobley — mother of Emmett Till was born in Webb and moved to Argo, Illinois in 1924 as part of what is known as the Great Migration.  Webb was founded circa 1880. In 1882, Judge James L.A. Webb, a Confederate veteran operated the only store here and later the Hood Masonic Lodge was built. There was one saloon at that time called “The Razzle Dazzle.” The town was incorporated in 1905.  The current population of Webb, Mississippi is 386 based on projections of the latest US Census estimates.

The Webb Depot was built in 1909 by the Yazoo & Mississippi Valley Railroad as a combination passenger and freight depot. A central part of life in this small Delta town for decades, the station was the junction of two different railroads coming from three directions. Trains once carried freight, agricultural products, and passengers, and connected these little towns with the rest of the world.  #scarredplacesphotoseries #whatisleadsustowhatwas #Webb #Mississippi #Trainstation #traindepot #YazooMississippiValleyRailroad #EmmettTill #MamieTill #MamieTillMobley #GreatMigration #Argo #Illinois

Reference: Webb, MS https://worldofdecay.blogspot.com/2017/07/the-mississippi-delta-20-webb-and-webb.html

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The Taborian Hospital, Mound Bayou, Mississippi

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Welcome to Mound Bayou (which will be explored and explained more fully in future postings). Suffice it to say, a highly successful and prosperous Black community established by former slaves. Also, a few facts here about healthcare. Imagine the American Medical Association actions…and only apologizing in 2008.

What is: The Taborian Hospital, Mound Bayou, Mississippi

From about 1885-1950+ hospitals in the South paid little heed to the Black population. Seriously ill black patients were often served by segregated “charity” hospitals – a one or two room ward at the back of a hospital, the “colored ward.” At the same time, Black doctors were routinely denied medical staff privileges at hospitals because they weren’t members of the American Medical Association, because you could not be black and be a member. The American Medical Association apologized for its history of discrimination in 2008.

In 1938, The Knights and Daughters of Tabor, a large fraternal organization for African Americans, established this hospital in town of Mound Bayou, Mississippi.

The construction bill was over $100,000. The facility included two large operating rooms, an X-ray room, a sterilizer, an incubator, electro-cardiography, blood bank, and laboratory. When the Taborian Hospital opened in 1942, Dr. T.R.M. Howard, one of the great civil rights crusaders to emerge from that era, came on board as the chief surgeon and medical director of the hospital. By 1946 the hospital annually conducted more than twelve hundred operations in its two operating rooms.

Howard would leave the hospital over a dispute in 1947. Matthew Walker of the Meharry Medical College in Nashville, stepped in to provide Taborian with surgical residents and interns from Meharry on a rotating basis. This plan alleviated Meharry’s problem of finding internships and residencies for its students and Taborian’s problem of maintaining a well-trained staff at a price that it could afford. Differing from any medical training program in the country, the Mound Bayou program was an enormous success between 1947 to 1974. The Meharry contingent hosted daily clinics seven days a week for the people of the Delta and performed a wide rage of minor operations.

In 1966 the hospital received a federal grant from the US Office of Economic Opportunity to continue the program. In 1967, with the increase of federal funding in hospital care, Taborian Hospital and the Friendship Clinic, a private hospital opened by Dr. Howard following his dismissal from Taborian, were merged into the Mound Bayou Community Hospital. In 1983 the facility closed. Source: https://mississippiencyclopedia.org/entries/taborian-hospital/

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