The Rest Stop

Greenville tries to pull together to conquer its problems.

By Mary Marge Locker

ehold, how right and good it is “B when brothers dwell together!” The Rev. Joseph Wright Jr.’s voice booms and echoes throughout the sanctuary of the New White Stone Baptist Church in Greenville. It’s just past seven on a Tuesday morning and cars have already filled the chain link-fenced parking lot. Many in today’s audience have never been to New White Stone before. Some have never been to this side of town.

“I don’t care what part of the neck of the woods you’re from. Or what’s your educational background. Or financial status. We all need Him this morning!”

The reverend is rolling now and the congregation gets into the act. Yeah! Amen! All right, preacher!

Greenville has hosted the local branch of the Mission Mississippi program, Mission Mississippi Delta, for almost 10 years now, sponsoring Tuesday morning prayer breakfasts. These alternate each week between traditionally white and traditionally black churches.

They bring together those the reverend speaks of : black people, white people, black pastors, white pastors, women dressed to the nines, men in dirty work boots and torn T-shirts, people who dropped out of high school, people with multiple postgraduate degrees.

In the words of Washington County Chancery Clerk Marilyn Hansell, “Eleven o’clock on Sunday is the most segregated hour.” Mission Mississippi seeks to combat that.

Gatherings like the one at New White Stone once helped Greenville earn a reputation as one of the state’s most racially progressive cities, a prosperous, more enlightened place, especially when it came to race. But

today, battered by hard economic times, it’s easy to find plenty of people who think the reputation is in doubt.

Greenville, the Delta’s largest city, was always a little different, and proud of it. In the 1960s, “Black Power” proponent Stokely Carmichael nicknamed it “the rest stop for the civil rights movement,” a place where civil rights leaders could plot strategy in peace, without fear of harassment.

In the 1950s and early 1960s, Greenville became the first Delta town to integrate its police force and gradually integrate its public schools. Greenville also avoided a major Deep South stigma: the community drove out the Ku Klux Klan in the early 20th century. It was never saddled with a violent reputation. No police dogs. No bloodied marchers.

Greenvillians are well versed in their progressive history: they’ll rattle off the names of landed gentry who helped distinguish the city as if they’re reciting the names of the 12 Apostles in catechism.

Landmark members of Greenville’s high society were seen as sophisticates, and they were proud of that. The Percy family—led by the paternalistic poet-planter William Alexander Percy, and including the literary icon Walker Percy—considered racial conflict to be déclassé,

and that attitude largely infiltrated the town psyche. Along with the presence of perhaps the state’s most progressive newspaper, The Delta Democrat-Times, most people credit the town’s enlightenment to the liberal attitudes of the press and the image-consciousness of the aristocracy. These major figures set a certain tone.

But it wasn’t all altruism. Greenville was a place devoted to making money, and racial unrest could easily be seen as “bad for business.”

On Washington Avenue, downtown Greenville’s former epicenter, there stands a historic testament to the business-minded nature of the town. The Greenville History Museum is housed in what was once a prominent women’s clothing store called The Fair.

Ring the buzzer at the front door, and instead of a store in this prime piece of real estate, you’ll find relics of the city’s past—a maze of old yearbooks, pinball machines, soda counters, Ole Miss practice footballs, photographs of the 1927 Mississippi River flood, a genuine 1950s voting booth, and a copy of a Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial from The Delta Democrat-Times.

Benjy Nelken, the owner and curator, is a lifetime local. In the 1960s, his family owned The Fair, one of the first stores in the Delta to hire black women as sales clerks. When he was young, they were working in the back and cleaning up after hours. A

few years later, they assisted black customers and wrapped presents for everyone at the holidays. By the time Benjy inherited the store, his most important sales assistants were black women, helping all customers and working in the storefront all day.

Nelken talks about this progressive period happily, almost nostalgically, while sitting among his cherished collection of Greenville’s historic stuff. It comes as a shock when he says, seemingly out of nowhere, “Greenville is more segregated today than it was 50 years ago.”

It no longer deserves its progressive reputation, he says. The schools are failing, and they are segregated. White children attend private schools almost exclusively. The economy is down, crime is up. Nelken, and others like him, believe their town’s progressive era ended more than 20 years ago.

But the eyes of some beholders see something drastically different.

Born and raised in Greenville, 96-yearold L’Vee P. Martin retired as an elementary school teacher years ago and has become more active in local civic affairs ever since.

Martin is soft-spoken but opinionated. She’s so glad to talk to you that you might feel like you and she go way back, as if you’ve known her all your life but can’t remember how.

She reaches out her arms, as if she wants to hug the whole room, or spread the good news to an assembly.

“It’s not just a church movement,” she says. “It starts here [at Mission Mississippi] as Christian work, but it

“Greenville is more becomes something else. … I do things across Greenville segregated today than that continue that Christian it was 50 years ago.” work in different ways, not just limited to church … and make it involve the whole community.” — BENJY NELKEN And she’s right about that. She’s the president of the local AARP, a steering member of Church Women United (another integrated religious group), and is involved with the work of the Delta Foundation, so plenty of Greenvillians know her name. Her late husband Robert T. Martin was a prominent figure in the local civil rights movement, and when a friend mentions him she smiles, closes her eyes, and shakes her head. As if paying homage to his devotion to Greenville, she still believes in its progressive reputation and her duty to help maintain it.

“Education was superior here once. So was business. And we have to try to keep it that way.” She beams positivity.

But even Martin and her son Darris don’t agree. Darris Martin lived outside of the Delta, and the South, for 45 years. A lot has changed since then. “It’s a totally different world once you get out of this city,” he says.

After living across the Northeast and traveling extensively for half a century, he has returned to his hometown to take care of his mother and now works as a local radio preacher. He recalls the blatant backwardness he felt when arriving in Greenville, his home, but a place in which he no longer feels quite so comfortable.

Standing in the heart of downtown, up against the levee on Washington Avenue—home to Jim’s Café and the Greenville Museum and hardly anything else now, but once a bustling trade center— Martin feels the impact of 50 years. Though in the grand scheme of things it’s been a half-century of progress for many— civil rights legislation, affirmative action, improved public education and technology—for Greenville, Darris Martin thinks, it’s been 50 years of decline.

It was impossible for him to ignore the population shifts. From a once majority white population, Greenville’s 2010 census identifies nearly 80 percent of the town’s residents as black. Even though the black population has a growing middle class, there is still a distinct sense of social segregation outside the workplace.

In the 1950s, Greenville was a major agricultural town. Big farmers employed thousands in the cotton fields outside the city to pick and chop cotton. But farm mechanization drove out thousands of laborers, people with few other skills.

And then industry left. In 1994, thanks to the North American Free Trade Act, Greenville’s factories, the envy of the Delta, were abandoned. The tall, empty towers of once-flourishing manufacturing plants are haunting landmarks against the Greenville skyline.

The Schwinn bicycle plant. Gone. Chicago Mills. Gone. Vlasic Pickles. Gone. A branch of one of the nation’s biggest carpet companies. Gone.

For Darris Martin and Benjy Nelken, these are daily reminders of how their city has not lived up to the promise of its former reputation.

Each one of those economic blows cut deeper into the pool of available jobs and opened fault lines in the city’s historically good race relations. White flight from the public schools combined with people leaving because of the job market and slumping

LEFT: Rev. Joseph Wright Jr. preaches brotherly love from the pulpit of the New White Stone Baptist Church, site of a multiracial prayer breakfast recently. PHOTO BY PHILLIP WALLER

L’Vee Martin, 96, shown here with son Darris, right, tries to keep positive about Greenville and thinks the city can pull everyone together. PHOTO BY PHILLIP WALLER

economy left the city a meek imitation of what it once was. The population, once around 45,000, has plummeted to under 34,000 – a drop of 25 percent.

Bob Boyd, who covered Greenville during the glory days of the local paper, shakes his head in frustration. “Sometimes new industry wants to come, but we don’t let it. They don’t feel comfortable here.”

He’s referring to the time Boeing wanted to open a wing building center in Greenville, but ultimately chose not to after several trips to the area. Reports filtered back to town that the company’s engineers and higher-ups did not feel comfortable with segregated education or distinct lines of class and race in the social scene. To the new Boeing families considering the town, it was out of the question.

Shrinking population also shifted the political scene. For the past 20 years, black people have filled most major offices in Greenville—a dramatic shift in power. Some whites considered the city’s first black mayor divisive, and that didn’t help things any. White and black relationships changed; there were more black people among the middle class, more joining the country club. But that didn’t mean everyone got along, or that everyone gets along today.

“Being neighbors is one thing. Being friends is another,” Darris Martin says. “What is wrong with us [here]? You go somewhere else—Canada,

New Jersey—these things, black versus white, they don’t matter. We’re still making them matter here. We can’t see past the color lines. ”

Even Mission Mississippi Delta has changed. Hansell, the chancery clerk, says more white people used to come. She believes that it took awhile for black people to become actively involved in integrated groups outside of politics, but they have a stronger presence today. On the other hand, “the white community has disengaged.”

But in the last couple of years, things have started to swing the other way, raising hopes that the city can reclaim the old reputation. Beyond Mission Mississippi Delta, there are several major organizations, as well as community groups, devoted to integration in Greenville. Among these are Delta Foundation, MACE (Mississippi Action for Community Education), and the Greenville Arts Council (GAC).

The Arts Council, housed in the monstrous renovation job of the former E.E. Bass Junior High School, helps to bring people together in an informal way. Once, in this massive old school, the likes of Walker Percy and Shelby Foote used to roam between classes, their voices echoing against the building’s fantastic acoustics, their books clanging into lockers after lunch.

GAC programs bring together both children and adults to participate in packed theater performances, arts

A biracial gathering breaks up in Greenville. PHOTO BY PHILLIP WALLER

classes and exhibits, after-school programs and summer camps, and events that extend beyond the immediate community, such as the Delta Hot Tamale Festival. (Last year’s festival was written up in Smithsonian and The New Yorker, and lured thousands downtown. Juanita Turney, a 94-year-old former teacher, was the Hot Tamale Queen.)

Anne Martin, the new executive director of the GAC, understands the struggles the community faces. But she also understands the power of bringing together children from white and black communities.

The annual Student Invitational Art Show at E.E. Bass unites students from every school, every social setting, every corner of town. Kids and their parents flock to E.E. Bass to oooh and aaah at their art and get to know each other.

Martin is proud of the fact that Mississippi has produced some of the world’s best artists and entrepreneurs: from William Faulkner to B.B. King to Robert Pittman, the founder of MTV. Why couldn’t some of Greenville’s own young artists climb to the same heights? Why should education and social segregation be obstacles for them?

Mayor John Cox, on the job less than two years, says the town has started to change for the better. He sees the old spirit returning, people of different races pulling together.

He points to the same tamale festival, to the hundreds packing the sidewalks to watch a Christmas parade (“The biggest we’ve had in 50 years”), to the new Dragon Boat races on Lake Ferguson. And he beams with pride at a new grant to help build a walking trail along the top of the lakefront levee.

But even Cox has run into the old problem of race. When he went on NBC’s Today show and said his children went to private schools because the public schools didn’t have what they needed, black state Sen. Derrick Simmons said he should apologize. The senator’s brother, Councilman Errick Simmons, suggested the mayor resign.

The popular chancery clerk, Hansell, knows Greenville well. She doesn’t immediately take a side when asked if her town still deserves being called progressive, but not because of politics. Instead, she looks around the Washington County Board of Supervisors meeting room for a moment and shakes her head, thinking.

“We took a lot for granted. … People assume all is well when you have a good reputation.” But Greenville hasn’t held on to it, she decides.

She looks around the room again, at the photographs of the supervisors, out the windows onto the parking lot, lost in a thought, before she continues. Maybe a memory of Greenville’s past, or maybe a notion of its future.

“And if Greenville sinks, all of us sink.” Design by Ellen Whitaker

L’Vee Martin, 96, tries to keep positive about Greenville and thinks the city can pull everyone together. PHOTO BY PHILLIP WALLER

Anne Martin, executive director of the Greenville Arts Council, helps stage arts programs that bring black and white patrons together from all over the city. PHOTO BY LOGAN KIRKLAND