McComb Railroad Museum director Winnie Len Howell and volunteer Bob Bellipanni brought a dual message Tuesday to the McComb Lions Club.
They discussed the Smithsonian Institute’s traveling exhibit “Journey Stories: Tales of How We Got Here” that will come to McComb next year, and asked for assistance helping defray some of the expenses of putting the program on.
Howell said the exhibit, which will open Oct. 24, 2009, “is a story of immigration, migration and transportation.
“It’s told through individual stories of people — those who migrated because of work and better money, and those who migrated because they had no choice.”
McComb, she said, is one of six Mississippi cities to host the exhibit, which is co-sponsored by the Mississippi Humanities Council. Mississippi, Howell added, is one of five states — including Illinois, Kansas, North Dakota and Oklahoma — the exhibit will visit.
She said the museum, the Pike County Chamber of Commerce’s Pike Room and the Depot ticket office will house the exhibit.
Bellipanni, project director for the exhibit, said museum officials applied to be a tour stop at the urging of an official with the National Endowment for the Humanities.
Bellipanni said it was fitting that the depot was selected as a site because of the railroad’s influence on McComb’s growth and development.
“The railroad is important to the county,” he said. “It caused the population shift from the Bogue Chitto area to the city and brought industry to the county. It caused the area to grow by leaps and bounds.”
He said five decisions combined to bring the railroad to McComb:
• A decision in 1851 to build a railroad from New Orleans north through Mississippi to Canton.
• A decision the same year to take the line through the Manchac area in southeastern Louisiana that took the railroad through McComb.
• An 1870 court decision awarding ownership of the New Orleans Jackson and Great Northern Railroad to Col. Henry Simpson McComb, the city’s founder.
• McComb’s decision to move the railroad’s headquarters from New Orleans to McComb, to get his employees away from the Crescent City’s bars and saloons.
• The decision by Illinois Central Railroad to acquire the New Orleans Jackson and Great Northern.
“If you’ve never been to it, you need to tour the museum, especially if you grew up here,” he said. “There’s a lot of history there.”
The Smithsonian exhibit, Bellipanni said, will be delivered in 30 crates of display material. He called it “phenomenal.”
Howell said several county organizations are planning activities and programs about the area’s history to coincide with the exhibit, which will be toured by area students.
She and Bellipanni said they also are asking residents, local businesses and civic groups for donations to help with the expenses affiliated with putting on the exhibit.
“We need as much support and assistance as we can get,” Bellipanni said.
