So, a friend from afar calls and says he’s planning a stop in your hometown on his way to somewhere else. He wants a suggestion on what to see or do in the old abode.
If he’s a golfer, you send him to the area’s two fine courses. In McComb, my hometown, both Fernwood Country Club and the public course at the nearby state park are excellent choices.
The friend is hunting a noon meal for the short visit. There’s the sophisticated Caboose or the quick Broadway Deli in the downtown area, or the renowned Dinner Bell two blocks away.
For museum seekers, McComb’s Railroad Museum is the among the best in the state. Railroading is why McComb exists. The Illinois Central Railroad Co. moved its shops there from New Orleans and the city, founded in 1872, became one of the leading railroad towns in America.
It has often been stated that the rail company came to McComb to keep its employees away from the New Orleans nightlife. That may be partly true, but a history of McComb’s first 50 years notes that the availability of land for the vast shops was the main reason for the move by company president Henry S. McComb.
Some residents have wanted to add a cultural arts museum and an arts and entertainment district as accompaniments to the rail museum. They would celebrate the fact that more musicians, painters, writers and other artists had their roots in Southwest Mississippi than in any other area of the state. The city’s governing board has begun discussions on such a project.
At least there’s a historical marker, a metal statue and a pavilion named for Bo Diddley, our star of stars and generally considered among the world’s top 20 entertainers of all time.
(There should be a separate museum for country comedian Jerry Clower, but there isn’t, for a variety of reasons. Luckily, you can “You Tube” him and hear dozens of the funny stories he told to different groups.)
You’ve exhausted the recreational, foodie and artifactual assets. What’s left to see?
I directed the traveling friend to Burglund, the all-black section on the northeastern edge of the city that was part of original McComb and where a legendary voting rights activist named Robert Moses arrived in early 1964 to begin a voter registration drive.
A recent reunion of two McComb High School classes, those of 1964 and 1965, shared the 55-year milestone of the tumultuous voting-rights movement that engulfed Mississippi in that era. Our two classes had a direct connection to that conflict.
My class of 1965 was the last all-white class at MHS before the move was made to desegregate the town’s public school system. Based on the racial troubles of the previous half-decade, many expected another hammer-and-tongs period of violence. But guided by one of the most seasoned superintendents in the state, Julian D. Prince, McComb’s school integration went off without any fireworks.
Memories of those tense times in the hometown are mixed among classmates of the ’64 and ’65 groups. Some recall “minor problems” or nothing at all; others well remember the sounds of firebombs tossed by the Ku Klux Klan heard in seemingly every part of the town throughout the pivotal year of 1964.
Here’s what ended it all:
The parents of some of these very same classmates of 55 years ago — and those of our deceased brethren (41 in the 1965 class of 150) — joined together in the fall of 1964 in a 650-name manifesto in the Enterprise-Journal newspaper demanding law authorities arrest the terrorists responsible for the mayhem.
The law did just that and the nights went quiet again.
Mac Gordon is a native and part-time resident of McComb. He is a retired newspaperman. He can be reached at macmarygordon @gmail.com.
