Hello, my name is David Olds and I'm the cohost of Mississippi Happenings podcast.
Joining me each week is my friend and cohost, Jim Newman.
Jim, it's good to see you still have your Easter suit on.
Thank you.
It's always good to be seen.
Good, good.
This week topic of discussion is about desegregation in Mississippi public schools.
Our guest today is Jack Reed Jr.
Jack is the former mayor of Tupelo.
He is the owner of the Tupelo-based Reed's department stores, is a graduate of Vanderbilt and the Mississippi School of Law.
He's a civic leader, a businessman and a philanthropist.
Mr.
Reed, it is a pleasure to meet you and have you join us.
It is my pleasure, David and Jim.
Thank you for inviting.
Yes, sir.
I want to do just a brief history of desegregation in Mississippi.
We know that the ruling of the Supreme Court's Brown versus Board of Education was in 1954.
And in Mississippi, initially, it opted to delay desegregation efforts after that ruling.
The state government
led by figures like Governor Ross Barnett actively resisted federal orders and implemented strategies to maintain segregation.
The resistance led to years of legal battles and federal intervention to enforce desegregation.
Mississippi attempted to implement freedom of choice plan, but
it ultimately failed to achieve meaningful desegregation.
And freedom of choice, that's one of the key phrases that we hear today.
The state also sought the establishment of private academies and basically segregated schools to circumvent the desegregation efforts.
In 1969,
the Supreme Court ordered Mississippi to desegregate its schools immediately and fully.
The federal government had to intervene, filing lawsuits and monitoring school districts to ensure the compliance.
By 1970, all school districts in Mississippi had been desegregated.
Most of our conversation today
is going to be around your father, Jack Senior, and his positive involvement in this process.
Would you like to share some information about Jack Senior?
Well, he was a man that really felt like if he thought the injustices were happening around him that he felt some sort of innate obligation to do something about it.
you know, there are lot of people that notice injustices and not everybody decides to do something about him.
was actually, the older I get, the more...
more impressed I am at how young he was when he was stepping out as one of the few white business leaders of the state to really stand up against the whole white establishment,
both the elected establishment, the governor, the lieutenant governor, the speaker of the house, most of the representatives and the senators, and then a lot of the white
businessmen who were in the citizens council and
in some of these more supposedly more prestigious segregationist organizations.
But just, I guess a short history, he was fortunate, his dad, Bob Reed, who started our store, was not a racist.
So he didn't come from a racist family.
And in fact, our store was the first store, maybe in Mississippi, certainly in North Mississippi,
to have dressing rooms where side by side where blacks could, he helped, my grandfather helped his black cook register to vote, took down there with her.
So those are just a couple of incidents, but just to maybe give you a little flavor of him.
And so, dad was lucky that his, you know, like too many.
families back then didn't have a role model of some of that generation who was still very set in their ways racially.
After dad went into the army, he enlisted after his freshman year at Vanderbilt and served for four years in the army during World War II.
And one of the things that, and he said this when he came back, the first time he ever really felt
discriminated against was he was an enlisted man and he was in Australia.
He was in the intelligence corps.
He was a code breaker and he had a date one night with a cute Australian girl and they wouldn't let him in a club that said they only permitted officers and it irritated him and
it kind of embarrassed him in front of his date and he you know he remembered that he really had not been a white male in Mississippi.
He really had not had that
occasion anything like that happen them.
And then of course on the boats home from World War II, mean here these black soldiers have been giving their lives too, just like the Americans had put their lives in danger
and fighting for this country.
And they get off the boat, they go to Camp Shelby in Hattiesburg and all of a sudden, bang, know, it's blacks over here, whites over here, blacks to the back of the bus, whites
come on in.
And he just, you obviously, mean, do you think everybody thought that was obvious?
But you see, that's not right.
That's not right.
These fellows have been fighting for our country just like we have.
This ought to be their country too.
They sure ought to be able to vote.
So, so that's kind of a little bit, I guess, of his history of where he, where he got to.
when he was 39 years old, he was the president-elect of the Mississippi Economic Council, which was the biggest business.
organization in the state and had all the big, the major companies, banks, manufacturing companies, law firms.
And he was a young man to become, you know, the president-elect of that.
But he had an opportunity to speak at a luncheon in Jackson that was attended by a lot of the legislators.
And it was right after Ross Barnett had been in the football stadium down in Jackson saying segregation now, segregation forever.
flying the Rebel flags.
it was heated.
James Meredith had just, in 1962, had just had the Battle of Oxford to get him enlisted in Ole Miss, just 45 miles from Tupelo up here.
And Dad said, in this speech, he said, we need to obey the law.
Mississippi needs to be part of the future, not the past.
We need to desegregate our public schools.
We need to do it peacefully.
and we need to get on with educating all of our children.
That's the only way Mississippi is gonna grow is if we all grow together.
And while he was speaking, a good many of the legislators walked out, but they've got some press around the state, some of the news organizations, and at my dad's funeral, William
Winter, Governor Winter, who was a friend of his,
said, I don't mean to sound like bragging because he's my father, but since you've seized the topic, Governor Winter said that that was the most important speech given by a
Mississippian in the 1960s to have someone of respect stand up for the right thing.
So yes, I'm proud.
mean, he's in the Civil Rights Museum in Jackson.
There is a plaque of Dad with several other, many, other
white Mississippians called something like points of life, light, points of light of other white Mississippians who stood up and did the right thing in the 60s.
So that's kind of where he came from.
And then we can go into the school stuff later on, but I don't want to give a soliloquy here.
So step.
no, that's fine.
I've done some research on him and he, and, I would recommend everyone do some research on Jack Reed.
I looked in Wikipedia and he sounds like number one, he sounds like a really nice guy.
and it sounds like he was perfect.
What Mississippi needed at that time.
Jim, I'll turn it over to you.
I thought you were going to keep right on going there, David.
I didn't grow up here in Tupelo, Jack, you know, moved here, moved to Oklahoma and from Oklahoma via Memphis to Oxford in 1978, I guess, and was really
shocked.
It was just a whole different world than the world I had known in Kansas City.
But I'd seen some of it in Oklahoma with the prejudice against the native tribes there.
And I had heard about the
I guess it was in the 1920s, Black Wall Street.
There was a part of Tulsa that they shot up and blew up.
I don't know why the mayor, I think the president mayor said he didn't know anything about it.
When I got here, I've heard so much about...
And I look at him as giants.
People like your father and Felix Black and Cotton McCullough, although I never met him.
I don't know whether that's good or bad, but.
It seems to me that in Tupelo, there was a core of strong leadership that people respected and listened to and were willing to follow.
And how did you go about, or how did your father and those around him go about making integration of our schools?
And this is just hearsay because I had no personal knowledge.
But.
I've always heard that it was, not have been easy, but it was not.
very, very difficult as opposed to.
I think somewhere I read Hattiesburg was the bombing capital of Mississippi during the integration.
And it may have been another town, I think it was.
McComb, OK.
How did that process begin in its incubation period?
Well, first let me say you're exactly right.
It just wasn't a one man show.
My dad had two brothers, both of whom had gone to World War II, come back to Tupelo, Bob Reed and Bill Reed, his two older brothers.
Felix Black, you mentioned, was just a wonderful man, almost a saintly man who was just generous and in a quiet way.
There were just a group of them, I guess they're friends, also some good friends and also just some general community people that honestly I think were God, a lot of them were
Methodists in our church, United Methodist now, that really just believed the gospel story, know, they believed we're all God's children and that really may sound a little
too...
religious the day after Easter when this has been recorded, but it really is true.
mean, they just felt like the right thing to do was to treat these black children just like their own white children.
And they realized separate but equal was not equal.
And dad had had before, while they were still separated, he had still gone to the black high school and given on awards day and things.
I mean, he...
even before the schools were integrated, he would be a part of trying to celebrate the achievements of the black students in the black schools.
But they just decided among themselves, the leadership did, that they just weren't going to leave and form a separate academy.
That's what happened around Mississippi, and that's what happened really around the South and really a lot of places in the North too.
People don't talk about segregated.
you know, black, white schools in North, because Boston had as much violence as anywhere, you know, for a while in part of integration situation.
So it wasn't just around here.
But the big thing was just, we're not going to leave and form a separate all-white private school.
And once there was just enough of you know, a group, a solid group of core citizens who said, we're not doing it, you know, it would have taken
some money even in these poor Delta towns that did it, it still took some of the planners or what you took one or two people with money to even, you know, build a, even if it was a
second rate private white school, it still took some money and really to blow just the people with some means, the bankers and the heads of the law firms and things, they just,
we're not gonna do it.
And they had relationships with some of the black leaders too and some of the black
principals and educators in the black community.
so it was really, and it was kind of city wide.
Tupelo, I think was the second city, maybe Graham was first, but the second city to integrate their public pools.
There's public swimming pools.
That was a big no-no kind of thing.
Are we going to let our children swim in the same swimming pools?
mean, it's hard to say those things without shaking your head now, but these were some of the real
test cases.
Our church, First United Methodist Church, was the first church in Tupelo to openly open its doors to black worshipers.
There was an article in the Wall Street Journal, the front page of the Wall Street Journal that talked about that, said that while it was fine for these churches in New York City
and New Jersey to say they were going to integrate, they thought the fact that the
First Bethesda Church in Chippewa, Mississippi, agreed to was a gigantic step in the right direction.
So it wasn't just the schools, it was the town.
And again, I'm coming back to the good Samaritan and who's a stranger, who needs my help, where I am when I see an opportunity.
At our church, dad told this story, our head usher, there was a
Word came out that some blacks in Tupelo were going to try to attend the white churches in the coming the next Sunday that this was being tested all over the state where they were
brave enough to test it and and so they had a meeting of the ushers of of our church in downtown Tupelo and The chairman of the administrative board has said something, you know,
well, we've got we've got this decision to make this Sunday.
We understand them maybe some
some of my black citizens want to worship with us.
We need to decide what we're going to do.
And dad said there was just a few moments of silence.
And then one of the hushers, man named Jack Eubanks, who was not a civic leader in any way, not a wealthy man, a...
He was a wonderful, solid member of the church.
He was there every Sunday.
open it up, be up close, but that was, he was in no way a public speaker or anything.
He just said, well, he said, I think we just ought to do what Jesus would do if he was an usher.
That's that's that's a really good story.
And, and so nothing else was said.
They didn't even have a vote.
You know, they just said, well, yeah, I guess you're right.
So, so, so all that say, guess, dad, there were a lot of other people in Tupole that, that rich and doing the right thing, but it was, it was unusual.
I mean, there, there are very few cities in Mississippi that don't have a very active private academy.
And we do have one now, you know, TCPS, which is a Tupole Christian Prepper School, but that's.
what, 40, 1960s, that's almost 50 years later.
And it's still over 90 % of the students in Tupelo go to the public schools, even now.
And it's been the best thing for our economic development.
It's told companies from all over that we're a welcoming community, it's helped our reputation as a progressive community that welcomes everybody and treats everybody well.
And so it's been...
not always the right thing to do, economically it was a smart thing.
How was, what was the feeling in the black community?
I'm not the best person to speak about that, but I think it was some trepidation and some right thing to do.
They understandably, according to my dad and conversations I've had with other black friends my age, didn't want...
Tupelo back then was about, I think 60 or 65 % white, 35 % black or something.
It's about 50 now, but with some other races and things mixed in, certainly.
But they realized that the parents, think, and the leaders realized that the white schools had better facilities, certainly.
you'd be blind if you didn't see that.
They had newer textbooks.
They had better science labs.
mean, everything was visible.
I don't know that they would admit or not that they had better teachers.
They probably had some better teachers and some not.
They're probably some of the black teachers that were better.
But I think there was some trepidation about being the black students being maybe overwhelmed a bit just in numbers.
But I think by and large, they also said, yeah, we want these good facilities too.
We want to be part of
what the best things a school can offer too.
And so there I was lucky to be at Tupelo High School during the two years of freedom of choice.
And I've got some real life stories about that.
But then my younger sisters and brothers were all part of the full total integration desegregation.
the next year.
I graduated in the spring of 1969.
Was your dad's dedication, I call it dedication, to education, was that, was his speech at the Heidelberg Hotel back in 63, was that really the beginning of...
his relationship with William Winter.
Well, let's see, probably not because he knew William when William ran for state tax collector.
Because when I was a page at age 15, so that would have been, I was born in 51, so that would have been, well, that was 63, would have been before that.
I honestly don't know.
They knew of each other.
I think they were both kind of keeping their eyes open around the state of who was a.
You know, were these dads?
Certainly was interested in who the people in politics were that were more of the same mind that he was.
although dad didn't go to Ole Miss, you know, most, lot of his friends in Tupelo went to Ole Miss or State.
So I'm sure he had friends that were common friends that had gone to school with William, but they certainly had a very close friendship that warmed and warmed and warmed.
And of course, Williams, you know, best known for the Educational Reform Act of 1982, which did so many good things for the state.
And he had asked dad to help get that through the legislature and then to head his blue, he had a blue, a citizen's blue ribbon committee to help come up with all of the pieces of
that legislation.
citizen run school boards, but before that the state school board had just been three of the politicians.
Five or six that were public kindergartens.
Lots of just lots of progressive things.
In fact, after it was finally passed, it was touted as you know, the most progressive school reform in the country in 1982.
But so dad was who William had asked to lead that effort.
which I guess was certainly a compliment.
He believed, I guess, that he had a reputation that he thought could help do it, and he knew he had the interest in it.
so they had, they led a movement to fully fund the minimum, M-A-E-P, minimum
adequate education plan, the minimum that schools should spend on public education in a school district.
And they called themselves octogenarians for equal education.
all the way into their 80s, they were still speaking out on
that's great.
Good night y'all.
looked at Wikipedia.
It says Jack Reed and then comma or semicolon Mississippi politician and
Never elected.
I thought.
defeated.
That's interesting.
I need to write Wikipedia and change that.
I know.
But every time that I met your father...
The only thing that I remember about him is that he was always a gentleman, no matter what.
No matter what the circumstances, he was always a gentleman.
And to label him as a politician, I think is an insult to his integrity.
I've never licked him up actually.
look at people.
That is interesting.
think can't you get people right in and try to help polish up things.
that it.
That's crazy.
I need to tell you, of course he only ran for one office and he was defeated.
He got 48 % of the vote when he ran for governor, but that was not enough to defeat Ray Mavis who was the, you know, the white hat young auditor.
Yeah, so many people have said he was the best governor Mississippi never had, and he would have been a wonderful guy.
You talk about it being a gentleman, he just had a great sense of humor too.
And that's what really helped him persuade people.
There's a book called A Time to Speak, and David, Jim, I don't know, Jim, you may have that book.
I'll get up and show it to you.
It was a book, just a collection of his speeches, which was edited by Danny McKenzie.
Danny and that talks about the fact that he would just pepper his speeches with humor and realize that people would pay attention.
And if they liked him, you know, if they liked him, then they thought he was, you know, had a good sense of humor.
A lot of it was self-deprecating humor that then when you get to the serious part, you know, they pay attention to it and he could ram it home.
And he was so well read.
He was an English major at Vanderbilt and had, oh, he had quoted everybody and they weren't just
I talked about his Christian values, but he quoted Mohammed, quoted rabbis, he quoted Catholic priests, he quoted Emerson and Tennyson, and just collected notes all the time,
things he read, he would write little things down.
If he heard somebody, he would write things down.
If he heard funny stories, he would write them down.
He had a whole book of just funny stories that he would, you
put in and out of his speeches.
if people are actually interested in that, we still sell that book in our bookstore.
It's called A Time to Speak.
It's by Jack Reed.
it's, started, the first chapter is this 1963 speech in front of the folks at Jackson, at the Heidelberg.
But it goes all the way through his life.
He was a big, he was the white speaker for
to join the Methodist church, the black and white Methodist churches in Mississippi.
They had a big debate down in Jackson, and he was the Clarence Darrow for, yes, let's combine the Methodist church.
He was on the National Council of Churches.
He was the only white Mississippian to be on this National Council of Churches, which was to deal with church...
church integration and those kind of things.
He made friends with James Lawson who was a black leader in Nashville.
He made some good friends all over the country and he was kind of viewed with suspicion by a lot of those Easterners because they thought he was a, know, assumed he was a white man
from Mississippi.
He was obviously a, you know, a prejudiced racist who wasn't, you know, if you were white and from Mississippi in those days.
So yeah, had a lot of, he was president of Vanderbilt Alumni Association.
They had an election year after that for the board of trust.
And he came in second to a chemist who had just won the Pulitzer Prize in chemistry.
that was bad luck that that was his opponent for that.
So if you say a politician, he really,
He, in all these volunteer organizations that he was, he helped found Lyft, which is, was the first community action agency in Mississippi.
He and George McLean went to Washington DC when they heard about that the federal government was going to start giving money to people to help pay their rent and, and, you
know, prevent these eviction notices and pay their water and light bills.
And he, and Felix Black and George McLean and some others, how Brian's dad, worked on that.
He, his grandfather, his father helped found the Boy Scouts in council.
And, but dad was a both silver, he ran a silver antelope and scouts.
He, he gave hours and hours to the Boy Scouts.
He helped find the United Way here.
It was, it was called the something, the trust or something, the United Trust or something.
They changed to United Way, helped found, create foundation.
He, he,
George McClain, George's wife, and James U.
Ray, George McClain's attorney.
And that's now easily the largest community foundation in state of Mississippi.
Millions and millions of dollars given through that to all these great causes.
He just had an amazing amount of energy and just was interested in making life better.
But he enjoyed life too.
He loved playing tennis.
He loved his friends.
He was in a coffee club.
Met every day from 10 to 1030, you know, downtown and they'd play this little game of, who pays.
I just, they'd just laugh and have the best.
Was that right there across from the railroad tracks?
Well, it moved around.
The game moved around depending on what restaurants ended up having them.
But they had a big time.
He enjoyed life.
remember he was the youngest president of Mississippi Economic Council and of course the first chairman of the State Board of Education.
And I remember once after kind of I was stepping into some of these roles that he was
aging out of in his seventies and stuff.
And I went to his office one day and what's up?
And he was asking me about, you know, something and he just looked at me he said, Jack, he said, I just don't want to become irrelevant.
I just don't want to become irrelevant.
That's great.
You know, he just was, he wanted to be a part of, part of where things were happening.
He was the leader of Mission Mississippi, which is, know, black and whites together have one breakfast a month.
He was, he went for months at seven o'clock.
He wasn't a morning person either, but he just, got up and did it and heck, made me go, asked me to drive him sometimes.
So I ended up going to all those darn meetings too.
You mentioned, just a minute ago, mentioned Lyft, L-I-F-T.
Tell me a little bit about that.
What is that and what was its purpose?
It was during the Johnson administration, I think, and it was one of the first federal funding opportunities for communities to help people who are really living on the edge.
And it's, I'm sure it's an acronym, well, it's called LIFT, L-I-F-T.
And they, I mean, every month they help as much money as they have.
And of course the state could add to it if they...
Woods, Mississippi hasn't added to it nearly enough, but people apply.
Again, it's just people one paycheck away from total poverty.
I they'll help pay somebody's heating bill.
it's, you know, 20 degrees outside, they can't pay the heating bill.
They'll help pay their rent.
They'll help give them a little money for whatever, you know, a heater, a refrigerator, a fan.
It's just people on the very...
the neediest of the folks in the communities.
And that's what that's done.
It's done it since the 1960s, guess, early 70s.
And it's still in existence, it's still working.
Okay, well that's good.
You mentioned the United Methodist Church and I've got to, that makes me proud when I hear about his involvement in the church.
I am also a United Methodist, so that makes me feel good.
One other thing that I thought was interesting that the private academies,
You know, from 1966 to 1970, it went from 121 private academies to 236.
And I should know the answer to this, but I'm not sure how many there are today.
But we look at the private academies, and then, you know, we hear that word again, school choice.
And to me, that's all about segregation.
that a fair, do you think that's a fair statement?
And I don't mean to put you on the spot.
yeah, well, I'm not just on this part.
I would just say that it's,
That
Okay, my apologies.
there.
And again, I don't, you know, I'd say I wouldn't want this taken out of context sentence by sentence.
I'm sure there were some Catholic schools in the state before.
We didn't have one in Tupelo.
I don't know, there were one in Northeast Mississippi, but you know, the coast had some, maybe the Delta had, so there may have been some Catholic schools that were.
My guess is most of them were probably white Catholic boys and girls too, but I don't know that.
I think the point that can certainly be made that I would certainly stand up for is that I think state public taxpayer money should not go to private schools.
If you want...
If I want my, and I went to Vanderbilt, I went to a private university, but you know, we, paid for that.
Mississippi taxpayers didn't pay for that.
I think as a Mississippi taxpayer, our public funds should go to the public schools.
And if, if a parent wants a child to go to a private school, then I think they have that choice to go to it, but they need to be able to pay for it.
and not take money from the public schools.
One of them to ask things was the legislature say, you know, we're, I'm tired of throwing money at the public schools.
You know, we, we need, let's, try the public private schools.
And, and he would say, yeah, if you'll take a look, I don't think we've ever thrown enough money at the public school.
We haven't even, we haven't tried that yet.
You know, let's try that and then say that they're not doing their job.
So, and you know, the tax base, that's one thing that, that's such a disparity.
That's why the minimum MAP is important because so many school districts have such a small tax base now that to take any money from them to put into, you know, private choice
schools, I think is just, it's just, you know, it's just not the right thing to do.
And apparently it's unconstitutional to do that.
Although the legislature has found
some ways to kind of weave in and out of that a little bit.
But I don't begrudge any parent that decides what's best for their child, where to go to school.
But I think if it's not public schools, they just need to be willing to pay for what the private school tuition.
Thank you for bringing that up.
We had a good conversation with Nancy Loom with the Parrots Campaign and a good conversation with Erica Jones with the Mississippi Association of Educators and both of
them brought it up as well as Representative Justice Gibbs and recently Representative Robert Johnson.
And the latest thing over this past week, Secretary McMahon sent out the letter and Mississippi's funding, share of funding is being cut by $136 million, which really
concerns me when I go through the The Taylor Vance wrote,
Mississippi today.
maybe Saturday, was Friday or Saturday, but there's 70 schools that are getting cut.
And the majority of them are county schools and they're rural schools.
Sunflower County is getting cut.
Well.
They were pro, I guess the process was that they were promised money, but they're not going to get it now.
And they had made commitments to build and to redo air conditioning systems and everything else.
Sunflower County's losing like $330,000.
Covington County Schools, I'm looking at 664,000.
And Columbus Municipal Schools, 519,000.
And as you go through the whole list, with very few exceptions, they're all county.
George County, Greene County.
Greenwood, LaFleur County.
We've talked a lot about why Mississippi is so poor.
Jack, is unless the state, at least in my opinion, unless the state wants to, needs to stand up.
and not do away with the taxes.
mean, we've got to support our school system.
to have any hope of attracting any kind of manufacturing companies or high tech quality companies.
And we're losing 136 million and I don't think the state's gonna make it up.
Is that what, is that what Senator McMahon's column said he didn't expect the state to?
had, I knew, I knew that figure that we were losing when the department of education, when Elon Musk was chopping away with his chainsaw.
Uh, you know, I'm
No, didn't mean, I didn't mean Senator McMahon from Mississippi.
I'm talking about cabinet level, education.
I meant Chad McMahon.
Yeah, right.
Yeah, it's no, it's it's a it's terrible.
mean, the if how do we expect children to move up to find the next rung on the ladder?
You know, I think in my mind, that's what what a state's obligation is, what a city's obligation is, what our own obligation is to teach you other.
is to be able to form reachable rungs on the ladder.
So you don't have to go from being a four foot five kid and have to dunk the next step to get out of poverty.
And the way you do that obviously is by building from really pre-K and these head start programs which are being cut too.
and working that way up and just so these children can get a decent education, better than decent education, a good education so they can lift themselves up.
know, the best, obviously the best welfare check is from a job.
You can make more than you can from, you know, best food stamps or a job that pays you enough to go to the grocery store and take care of your family.
So no, it's a shame.
I just wonder, Mississippi voted for Donald Trump per capita, I think either first or second, more than any other state in the union, maybe Alabama and Mississippi.
And you wonder how many of these voters that voted for Trump in these rural areas will be affected by these cuts that really are hurting the real people that need it the most.
Yeah, we did reach out to Dr.
Philip Birchfield and also Dr.
Lance Evans.
And I don't have the article in front of me, but both of them were quoted.
I believe, and as I said, I don't have the article in front of me, but I believe it was Dr.
Evans who sent a letter to the Secretary of Education, Linda McMahon.
asking her to reconsider that.
And I like Dr.
Evans.
think he's an excellent, he's going to be an excellent superintendent.
He just needs enough ammunition to be able to work.
Gotcha, and hopefully we have reached out to him and to Dr.
Evans also.
We would love to have him on our show to talk about this too.
How did they come up?
And I applaud him for sending that letter and asking for them to reconsider.
What, what do you think your father would do with this situation?
This is going to be a good answer.
just know it.
I love it.
Go ahead.
I don't know.
think he would probably...
Senator Roger Wicker was elected in 1987 to the state legislature, the same election that dad got beat.
He gave dad some credit for his election because so many people in Tupelo in this district came out to vote and voted for
dad and voted in the Republican primary.
So I suppose he would do, is what I've done is reach out to Roger as a friend and someone in, I guess, the best person we have in a position of influence to just give him his
thoughts on what the responses could be, should be to some of these.
just totally surprisingly.
It's hard to use a word, I guess, to explain.
to, yes, there's no words for it, but it.
think that probably, I think he would, you know, I think he would also feel like, you need to double down in your own community.
and I remember, I'll say this after nine 11, it was interesting what, what sort of kind of historical perspective he put that in.
remember we watched that.
We watched the, twin towers fall here at the store, watched on the today show.
And either that day or the next day, I was talking with Dad in his office and he said, pretty appreciately really, said, know, he said, there will be some things that will
change.
But he said, most of what is important in our lives is not almost all of what is important in our lives.
is still going to be up to us to take care of our own families, our own communities, our own friends.
he said, he certainly was not a war hawk, but he said, don't know what militarily what will happen.
said, but I do think business will go on.
We need to keep
coming to work and being good citizens and doing our part where we can to be part of whatever the right response is.
And I thought that really made it true because honestly, in my life, most of the changes that have come, didn't go to, fortunately I didn't have to go when I was too old, I guess,
to go to Iraq and Afghanistan as a soldier, but except for the soldiers.
who have gone to war in the in mid-east.
Of course the people that died on 9-11 which was terrible but
I mean, honestly, the inconvenience is at the airport.
That's probably most of what the repercussions have been.
Now, as a citizen, all the money, all the treasure that we spent in Iraq, my opinion was unnecessary.
mean, there's some ripple effect things as a citizen that I regret.
So I would think he would say today, if people just felt like they've been hitting the...
head with a two by four about any of the Trump decisions that had been made all at once.
I think he would say, you know, we need to protest what we think needs protesting.
need to, you know, we need to not be silent, but we also need to just keep doing the best we can where we are with what we have.
A good example is for our children, you know, that just...
Carry on.
really admired the English stiff upper lip, know, the Battle of Britain and war where I'm sure some of your listeners, of course, know, Churchill and studied, you know, the British
in World War II.
He was a big admirer of Churchill and that, you know, that determination to not give in and to keep coming back.
Yeah.
So I think that.
That's probably what he would say.
I think that's good advice for all of us.
I remember George H.W.
Bush's wife, Barbara Bush, said once, and I've quoted this in some of my speeches over the years since I've heard it, she said, you know, what happens at your house is more
important than what happens at the White House.
And maybe that's a good time to remember that.
I think you're right.
It really is.
I tell you, if you got three minutes, I'll tell you one funny integration story that happened to me personally.
Like I I was far freedom of choice.
in the fall of 1967, we had five black students come to Tupelo High School.
No whites chose to go to Carver High School, which was an all black high school.
Three girls and two boys.
The two boys both came out for football.
One was David Adams, one was...
fellow named Frank Dowsing.
Frank had been in an automobile accident that summer.
And so he couldn't participate in two day, I was on the football team.
He couldn't participate in two day workouts because his mouth was wired shut from this accident.
So he was out in t-shirt and shorts and we were in our pads and you could tell he looked like, you know, pretty good athlete, you know, testosterone high school guys are like,
yeah, but you know, can't even think you hit, you know, and
Yeah, sure.
Everybody's faster in shorts and in pads and kind of discounting all this stuff.
Well, anyway, Frank gets his mouth, the wires out and it's the first, first weekend, I guess.
And I was firmly in sconce as the B team quarterback my junior year.
I should have been the varsity quarterback, but the coach didn't.
And so.
We go down to Amory on the bus for the B-team.
The B-team games are on Thursday nights and the varsity games are on Friday nights.
So our offensive coach, Coach Dennis White was the coach of the B-team.
He said, Jack, we're going to put Frank tailback tonight and you call the play for everybody else and then tell him what his role is going to be.
So I go down and they kick off and we get the bubble word that a friend of mine may know still.
till around was a farmstead.
So he takes a kickoff and runs it back to about the 20.
And so I call this sweep left.
And I said, Frank, I'm going to reverse out.
I'm going to pitch it to you.
The fullback's going to try to lead you.
And you try to get around left in.
Sweep left in.
The guard's going to pull, and we're going to try to sweep left in.
Got it.
80 yards later untouched as the referee is trying to keep up with him.
He tosses the ball to the referee.
And I'm going, whoa, whoa, wow.
Yeah, that does.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And we didn't have a kicker on the B-team, so I had to stay out there.
We always went for two, and I think we made it anyway.
So I come back to the sidelines, and I said, Coach White, this is great.
We're going to have a great B-team season.
We're going have a great season.
he puts his arm around me, and he says, Jack.
Don't get used to Frank being on the B team.
The next night he started, he played first team wing back on offense and defensive end, which shows you how good he was.
He was about, he wasn't that big.
He was about five, 10 or five 11, maybe 185, 175.
By the end of his two years at Tupelo High School, he had, he was all big eight in football.
He had led our basketball team to the six, eight championship.
as a five, 10 center, they tried to foul him so as to keep him off the, you know, out of the offensive part of the game.
And in the state championship game, he made 16 out of 16 free throws to help us win that game.
set the state hundred yard dash record of the state 120 hurdles, low hurdles record that stood for 10 or 15 years.
He was number four in our class of 218.
He went on to almost med school.
He dropped out of med school, didn't like it, but.
He personally was the Jackie Robinson of North Mississippi and Mississippi really because we played the state championship basketball game down there and we played it as far down
as the Yaser City.
He was.
unbelievably a man of grace.
People, unfortunately not in Tupelo, but people other places would be n-word yell at him.
But he, the sports and his accomplishments in sports did more for peacefully integrating Tupelo than any one single person.
There's there's a marker at Jim at the Highland Circle at Robin's Field about him, about Frank.
But,
What a wonderful, what a wonderful person.
And, he went on to do the same thing in Mississippi State.
He was all SEC and all American at Mississippi State defensive back.
He's, he was the first black Mr.
Bulldog.
There's a part of the, the gated radium at Scott field is named for Frank Dowsie and Robert Bell, who was the other first black athlete at Mississippi State university.
he did, he did the, for the SEC is one of the first black athletes in the Southeastern conference.
ran a
hunt back against Alabama for a touchdown.
Just a wonderful human being.
Virginia Dowsley, Virginia Tolliver is his sister, Jim.
Yeah, yeah, he's his big sister.
Anyway, that's an example of somebody else who really played a big part in how sports can be a great melting pot, really the best, the best of, you you're judged by your ability,
not by the color of your skin.
and how you treat people.
There was a heckler down at the state basketball tournament.
Every time he'd get the ball in warmups, kept going, hey, Leroy, hey, Leroy, we got to take you out, Leroy, Leroy, Leroy.
And finally, Frank, after the last time he goes around to get the ball for his dribbling in, he goes over to the stands on the front row and said, how did you know that my name
was Leroy?
And he completely disarmed the guy.
On the other side, one of my friends got in a fistfight in the restroom with that game with a guy from Meridian who started trashing Frank, racially trashed him.
So the white student stood up for him.
Anyway, I'm sorry.
Frank's last name?
D-O-W-S-I-N-G.
Frank Dowsing.
He's in the midst of his sports hall of fame, as he should be.
No, he is deceased.
He's deceased.
That's, you know, that's, that's one of the things that I like about these kinds of podcasts.
Having grown up in Kansas city, there was the Kansas city blues, which was a farm club for the Yankees, but there was also the monarchs and satchel page was one of the pitchers.
I did not know.
that Satchel Paige died at home here in Mississippi.
If I had known that, I would have gone to see him.
Sure, yeah.
We lose so much of our history and I guess where I'm getting around to is that Saturday's paper, or maybe it was Friday, said that the State Education Board is not going to be
requiring tests of history.
I saw that.
Okay, so I'm saying self, I'm going to take history and I don't have to pass the test.
don't have to.
I just need to take history and.
That's not getting an education.
Yeah, I think that comes back to again, I think Dr.
Evans, new superintendent is concerned about this too.
Mississippi has gone too much overboard on how the communities are graded.
an A school, a B school, a C school, D school.
I mean, you can pretty much tell which schools are the D schools by how many school lunches they provide.
If you have a high percentage of poor students, they're coming in with
One parent families oftentimes they don't have the resources.
They're they're not, you know, they're not well educated at home or in the summers and things.
It's a it needs to be that grading system needs to be changed.
And if you don't have a grading system at all, or at least it needs to be something on how you're improving, how the teachers or how these students are improving, not just how they
do on a test at the end of the year.
And I think part of this history thing is because since that's not part of the state test, they're saying, well, we're we're trying so hard.
Our teachers trying so hard for this to be, to be to be an A.
You thankfully we are an A school system.
But those teachers worked just as hard if there was a B school system, if they had more at risk students.
So I think that's part of that backdrop of that story.
I was gonna get real quick, I'm gonna move real quick and get this book just to show you in case.
And I know we're out of time, but that's it.
no, that's, we're good.
Time to speak, speeches by Jack Reed, Danny McKenzie edited it.
But get it, Reed's Guptree bookstore, we still got copies of.
I'll be down there.
I'll be down there tomorrow.
Well, Jim, pick up two.
Pick up two.
This has been great.
Thank you so much for Jack for being with us.
Jim, you got anything before we close?
No, other than just to say that...
The greatest generation, I think, was...
the Jack Reeds and the Dr.
Robert Newmans and all of these guys that went to the Second World War.
I appreciate it, Jack.
Well, thank you.
they gave us a of good examples to live up to.
Absolutely.
the apple didn't fall far from the tree.
Very generous, thank you, God.
Thank you.
Well, I enjoyed talking to you guys.
good.
And I, I do want, I won't leave with a couple of things.
and then Jack, you were quoted a couple of years back, in the Mississippi today.
And I think this kind of sums up your life and also kind of sums up your father's life in Mississippi today, you were quoted as your personal motto.
God wants life to be a party.
It's up to us to make sure that everyone is invited.
That is a great motto to live by and it shows in what we heard about your father, it shows what we heard about your life as well.
We do appreciate our viewers.
We appreciate our sponsors, one being Alpha Insurance and Olive Branch and the agent is Ali Ejilali.
So we do appreciate him and we appreciate all of our sponsors.
And also as usual, we want to remind everyone, may we never be indifferent to the suffering of others.
And our web, excuse me, our email address is Mississippi One Happenings.
at gmail.com mshappeningsthenumber1 at gmail.com.
Thank you for joining us.
Jim, good to see you.
Jack, great to talk to you.
Thanks, guys.
Thank you all.