Mississippi Moments Podcast

For over 55 years, Oliver Emmerich, Sr., was editor and publisher of the McComb Enterprise Journal. In this episode he explains his philosophy of using the editorial page to influence public opinion. During the 1960s, Emmerich used his position as an editor to promote Civil Rights. He recalls publishing a series of articles about local schools to disprove the idea of "Separate but Equal." Emmerich...

This past weekend, June 2-3, 2018, the 89th Annual Blessing of the Fleet was held in Biloxi.  As coastal fishermen head out into Gulf in search of shrimp, we decided to revisit the interview of Earl Ross, conducted in 2011. A third-generation fisherman, Ross began shrimping in 1977. In this episode, he discusses his first shrimp boat, the variety of nets he uses and the size of his territory. When...

When the United States entered WWII, A.J. Jones of Hattiesburg decided to become a Navy fighter pilot. In this episode, he shares his memories of that experience, beginning with the training he received and all those who died trying to learn to land on an aircraft carrier. As a navy fighter pilot, Jones was assigned to a carrier group in the Pacific Theater. He recounts targeting Japanese ships an...

For this week's episode, we revisit Coach Sank Powe's 1999 interview. MSM 496 focused on his successful 25 year career as the men's baseball coach for Cleveland High School in Cleveland, Mississippi. Today, we examine his childhood, growing up on a Delta plantation as the son of a poor tenant farmer. Powe enjoyed listening to professional baseball on the radio and recalls learning how to swing a b...

Growing up in Sumrall, Eberta Spinks was taught by her parents to care for those in their community. In this episode, she remembers helping her mother deliver fresh-cut flowers and home-cooked meals to sick neighbors. Spinks was five years old when she and a playmate became gravely ill in 1919. She recalls how neighbors sat with her around the clock so her parents could get some rest during the or...

After the Empire of Japan attacked the US Naval Base in Hawaii and declared war on the United States, Americans of Japanese descent were forcibly relocated to internment camps, out of fear they would be loyal to the emperor.  But, by the time Japan bombed Pearl Harbor, many Japanese-American men were already serving in the US military.  In this episode, Herbert Sasaki recalls coming to Camp Shelby...

Former Governor William Winter was first elected to the Mississippi House of Representatives in 1947. In this episode, he remembers how the verdict in Brown versus the Board of Education solidified opposition to desegregation throughout the South. Gov. Winter was running for State Treasurer in 1963 when he learned of the assassination of civil rights activist, Medgar Evers. He recalls being shocke...

Clara Watson has many pleasant memories of growing up in Biloxi during the 1940s. The status quo nature of segregation so thoroughly permeated life that it wasn't given much thought. In this episode, she explains how the city's liberal atmosphere shielded her from the racial tensions faced by other black Mississippians. For instance, before the Civil Rights Movement, black customers were often tur...

Most people have heard of Leontyne Price, but there was another talented soprano from Mississippi, whose name is not so well known. That is because Kathleen Roberts Striegler chose to move to Germany in the late 1960s to pursue a career in opera, where some sixty state-funded opera companies provided steady income for professional singers. Born in Hattiesburg in 1941, Striegler began studying musi...

Johnny Balser's grandfather moved to McComb in the 1880s and took a job with the railroad. In this episode, he discusses his family's long history with the Illinois Central maintenance shop there and why there was never any doubt he would follow in his grandfather's footsteps. When Balser graduated high school, his father insisted he follow the family tradition and work for Illinois Central railro...

Reverend Robert Hartenfeld's father ran a small country store in northwestern Ohio. In this episode, he explains how watching his dad interact with customers in an intimate and personal way taught him the importance of listening—a skill he would come to appreciate in later years as a Lutheran minister. In 1983, Hartenfeld came to Long Beach, Mississippi, to help establish a new Lutheran congregati...

In 1917, Mississippi passed the Bone Dry law, prohibiting the sale and consumption of all forms of alcohol. In this episode, LeGrand Capers remembers Vicksburg's fifty saloons, and how the city reacted to their closing. After alcohol was outlawed in the U.S. in 1920, bootleggers began making and selling homemade liquor. Capers describes Vicksburg's moonshine marketers and how police looked the oth...

On August 7, 1975, LeGrand Capers sat down with the Center for Oral History for the first part of a two-day interview. A lifelong resident of Vicksburg, Mississippi, Capers or "Doc" as he was known to his friends, was considered the town historian. His natural curiosity, love of the Arts, and memory for details made him the right person for the job. Born in 1900, Capers knew many Civil War veteran...

Prior to the end of slavery in the United States, educating African-Americans was discouraged or prohibited by law throughout the South. After emancipation, opportunities for blacks to attend school were still scarce, but began to improve during the Reformation. Lounett Gore's father was born a slave, but emancipated while still an infant.  In this episode, she describes how he was educated by his...

On Friday morning, Feb. 2, 2018, an unveiling ceremony was held on the USM campus for a new historical marker detailing the efforts of Clyde Kennard to enroll at Mississippi Southern College. Kennard had tried to enroll as a student at Southern Miss multiple times in the late 1950s, but was denied admission because of his race.  He was later arrested on trumped-up charges and sentenced to seven ye...

In the Jim Crow South, African-Americans had limited access to doctors and hospitals. One of the goals of the Civil Rights Movement was to improve healthcare for blacks in segregated states like Mississippi. In this episode, taken from a series of interviews conducted in 1998, Dr. Gilbert Mason recounts conditions as they existed in 1955, when he came to the Gulf Coast as a young doctor.  He expla...

In this episode, we hear from Jobie Martin, a Jackson broadcasting pioneer who broke through the racial barriers of the day with his smooth vocals, jovial personality, and kindhearted nature. The only child of a single mom, Martin grew up in Mississippi at a time when job prospects for African-Americans were limited largely to menial labor. He takes us through his unlikely journey into broadcastin...

Powell Ogletree was hired as the first Southern Miss Alumni Association Secretary in 1953. In this episode, he shares his memories of those early days spent recruiting new students, compiling alumni rolls with current contact information, and raising money for scholarships. One of Ogletree's first tasks was to organize the group into local chapters. He explains why they chose March 30th as the day...

Yvonne Arnold of Hattiesburg dropped out of high school to get married in 1955. In this episode, she remembers her decision to get a General Equivalency Diploma or GED, some thirty years later. When Arnold took the GED test in 1985, she scored the highest of anyone in the Hattiesburg area. She explains how a story in the local newspaper led her to enroll at USM as a 48-year-old freshman. Arnold co...

Last week, Mississippi lost a legend of the Civil Rights Movement. Peggy Jean Connor of Hattiesburg owned a beauty shop on Mobile Street in the early 1960s. In this episode, she shares some of her memories of joining the Movement, like becoming a citizenship teacher after hearing a speech by Fannie Lou Hamer, being arrested in Hattiesburg for picketing for voter rights and spending a week in jail,...

Transport pilots ferried soldiers and supplies between the Pacific Islands during WWII. While the pilots of fighter planes and bombers garnered all the glory, it was the transport pilots whose bravery kept the war going—bringing in cargo, taking out the wounded, delivering mail, escorting fighters to new locations—all while under the constant threat of attack from the enemy and mother nature.  In...

No soldiers faced more hardships than the infantry, during WWII. In this episode, James Mulligan details his time with the 103rd Infantry Division, known as the Cactus Division, as they fought their way across Europe in the winter of 1945. In the harsh cold, the uniforms the men depended on were barely adequate, according to Mulligan. He describes his army-issued weapons and clothing, as well as,...

Growing up in the Delta, Gail Goldberg celebrated all the traditional Jewish holidays with her family. In this episode, she describes some of the foods associated with certain holidays such as Chanukah, Rosh Hashanah and Passover and why some foods are forbidden. Since marrying into the Goldberg family and moving to Greenwood in the late '70s, Gail and her mother-in-law have worked together to mak...

Growing up in Ruleville, Lisa Burnett learned the basics of southern cooking from her family. In this episode, she remembers helping her grandmother make biscuits and how "Papaw" smoked meat in an old refrigerator. Burnett moved from Ruleville to New York after college, but she still loves southern cooking. She marvels at how many New Yorkers don't cook and how much her co-workers love her pimento...

Josie Wilson and her new husband moved to Richton, Mississippi in the spring of 1915.  Like so many towns built around the sawmills that sprang up during the timber boom, Richton was a small primitive place with no paved streets or sidewalks.  In this episode, Wilson remembers how the townspeople were scandalized when she sat with the men at the drugstore soda fountain. When her first child was bo...