Shake Rag – A Way of Life

Shake Rag, known for its music and influence on a young Elvis, was more than music to the people who lived there – it was a way of life. After emancipation, freed slaves moved into shanties around Gum Pond and several black communities, including Shake Rag, grew from there. Shake Rag was a self-contained community with stores, successful businesses, and a few home owners. First and Triplett Streets were the most densely populated. Work was meager with most employed in the cotton compress, stockyards, railroad, and L.P. McCarty Wholesale. Less fortunate worked as domestics or yard boys. The residents danced to the Saturday night sounds of juice harps, scrub boards, brooms and spoons into early Sunday morning hours until the tambourines and hallelujahs of the sanctified church brought them into Rising Star MB Church. Former Shake Rag resident, Reverend Robert Jamison, explained, “Even though we stayed in a poverty-stricken area when I was growing up, you always had a friend. People would respect you in Shake Rag. I wanted to get out of Shake Rag in the mind, but I never did want to leave Shake Rag in the person. Because that's where my roots are.”

Shake Rag and Urban Renewal

For 50 years locals theorized that the Shake Rag community would someday burn from the dismal conditions of the structures built with faulty wiring and open fireplaces. It indeed did burn in 1962, but not from poor construction. It was burned in the name of progress as part of one of the state’s first urban renewal projects. Nonetheless, it was a sad day for the 169 families, 60 individuals and 43 businesses that were relocated from the 60-acre tract. Shake Rag was home to them and the memories of family, church, and life in Shake Rag were all they had left of the beloved community. Congress launched the federal urban redevelopment program under Title I of the Housing Act of 1949. Some viewed it as a way of boosting sagging property values; others as a means to increase tax revenues; and still others hoped it would clear the slums and provide better living conditions for the poor.

Robins Field

Built in 1927, Robins Field was named for former Tupelo Mayor D.W. Robins and served as the Tupelo Schools’ football field until 1991. On Friday nights, the all-white Tupelo High School Golden Wave football team played here, while the state champion all-black Blue Devils of Carver High School played at Robins Field on Saturday nights. In much of the south and Mississippi, black schools often had separate, inferior, or no football facilities. In Tupelo, even before desegregation, crowds both African-American and white showed up to see the Carver Blue Devils’ exciting football games and to hear the award-winning “G.W. Carver Band” under the direction of career educator, Benjamin Branch, and later, Walter Partlow. Tupeloan Mearion Smith reminisced, “When the band paraded down the streets, black people and white people again united on common grounds along the streets and sidewalks to watch the ‘G.W. Carver Band’ strut down the parade route.” Following full integration of the Tupelo school system, Tupelo High School academic, football, and track star Frank Dowsing played on this field, and in so doing generated goodwill and broke racial barriers. Dowsing went on to become one of Mississippi State University's first two African-American athletes, setting records as a defensive back and kick returner, and was voted Mr. MSU.

High School Football During Segregation

Football has always been a special pastime in the South, and perhaps high school football most of all. In a 2006 study conducted by USA Football and the Wharton Business initiative at the University of Pennsylvania, Mississippi was distinguished as having the best high school football in America. Mississippi high school football was and is more than just a sport; it is a source of immense pride and great rivalries. High school football in the black community during segregation, operating in the all-black Magnolia State High School Activities Association, was no different. With few if no black players on collegiate or National Football League rosters, black high school football teams became symbols of success. The young black stars on the field were heroes across the entire community. These young athletes served as role models for young boys and provided hours of conversation in barbershops and other gatherings as every down was replayed and analyzed. These athletes were under intense scrutiny to do the right thing and represent themselves, their family, and their communities to the best of their abilities, both on and off the field.

Spring Hill Missionary Baptist Church

Established approximately during the 1850s, Spring Hill Missionary Baptist Church is the oldest African-American Church in Tupelo. The original sanctuary, still standing today, was completed in 1921 and is one of the oldest surviving church buildings in Tupelo, having survived the devastating tornado of 1936. As Journalist Terry Marsh wrote in 2008, “The Black Church, established because of the necessity to create a place of worship separate from whites, became significant as an organized body where opposition concerning the treatment of its congregations could be voiced. It progressed from a place of spiritual healing, to one of social and political awareness, creating a litany of protests advocating rights afforded by the U.S. Constitution.” Spring Hill Missionary Baptist Church has been that place of worship for many years, and it also has been an advocate for the rights of not only its congregation, but the African-American community.

A Strong Voice in the Civil Rights Struggle in Tupelo

During the Civil Rights era, under the leadership of the Reverend E. Page, Spring Hill Missionary Baptist Church served as a voice for the struggle of this area’s African-Americans. The church opened its doors for meetings of the United League, Freedom Marchers, NAACP, Council of Federated Organization (COFO), and area citizens. This allowed those groups to voice their dissatisfaction with voter registration, segregation of schools, local facilities and stores, police brutality, unfair hiring throughout the city, and all practices that were denied to African Americans simply because of the color of their skin. Civil Rights marches in 1976 and 1979 began at this historic site. Gathering at the church, 300 – 400 demonstrators joined in song and prayer before they began these marches down Green Street to Downtown Tupelo.

The first Lee County Courthouse in Tupelo burned in 1873. A contingent of leaders from Verona approached county officials and offered them $15,000 to build the new courthouse in Verona. This angered Tupelo business leaders, who accused Verona people of sneaking in and burning the courthouse so their town could be the county seat. Later, fire inspectors discovered an exploding coal oil lamp caused the fire, not arsonists from Verona.

In 1860 after Tupelo was platted as “Gum Pond” saloons and hotels made up most of the town. Those who filed the plat in Itawamba County (Lee County would not be formed from Pontotoc and Itawamba counties until 1866) changed the name of the town to Tupelo as construction workers rolled into the town to build the railroads. During the Civil War, one of the hotels became a jail to lock up those who sympathized with the Federalists or Union. Confederate soldiers bedded down in the other hotels to guard the prisoners.

At the time Tupelo was chartered, downtown consisted of businesses for trade with farmers from the outlying area. Most of those businesses along Main Street resided in unpainted and wooden structures. Main Street was a dirt street and packed earth served as sidewalks. Rains turned the streets into nearly impassible muck, forcing businesses to limit hours or close until people could pass again. Dogs and hogs walked freely in the streets among the garbage left on the streets.

A popular entertainment venue during the 1920s and 1930s was the circus. Various shows would come through Tupelo, set up in a vacant lot downtown or at the Fairgrounds, and people would flock to the sideshows and the tents for the acts. According to David Baker in a 2000 oral history, an elephant died at one of the circuses. The elephant was buried quickly in the Town Creek levee in East Tupelo.

The Jersey cows for which Tupelo was so famous in the 1940s originated from the Isle of Jersey in France. Rex Reed, owner of Forest Lake Farms and the site of the Oren Dunn City Museum, was one large Jersey farmer. But Balfour William Ruff credits Gale Carr with getting the cows in Tupelo with the first artificial insemination. After World War II, the Jersey cows in France had been killed, and Mr. Reed with others provided cows from their herds to breed and replenish the French Jersey stock.