Highway 61 | Mississippi Roads | MPB

[Music] coming up on Mississippi roads we take to a road one specific highway that we travel in to end at least the part of it that's in Mississippi a highway that traverses much of our geography history and culture old bluesman called it the longest road by noon [Music] run [Music] hi welcome to Mississippi roads I'm your host Walt Grayson you know here while back it occurred to me there was a show titled Mississippi roads occasionally we need to take a whole half-hour and travel up or down an entire Mississippi Road and that's what we're going to do today and the road we picked is highway 61 although you might associate highway 61 more with the Delta and the Blues we're coming into highway 61 where it lifts up out of Louisiana into Southern Mississippi just south of woodland highway 61 gets through a wide variety of Mississippi geography caused a good deal Mississippi culture and has witnessed Mississippi history from the colonial period all the wealth of the day and it has a lot of lore tales associated with it we'll see how many of those tales we can include to as nobley song I hear it on MTV radio the promo for the Blues music program which interestingly enough is entitled highway 61 in which the singer mournfully tells us that highway 61 is the longest road he knows it runs from New Orleans northward along the Mississippi River for 1,400 miles goes through Memphis st. Louis on the way and it was the first leg out of the Delta 2 in Chicago and the great migration between the world wars so it is a long time and that's just in length over 300 miles of that 1,400 is in Mississippi and considering all it touches fossils and connects just here it is a very long highway in spirit [Music] before we travel too far away from where we are though let's say something about the spot we're standing in that the state line here south of Wood bull in Wilkinson County not only is it a state line today but back in colonial days this used to be an international boundary to the north of us was the United States to the south of us was Spanish West Florida the 31st parallel which is now the Mississippi Louisiana state line was the southwest corner of the United States we're at the Mississippi River Bank late seventeen hundreds not led to the establishment of what used to be one of the most important forts in the nation for Adams the western part of Wilkinson County just north of the 31st parallel on a high hilltop overlooking the Mississippi River fort Adams was the country's first line of defense inside the borders of the nation against any invader attempting to come up the Mississippi River from French territory and then Spanish territory but after the Louisiana Purchase of all that land became a part of the United States and Ford Adams almost immediately became an obsolete inland port that didn't protect much of anything in particular and it's long since vanished a little village grew up around the fort and it survived but the recent 21st century super floods on the Mississippi River and pretty much a race 12 was left with it [Music] so highway 61 rises up out of what used to be foreign territory until 1803 out of Louisiana and enters Mississippi here with its southernmost part running through remote wilkinson county and the population Wilkinson County and it's county seat Woodville is almost identical of what it was 150 years ago during the Civil War although there are strong associations with the Civil War here the Union Army having burned some homes in the county and Jefferson Davis president of the Confederacy boyhood home Rosemont plantation is just east of woodland they're still stronger colonial period and statehood period associations here now for instance the territorial bank was located in woodland the building still stands and today houses the Woodville African American Museum there's an extensive exhibit about American composer William Grant still in the African American Museum in woodland he was born here and his classic composition afro-american symphony just happens through heaven my babies now the other side of the square now housing the Historical Society Museum is the old headquarters and Bank building for the West Feliciana railroad now the assistant was only 28 miles long connecting Woodville to ballast era landing in st. Francisville Louisiana but in 1828 when it was built it carried a couple of first first interstate railroad and the first standard gauge railroad it was built primarily to haul cotton from South Mississippi through the river landing at dial Sarah Louisiana and if it's in Louisville it's just about the oldest of whatever it is in the state the oldest Baptist Church building in the state is here would Will Baptist Church Jefferson Davis's mother was a member of the Episcopal Church the state's oldest newspaper the Woodville Republican is here still in operation which makes it not only the oldest newspaper but also the state's oldest continuously operated business established in 1823 some of the state's most beautiful wilderness is in Wilmington County at pond southwest of Woodville is Clark Creek state home Natural Area has several waterfalls that's a pretty good hike in and out so if you plan on coming and seeing cart Creek plan on making a day of it but our destination is long way that way and if we're ever going to make Memphis just a half-hour we'll get a move on northward not a wiggle Hali 61 job centers and pine and hardwood forest lands and crosses some wide river bottles homothetic buffalo river's cut under the highway as they flow westward to the Mississippi below Natchez just east of highway 61 on coaster two matches is Kingston are several interesting things about it it started out known as the Jersey settlement members of the Kingdom Swayze families settled here from New Jersey prior the American Revolution because among other reasons they were loyalists to England and it was getting more and more uncomfortable for loyalists to stay along the Atlantic seaboard prior to the revolution and there were a lot of loyalist reporters all who came to the Natchez district because of the Revolutionary War and here's another first roots of the Kingston Methodist Church go back to the days when England still controlled its part of the country and Kingston Methodist was the first Protestant Church in Mississippi and this building was built decades later but it's still old it's from the 1850s and so far we've talked about things that happened back in the colonial era or earlier or early statehood on our trip of highway 61 obviously all of that was way before how we 61 was ever needed her thought of much less built but just before we get in the Natchez we run across our first icon directly associated with the early days of the highway itself Mami's covered it's one of those buildings whose design somehow suggests its function mandis covered is a restaurant now about the time Americans began to hit the roads is truest places like this sprang up to catch the eye of motorists so they'd pull in and she shaped like an old southern cook and good cooking is what you get here open for lunch Tuesday through Saturday and my suggestion is skip to lunch go straight for the dessert [Music] we're traveling up highway 61 this week on Mississippi roads we started down at Woodville at the Louisiana Mississippi State Line and now we're in Natchez and as we get the Natchez we kind of get to the antebellum period of history in the state time of plantations opulence riches for some people but as we get here I'm also reminded at this place just right off of Highway 61 the grand ability children axes Indians which is a reminder people have been here for a long long time this is a very old country not only is it old with the Native Americans having arrived here ten to fifteen thousand years ago here we take twenty which experts are asking it's a complicated place too because we already mentioned that after the Native Americans came the French and then the English then the spanish then the United States but it's not like all the predecessors cleanly moved out when the new proprietor moved in like moving into a new house now when the new folks got here oftentimes some of the old folks stayed or they moved back later consequently that left land claims in the southwest part of the state more complicated than Howard used will this was Indian land to begin with but then the King of France handed out homesteads here too then after the French and Indian War when the British got ownership of the old French territory the King of England asked out parcels and even the colony of Georgia doled out Lots in this area then Spain got it after the American Revolution and subdivided it again same with the United States when it ultimately became the anisa city territory much of that mess is what was sorted out prior to statehood in the Natchez area a land here is desirable because it's high on another type geography with highway 61 cuts through that's the bluffs geologists say this tight soil was blown in here when the Ice Age glaciers out west started melting and that ground up rock dust that was in them was caught by the prevailing westerlies saddle here it's all topsoil 300 to 400 feet deep roads cut through the bluffs and get lost in the bottom of the cuts hardwoods cover them in the rural areas and in many places kudzu covers the hardwoods a matches started out as a training center in the rare report on the Mississippi River as cotton took over most of the great plantations migrated across the Mississippi and the refer to Louisiana side of the river and as the owners grew wealthy they built their fine homes on the bluffs in matches we're living those more genteel and as the city grew wealthier more and more huge homes were built here this was true in other areas of the state too but a trust debate and civil war left Natchez without Confederate fortifications and a greater dream so therefore the Union Army with a few individual exceptions that between the great need to destroy the city matches with over 500 antebellum structures today many of the old homes are on tour during the spring of our pilgrimage somewhat like Melrose Park the National Park System are open year-round and Natchez was the first capital to Mississippi Territory and if you remember here American history the Mississippi Territory at that time included all of what is now Mississippi and Alabama and here the Capitol was located just about as far to the southwest as you could get so there arose a call to move the Capitol and get it away from all of that River influence so it was moved to the next woody village of highway 61 dude out of Washington Mississippi six miles inland from all that river influence now realizing six miles was a lot farther back then than it is today but still six miles couple of blocks off highway 61 in Washington is Jefferson College it was the first anything to be chartered by the territorial legislature which by the way that legislators met in a tavern just around the corner that building burned in the early 1990s Jefferson Davis was a student here and natureís illustrator John James Audubon taught here for short while the school is owned by the Department of Archives in history and is open year-round their periodic living history events here even a neat little Museum here but we continue our trek northward up highway 61 and not far out of Washington the road intersects with the oldest road in Mississippi the Natchez Trace the trace started out thousands of years ago as animal trails perhaps when people started using those animal trails and interconnecting them until this became a prehistoric superhighway in the settlement days of American flat boatsman poles with the current down the Mississippi sold their goods then walk back home on the Natchez Trace the roadway fell out of popularity in 1811 with the invention of the steamboat that could go against the current on the big river announced modern national park way and if one remind cruise you could drive in the day admittedly it'd be a long day but you could do it you could drive it today what would have taken walkers a month or more to travel [Music] getting back to highway 61 continuing to travel to the north the next town passed the trace is stay it and say it is of note because Fayette is the first town in Mississippi in modern times to elect a black mayor Charles Evers back in 1969 was elected after passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1964 by the way he was a graduate of Alcorn State University which is also just a few miles west of highway 61 and the turnoff to Alcorn is at Lerman and Lohrman is where you need to stop to get a taste of the best fried chicken in the world at the Old Country Store at Lomond mister D makes it from his grandmother's recipe and people from all over the nation and for that matter all over the world have flocked here to get a taste of it I turn east of Lomond all six do you want to go to red lick and if you know where you're looking you can find the grave of a man buried standing up his reason I didn't want to have to wait to climb out of his grave on Resurrection Day he just wanted to walk out standing now something else you'll find along highway 61 and that's a strong faith in God you'd have to have faith in something bigger than yourself to survive the early days out here slaves and the old plantation days had to have faith does a better day was coming and some of the prettiest churches in the state erected to show tangibility of that faith or along the highway in the next town up the road Port Gibson the Presbyterian Church with the famous hand pointing toward heaven on the top of the steeples here the catholic church with its cobalt blue window panes gives the interior of the church a heavenly glow on bright sunlit days lore has it that when General Grant landed his army quest appeared Bruins burg at the onset of his march toward Vicksburg in the Civil War after camping in the cornfields of Windsor whose ruins are less than 10 miles west of Port Gibson just off of highway 61 when Grant saw the town he said it was too beautiful to burn and here it stands today now most of it lot of its falling in due to old age since then an inch in Vicksburg that's the next town up from Port Gibson past the Big Black River some 25 miles away and at expert we're back out of the hardwood River bottoms back on top of the bluffs again and back in time to the Civil War I think it's odd that when they were taking a boat on where the Mississippi should follow South Carolina and secede from the union or not Warren County's delegation from Vicksburg voted to stay in I didn't make a lot of difference to General Grant there wasn't an unbroken Wendell taint left in the city after grants 47 day siege constant bombardment that left much of the town in ruins in 1863 the fall of Vicksburg was a turning point the Civil War for all practical purposes when Vicksburg fell the war was lost for the south because it went on for another couple of years the see is documented in the Vicksburg National Military Park [Music] [Music] well as we continue up highway 61 traveling northward out of Vicksburg the character of our journey changes entirely back where we've been we're going to leave the bluffs the gullies and all the bowels and Antebellum world all that behind us where we're heading is into the Mississippi Delta now admit it's with a little fear and trepidation that I try to write anything about the Delta mainly because it's culturally a deceivingly complicated place in comparison to its flatness as many social and economic levels that have to talk to them dependent on and dependent on each other at the same time here that it would make an anthropologist change majors another reason I don't want to get too deep into the Delta some of the best of already taking a whack at it William Faulkner spit out quite a few paragraphs about the contradictions built into the fabric of the Delta so did you door well tea and I think there's a little bit of Delta and everything really Morris wrote even if he what writing about the Delta because the Delta was where he was raised well at Delta half Hills has its city but when you from here the Delta and its mores values become the unconscious reference point from which you judge the rest of your life experiences the back of highway 61 one of the first little villages you come to traveling northward on 61 coming into the Delta from the south is Valley Park former powerful speaker blintzes at the House of Representatives EB Buddy Newman lived here but he saved a mile-long stretch of track out behind his house when they came through the Delta ripping up rails at a few railroad cars put there from nine rivers childhood and his load a car that he once told me as he put it that he and the other children a valley park like Tryon sits idle like the rest of the Delta has drastically changed since the days in which it was functioning a quick note highway 61 at a section one of the most important smaller waterways in the Delta at Valley Park Deer Creek Native Americans used it as a highway many of their mounds are located along here matter of fact the first leg of Mississippi's new mound trail highlights Indian mounds primarily along Highway 61 and not only in prehistoric times were the waterways for highways but even the early Delta settlers built along the waterways it was until after the Civil War that the interior of the Delta began to be cleared that's when those railroads buddy Noonan loads too much came into play hauling out the timber and then carrying passengers Deer Creek parallels the lower portion of highway 61 through the Delta it usually is the centerpiece of towns through which it runs Leland decorates it for Christmas to an extent sodas and willam rolling fork creeks intersects Deer Creek at rolling fork and at rolling fork another of the Delta's contributions to the world is celebrated every year with a great Delta bear affair and that contribution the teddy bear story still pretty good and onward just out the bowling fork about Teddy Roosevelt's early 20th century bear hunt here that resulted in Roosevelt refusing to shoot a bear the guide Hokage lassoed resulting in a cartoon in The Washington Post and The New York Times that they named Teddy's bears contributions of the Delta well we've already touched on writers other contributions obviously blues music it was born of the Beltre Dockery plantation between highway 61 and 49 lays claim to being the cradle of the blues because of those lenient policies allowing field hands working there to have gatherings and music jams anyone you've ever heard of being one of the founders of the Blues learned something from someone at Gawker II Clark sales probably considered the epicenter of Delta blues today with its these festivals and the Delta blues Museum right across the street from Morgan Freeman and Bill luck its ground zeroes Blues Club Leyland has a blues museum too and a mural of Lee lenders who contributed to the art form from son Thomas to Johnny Winter speaking of Leland's another Delta gift to the world from the Frog creator Jim Henson was born in Greenville and spent his younger years playing along the banks of beer creek in Leland no doubt running across many sizeable bullfrogs in the process way up north the casinos tell you where the river is as their hotels tower over the cotton fields and more likely corn fields now corns taken over so much that the Delta looks like Kansas and summertime that brings up the point that at the base of the Delta is agriculture all there semenya factoring here not as much as it used to be but when you're sitting on the richest farmland in America your base has got to be growing things no time Delta planner told me when we were at his place one Sunday morning years ago shooting the Mississippi gold story but one man on a tractor by himself could do what it used to take in families sharecropping to do and he went on to say the problem with the Delta is the 10 families are still there but nothing to do there's a contradiction of development progress is choking it but not to progress would be instant death it's hard to equate to fading away of small towns that used to be the supply centers for the old plantations as progress but the way of doing agriculture has changed so much that they're obsolete you don't have to have small towns to supply anything anymore and that hurts the big towns that grew up supplying the small towns and that contradiction and having to live with it make a living in it causes the kind of headache and heartache that created the fertile ground from which the blue spray and we're nearing the end of our journey they never got to mention the levee and on tamales or any of the other musicians from the Delta like Ike Turner and how rocket rolls have to be from tier two maybe sometimes we can come to a whole show about the Delta now that brings us to the end of our journey we started according to my GPS about three hundred and twenty-one miles ago to the south as we came across the Louisiana State Line heading north Tennessee state lines right over there and we've traveled highway 61 the entire distance highway that's cut across just about every geographical and cultural feature that we have in the state of Mississippi which underscores that highway 61 is about the longest road I know more information at mpbonline.org slash Mississippi roads and like us on our Mississippi Public Broadcasting Facebook page I'm Walt Grayson now be seeing you on Mississippi roads [Music] [Applause] [Music] now [Music] Mississippi roads is made possible in part by the generous support of viewers like you thank you [Music]

Channel: Mississippi Public Broadcasting

Views: 252,705

Keywords: mpb, mississippi, mississippi public broadcasting, etv, MPBOnline, MPBTV, MPB TV, Missippi, Mississippi PBS, NPR, Television

Id: LP6dKLQozCw

Length: 26min 46sec (1606 seconds)

Published: Mon Jun 26 2017