I’m happy to share a few of those columns with you as they appeared in The Review of Jones County.
While doing research for one of my novels, out of boredom, I looked through the archives for The Laurel Leader Call, my hometown paper to see what was going on the day that I was born. Nothing much of interest—mostly items about Truman, General MacArthur and Korea. But what I discovered happened the day before, on May 8, 1951, changed my life forever.
“Willie McGee Pays with Life!” the headline screamed.
I was amazed to learn that only six blocks away from Masonite Clinic, where I was about to be born, a black man named Willie McGee had been executed inside the courthouse in the state’s portable electric chair, the only one of its kind in the nation. I dug deeper and found passionate quotes about the case from the likes of Albert Einstein and Jean Paul Sartre and President Truman. Bella Absug was McGee’s defense attorney. I read of riots in Paris and demonstrations in Washington. There was a grainy photo of the familiar courthouse lawn, where1,500 white men, women and children, people I would grow up with, had gathered at midnight to witness the death of the young black father of four.
But I had never heard the first word about this notorious case that was, in its time, a cause célèbre. For a week leading up to the execution, the paper was filled with items about McGee. The day after the execution, on my birthday, not a word. It was if the town was trying to forget it ever happened.
I wondered, “What else haven’t I been told?”
Thus began a fascinating journey, at times surreal, heartbreaking and hilarious. It is the true story of a native son’s return to the town he thought he knew only to end up stepping through the looking glass into an alternate universe.
In riveting interviews, fellow Jones Countians, black and white, have been opening up to me, allowing me to glimpse behind the myths that I grew up with. Indeed what I discovered that this was not the place of my memory—the City Beautiful with its elegant mansions built by turn-of-the-century lumber barons, the wide, oak-lined boulevards, the proud Civil War history, the devotion to quality of life, art and culture. I learned this was at times a veneer the town wore like a pretty façade of Masonite paneling, which appropriately was an invention of one of its citizens, William Horatio Mason.
I found that while I was growing up in my “white child bubble” of privileged segregation, there was an entire world of which I was ignorant. A world peopled by KKK Wizards, a black opera diva, and a proud, bi-racial community known as the “Black Knights.”
I stumbled upon a century-old dispute that still raises the blood pressure of Jones Countians, both black and white, over the true character of Newt Knight, a Confederate deserter who some say took control of Jones County by force, appointed himself Emperor and sired families by both black and white women.
I uncovered the story of the town’s pariah, the Emperor’s last living child, Thomas Jefferson Knight, who sold peanuts on the steps of the First National Bank along with a self-published biography of his father. Thomas Knight was said to keep the racial secrets that could turn the county upside down.
There is the restless soul of a convicted rapist, whose last words to his people were, “Keep up the fight.“ And the black community that to this day is convinced of his innocence.
Well, this is the world into which I was born—an impossible tangle of custom, legend and myth. Willie McGee’s spirit, as it was leaving Laurel probably passed mine coming in, yet I would be a middle-aged man before I ever heard his name. I learned about Sam Bowers from movies like Mississippi Burning. By the time I heard of him, Newt Knight had been reduced to a quaint cautionary tale of race-mixing. Leontyne Price could have been from Sweden for all I knew.
In this series of columns, I will share with you what I discover along the way. I’m not conceited enough to think I can ever learn the whole truth about any of these events. It’s probably too late for that. The facts have become legend and legends are always shaped by the teller. Like Faulkner said, “Facts and truth don’t really have much to do with each other.”
My interest, and I hope yours, the reader, is to appreciate all the stories, factual or not, that shaped our lives as Jones Countians, and with pride be able to say,
“Oh what mighty myths from which we have sprung!”
More columns by topic:
Newt Knight: Emperor Of The Free State Of Jones
Rachel Knight: Slave, White Man’s Mistress And Mother To A Movement
White Negro Communities: Too White To Be Black And Too Black To Be White
Willie McGee And Mississippi’s Traveling Electric Chair
Leontyne Price: Midwifed by Community
Facinating. You certainly grew up in an interesting place Jon.
Thanks, Beth. Still trying to understand it myself!
As a native of Jones County, I remember many of the events you write about, and enjoy reading and remembering.
Hello Dorothy! Thanks for your comment. It was fun learning about those things my parents and grandparents spoke of–the events that shaped them and in turn shaped me. Like finding buried treasure!
Jon, I have read and re-read your articles over the past year or so. I find them both fascinating and educational. I grew up close to Reddoch’s Ferry and knew so many of the people that you write about. Ethel Knight, Sam Bowers, remember T J Knight, and even was at the court house the night of Willie McGee’s execution. Thanks for all the articles.
Thanks, Ralph. I wish I had met you when I was writing the articles!!!!!! Sounds like you are a fount of information. I hope you will write them down and share them with others. We are losing our memory of where we come from!