Friday, November 17, 2023

Flashback Friday

Here is a blast from the past. JJ posted this video ten years ago. WAPT was cleaning out the vault and came across this old color video of Jackson. WAPT provided it to Downtown Jackson Partners, who posted it on Youtube. Really interesting stuff.

 

43 comments:

Anonymous said...

It isn’t interesting at all.
Whenever you post stuff like this it feels as if you are proclaiming that Jackson was so much better during segregation.
That shows a lack of cultural awareness.

Anonymous said...

Lord have mercy. If there was ever a time that anybody did anything right or good, it was completely negated by anything that was negative in the culture?

Well heck, I'd say Henry Ford knew some people who were mistreated, so creating the car was not any good because of the things going on around him. (Yes, in Michigan they had segregation and racial issues.)

Same thing for the Wright Brothers. Whether it was in Dayton or Kitty Hawk, their work should have completely stopped because things weren't perfect around them.

Jackson has had its share of problems, but there have been some good periods, too.

Give it a rest.


Anonymous said...

@ 5:09 Back away from the kool-aid and seek professional help for thinking everything is racist.

Anonymous said...

Very nice, love seeing these old videos. Apparently you hurt 5:09’s feelings and seeing a DC-3 land, fire trucks, a road grader, buildings, and animals at the zoo triggered their inner racism. Please be considerate of smooth brains on here.

Anonymous said...

@ 5:09

Jackson has consistently been better at anytime other than the present.

Anonymous said...

@5:09, it wasn't better? Hell, I can see it was better. Anybody can see it was better.

Anonymous said...


nostalgia
noun
nos·​tal·​gia nä-ˈstal-jə

: a wistful or excessively sentimental yearning for return to or of some past period or irrecoverable condition
also : something that evokes nostalgia
2
: the state of being homesick : homesickness

Anonymous said...

Very interesting and sad. Jackson used to be a nice city. Now it has been destroyed by progressive tactics that don’t want to actually improve anything, but rather, simply destroy everything.

Nice job liberal assholes.

Anonymous said...

I would enjoy experiencing only one day without someone referencing racism.

Anonymous said...

Well, I grew up in Jackson. Great memories. JPS graduate. Many great friends still today. Black and white. But I can’t live in Jackson because I can’t get good water. My trash may or may not get picked up. My car gets beat to pieces. I get robbed and shot at. So my friends and I, black and white moved out of town. Never have and never will support racism. Either way. But it’s okay to enjoy history. So get over it.

Anonymous said...

5:09 - you would have to be 90 years old to remember anything in these photos, it’s not proclaiming anything. It’s history. Grow a pair or get a helmet.

Anonymous said...

Segregation is living rent free in your mind along with KF.

Anonymous said...

Where were those kids diving towards the end - that lake by the zoo?

Anonymous said...

Okay Karen. Maybe KF is harkening back to a time when people could walk through any place in Jackson at night with no fear. Unlike today when people cannot drive through many areas in the daytime with major risk.

Segregation was not good. But good things did occur. Jackson was a safe vibrant city, and the water was safe to drink.

Anonymous said...

"a lack of cultural awareness"

Silly me - I thought it showed a lack of people shooting each other.....

Anonymous said...

5:09. There actually was a time when Jackson was a First World city, clean, "on the move", and when residents didn't fear crime so much, especially black residents; and when city government was not run by incompetent fools, city services actually worked. You know, it could be that way again, but, no, people like you just want dwell on social structures that disappeared years ago in an attempt to divert attention from the present reality of what this town is now. You don't want to discuss wide and deep incompetence and uncontrolled crime. You want to hide all of that by trying to change the subject.

Anonymous said...

Goodness, 5:09.

JJ said nothing to suggest the video represented a better era. Maybe you feel like the video shows a better Jackson, and maybe you think that is connected to segregation. But that is you not JJ.

Go make some friends with a different skin color than your own, have some fun together, and stop projecting your racial view of life on everyone else.

Anonymous said...

5:09 PM That wasn't a very nice thing to say. Cultural awareness aka "DIVISION and DISCORD" is what has made Jackson a ghetto. Sending love, light and peace to you.

Anonymous said...

5:09 is a culture warrior! To hell with the facts

Mad Money said...

Had never seen this. Great post JJ.

Anonymous said...

In 2038, Jackson will more resemble post-war Chimneyville than the Jackson in this film.

Anonymous said...

Cool post, Kingfish. Montgomery Ward store made me smile. Love seeing the vehicles (cars, police car, and firetruck). And the gas pump. Lots of smiles.

ChildOfThe50's said...

@9:51pm...that lake was Livingston Lake right next to the Jackson Zoo. It was always packed in the early 50's as well.

If you swam there, you could always feel the bream nipping at your toes thinking that you might be a morsel of food. Hilarious.

I lost count of the number of ear infections I caught swimming there as a young boy! :D

Anonymous said...

Is there no audio or is it just me?

Whose funeral? Whose car wreck...I mean, crash.

Just a normal dude said...

5:09 can't admit the progressives' policies of the last 30 years have decimated the city of Jackson. This feeble argument that "at least Jackson isn't racist" carries considerable weight with him. He is clueless as to why you don't see it that way.

Pretty cool video. This is the kind of film that needs to be preserved for history.

Anonymous said...

Thank you for the video, Kingfish.

Anonymous said...

5:09, I bet you didn’t expect any of the comments that came at you did you, or were you wanting them? Jackson was incorporated in 1822 and since the last 201 years of its life it has taken a short brief 26 years to drag it into the gutter. Hinds county is not far behind in its progressiveness itself and it’s downward decline. You all may or may not agree it was better many years ago but it sure worked and it worked for everyone, black and white included. All benefitted from the advancements that were made so what’s wrong with that? Because at the present time it’s only benefitting a chosen few while a chosen few carry the tax burden so the others can take credit. I enjoy seeing things like this and many others do also. We need more and we need people like that from “back then” who actually gave a damn about their city and perform civic duties. Those people showed us how to take pride in home ownership which means you actually paint your home, clean it up, mow your lawn, rake your leaves, pick up trash, keep your trash cans out of sight, know your neighbors and actually care for them, and just generally take pride in your community. Did I miss anything? And let me say that nothing I said should be construed as racist. Either you care or you don’t.

Anonymous said...

Capital street was so vibrant and alive in years past, it could be again but the citizens vote in people who really just don’t care.

Anonymous said...

What happened was that whites refused to share public spaces with African Americans so they just shut it all down and fled in hate-fueled fear to their rural white enclaves with crooked sheriffs.

Anonymous said...

@10:13, 100% accurate, I agree. They focus on daily nonsense like renaming schools and renaming part of a street after Larita Stokes.

Every time I go in Primos in Madison I stare at the pictures on the wall of the former locations from the 1940’s-60’s, particularly the cafe on Capitol street and the Glass Kitchen. All the 1950’s cars parked along Capitol and I never get enough. People probably think I’m crazy but I examine the pictures closely and wish I could buy a few of them. Everything was simple and clean but state of the art. People were civilized and women dressed and acted like ladies.

Don Drane said...

According to my memory, following what the north called 'reconstruction', Chimneyville, aka Jackson, had white city administrations for roughly 130 years. During that time, Jackson grew into a beautiful, prosperous and productive city.

Following that 130 year stretch, Jackson has had seven black mayors in a row, including temporary mayors, due to deaths.

Since 1997, coming up on 27 years, Jackson's city administrations have been led by Harvey Johnson, Frank Melton, Leslie McLemore, Chokwe Lumumba I, Charles Tillman, Tony Yarber and Chokwe Lumumba II - all of whom, for the most part, totally excluded white participation.

And some of you want to talk about 'sharing public spaces', 'cultural awareness' and segregation?

Twenty-seven years of decline and sliding into third-world-country status cannot be laid at the feet of white people.

At some point, something called personal and collective responsibility should have kicked in.

What will the next twenty-seven years look like for our capital city?

Anonymous said...

November 18, 2023 at 12:01 PM
And yet the black middle class in Jackson also left to those so-called racist enclaves

Anonymous said...

Does 5:09 think Jackson isn't segregated and racist today? Try being a small white owned company and bidding for work with Jackson's government.
One could argue that Jackson is more racist and segregated today than in 1938.

Anonymous said...

This video is a perfect examples of why we don’t need electronic computers. Everything you saw in that video was designed with pencil, paper, and analog calculators, known as slide rulers.

These people more more physically, mentally, and spiritually healthy simply because they didn’t yet have electronics like computers and television.

Books were treated like they still had value to everyone of every race.

Anonymous said...

Where did all the beautiful buildings go? It's amazing how ugly things got, once Modernist Dogma infected architecture, after World War 2. Those firehouses in the video, and the old airport, are amazing!

This video shows Jackson toward the end of the Great Depression. People were so grateful to have jobs, they worked hard. And they worked WITH PRIDE. Mississippi had already been so devastated by the Boll Wevil, then The Cotton Panic of '25, that when the Great Depression began, few even noticed. Older people have told me that.

Most of the people in that video, had moved to Jackson from all over the state, in search of work. They were so happy to have a chance, and to be taking part in making a great city. The optimism shown in the film, was REAL.

Don Drane said...

A little historical context and accuracy should be appreciated in this discussion, but Kingfish would rather not have that sort of thing.

What's the point of accuracy when you can have emotions, racist posts and heated rhetoric?

The click count rules again.

Anonymous said...

Nostalgia is racist.

Anonymous said...

12:01 Um, each of the immediate surrounding suburbs, Ridgeland, Clinton, Byram (Terry), and Pearl all have high schools that are majority black. But people like 12:01 never like pesky things like facts get into the way of their narrative.

Kingfish said...

Harvey and Lumumba the Younger hired white people all the time. Yarber is the one who did not hire nor appoint whites. CAL appointed the first white member to the airport board in nearly 20 years. He kept Raff and when he passed, he promoted a white employee to take his place. He hired Bob Miller, Jordan, Carla Dazet, and other white employees. Sharon Thames in his administration is white. Harvey hired white folks all the time and appointed them to boards as well. Hell, Rick Hill couldnt get replaced.

Anonymous said...

12:01 and 6:59 both make a point. The school districts named are majority black, but it’s because the black people are fleeing Jackson. Go watch the drop off traffic at Pearl schools. There are mostly Hinds county tags dropping off kids. People did flee Jackson to safer areas and now people stuck in the crime ridden areas of Jackson are sending their kids to school districts in predominantly white residential areas. That is why attendance is down in Jackson schools and the Jackson school district is consolidating schools. 20 years ago Wingfield HS was one of the larger HS in Jackson and now it’s closed. Somebody will definitely come for me because of my comment but it’s true. Follow the statistics.

Anonymous said...

Nonsense, Kingfish. Do you really not have the mental capacity to recognize tokens when they're laid in front of you?

There's a large difference between naming people to useless boards and eight black administrations excluding white folk from a meaningful seat at the table.

You knew that, right?

Anonymous said...

One thing I noticed were the men physically “shoveling” gravel from train cars into dump trucks. Back then there was no equipment for smaller cities that was affordable to perform the work that larger cities with greater economies had. People did what they had to do to get the job done. Even the segment where the asphalt was being laid on a street, it was done by manual labor. I did notice the Lockheed Electra at Hawkins Field and that’s the same type Amelia Earhart flew. I remember my father in law speaking of the swim teams at Livingston Lake and one that he was on. I spoke to an architect who owns an old building from 1890 in downtown and he told me how the bricks were cast in molds. The bricks were placed like an igloo and a fire was built in the center with a tarp over it to create a kiln. There was hardly any access to modern methods and yet these people made do with what they had. They built a great city and expected, and I say expected with emphasis, that this city would not degrade itself in the manner it has today. They are rolling over in their graves. Just an example of how smart they were is the water works at the curve on 55 was built in the 1920’s and it still works to this day…but we all know what it took within the last year to keep it running when it actually would have run another 100 years had anyone cared or gave a damn. The point I’m making is, it’s not a black or white issue. It’s a right or wrong way to do things and right now there are so many things being done wrong it’s pathetic because they make it a black or white issue. Damn the Torpedoes…Full Steam Ahead….that worked one time but it sure as hell didn’t work the last 27 years.

Anonymous said...

I was hoping to find comments that shed light on the people, places and things in the video, sans political commentary etc. Thank you to those with that knowledge for sharing with us. (I wish post with historical info could be bumped to the top).


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Trollfest '07 was such a success that Jackson Jambalaya will once again host Trollfest '09. Catch this great event which will leave NE Jackson & Fondren in flames. Othor Cain and his band, The Black Power Structure headline the night while Sonjay Poontang returns for an encore performance. Former Frank Melton bodyguard Marcus Wright makes his premier appearance at Trollfest singing "I'm a Sweet Transvestite" from "The Rocky Horror Picture Show." Kamikaze will sing his new hit, “How I sold out to da Man.” Robbie Bell again performs: “Mamas, don't let your babies grow up to be Bells” and “Any friend of Ed Peters is a friend of mine”. After the show, Ms. Bell will autograph copies of her mug shot photos. In a salute to “Dancing with the Stars”, Ms. Bell and Hinds County District Attorney Robert Smith will dance the Wango Tango.

Wrestling returns, except this time it will be a Battle Royal with Othor Cain, Ben Allen, Kim Wade, Haley Fisackerly, Alan Lange, and “Big Cat” Donna Ladd all in the ring at the same time. The Battle Royal will be in a steel cage, no time limit, no referee, and the losers must leave town. Marshand Crisler will be the honorary referee (as it gives him a title without actually having to do anything).


Meet KIM Waaaaaade at the Entergy Tent. For five pesos, Kim will sell you a chance to win a deed to a crack house on Ridgeway Street stuffed in the Howard Industries pinata. Don't worry if the pinata is beaten to shreds, as Mr. Wade has Jose, Emmanuel, and Carlos, all illegal immigrants, available as replacements for the it. Upon leaving the Entergy tent, fig leaves will be available in case Entergy literally takes everything you have as part of its Trollfest ticket price adjustment charge.

Donna Ladd of The Jackson Free Press will give several classes on learning how to write. Smearing, writing without factchecking, and reporting only one side of a story will be covered. A donation to pay their taxes will be accepted and she will be signing copies of their former federal tax liens. Ms. Ladd will give a dramatic reading of her two award-winning essays (They received The Jackson Free Press "Best Of" awards.) "Why everything is always about me" and "Why I cover murders better than anyone else in Jackson".

In the spirit of helping those who are less fortunate, Trollfest '09 adopts a cause for which a portion of the proceeds and donations will be donated: Keeping Frank Melton in his home. The “Keep Frank Melton From Being Homeless” booth will sell chances for five dollars to pin the tail on the jackass. John Reeves has graciously volunteered to be the jackass for this honorable excursion into saving Frank's ass. What's an ass between two friends after all? If Mr. Reeves is unable to um, perform, Speaker Billy McCoy has also volunteered as when the word “jackass” was mentioned he immediately ran as fast as he could to sign up.


In order to help clean up the legal profession, Adam Kilgore of the Mississippi Bar will be giving away free, round-trip plane tickets to the North Pole where they keep their bar complaint forms (which are NOT available online). If you don't want to go to the North Pole, you can enjoy Brant Brantley's (of the Mississippi Commission on Judicial Performance) free guided tours of the quicksand field over by High Street where all complaints against judges disappear. If for some reason you are unable to control yourself, never fear; Judge Houston Patton will operate his jail where no lawyers are needed or allowed as you just sit there for minutes... hours.... months...years until he decides he is tired of you sitting in his jail. Do not think Judge Patton is a bad judge however as he plans to serve free Mad Dog 20/20 to all inmates.

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If you get tired come relax at the Fox News Tent. To gain admittance to the VIP section, bring either your Republican Party ID card or a Rebel Flag. Bringing both will entitle you to free drinks.Get your tickets now. Since this is an event for trolls, no ID is required, just bring the hate. Bring the family, Trollfest '07 is for EVERYONE!!!

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