Remembrance in Vicksburg
Although Natchez was left largely unscathed by the Civil War, Union forces heavily bombarded the strategic port of Vicksburg to the north during a 47-day siege that finally resulted in its surrender on July 4, 1863.
The 1,600-acre Vicksburg National Military Park, which includes the nation’s largest Civil War cemetery, encompasses a large swath of the defensive lines along which Union and Confederate troops fought during the siege.
“You can still see the footprint of fortifications,” said ranger Ray Hallem. “The way you see it now is the way it was from May 22 on.”
The 16-mile road through the park passes more than 1,500 monuments.
Prominently situated atop a high hill downtown, Vicksburg’s Old Court House Museum was a major target of Union shelling. It survived and today is filled with thousands of local artifacts and memorabilia.
“It showcases the history and culture of Vicksburg, everything from pre-Colombian through World War II,” said George “Bubba” Bolm, the museum curator and director.
Vicksburg sits on the edge of the Delta region, which gives a special sense of place to Mississippi. “Someone said it begins in the lobby of the Peabody Hotel in Memphis and ends at Catfish Row in Vicksburg,” said Ashley Gaitan, group services manager for the Vicksburg Convention and Visitors Bureau. “We are happy to be part of the Mississippi Delta.”
Birthplace of the Blues
The Delta helped produce one of America’s most distinctive musical genres: the blues. Robert Johnson epitomizes early blues performers who often lived the hard life about which they sang.
“We are the final resting spot for blues legend Robert Johnson, who allegedly sold his soul to the devil,” said Yvonna Lucas, sales and marketing coordinator for the Greenwood Convention and Visitors Bureau. “People come from all over to stand at his grave.”
They also leave numerous items on the grave of Johnson, allegedly poisoned by the jealous husband of an illicit lover. There was a half-full bottle of Wild Turkey bourbon propped on Johnson’s gravestone the day I visited.
Blues legend B.B. King hailed from Indianola, 28 miles west of Greenwood, where a museum tells the story of his rise to international fame. King, who died in May at age 89, is buried on the grounds of the museum.
Back in Greenwood, visitors can take cooking lessons at a downtown building renovated by the Viking Range Corporation and sample wine made just down the street in a restored historic former firehouse at the Winery at Williams Landing.
Finding Faulkner
Another writer who exquisitely captured Mississippi’s sense of place was Nobel laureate William Faulkner, whose preserved Oxford home, Rowan Oaks, gives a great sense of the man as well as the place.
“He lived here from 1930 to 1962,” said Bill Griffith, the curator of the house that is owned by the University of Mississippi. “We interpret his life here at Rowan Oaks. Each room has representative exhibits. Everything on display belonged to the family.”
One of Faulkner’s typewriters sits on the small writing desk, a gift from his mother, that he used for many of his books, one of which he outlined on the wall of his study.
No sense of place in Mississippi would be complete without seeing the influences the town of Tupelo had on the young Elvis Presley, who spent the first 13 years of his life there being exposed to gospel, blues and country music.
The small 15-by-30-foot, sparsely furnished house in which Presley was born in 1935 is preserved at the Elvis Presley Birthplace and Museum, along with the Assembly of God church he attended.
“This is the actual church Elvis went to while he lived in Tupelo,” said Judy, a guide at the site. “This is where he learned to sing and play the guitar. His basic training was here.”
Presley was also influenced by black blues music he heard in the Shake Rag neighborhood of Tupelo, where his family lived for a while.
His mother purchased his first guitar at the downtown Tupelo Hardware Company; an “X” on the original wood floor marks the spot where the 11-year-old Presley stood in front of the guitar case.
After sampling the sense of Mississippi’s scenery, culture and heritage, I could easily see why it has been such fertile ground for world-renowned writers and musicians.
