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hello everyone i'm chris goodwin with the mississippi department of archives and history welcome to this week's streaming only histories lunch program which is sponsored by the john and lucy shackleford charitable fund of the community foundation for mississippi we're working safely with the skeleton crew from our home the craig h nielsen auditorium in the museum of mississippi history and mississippi civil rights museum we're also easing back into in-person events so we want to invite you to join us here tomorrow from 5 to 7 pm for history happy hour a physically distanced evening of live jazz by saxophonist tiger rogers and conversations inspired by topics in the museums cash bar free refreshments and admission for more information visit the museum of mississippi history or mississippi's civil rights museum facebook page and then tune in next week when we'll be joined by our old friend richard grant who will discuss his new book on natchez the deepest south of all this year marks tupelo's 150th birthday and to discuss the history of that city we have with us carla faulkner lisa faulkner sahia smith and boyd yarber carla faulkner retired last year from northeast mississippi community college where she served as history instructor and chair of the division of social behavioral and applied sciences lisha faulkner is curator of the oren dunn city museum in tupelo she writes a weekly column about tupelo's history for the northeast mississippi daily journal sahaya smith is director of operations and assistant curator at the orendon city museum a former educator smith's family has lived in the tupelo area since the late 19th century and boyd yarbrough is president of the orendon museum advisory board he is an expert on the railroad history of tupelo thank you all for being with us today thank you thank you thank you and we would like to bring you greetings from tupelo yes please [Music] there's definitely a spirit here in tupelo and a pride in the town in its people and i think that's one thing that's kept us going so long we call it the tupelo spirit it's a spirit of cooperation it's a spirit of trying to get things done and that really coalesced and came together after the tornado of 1936 when most of the city was destroyed and over 200 people died in that tornado you saw then the city of tupelo our leaders the families they rolled up their sleeves and they said we're going to rebuild and that went into the 1940s and 50s and 60s as you got into all the different things that challenged cities particularly in the southeastern united states time and time again you saw the city of tupelo outperform other cities tuple has never been afraid to tackle a problem in a way that's best for the community not just for one side that spirit of collaboration cooperation exists here this is a unique city unique people they all work together pull the same direction and that's why this town is so successful you know another thing i think that sets duplo apart i don't think it's ever just sat down and said we've done it and that's all we need to do there were always volunteers business leaders who were looking for the next big thing we see the elvis statue in fair part and we celebrate that but it's the everyday folks are what makes tupelo it's those people all interwoven together that really make tupelo what it is that's what i love about truffle that feeling of everyone knows each other that's a good feeling and being part of the community where you can give back and you can also get back i mean there's so much that troop has given us i don't even think i can quite give back as much as it's given us there's a lot of hospitality true hospitality people here that really care and are trying to do the best for each other when i first come to jupiter area i get so much hong kong from neighbors welcome to people what can i do for you that was just amazing overwhelming joy to get to know each other there's always going to be someone there with a casserole or someone to check in on you there's always the support that tupelo brings to its community i want my children to be raised with those same values and beliefs and i look forward to helping to be one of those next generation leaders to help teach that to my children and future children those are the kinds of things that you don't want to leave behind you want to take those forward and incorporate them into whatever new things that come along because you got to have a firm foundation on which to build the new part and if you don't bring those things forward with you then you've messed up where this city is today it's because of all these stories that we have in the past that is part of your dna is the stories of where you came from it's a love story of how the people who live in this community love this community and how they have loved it enough to want to make it better not just let it sit there but they love it enough that they want to make it better tuple's been a wonderful place it's fabulous today and i hope it stays that way it's been a joy for me to live here this will always be my home even if i pack my bags up tomorrow and move a thousand miles away i will always have a connection to tupelo and i feel like my heart will always draw me back here we've have a long history of great leadership in the community and they have established some pillars of development and progression that we're all benefiting from today and our responsibility is to continue that progress and i see it happening every day i haven't seen many cities that has the support that we have here now i'm telling you if you want to be a part of it you have the opportunity i love tupelo i am tua that tupelo spirit runs through me so i love it i want to leave tupelo better than what i found it i would like to look back 150 years from now look down and just smile and say wow they got it they got it [Music] now it would take all afternoon of a conversation to tell you all of duplo's stories what we're going to try to do is boil them down into some nuggets and i think because it's the 150th we need to start with void because he knows how tupelo got its name and the folks who gave to blow its name well thank you lisha you know the railroad industry was only about 20 years old when some promoters from mobile said we need more business in our community and we want to build a railroad to the fertile ohio river valley and it just so happened that they positioned that railroad through a nondescript portion of north mississippi on the fulton pontotoc road and right there is where tupelo began with the mobile and ohio railroad and boyd the it was the construction persons who gave us the name tupelo was as a matter of fact the town was first called gum pond and they wanted a more romantic name so they renamed the community tupelo after all of the low-lying areas had tupelo gum trees located throughout and so they gave it that romantic name as a matter of fact there was a little hamlet called harrisburg about three miles to the west of tupelo and they just pretty much picked up lock stock and barrel and moved to the railroad and created our community that's where it started there was a time when harrisburg played a major part in tupelo history as well carla yes and certainly that's true for the civil war you know shelby foote says that the civil war produced two geniuses one of them was abraham lincoln for the north and for the south it was none other than nathan bedford forest well tupelo is the place where the union finally managed to hand forest a major defeat tupelo had been a fairly minor role in the civil war up until the summer of 1864 and to understand tupelo's role in you've got to look at the big picture because sherman had invaded georgia was ravaging georgia but sherman was totally dependent on a supply line that ran from nashville to chattanooga and his biggest worry was that nathan bedford forest and his cavalry were going to come into tennessee and attack that supply line and so the union sent troops into mississippi with the express purpose of keeping nathan bedford forest in mississippi the first campaign met at battle at bryce's crossroads in baldwin and was a horrible defeat for the union even though the union forces far outnumbered forest for his completely outmaneuvered amount general and general sturgis for the north had to limp back into memphis so the next general that gets sent out is general a.j smith and he is keenly aware that he's being sent to do what everybody else has failed at which is defeat force so he studied everybody else he's seen what their mistakes are and he heads into mississippi but he does a couple of things a little different one is he moves at a very slow pace in doing so he reserved the strength of his troops in that july heat of 1864. and secondly by moving slowly and in a little bit unpredictable way he kept forest and general stephen d lee guessing as to where he was going to be and they kept miscalculating so they're sending their troops here because oh they would think he's going to columbus and then oh no he's headed towards oklahoma and they have worn their troops out when aj smith and his union troops get about two miles or three miles out of tupelo at harrisburg he sees the defensive spot that he wants and he sets in for battle and ends up in a two-day battle that is just a strong wind for the north however he doesn't have the ammunition he doesn't have the rations to stay in tupelo it also wasn't his goal to occupy tupelo his goal was to keep forest pinned down and to uh keep for to keep forest pinned down and to hand force to defeat he's done that and so 24 hours after his win he heads back towards memphis and his supplies in the process the confederates are able to move in take the city and go we won we won well they only won if that had been the goal of the battle and as national park historian tom parson points out in his excellent study of the battle called work for giants that was not the goal at all a couple of interesting things lisa what uh sherman did not know is that he had an ally in keeping forest pinned down and that ally was none other than confederate president davis who wanted to keep forest defending his home state and that victory in tupelo had to be particularly sweet for the brigade of united states colored troops that were fighting with smith they had really wanted to give forest revenge at bryce's crossroads for the horrible massacre of 300 black troops at fort pillow tennessee the previous april of course they had failed at bryce's crossroads and so that made that win at tupelo even sweeter but yeah by the end of the civil war tupelo looked like much of the rest of the south buildings were in ruins their most valuable economic resource boy the railroad has been destroyed uh like 13 miles of it is out there about the only thing they've got left is rich fertile farmland you know that brings us back to a recurring theme through tuples history and that's when adversity hits tupelo rises and boyd what happened shortly after the civil war as tupelo began to rebuild well they started creating the industries in the community associated along with the mno that actually came through about 1857 but uh between the time of the of the railroad coming through and the uh the civil war the tupelo prospered with uh with a couple of hotels and some saloons oh it was wild and wooly it was a good time to people though but uh um after the civil war the tupelo kind of languished a little bit until there was another railroad that came through in like 18 57 two years i mean 1887 about 20 years after it was the kansas city memphis and birmingham railroad which gave actually access out of tupelo and into tupelo a north-south and east-west direction which really really enhanced and spurred the growth of our community and sahai you've done some research into this what were some of the industries that like people's bank well i mean you had you had the people's bank of course which was coming up in the late 19th century and it became uh really a part of the community and it marketed itself as the people's bank you also had the um creation of the cotton mill and later the garment factories that came up around the cotton mill and you had agriculture this concept of diversification comes up and where you had during that period of time in the south you had crop failures you had the boll weevil you had poor farming techniques and so you know they're really pushing for local businessmen begin to really look at what can we do differently and they brought in uh jersey cows jersey cows are an interesting story because the jersey cows that came in and the oren dunn city museum rests on an old jersey cow farm rex reed and nail reid's farm and they came from the isle of jersey uh their it grew and grew and grew and um then later on in 29 it was just absolutely amazing how farmers and the dairy industry incarnation comes in and builds the carnation plant and then world war ii occurs and i'm jumping a little ahead here but i think it's interesting because when the nazis took over the isle of jersey they ate the cows and they fed the prisoners gruel but they ate the cows and so at one point i know it's like we laugh about this at the museum and then there were no more jersey cows or very few on the isle of jersey and society what happens well uh some of the leading jersey cow farmers get together and they send some of the best stock jersey cows back to jersey isle with a with a insemination program to be able to revitalize the jersey cows there in jersey isle and so i always like to tell people so the uh so the cows on jersey aisle they're actually tupelo jersey cows so there you go the world over well you know the the enhancement of tupelo it was really based on diversification of the agricultural industry because the fertilizer plant that we created that sent fertilizer throughout the whole southern region of the united states was in tupelo one of the plants and then you mentioned the the creamery but uh than in the cotton meal all those really were to try to make the farmer more prosperous and we had a pretty major egg in poultry business uh centered around tupelo as well early on too now something else happened though in 33 that really really put tupelo on the map a year later sahaya well uh you know i think that it's interesting because i really think that we have to kind of look back um at uh you've got the 1930s you've got uh the great depression uh and mississippi was the bottom of the barrel i mean it was you know it was poor poor poor uh you know i tell people i'm like you know people my family were so poor they didn't know there was a great depression but in 1932 uh president franklin delano roosevelt was elected and in 1933 just a few months after he was elected he passed the first new deal now in that first new deal there was something called the tennessee valley authority act now um the tennessee valley authority act was co-authored with congressman johnny rankin and uh he was really promoting this rural electrification and so he co-authored this bill and it passed through the new deal and the goal of the tennessee valley authority had several different goals one was to the south in particular was suffering from deforestation and so one of the goals was to stop this deforestation and to replant trees another of the plant of the goals was to teach farmers better farming techniques because the soil was stripped it was stripped it was running into the river and on top of that the tennessee river was not friendly to travel and so it what the tennessee valley authority did was set up a system of dams all along the tennessee river making it easier for boats to travel through shipments to travel through and of course also jobs and then finally electricity this was a big deal because this is one of the first programs where you have this concept of the government controlling a utility and because mississippi and the ingenuity with its businessmen through economics as well as um congressman rankin um tupelo became the first city to sign contracts with tva becoming tva's first city all right i'm going to stop you there because there's an important side story here and that's a fella came along about that time and he bought a newspape that was nearly bankrupt and it had been a weekly newspaper and his name was george mclean carla talk a little bit about the ideas of george mclean you know george mclean uh is really a bit of an unusual figure to find in mississippi his ideas were based first of all in christianity which of course that's not surprising but he has studied philosophy and he has really become uh convinced that his true mission in life is to be the servant leader is to try to improve mississippi from the common people up he's far less interested in connecting with the wealthy except to motivate the wealthy to improve things for everybody and that that's the secret he uses the newspaper as a platform to build that kind of support and he did at times his ideas were far enough out that he did at times run into friction but he was a consensus builder and talking about that and working from the ground up that was highlighted i think by 1934 and a visit in november from a special couple sia okay so back to my story of the tva and we will do this all right so tupelo was really a nexus of new deal programs not only did you have tva but you had the civilian conservation corps working out of um camp johnny rankin over in toshimingo or i'm sorry tom bigby you also had interesting you had the wpa sending archaeologists over to study ikea in the chickasaw village and you also had the industrial subsistence homesteads program that was going on so you had a lot going on well in 1934 we get a visit from the man himself franklin delano roosevelt and his wife eleanor roosevelt and so uh it was really it was a really exciting time for tupelo everybody came out to see him and when they came in they came in and went directly to one of the programs that i just mentioned and it was this industrial substance homestead program what's really interesting about this program is um there was only five of these communities that were planned in mississippi and let's see if i can get them all right there was laurel mccomb hattiesburg there was meridian meridian thank you and tupelo and tupelo tupelo's community when it was built was um the uh it was the the poster child for these communities to to to promote these communities it had uh they had electricity so they had uh appliances that were stocked with them including refrigerators iron stoves there was also they were built on this small on small acreages and the concept of it was to um put together because remember we're in the middle of the great depression but it was you have industrialization that's building in tupelo with the cotton mill and so the substance farming to be able to subsidize their um what they were bringing in through farming so you would make money at the at the meals but then you would turn around and you would also be growing your own food and so you know the idea of course was to subsidize what they were not making at the meal so um and this was a huge project for eleanor roosevelt she had started it off in west virginia and so she was really looking forward to going to these homes and seeing these homes so this was where they went first now it's interesting because the ladies of tupelo and the ladies at tupelo are wonderful and i remember this from an oral history was it janelle mccombe or uh i've forgotten now but anyway the ladies of tupelo went into these houses now the first families of the in these houses had only moved in the friday before the roosevelts came on sunday morning uh by the way boyd what was the name of the car they arrived in you tell me the ponce de leon oh the railroad cars yeah yes and that was a special kind of it was a special railroad car uh owned by the southern railroad but exclusively used by the president and where is the engine that pulled well that very engine is aimery right now it is it is part of their amory railroad exhibit exactly but back to our story so the ladies of tupelo fixed up two of the houses that had not been moved into so that eleanor roosevelt would have these nice houses to go into mrs roosevelt being mrs roosevelt wanted to go and be with the folks who were there on the ground living in the houses the name of the family it was jc barron's family and the other day when we were researching some of this history sahaya found some of the relatives of the family that was first visited sahai well i mean today's access to information i was able to track them down and they were really really excited because they you know they had lost that part of their history and so we were able to uh reconnect with them to kind of get an inside story uh they were at uh what was it um they're lot uh was where they were at so um and they got their picture taken they were really excited with the dog they had to have the dog in the picture unfortunately we don't have a picture of that though so well you know when tupelo first uh got the electricity they created their own with an electrical plant in tupelo in town and then went with mississippi power but when they got tennessee valley authority electricity their rates dropped by half so that didn't prove the economy of the people in town just a great deal right there i think that's interesting um because you know when we look at what is left of the new deal in as it pertains to chipotle i mean tva is still a huge huge part of tupelo electricity jobs yeah industry absolutely sure sure well the other thing is today tva supports our stem projects in our school i mean look at milam yeah i mean we benefit so much from tva i'm going to go back though to the homestead houses and after they left the homestead houses which by the way when they pulled up to the places where the homestead houses were the uh youth and men from the ccc stood by the road and saluted them which you know was just really cool but they got more honor than that when they came back through because this was five miles north of town as town was at the time when they came back through and headed to robbins field which is on east jackson street in tupelo and it's still there and as they were driving up green street well kids from carver african-american kids the band played america people were waving signs but they weren't allowed among the 35 000 that were at robbins field instead he gave a great speech though there um that story of african americans has not been told much that area of tupelo and we had one big example now that we've tried to correct carla can you sort of lead us into the issues there the african-american community was much like you see in much of else in mississippi is very low-paying jobs very little opportunity the literacy rate was disastrous and the city and partly mclean recognized the need that if that situation's going to change there's got to be educa you know there's got to be better education and so the city recruits an educator am strange to come in and he really turns things around now so you've done some research on that what specifically that a.m strange do that you will never hear of again well he first of all he was belovedly called prof for professor for professor and um but he had his kids because you know he didn't even though the city council supported you know supported the fact they want to bring him in they did not fund any of the educational programs or provide him assistance in facilities and they needed a new school and so to be able to build this school without any funding he had his kids bring a brick to school every day until the buildings were built and then you have carvings there's like six buildings yeah i mean yeah six buildings without any financial support from the city and that was that was at a time a brick at a time now all that nearly came to an end on a palm sunday in 1936. what a disaster what a disaster i mean we had a school that was damaged you know about that because you've worked you've worked that at our museums yeah so okay in the evening or in march um was it april april sorry it was april um nine o'clock in the evening on sunday evening uh the clouds came in the wind was blowing and you know how older people when i thought they're like oh there's a storm coming there's some weather we're going to have some weather well there was definitely some weather that came through and unlike today where we have we could have anywhere between 20 10 to 20 minutes before i mean we know when some bad weather is coming through and we we get warnings we get warnings from outside whenever you have the tornado warnings going off you get alerts from your phone and back then they didn't have that and so the only thing that they had was that feeling in their bones and so many people felt it and it began to blow in and the storm came through and it hit tupelo so quickly most people had no clue what was going on a lot of people were going coming back from church uh they had been visiting their family remember it's sunday evening and the storm comes up and blows through tupelo destroying over half the city the the bottom of the cyclone was approximately a mile wide um this was before they measured the size of storms based on their destruction path but after the destruction path and after they began to look at it it was definitely an f5 tornado that tore through tupelo afterwards now this was a multi-state storm and so hundreds over over 400 people were killed in multiple states however over 250 over 200 this is just what we know about over 250 people were killed just in tupelo now one of the areas hardest hit was the part what we know today is park hill um above uh gumtree pond which had been a resort area and whole houses with people in them uh were blown into the pond yes and you know during that tornado uh most of the damage was in the residential areas so you know it caught all those people by surprise and after the storm uh parents and children were separated sometimes for weeks because they were scattered out to all different communities as they were trying to be attended to well in the lyric theater i think was set up as a hospital even the popcorn popper was used to sterilize medical equipment just to give an idea of the sheer destruction as well the very first people that were killed in tupelo were on the western side of tupelo and it was a family of 13. the boroughs completely within a matter of seconds wiped out the entire family but as usual tupelo recovers that's what nailed the tupelo spirit i think was that tornado was that's when all the folks came together and said we're going to build back better than we've had so i think that's and again a big part of building back better was george mclean he led the merchants the bankers he was with everyone particularly in education particularly in education but it was also a spirit of giving and as he they started forming committees to address and and organizations to address development there was a rule with mclean and that was you didn't send a proxy you know it doesn't matter that you're the ceo you're the one that's supposed to be there and be there giving and so part of doing business in tupelo became also that you found time you budgeted time you devoted part of your time to building the city itself and that spirit of the idea that if you're going to be working in tupelo you also give back to tupelo prevails today well i think he came up with the concept of we had a chamber of commerce but he wanted something more than just a business chamber wanted something to address educational and of cultural needs and all so they came together and devised the community development it was and it was that spirit of regionalism of joining together of service that resulted in not too many years ago something called the pull alliance which developed a spot at blue springs and we have toyota manufacturing mississippi today because of that shared experience because of that service and you know i was talking yesterday to some one with the united way and we don't have figures for this yet but it is believed that there are more non-profits in tupelo that spread a wider diverse group of people than um anywhere else in the state of mississippi but it's important i think to stress that our united way is not just united way of tupelo it's united way of northeast mississippi again tupelo has taken a regional approach that it's not just what's good for tupelo it's what's good for the region and that benefits the city our population today is around 37 000 but it's about twice that during the day when you have everybody there who works in the city so we're we're a regional center we look like a larger city than we are because of the people who were there but it's that regional approach same thing with boys and girls club it's boys and girls club of north mississippi and you know in their fundraiser which had to go virtual this year it they raised 259 000 you know you know that the regional aspect you're talking about it goes back really to the early 1900s like 1910 and 11 when tupelo created and started the first paved highways in mississippi so that they could get their agricultural products that's an excellent point because that transportation was key you know i want to play off something carl you said and that's how tupelo may be small in population but expands in other areas and we've got to recognize that in 36 when the tornado came through there was a little boy living in a little shack yeah with his mama and daddy and it's really interesting that if you look at the story of elvis presley and if you didn't catch the reference that's that's who it is that when you look at that story of elvis presley that he really mirrors the american story and the tupelo story you know he was born in a two-room shotgun shack mama was working in the meals daddy you know the family was impoverished and they never thrive through those years and they have to finally hightail it to uh memphis in uh financial and probably legal troubles so it is it it reflects what was happening in the nation in that time but sahaya elvis isn't the only successful cultural art story that evolves out of tupelo even though he came back in 56 and turned everybody on with and that was the first live broadcast by welo that's right but go ahead tell us about some other rockabilly well i mean you had um jump uh what was it jumping jumping jeans simmons yep no um i think that when we talk about music um we can and back to elvis and even you know some of the others growing up around there we take it back to shake rack and the african-american community where that was really where they were playing music on the side you know out from their homes and on the corners and everything so and then there's lee williams and you know he is known all over europe and all with the in the united states with the gospel music guy hovis guy hovis of lawrence bubbly fame but alicia we also can't forget that the music is not just the music of the people that we tupelo has it's one of the smallest cities to have a fully professional orchestra and again back to the fact that it's a regional approach it used to be the tupelo symphony but today it's the northeast mississippi symphony and people are often quite surprised at the quality of the music provided by the symphony and tupelo but we're more than music too i mean look at our arts there's a sally keppel and gumtree art museum they just the theater the the theater yes and um you know there's a group i have to mention uh is it west of shake rack yeah west of shake rag is an improv group and uh great fun uh and so again we've got major drama presentations downtown in the old lyric theater but out at the lynx center which is the old harrisburg baptist church building that is now a cultural arts center you've got poetry readings you've got west of shake rag that does great improv nights and monthly music mixes and tupelo is also proud of the fact that during the summer there's outdoor concerts that are totally free they're in city downtown main street that's right kovitz kind of messed us up with that but debbie brandenburg does a mighty mighty job to uh and and her group to bring people in and of course we have the elvis festival sahaya i want to move to another aspect of of living as mayor jason shelton says making tupelo too good to leave and that's we have a heck of a park and rec program and some state-of-the-art facilities oh eah i mean i think that really with our park and rex department just this weekend we've got how many teams is 112 222 122 softball teams coming in for a tournament we also have um the new aquatics facility and i say it's new aqua aquatics facility but um i think that it's we're on our fifth year now um but it is an indoor uh olympic sized uh swimming pool with an exercise we call it the elvis pool because there's a a picture of elvis side of elvis face over it so we call it the elvis pool we have hold what i think is one of the most important programs that we have is called little ripples and what chipolo has done is it has uh in the aquatic center with parks and rec it has uh teamed up with the um elementary schools so both first grade and second graders get a week of free swim lessons during the fall and spring so and that's something i want to move back to is working the public private partnership with our schools you know tupelo high school is one of the largest if not the largest in the state of mississippi and it's you always see as our superintendent dr rob pico says one single heartbeat we're working together you know that was even at a time when tupelo maybe couldn't have worked together and that was in 68 when there was so-called school choice there was a fellow there by the name of frank dowsing jr and he was outstanding he was academically outstanding he stepped on a football field and i think jack reed jr once wrote that the first pass he threw to this walk on he scored a touchdown 80 yard touchdown yes 80 yard touchdown and then he was one of the first two african americans recruited by mississippi state university and this is one at a time when the state's in turmoil and in 72 by the way he played with rocky felker who came down to the museum and recalled those days last february but he in 72 the students of mississippi state university thought so much of him that they elected in mr msu you know with stories like that wow and and with this working with the schools i mean this this is amazing it's no wonder that we've been named or earned the title of all america city not once well it was really important not twice i mean five times five times it was important that our our city leaders found that public education was important and so it was stayed public for such a long time which increased the value and education of our students too well and they avoided in those years a segregation academy and that was done through very intentional leadership on both the african-american and the white community i think that's interesting carla because as a product of uh the tupelo school system um you know growing up i you know i went through school and you know you have what you considered normal and then when i went other places down south they were segregated and it was i was like what is this i do not understand this what's going on you know well you know it was the dealing with desegregation and and we had our hiccups in our definitely for sure uh but in 67 it was our dealing with our coming together our ability to come together and say i agree to disagree let's work this out that we earned our first all-america city designation and the first southern city to do so and the first southern city to do so but that's not to say there weren't hiccups in 78 there was major conflict over a police beating and a lot of racial tension but when the clan tried to move in the cdf took a united stand at one of their banquets with like a thousand people there there was a proposal introduced that the clan i don't know i remember the wording but the clan would not be tolerated basically and they asked who agreed and almost in unison those thousand people stood up you know there's not a place for the clan in this community even when we're having some conflicts you know guys and i know we're about to wind up so we'll make this one short but what are we going to look like is it's like aaron washington said what are we going to look like 150 years from now what's going to be the legacy what what's going to be our story in another 150 years where are we going i'm still looking forward alicia to a community where it's walkable and that people can visit openly with one another and have conversations of all type of topics that we've been kind of talking about today and we've got to continue to work on the affordable housing one of the issues and challenges that tupelo definitely faces is affordable housing and it's it's a struggle to deal with it but if we're going to have that kind of community and a community like george mclean envisioned where everybody matters affordable housing is key i think that uh education and maintaining um what we have with inclusiveness and um you know really being strong and keeping our education to strong so that we don't have uh segregated we don't create segregation within our school systems you know one of the things i'm proud of in tupelo is the way that we involve our immigrant community we have a surprising amount of diversity and we've got esl classes and we've got el centro to provide support for children after school we do a celebration of cultures that type of thing but i think in 150 years we're going to see even more diversity and i think that's that's going to be fun and exciting to see that city with that kind of diversity in it you know and i think we're going to see more exciting you know when jason shelton came in as mayor he was the first democrat in forever and the first mayor from east tupelo and the youngest mayor we've had and you know he really he promised us events and by george i mean you know i've sat out there at fair park and watched a couple of ball games too i've enjoyed the the music uh i've enjoyed being around people and i think i look forward to more interaction more people more doing things greater access and i'd like to if if i could thank cvb for making us possible today they they took the bull by the horns on this 150th celebration and covet messed it up a little bit but neil and company survived and i'd also like to thank them for the video that carolyn perkins in particularly had a big hand in we have some questions we are almost top of the hour but let's see if we can get to these quickly uh one is what is the significance of the natchez trace to tupelo well the natchez phrase it was a trade route i guess dating back to the 13 1400s for the indians that the native americans that traveled through our community and through through the mid-south so uh and then it became a national road you know once mississippi became a territory in a in a state uh and uh after other roads were created it kind of came out of it came into disuse but now it's a great great tourism attractor for north mississippi we also have the natchez trace headquarters there in tupelo which hosts the archives for the natchez trace as well as the homesteads that i was just talking about and how many of those are still standing uh currently there are approximately what 15 still standing we what's great about those homesteads is they are the best example remaining of the original architecture and they um you know they belong to uh the natchez trace um but they also are in danger of some of them being torn down um so you know um i know that they're trying to save a number of them but we may actually end up losing some diane williams has questions about two museums i'll just sort of ask the toyota museum and the health museum well the health museum is basically a children's museum and it allows children to go in and hands-on experiences learn about their bodies and healthy eating and that type of thing called health works health works this is the name correct um i don't toyota museum is she talking about the automobile museum if so it has been liquidated yeah and the money going the money going to the schools that's right into education in typical tupelo style we have also just had a wealthy uh collector collector who wield his entire collection for the rehab center again that tupelo spirit of giving toyota is a great benefactor for our community too they fund a lot of projects throughout exactly yeah trisha mae haynes asks were there any grassroots organizations that helped facilitate the desegregation in schools well i would go back to john ditmer's book local people and i would say local people uh on both sides uh one last question can y'all say a few words about the revitalization of the downtown that began early in the early 21st century and has continued through oh wow it's an exciting day it really is i mean and a lot of this has been the work of downtown main street association debbie brandenburg i mean she has along with the city council and of course mayor shelton and pat faulkner the uh city plan city planning planner and um i mean wow a few vacancies in any of the buildings and then the upper floors are always being converted into apartments and condominiums in fact in the fair park district which is a new and exciting part of the downtown area where city hall is they're now in the midst of constructing three major buildings just in the fair park district which will host retail and apartments but also great restaurants some artwork we love it you say one word we were expecting one more panelist today she was unable to come juanita gambrell floyd was only unable to come she her duties at create kept her too busy so and we miss her because she is a vital part of the museum association and we didn't even mention korea and we didn't mention creators in here going how did we do this without and create that is the creation of george george mclean and again a regional approach all the all the counties served by the northeast mississippi daily journal are also served by create and can get grants through them well there's never enough time especially to go through the history of the city as rich as tupelos but we appreciate you all coming down being here we appreciate what you all have done to commemorate the 150th anniversary of it uh we thank you all for watching and don't forget to join us here tomorrow if you can for the history happy hour and tune back in next week for richard grant talking about his new book on natchez thank you all for being with us today thank you are we off are we off you