Photo by Nalini Raghavan
Enjoying mid-afternoon Saturday milkshakes in Jackson, this group of young men advised that Brent’s Drug Store, a classic diner that was the location for scenes in the movie “The Help,” gives out diner-appropriate headgear if you just ask.
Particular writers get under our skin. By whatever magical confluence of ideas, observations, language, or kindred spirit cause a reader’s soul to meet a writer’s, once established the connection is a powerful and resonant thing. It is why we return to the works of certain authors again and again, leaning on them to interpret the world around us, lending voice to our own experiences in ways we are powerless to articulate on our own.
Luckily for literary tourists, a weekend spent in Jackson, Mississippi, reveals much about the lives and the literary legacies of two prominent women of letters who chose to call the city home, Eudora Welty and Margaret Walker. There are many sites in Mississippi’s capital city that put these writers’ rich, diverse literary legacy front and center, where visitors can follow in their footsteps, and perhaps bask in whatever residual glow of writerly inspiration gave their work the texture and shape that has made it part of the South’s literary canon.
Sites to Soak Up
{gallery}Galleries/2015/1Jackson0415:::0:0{/gallery} Pulitzer Prize-winning author Eudora Welty lived practically her whole life in Jackson, and that provenance is deeply embedded in the places she invented and the cadence of the characters that moved through the pages of her short stories and novels. In the tried-and-true manner of so many literary greats, she wrote what she knew: “I grew up with an encyclopedic knowledge of the kind of society this is,” she said. “And so I could draw on it, and I knew it, and that’s why I used it. I think that’s invaluable, when you don’t have to worry to get things right. You know how people talk and you know their meanings; you know what they’re saying and what’s behind what they’re saying.”
Of the authors who elicit pilgrimages to the wellspring of their inspiration, Welty’s devotees are particularly fortunate. Eudora Welty and her family moved to their second home, a mock-Tudor Revival at 1119 Pinehurst Street in 1925, when she was sixteen years old and about to graduate from high school. She went away for college; but prompted by her father’s illness, it was not long before Eudora returned to the family home. She remained in Jackson till her death in 2001, at the age of ninety-two. It was here, specifically in her simple, second-floor bedroom on a worked-over typewriter and facing a shelf of photos of friends and colleagues, that she refined each of her pieces of writing.
With great forethought, Welty left her letters, books, photographs, and manuscripts as well as her house and its contents to the Mississippi Department of Archives and History (MDAH). The Eudora Welty House opened to the public in 2006, and for the first few years, tours of her home and garden began in Welty’s garage. A few years later, the MDAH purchased another smaller mock-Tudor home next door, which now comprises administrative offices, permanent and rotating exhibits, and a screening room where visitors are treated to Welty’s exquisitely broad Southern drawl in a priceless twenty-minute film.
Tours are conducted Tuesday through Friday on alternate hours beginning at 9 am; the last tour starts at 3 pm and reservations are required. The tour begins in the exhibit space before moving to the Welty house proper for a thorough exploration of the rooms where Welty clacked away at her typewriter and edited her work using her storied cut-and-pin method. All throughout—stacked on couches and shelves, piled on every flat surface—are her beloved books.
The tail end of the tour is a stroll through the multi-level garden that Welty’s mother, and then she herself, cared for, the highlight of which is the camellia room, a small open green space surrounded by more than thirty varieties of camellias. “It is one of the most intact literary homes in the country,” said Bridget Edwards, director of the Welty House. “It’s a remarkable gift to the citizens of the state.”
If that’s not enough, the museum has also designed a driving tour of the city, a thirty-minute route through Welty’s old haunts congregated around downtown Jackson: her elementary and high schools, the Lamar Life Building whose construction her father oversaw, her church, and even her gravesite.
A contemporary of Welty’s, though much less well-known, Margaret Walker was an African American poet who lived in Mississippi’s capital city during the same period as Welty. Six years Welty’s junior, Walker was not originally from Jackson but moved there when she earned a position teaching in the English department at Jackson State University, the city’s historic black college. Though Walker’s biographer, Carolyn Brown, now works hard to make it otherwise, Walker and her work have been relatively overlooked. Writing mostly poetry, she produced the bulk of her output during the civil rights era. She also wrote one novel, Jubilee, a neo-slave narrative based on stories passed down from her maternal grandmother.
In contrast to the intimate scenes of Welty’s everyday life, Walker’s mark on Jackson took the form of an institution. In the oldest building on the Jackson University campus, Walker founded what she called The Institute for the Study of the History, Life, and Culture of Black People in 1968. “It was one of the first black studies departments in the country,” explained Brown. Now called the Margaret Walker Center, it is there that a museum and renowned archive have been established to preserve and interpret African American history and culture.
A compelling third option suggested by Brown is to visit and/or request a tour of the modest home of Medgar Evers, the civil rights activist who was assassinated in the driveway of his home in 1963. His murder affected both women deeply, and they each responded through writing. Welty, on the same day as Evers’ murder, was compelled to write a piece called “Where Is the Voice Coming From?” told from the point of view of the then unknown killer. While not knowing the actual identity of the killer, Welty said she knew the type of person he was, his mindset, and the words spilled out. Walker’s response was to write a poem titled “Micah,” which appeared in her collection Prophets for a New Day in which civil rights martyrs are presented as biblical prophets.
Funky Fondren
“Perhaps it is the sense of place that gives us the belief that passionate things, in some essence, endure. Whatever is significant and whatever is tragic in its story live as long as the place does, though they are unseen, and the new life will be built upon these things—regardless of commerce and the way of rivers and roads, and other vagrancies.” —Eudora Welty
There is a synergy in Fondren that has picked up marked momentum even in just the past year, and the neighborhood is now a bonafide dining destination. One former Jacksonite recommended a pinball approach to Fondren, where lunch, a bit of neighborhood browsing, pre-dinner cocktails, dinner proper, and post-grub digestifs can all be had at different establishments. Luckily, in Fondren, this type of musical dining only requires crossing a street or two. Here’s how one such plan could go:
Award-winning barbecue and local brews are on order at the Pig & Pint where you can stop for lunch. The inside of the shop is smallish, but the outdoor patio provides plenty of communal dining space at long picnic tables. The décor is rustic, with homemade barbecue sauces and utensils provided in metal buckets and paper towels impaled on roughly welded metal piping. The three sauces cover the classics: there is the Carolina sweet mustard, a sweet Mississippi red sauce, and for the tougher-tongued, a vinegary sweet-potato habanero.
A stroll down the street delivers you to dessert, and there are so many options. Campbell’s Bakery serves its famous tea cakes from its original 1950s location. The tea cakes are different from the South Louisiana version in that they are lemon-infused, buttery glazed cookies rather than sweet cakes. Be sure to tell them it is your first time, because newbies get a tea cake on the house. You could also head to La Brioche, opened last fall, an authentic patisserie that serves delectable confections with an international flair, reflecting the origins and travels of its Argentinian owners. Or keep it classic at Brent’s Drug Store, a vintage mid-century diner that looks like a movie set, which is probably why it was a location used in the film The Help. Originally a drugstore cum soda shop built in 1946, Brent’s recently underwent renovations, reopening its doors last fall with turquoise booths and tables expanded into its former pharmacy area. One friendly waitress offered up an off-the-menu treat: a Thin Mint milk shake made with house-churned ice cream; impossible to turn down.
In its former storage room, Brent’s also houses a “speakeasy” lounge called The Apothecary at Brent’s Drugs, specializing in pre-Prohibition cocktails. That could be the location for either a pre- or post-dinner drink, alternated with CAET, a fine-wine bar and tasting room that also opened last year. CAET is headed by James Beard-nominated chef Derek Emerson and his wife Jennifer. The couple also own Walker’s Drive-In, another Fondren favorite and a stone’s throw from CAET.
Saltine Oyster Bar joined the neighborhood last September, taking up residence in the re-purposed Duling School building, a former grade school that was turned into a collection of businesses and an event venue. Grab some raw, fried, or wood-fired oysters and a tipple at the bar or have a seat and explore Chef Jesse Houston’s inventive menu. In a comfortable, chic dining room that includes tips of the hat to the school-room setting (menus presented in red manila folders, chalkboard signs, and a bar faced with lockers), diners can order from the familiar to the far-out: skillet cornbread or catfish and caviar; Craig’s oyster stew or spaghetti & meatballs (squid-ink-colored capellini nero with lamb meatballs); kale salad or PB & J (crispy pork belly, pepper jelly, and boiled peanuts).
You may wish, and I recommend you do, to extend the literary theme of the trip by dropping in to Lemuria Books, a rare, independent bookstore that Welty herself supported. This could be your Sunday excursion, as the bookstore and downstairs’ Broad Street Baking Company & Cafe are both open in the morning. An espresso and the leisurely perusal of a good book are the makings of a perfect morning and a satisfying denouement to this literary pilgrimage.
Details Details. Details.
The Eudora Welty Foundation
Margaret Walker Center
jsums.edu/margaretwalkercenter
Carolyn Brown wrote A Daring Life: A Biography of Eudora Welty and Song of My Life: A Biography of Margaret Walker.
Medgar Evers House
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