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© 2004 J.D. Schwalm Introduction Essay for Mississippi 24/7 Up From the Blues By Billy Watkins This is where neighbors in the small town of Columbia used to peer out their windows and watch a young boy walk to the mailbox every day. Up and down the driveway he went, with grace and ease. On his hands. The neighbors would laugh, shake their heads, and mumble, "That little Walter...no tellin' where he's gonna wind up one day." Little Walter-the late Walter Payton-wound up in the National Football League Hall of Fame as one of the greatest running backs in history. This is where men used to gather every morning, in the shade of Oxford's town square, and discuss important things, like whose mule had died or if the bream had bedded yet. After a while, Mr. Bill would excuse himself and walk the half-mile back to his frame house called Rowan Oak. The others would chuckle. "Wonder what he's gonna come up with today?" From the imagination of Mr. Bill-William Faulkner-came short stories and novels like The Sound and the Fury, The Reivers, and Absalom, Absalom!, some of the most revered and studied literature in the world. This is where a 6-year-old boy named Riley watched with wide eyes as the Reverend Archie Fair played the guitar at the Sanctified Church of God and Christ in the Delta town of Indianola. Riley was 12 before he could afford one. Paid $15 for a used red Stella. Bought a book that showed him a few chords and how to tune it. Sixty-six years later, Rolling Stone named Riley "B.B." King the third-greatest guitar player in history. This is Mississippi, the land of rolling pine hills, rich Delta farm land, and a Gulf Coast packed with casinos. Life is slow and easy in towns with names like Hot Coffee, Tutwiler, Alligator, Money, Rolling Fork, Panther Burn, Midnight, Whynot, and Tupelo-birthplace of Elvis Presley. This is where the Blues was born, too, and rightfully so: This is where at least 534 black Americans were lynched between 1882 and 1952, more than in any other state; where NAACP leader Medgar Evers was assassinated in his Jackson driveway in 1963; where, a year later, members of the Ku Klux Klan killed three civil rights workers-Michael Schwerner, Andrew Goodman, and James Chaney-and for years the state never pressed murder charges on anyone. But this is also where the Klan cases have been reopened, and the Evers murder case was solved, finally, with the conviction of a white man, Byron De La Beckwith, who was sentenced in 1994 to life in jail. History books are not kind to Mississippi, but residents-black and white-are determined that future chapters will tell a different story. This is where a troubled past lingers like the haze that comes with 100-degree days, and new generations strive to make things right. Gholson (Noxubee County) native BILLY WATKINS has been a features writer for The Clarion-Ledger in Jackson since 1982. Browse    View All    Up From the Blues    Hearth & Home    Hard at Work    Mississippi at Play    Reason to Believe    Our Town Photos: 116 Photographers: 25 Towns: 48

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