Smith Park Fence

In the original 1820's map for Jackson, roads were set up on a square grid pattern, starting with the intersection of Capitol Street and State Street in front of the old Capitol building and extending west toward Raymond and Clinton.  Livingston Park, the future site of the Battle of Jackson, was on the Western border of the city.   The northern border was the highway we now call Woodrow Wilson, with the farm that became the Jackson College for Negros and then Millsaps College on the very northernmost border.  The state Sanitarium, now UMC, was just outside of the city limits.

In the original plan for the city, every few squares on the grid were left green to beautify the city.  While done with pure intention, this plan irritated business owners because people would use these green patches to pasture their mules and cows.

Just before the Civil War, considering its position near the Methodist Cemetary (now Galloway Sanctuary) and one of the state's only Catholic churches, a furniture dealer named James Smith donated $100 to erect a castiron fence around one of the greenspace parks to keep the mules and cows out, which was later downgraded to a wooden fence when future donations didn't materialize.  In gratitude for this enormous sum of money, the city named the park after him, and it is today still called Smith Park.  

I've tried several times to find photographs of the fence before it was torn down and maybe some information on why it was torn down, without much luck.  Smith Park occupies a significant space in Mississippi history.  Some of it isn't talked about very often because, for some time, it was one of the only places where gay men could meet, more or less in secret, without considerable harassment, although there was some.  

One of the problems I have with the whole "give up on Jackson" crowd is they'll be losing so much remarkable and varied history.  There was about a twenty-year period, starting in the mid-70s, when business leaders in Jackson began tearing down sites that were significant to the civil rights movement, replacing them with modern buildings, and completely repurposing the site.   This is why you have so many "Civil Rights Trail" signs where there is no building.

All of the men who made these decisions are gone now.  Most of them were pretty legendary.  They believed the best way for Jackson to get beyond the racial strife of the sixties was to get beyond it and act, almost like it never happened.  While I respect their efforts and their point of view, I don't believe that's the best course.  The past creates the present, and understanding the past, all of the past, the good and the bad, is our best bet at creating a better future.

You don't see a lot of people grazing mules and cows in downtown Jackson anymore.  Understanding that they once did and that it was something of a problem helps us fill in the blank spaces on our historical portrait and keeps us mindful that this is a living place with a living history that we should keep alive.