Death in the Delta: Uncovering a Mississippi Family Secret

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN: Springtime in Mississippi

194 SpringtimeinMississippi May 2008 I made phone call after phone call to forensic labs in Mississippi after my friend, a district attorney in Tennessee, suggested that the scene where Simon and David were shot could still yield valuable information. She told me that a retired specialist might be available and less costly to hire. Every place I tried offered to have someone call me back but no one did. Meanwhile, I worked to find out who currently owned the old Pan Am station. Finally, Mayor Richardson said—with certainty —that if I’d come down there, he would get me into the building. After our telephone conversation ended, full of the hope that I’d be able to gain access to the interior, I sat very still and my imagination kicked into play. I saw myself standing in the “coloreds only” room, eavesdropping on the men as they drank their whiskey, talked about their day’s work, maybe boasted about their war years. I watched their faces as Dad, Bill, and Tom entered the room in a heat, determined to send the black men on their way. I felt the tension mount as age-old anger, the black men’s abandonment of pride, their low self-esteem, and sense of futility combusted into harsh words. I watched the Fields men asserting themselves—first verbally, then with physical aggression —hell-bent on maintaining the caste system that had begun so many generations ago. Then, I could see David Jones reach for his pocket. Tom, who was right handed, may have had his arms lifted in self-defense or preparation to thrust forward, when he felt the sting of a bullet entering the flesh of his left shoulder. chapter eighteen springtime in mississippi 195 That would have been the point when a return volley struck and mortally wounded David. At that point, everyone scattered. The Fields men chased Simon Toombs out of the building and fired multiple shots into his back. Maybe my father killed them. Maybe my uncle Bill. What mattered most to me then, and now, was that intersecting lives and countless social, economic, historical, psychological elements zinged into place in an instant. This drama could have played on a similar stage anywhere that class and privilege met with degradation and resistance. At critical, defining moments in my own life, I have learned to stop and reflect on the wisdom of a great thinker, Albert Einstein, who said that a problem cannot be solved at the level at which it is experienced. Violence does not engender peace. My father could not perceive a higher calling when he found himself in a tragic confrontation. He had an opportunity to change course but he didn’t, and racial relations in the dark heart of Mississippi took a step backwards. If only he had gone to the courthouse first, he would have discovered, as I did, that there was no record of a transfer of land to Simon Toombs. ��� On the first of June, I tossed my duffle into the back of my green Subaru station wagon and left for the Delta, making it only as far as Meridian when massive black clouds unleashed a storm that threatened to hijack my car. I spent what was left of the day planning , and drove on early the next morning to meet Mr. Richardson at the mayor’s office in Anguilla. After we chatted about the mundane, Mr. Richardson asked me which building I wanted to enter. I thought he knew, but soon figured out that he had no idea. We got in his car and drove to the site that King Evans had taken me to—at which point Mr. Richardson told me that one of the Klein brothers held the deed. The problem was that Mr. Klein was out of town so we couldn’t go in. To assuage my disappointment, he drove to the Gipson home, springtime in mississippi 196 which sat on Highway 61 to the left of my grandmother’s house. “Gip” was Mamaw’s gin manager and right-hand man in business. Were he still alive, I would have learned a great deal from him. Jo Anderson, Gip’s daughter, now in her late seventies or early eighties, met us at the door with a broad, welcoming grin. She was friendly, jolly, and spry, and clearly a great friend of the mayor...