Where Healing is Happening

Anyone who knows Winfred Keith Davis knows there’s something to be discovered at every turn. To some, he is a yoga teacher, leading meditations and creating space to heal body and mind. To others he is a mentor, reading with a student at a local elementary school, or a voice in the community choir, or an actor on the stage at the Ned.Standing in his garden, this kind of fullness of life is on clear display. It’s a teeming work in progress. There are trays of plants waiting to be planted in the earth, and a wheelbarrow full of mirrors that will be placed to reflect more light in the garden.

The Woolworth's Sit-Ins

Only sixty years ago, our town, like much of the south, was in the middle of its own pain. Jim Crow laws had allowed states and communities to practice legal segregation under the guise of “separate but equal.” While clearly separating “coloreds” from “whites”, the results of that separation were anything but equal. Many times, these laws would be enforced by racist vigilantes before they were ever enforced by local law enforcement. Law enforcement would take a protester to jail; a vigilante would degrade a protester through physical and emotional violence.

Well Done, Sister Suffragette

Did you know that Tennessee was the deciding factor in ratifying the Nineteenth Amendment? I’ve lived here my entire life, and I didn’t realize this until a few days ago. I’m a woman who started voting in Madison County elections in 2011, but I would not have had that privilege if I had been born before 1920. If I were a black woman, I would not have been able to vote in the South without threats to my life and racist voter suppression state laws until 1965.

Monument of Memories

Why do we create monuments to the past? What is it about physical reminders—be they statues or plaques—that move us? Why do we feel the need to travel to the places of great historical events and walk the same ground? I am struck by the words of Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain, the hero of Little Round Top at the Battle of Gettysburg: “In great deeds, something abides. On great fields, something stays.”

Hub City Brewing: Jackson's "Skyline" Moment

When I was young, my family would take vacations to different cities to watch baseball games. While I loved baseball, the thing I looked forward to the most was seeing the skyline of whatever city we were visiting. In my single digit years, it was always St. Louis. Driving past the multitude of Drury Inns in the suburbs and waiting for the skyline to materialize in the distance never got old. Seeing the Arch stretch across the sky is something I can still see in my mind today. As I got older, the cities became larger: Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago, New York.