The core criteria, conditions, and preferences of the search committee at Monument Labs for Re:Generation align almost perfectly with the mission and work of the Mt. Zion Memorial Fund, a Mississippi non-profit that promotes the inclusive and responsible practice of memorialization, historic preservation, and public humanities in Blues communities.

We serve as a conduit to provide financial and technical support to African American churches and cemeteries, and we collaborate with the descendants of Blues artists and Blues communities to research, design, and install memorials that transform abandoned cultural resources into international tourist destinations.

In 1949, Mississippi Department of Archives & History (MDAH) director and longtime leader of the Sons of Confederate Veterans William McCain inaugurated the historic marker program to "encourage justifiable pride" in the southern way of life and "stimulate tourist trade" in "the closed society," as historian James Silver referred to the Magnolia State, which defined race relations along a rigid color line. The publication of Silver's book coincided with the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which signaled the decline of dejure (legal) forms of racial segregation.

But the state's historic markers remain on display, and the southern way of life persists in more polite displays, insidious initiatives of passive aggression.

In 2003, a predominantly African American delegation revived the marker concept during the term of Democratic Governor Ronnie Musgrove, but the original purpose of the Blues Commission was to redress the legacy of racial segregation. The Mississippi Blues Trail originally promised to 1) redress economic inequality, 2) improve the state’s image as an intransigent racist backwater, 3) encourage historic preservation in African American communities, and 4) promote racial reconciliation by telling uncomfortable truths about the state's dark racial past.

Musgrove, however, lost the election to Republican Haley Barbour the following year, and most members of the original delegation “were pushed back…and other people came in and took control,” abandoning its racial justice imperatives. In the end, the Blues Commission awarded millions in lucrative no-bid contracts to a white-owned graphic design and advertising firm [Hammons & Associates of Greenwood] and hired an all-white creative team of music enthusiasts with no academic training in African American history or connections to descendant communities. By carefully controlling the design, fabrication, content, and economic incentives of the Blues trail, the Blues Commission promoted racial division--not reconciliation--through an exclusive process of commemoration, a strategic campaign of economic development in predominantly white business districts, and an passive aggressive pogram of erasure in the Blues communities in Mississippi.

In late 2019, Mississippi state auditor Shad White recommended that the Mississippi Legislature abolish the Blues Commission, because he discovered that it “failed to retain documentation for over $964,000 in payments to vendors and paid $1.9 million to vendors without a contract.” While the Office of the State Auditor and the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic combined to stall its productivity, the Blues Commission remains a powerful force that shapes public memory in 2021.

The pilot project will allow us the opportunity to research his life and career, track down his descendants and conduct oral histories, put together a diverse and inclusive group of musicians, community members, and other stakeholders to design the memorial, conduct a survey of the burial ground and document the names of internments with headstones, solicit information about the artist and the burial ground in the community, conduct oral histories with community members, organize and promote an inclusive dedication ceremony to unveil the memorial, and solicit funds for the perpetual maintenance of the cemetery.

We have already located a local, African American-owned landscaping business mortuary service, R&J Removal and Mortuary Service. The owner, Quincy Randal, is prepared to help us clean-up and maintain the cemetery in perpetuity.

The memorialization of Jim Jackson will also serve as the promotional vehicle for the launch of our Blues & the Commemorative Landscape Atlas and website, a publicly accessible digital archive and interactive map of Blues communities, which will heighten public awareness and raise historical consciousness. It also provides an opportunity for greater collaboration with descendant communities:

The Atlas will provide a survey to identify cultural phenomena unique to Blues communities in Desoto County, Mississippi and offer descendant communities an opportunity to achieve their economic development and historic preservation goals. The pilot project in Desoto County will serve as an example of how to conduct similar projects and eventually expand to all 82 counties in the state.

Potential Partners/Fiscal Sponsors

1. Rev. Leona Harris, director of the Ida B. Wells-Barnett Museum in Holly Springs, MS.

2. Chandra Williams, Executive Director at Crossroads Cultural Art Center in Clarksdale, MS

3. Mary Francis Hurt, director of the Mississippi John Hurt Foundation in Avalon, MS

4. Patricia Wilson Aden, president of the Blues Foundation of Memphis, TN

(Left) MZMF secretary T. DeWayne Moore & MZMF Treasurer Kechia Patton Brown, the great granddaughter of seminal Delta blues artist Charley Patton

(Center) MZMF President Annise Bradley, torchbearer for the Young Family Fife & Drum tradition and the granddaughter of Senatobian instrumentalist Abe "Keg" Young

(Right) MZMF Vice President Shannon Evans

Jim Jackson entertained crowds and helped sell the Jack Rabbit Salve of Dr. Willie Lewis, whose medicine show was large enough to support a jug band, in which Jackson became a mentor of sorts for several future Memphis recording artists. Jackson's jug band included Will Shade, who went on record with the Memphis Jug Band, and Walter "Furry" Lewis, who later travelled with him to Chicago and recorded in the famous first session that produced Kansas City Blues.

Jackson spent many of his active years working in medicine shows, which provided employment for innumerable blues singers and songsters. Gus Cannon, for example, would organize his popular Jug Stompers after playing in Jackson's jug band for Dr. Willie Lewis's show. He previously had travelled every year in one medicine show or another with his guitar-playing partner Hosea Woods. Cannon started at home on South Parkway in Memphis with Dr. Stokey's show, and he met Chappie Dennison, who played a piece of plumbing pipe, on the show of Dr. W. B. Milton. After he got the idea to play a jug, he played on the shows of Dr. Benson and Dr. Hangerson, and Cannon explained, "I worked with a man out of Louisville. I worked through Mississippi. I worked through Virginia. I worked through Alabama, [and] I worked through Mobile, Gulfport, Bay St. Louis—far as I been down, playin' my banjo on them doctor shows."

Jim Jackson worked in the Red Rose Minstrels with the pianist Speckled Red. Setting up in towns across the states of Mississippi, Arkansas and Alabama, it was a medicine show, according to Speckled Red, where:

"the man sold all kinds of medicine and stuff. One medicine good for a thousand things — and wasn't good for nothin'. A whole lot of pills, everything. He had a big show where there was a whole lot of women and I was playing pianner. Sometimes I was on she stage, trying to dance, and I could talk, crack a whole lot of jokes — me and Jim [Jackson]."

Furry Lewis: "used to hear about him down in Greenville. He used to travel with the medicine shows, you know. I played with Jim Jackson. You know, he could pick a guitar just like I did. Sometimes just us two was playing together. Jim Jackson's been dead about thirty years ago. I couldn't tell you if he was two or three years older or younger than I. We was about the same age."

Gus Cannon: "I was at the same recording session as Jim Jackson when he cut Kansas City Blues. We used to play together in Memphis in the streets and, in medicine shows. Sometimes he would play with Frank Stokes too. The people who recorded Jim didn't allow me to play with him on the records. He was from Hernando."

Photo: Jim Jackson and filmmaker King Vidor on the set of Hallelujah in 1928.

King Vidor talks about his decision to shoot the film about the blues in Memphis, Tennessee in The Los Angeles (CA) Times, November 11, 1928.