Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Danny McKenzie - A Time To Speak - Speeches by Jack Reed (2009)
Danny McKenzie - A Time To Speak - Speeches by Jack Reed (2009)
Danny McKenzie
university press
of mississippi
jackson
A portion of the proceeds from the sale of this book will be donated to
the CREATE Foundation.
www.upress.state.ms.us
McKenzie, Danny.
A time to speak : speeches by Jack Reed / [compiled by]
Danny McKenzie.
p. cm.
Includes index.
ISBN 978-1-60473-130-9 (cloth : alk. paper) 1. Reed, Jack
Raymond, 1924—Oratory. 2. Reed, Jack Raymond, 1924—
3. Businessmen—Mississippi—Biography. 4. Civic leaders—
Mississippi—Biography. 5. Politicians—Mississippi—Biography.
6. Methodists—Mississippi—Biography. 7. Mississippi—
Economic conditions—20th century. 8. Mississippi—Social
conditions—20th century. 9. Mississippi—Religious life
and customs. 10. Tupelo (Miss.)—Biography. I. Reed, Jack
Raymond, 1924– II. Title.
F345.3.R44M38 2009
080.9762′063092—dc22
[B] 2008029526
Preface ix
Introduction xi
c h a pt er one
1963: A Rare Voice of Reason 3
c h a pt er t wo
1965: Witnessing on Race Relations 17
c h a pt er t h r ee
1956: Beginning to Build Bridges 30
c h a pt er four
1965: Strong Words for Fellow Methodists 35
c h a pt er fiv e
1971: Christian Testimony for Improved
Human Relations 44
c h a pt er six
1964–1984: An Indefatigable Champion of
Public Education 53
c h a pt er sev en
1985–2006: Making Measurable Progress 65
c h a pt er eigh t
1970–Present: The Need for Leadership 76
c h a pt er nine
1987: The Plunge into Politics 89
c h a pt er t en
1996: Humor—His Oratorical Trademark 115
vii
Contents
c h a pt er e l e v e n
1948–Present: Always a Businessman 122
c h a pt er t w e lv e
1998–Present: Still Speaking Out 131
Afterword 149
Acknowledgments 153
Index 155
viii
PR E FA C E
ix
Preface
x
I N T RODUC T ION
xi
Introduction
xii
Introduction
his collection of speeches and talking about the Whos and Whats
of the times. They were enjoyable sessions and always included a
great number of laughs, usually from Reed poking fun at himself.
His speeches were carefully written out in impeccable grammar
and syntax—as might be expected from a Vanderbilt University
English major—but, alas, when he delivered them his jokes were
usually off the cuff. His speeches always included a large dose of
humor, no matter the gravity of the issue. Reed is a really funny
man, but his one-liners rarely made the pages of his transcripts,
and I hate not being able to give the reader a full measure of his
considerable wit.
I think, too, that our sessions were so meaningful for me be-
cause I am the son of a school superintendent and a church lay
leader. Norman McKenzie devoted his life to education and to
the church, and his struggles with the Holly Springs schools and
the Presbyterian Church mirrored the difficulties Reed was ad-
dressing at the same time with the Mississippi Economic Council
and the Methodist Church. While I love history and welcome any
opportunity to visit with those who helped make it, I suspect the
conversations Reed and I had allowed me to revive conversations
of long ago with my father. Those memories are dear to me.
In these pages you will find several mentions of the late George
McLean, the longtime owner and publisher of the Northeast Mis-
sissippi Daily Journal and the man considered by many to be the
very source of northeast Mississippi’s regional economic success.
McLean is the strongest connection between Reed and me; to this
day he considers McLean his mentor in many things, and the five
years I worked with McLean during the 1970s were, in a lot of
ways, the most meaningful of my life. Few are those who can hon-
estly say they worked on a daily basis with a true visionary.
And it was through Mr. McLean and his newspaper that I was
able to first meet Reed and over the years get to know this re-
markable man, hear him speak out, and come to see clearly what
it means to be a leader. I will be eternally grateful to Jack Reed
for the opportunity to work with him on this book, and I cherish
his friendship even more.
Danny McKenzie
xiii
A Time to Speak
c h apt er on e
There comes a time when a person just has to do what his heart,
what his soul tell him to do. For many, it is the defining moment
in their lives. For most, those moments are private. For others,
they are public.
Jack Reed can pinpoint his “defining moment” of statewide
civic involvement, and it was public, very public: January 22,
1963—when, as president-elect of the Mississippi Economic Coun-
cil, he stood and spoke to hundreds gathered in the grand ball-
room of the venerable Heidelberg Hotel in downtown Jackson for
a luncheon and a “citizens action clinic.”
Among those assembled on that cold Tuesday midday were
dozens from the Mississippi legislature. They would not stay for
Reed’s entire speech.
Then thirty-eight years old, Reed spoke for nearly twenty min-
utes, urging Mississippi’s leading businessmen to become ac-
tively involved in the electoral process—the 1963 elections were
at hand—and to get others involved. He quoted Confucius; he
quoted Will Durant; he quoted Woodrow Wilson; he quoted
Edmund Burke; he quoted Horace Mann.
For good measure, he even quoted leaders of organized labor,
a measure clearly designed to grab the attention of his antiunion
audience. It worked.
3
1963: A Rare Voice of Reason
4
1963: A Rare Voice of Reason
5
1963: A Rare Voice of Reason
6
1963: A Rare Voice of Reason
7
1963: A Rare Voice of Reason
8
1963: A Rare Voice of Reason
9
1963: A Rare Voice of Reason
tion.” And still later: “Of one thing I am sure, your speech did
not represent, or voice the opinions of the Tupelo businessmen,
including myself, and your individual neighbors, who are paying
for printing this letter.”
And on and on it went, including, of course, the obligatory
phrase of the time: “The State of Mississippi and its institutions are
under heavy pressure from both outside and inside professional
‘agitators’ and federal officials with caesarian complexes.”
Dacus’s remarks were nothing Reed hadn’t already heard many
times before, but he had not experienced very much like that in
print, especially in his hometown.
“Considering the source, I really didn’t mind,” Reed says. “If
it had been somebody I respected it would have hurt more. All I
knew about him was that he was a local manufacturer who sup-
ported the Citizens’ Council. I didn’t really know him and I’m not
sure he knew me. But to be criticized at home . . .
“When Dacus ran the ad in my hometown newspaper, that gen-
erated a substantial amount of comment and encouraged people
to criticize and be critical of the speech. Even though many of
them had no idea what I’d said, they had read Dacus’s letter and
they formed their opinions on that. But I don’t think I ever heard
from him again after the initial impact of his letter wore off, and
it wore off pretty quick.”
This was new territory for Reed and especially for his family.
They were independent business owners whose very livelihoods
depended on the good will of Reed’s Department Store patrons,
and controversy was certainly not in the family business model.
“Our family, as far as civic leadership was concerned, had never
been seriously controversial. We always supported the mayors and
all the people we could. We were certainly less controversial than
George,” he says, laughing while remembering many controver-
sial opinions Tupelo Daily Journal publisher George McLean had
espoused over the years.
McLean had become the most powerful voice for progress in
northeast Mississippi since buying the bankrupt newspaper from
a bankrupt local bank in 1934, and Reed unabashedly admired
10
1963: A Rare Voice of Reason
11
1963: A Rare Voice of Reason
12
1963: A Rare Voice of Reason
13
1963: A Rare Voice of Reason
year later would be elected governor), and many other elected of-
ficials of the time who were so vitriolic in their stances opposing
desegregation of the state’s public schools.
After a moment or two of reflection, however, Reed says that,
in the grand scheme of things, Johnson wasn’t a bad governor. “I
think he did wind up making a good governor. I believe he was
the right man at the right time. I supported him once and even
helped him raise some money. He was much more moderate after
he became governor than he was while he was running. When
Paul said we had to accept federal ‘interference,’ his supporters
accepted it as fact, and that made a pretty big impact.”
Reed had no patience, though, for the political diatribes of the
time—usually made under the guise of garnering votes—and still
doesn’t.
“I think we all have a responsibility to do what we think is
right,” Reed says. “Somebody—and I forget who it was—said that
we ought to give a dual test of morality and reason to everything
we do. I tried deliberately to do that. Is it moral and is it reason-
able? I thought that speech certainly met the test.”
Almost overnight, citizens from across Mississippi had become
familiar with the retailer from Tupelo. The 1963 MEC speech had
thrust Reed into the state spotlight—a position he would find
himself in for years to come. In the ensuing years, he would serve
on nearly every local education committee and board around, as
well as on those of many state and national groups.
In April of 1964, he left the presidency of the MEC, challeng-
ing its membership to become more involved in affairs of the
state and to strengthen its statewide leadership role.
At the fifteenth annual banquet of the MEC, Reed clearly
stated his belief in the potential of the organization, a resolve
that had been strengthened during his many months of traveling
throughout Mississippi and speaking to and visiting with groups
and individuals from all walks.
Gathered once again at the Heidelberg Hotel in downtown
Jackson, more than three hundred business leaders listened as
Reed touted the potency of the MEC in his typical forthright
fashion:
14
1963: A Rare Voice of Reason
The most significant fact about the MEC as I see it is that it pos-
sesses the potential to exert the most powerful influence on the af-
fairs of this state of any organization outside the state legislature—
and not as the most powerful political lobby, either.
Not by strong-arming legislators, not as a special interest group,
but as a respected group of business and professional men address-
ing themselves to statewide problems and issues of long-range and
lasting import, whether they be controversial or not, and by address-
ing themselves to these issues as objectively as possible.
I personally believe it is our duty to guide and create public
opinion, not just reflect it—to be a voice, not an echo.
It is far more important that we be right than that we be popu-
lar. I do not believe the MEC should ever deliberately seek contro-
versy, but God help us if it sacrifices principle to avoid it.
15
1963: A Rare Voice of Reason
closely akin to public education issues. They have been the great-
est challenges of my generation in Mississippi, and I would put
them on parity with each other.”
Reed raised more than a few eyebrows when he told his busi-
ness constituents in several speeches to become “economic states-
men—not beggars asking for a backdoor handout” from the state
legislature. It was his deep conviction that business leaders had
a responsibility outside their stores, their shops, their factories.
Leadership, Reed felt, did not stop at the end of the work shift.
16
c h a pt er t wo
17
1965: Witnessing on Race Relations
18
1965: Witnessing on Race Relations
19
1965: Witnessing on Race Relations
20
1965: Witnessing on Race Relations
This was the first time Reed referred to God’s inability to solve
human relations problems without human help, but it would not
be the last. For some, it was outright blasphemy and almost as
troublesome as his progressive stance on racial issues. Almost.
Reed knew his remarks would be welcomed by many, but he
knew, too, that he would be vilified in many quarters within the
Methodist Church. He knew his remarks would be published in
the Mississippi Methodist Advocate and circulated throughout the
entire state. He remembered well the feedback, good and bad,
from his 1963 speech to the MEC on public education, and as
dedicated to the preservation of the state’s school system as he
was, this talk was different. This was his church, and these were
his church friends. He knew all too well that many disagreed with
him on race relations, even some of those fellow members at Tu-
pelo First Methodist. There were many, though, who were sup-
portive.
“My good friend, M. B. Swayze [then executive director of the
Mississippi Economic Council], said he thought I’d given a nice
speech even though he really didn’t think God needed our help,”
Reed says with a chuckle. “But the response I got from that first
Methodist talk was quite different from the MEC speech a couple
of years earlier.
“As I look back on it now, I think within the Methodist Church
itself I was expressing a viewpoint that many were pleased with,
and to hear from them in that vein was most gratifying.
“Again, there were people who were, and still are, just as se-
rious about their Christian beliefs and about their relationship
to the Methodist Church as I am. I certainly meant them no dis-
respect, and I don’t think any of them thought I was being dis-
respectful, but I did want to at least express ‘our’ views. I think I
accomplished that, if nothing else.”
Without mentioning her name, or that of any other women
who also shared in the belief that Mississippi churches must move
21
1965: Witnessing on Race Relations
past the race issue, Reed spoke about an organization his beloved
wife, Frances, was associated with as vice president. He held it up
as a model of Christian love and understanding.
22
1965: Witnessing on Race Relations
fact that men have faced up to the economic realities of the Civil
Rights Act, which in short says: 1) comply; 2) go to jail; 3) go out of
business.
But I can say, also, in all sincerity that the small group who was
responsible for that statement being presented was primarily moti-
vated by the desire “to be a Christian” in these troubled times.
This was equally true of those who agreed to testify before the
Civil Rights Commission earlier this year, when it was tremendously
unpopular to do so. In so doing, they saved Mississippi a serious
setback in national public opinion by pointing out that some prog-
ress was being made. Of course, these men—led by Owen Cooper
[president of Mississippi Chemical Corporation in Yazoo City]—did
not say they were giving Christian witness; with them, it was an
“act of conscience.”
In every case, I sincerely believe that the basic decisions were not
emotional or economic, but were, rather, the result of conscientious
citizens applying the dual test of morality and reason, and being
willing to take the consequences for their decisions. I believe in this
test myself and, frankly, it is not always easy to determine when
reason takes over from morality, or vice versa.
Fortunately, the Christian will seldom find the two in con-
flict. What is needed to apply the test is an open heart and an
open mind.
No witness, Christian or otherwise, is convincing unless it is
based on facts and on solid conviction. Facts must come from ex-
perience and objective investigation, but convictions involving per-
sonal relationships must come largely from spiritual faith!
Certainly, it is the purpose of the church today to supply and
support and replenish that faith in its individual members. If we fail
to do so, we have failed in our purpose despite the size of our bud-
gets, our buildings, or our membership.
I have been asked to suggest what the Methodist Church can
contribute in this area, and to tell how the church has affected me.
I am not accustomed to answering such questions, but I will try to
give a brief and honest answer to each.
1. I think the church must take a strong position in support of
the total Methodist program, financially and spiritually. Not only is
23
1965: Witnessing on Race Relations
this right, but [it] will demonstrate our faith in the ability of other
Methodists, of a different background, to be Christians, too.
2. We need not be defensive. We need not be afraid of losing
membership because our program is unpopular with some. To do
so is to underestimate the personal faith of those who disagree. If
we can’t have something for everybody let’s at least have something
for the faithful. We do not need to lower the standards of our
church to the lowest common denominator of our membership.
3. We can emphasize the need to witness first at home and in
our community as Jesus did. I am satisfied that the reason many
ministers have come to Mississippi and Alabama in recent months
is because it is easier to give witness away from home, but that is
not the place to start.
4. We can use the church to open the door to closer communi-
cation between the races.
5. We can witness in terms this generation can understand. Old
time imagery and platitudes, expressions and phrases, though dear
to many of us, simply do not reach the young people of today; it is
our responsibility as churchmen to make the effort to reach them
and not require that they adjust to us.
Even then, he could not leave the issue of race out of his re-
marks. “I guess I was always slipping it in there,” he says. “It’s just
something I believed in very strongly then, and still do today.”
Reed closed his remarks to the annual conference on a per-
sonal basis. Though he says he’s not particularly fond of “witness-
ing” from the pulpit, he left little doubt that spring day in 1965
as to his feelings for his church:
24
1965: Witnessing on Race Relations
25
1965: Witnessing on Race Relations
not we have solved our racial problem, but by the effort we have
put forth and by our attitude toward the Negro and toward each
other as individuals and not as ethnic groups.
I believe that Christian witness is needed as much in a democ-
racy as it is needed under Fascism, Nazism, or Communism.
I believe in the Spirit of Liberty. Judge [Learned] Hand says: “The
Spirit of Liberty is the spirit which seeks to understand the minds
of other men and women. The Spirit of Liberty is the spirit which
weighs their interest alongside its own bias. The Spirit of Liberty is
the spirit which is not too sure that it is right.”
Despite our critics, the Spirit of Liberty is very much alive in Mis-
sissippi today and in the North Mississippi Conference. I believe
that it is up to us, through Christian witness, to be sure that it re-
mains alive in the days and years and centuries ahead.
26
1965: Witnessing on Race Relations
27
1965: Witnessing on Race Relations
28
1965: Witnessing on Race Relations
29
c h a pt er t hr ee
30
1956: Beginning to Build Bridges
pus, and over the course of the next few years the college would
become closely identified with “the movement.”
Rust College was directly across U.S. Highway 78 from (now
defunct) Mississippi Industrial College, another all-black institu-
tion of higher learning on the north side of Holly Springs. The
student body at Rust was beginning to become extremely active
in the civil rights movement, and in the next few years many of its
members would join the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Com-
mittee (SNCC). Some of the homes just across the street to the
south of the campus would soon become places of refuge for
workers from the Council of Federated Organizations (COFO),
a group that included members of SNCC, the National Associa-
tion for the Advancement of Colored People (NA ACP), and the
Congress of Racial Equality (CORE).
So it took more than a little courage and Christian conviction
for Reed to appear before the Rust student body. But it was a time
to speak.
31
1956: Beginning to Build Bridges
Reed knew better than anyone that his words were being re-
ceived coolly at best. No one was discourteous; there were no dem-
onstrations or disruptions. Neither, though, was he interrupted
by applause. Always and forever the optimist, Reed plowed ahead
with his white man’s attempt to offer hope to his all-black audi-
ence during a time when few cared enough to even try.
32
1956: Beginning to Build Bridges
Now, let’s see what Christ had to say about minority groups.
Good? Not necessarily. Bad? Sometimes. Inevitable? Yes. All people
will never be equal in all things on this earth.
Does Christ think we all have equal opportunities? Not here, to-
day, but in the things that really count, yes. In the things that come
from God, we do indeed.
We have the opportunity to enjoy the world’s beauty, to enjoy
the world’s people, to fall in love, to build strong character, to marry
and have children, to learn about Jesus and God, to do God’s work.
These, Jesus considered important—more important than gov-
ernments, or states’ rights, or even constitutions, or racism. These,
and these alone, can bring life eternal and fellowship with God.
These opportunities are extended to all, black or white, and some-
times the harder your lot the greater they are.
Does this mean that integration and segregation are unimpor-
tant? No, indeed! It simply means that there are some other things
that are even more important, and that we should never sacrifice
these in attempting to get the other.
Jesus said, “Seek ye first the kingdom of God.” Was he talk-
ing to us here in Mississippi today? You bet your life he was!
Just as surely as if he were on this platform. Well, then, what did
he mean?
If you think integration and segregation are Christian problems,
then pray to God. Go ahead and work for your choice, but re-
member Christ set the example of peace and love. He knew that he
could not conquer for God by returning hate for hate! He was per-
secuted, criticized, lied about, cursed, run out of town, and cruci-
fied. But he did first seek the Kingdom of God and today is wor-
shiped as the son of the Almighty God.
Reed knew he had taken it about as far as he could take this is-
sue, so he closed his remarks with positive words about the state
of Mississippi’s economy and how as it improved so, too, would the
lot of its black citizens. It was still an era, however, when people
of color were not allowed to use public restrooms, drink from
public fountains, shop in many stores, or eat in many restaurants
outside their neighborhoods. African Americans in 1956 were
33
1956: Beginning to Build Bridges
34
c h a pt er fou r
It’s a good thing Jack Reed felt it was his Christian obligation to
speak out on matters that many in Mississippi preferred to avoid,
because he soon received opportunities—and appointments—
beyond his greatest expectations. His address to the annual con-
ference of the North Mississippi Methodist Church in June of
1965 resulted in an invitation a couple of months later to speak
to a “mass rally” of Mississippi Methodists at Galloway Memorial
Methodist Church in downtown Jackson.
Located midway between the state capitol and the Governor’s
Mansion, where in 1965 segregationist Governor Paul B. Johnson
presided and resided, Galloway is considered the “mother church”
of Mississippi Methodism.
The Galloway meeting on September 9, 1965, was billed as
an “Action Crusade for Mississippi Methodists,” and hundreds of
church members from every corner of the state crowded the pews
of the storied old sanctuary.
Nat Rogers, president of Deposit Guaranty Bank, the state’s
largest at the time, gave the keynote address. As Reed had ear-
lier in the year—and would later that same day—Rogers spoke
of his devotion to and love of Methodism. While most of his ad-
dress focused on the growth of Methodism in Mississippi and the
financial resources that would be needed to sustain it, Rogers also
35
1965: Strong Words for Fellow Methodists
36
1965: Strong Words for Fellow Methodists
While driving down the Natchez Trace this morning with Brother
“Bo” Holloman, I asked Bo if he thought I would be well received.
He said, “Certainly better than I would be.” To which I replied,
“Well, after all, I’m not a preacher.”
So, while I officially represent no one, perhaps unofficially I rep-
resent those “whose heart is as my heart” on these accounts.
Frankly, I believe this to be a considerable number of our member-
ship, and I will try to speak for them in a responsible way.
Upon examination, I have realized that Methodism’s “mistakes”
have resulted primarily from its fundamental Christian concerns,
from its broadminded tolerance, from its sense of responsibility
to and for others, and not from a doctrine of distrust and
exclusiveness. . . .
I am concerned because we do have real problems in Mississippi
today that are making it difficult for our church—and because
37
1965: Strong Words for Fellow Methodists
38
1965: Strong Words for Fellow Methodists
39
1965: Strong Words for Fellow Methodists
Reed’s words, coupled with what Rogers had said earlier in the
program, had a clearly positive effect on those gathered in the
Galloway sanctuary. Many in each of the Mississippi Methodist
conferences who had wanted to speak out on the same issues but
had not were now emboldened by Rogers and Reed. The Inde-
pendent Methodists had little to say—there were few of them,
if any, at the Action Crusade—but the responses Reed received
were plentiful and positive.
“Judging from the letters I got, and I got a good many from all
around, I would have to say my remarks were extremely well re-
ceived,” Reed says.
In a letter to Reed, Bishop Pendergrass wrote: “We believe that
the success of this meeting, and certainly think nothing but that it
was a major success, was stemmed by you and Mr. Rogers. I want
you to know that we are obligated to you beyond any expression
of words.”
Reed appreciated the kind words from the church’s leader in
Mississippi, but he also remembers how even the bishop had to
treat such issues with more than a little sensitivity.
“The interesting thing is that Bishop Pendergrass told me, pri-
vately, how pleased he was with what I had to say, but publicly he
took it pretty easy,” Reed recalls. “He tried to trod in carefully; he
didn’t want to offend anybody. There were some congregations
who were trying to decide if they wanted to stay in the confer-
ence or pull out, and he didn’t want to give them another reason
to pull out.”
The letter from the bishop was hardly the only letter of appre-
ciation Reed received following the Action Crusade. Like the re-
sponse to his 1963 MEC speech, letters came in from every corner
of Mississippi and elsewhere. Their words underscored some of
the first words of his speech—that while he was officially repre-
senting no one, he was indeed unofficially representing many
Methodists, inside Mississippi’s borders and out.
40
1965: Strong Words for Fellow Methodists
41
1965: Strong Words for Fellow Methodists
42
1965: Strong Words for Fellow Methodists
43
c h a pt er fi v e
44
1971: Christian Testimony for Improved Human Relations
45
1971: Christian Testimony for Improved Human Relations
It was this group of white leaders that sat down with the lead-
ers of the all-black Upper Mississippi Conference and began dis-
cussing opportunities and challenges inherent in such a historical
union.
Reed is quick to point out that while much of the opposition to
the merger came from the Mississippi Delta, there was resistance
from churches all around the state, including Tupelo.
“Look, even in our church we had some ushers who didn’t
want to seat blacks if they came to our services. We had a meet-
ing of the ushers to talk about what to do, and it was Jack Eubank
who said we should just do what we thought Jesus would do. That
pretty well ended that.
“We adopted a policy that we would seat them, but there were
some who dropped out as ushers. There were some really fine
people who had some really strong feelings—you know how it is
about race. That was paramount everywhere.”
Progressive actions in even the smallest of communities did
not go unnoticed on the national level. One example was an ar-
ticle in the Wall Street Journal about conditions in the South that
included this sentence: “By way of encouragement the United
Methodist Church of Tupelo, Miss., voted to seat negroes by a vote
of 40 to 4.”
On May 7, 1971, an interdenominational, interfaith “Lay Lead-
ership Assembly” was held in Jackson, drawing church and reli-
gious leaders from all around Mississippi. Reed was one of the
speakers—invited by his Yazoo City friend Owen Cooper—and,
as usual, cracked a couple of jokes, including one in which a
Catholic asked his Baptist friend if he believed in infant baptism,
and the Baptist friend replied, “Believe it? Heck, yes. Why, I’ve
even seen it done.” Then Reed got straight to the point—the rele-
vancy of the church in a society seemingly gone mad:
46
1971: Christian Testimony for Improved Human Relations
47
1971: Christian Testimony for Improved Human Relations
48
1971: Christian Testimony for Improved Human Relations
49
1971: Christian Testimony for Improved Human Relations
50
1971: Christian Testimony for Improved Human Relations
51
1971: Christian Testimony for Improved Human Relations
doing, that this is God’s work and that if the good and decent
church people of America, like you and like me, do not give leader-
ship in the improvement in human relations, He will find other
ways and other institutions to build his kingdom.
At least we can give the lie to the old accusation that “Like a
mighty tortoise trods the Church of God, and today we are trod-
ding where always we have trod.” At least this is a change in the
church. . . .
Surely, it’s disturbing, but it is also challenging, and when I get
upset and frustrated about the violence and unrest and conflicts at
home and abroad—about Vietnam and Washington, about bus-
ing and marching, I am truly strengthened by Thomas Paine’s state-
ment in The American Crisis in 1776, when he wrote: “If there
must be trouble let it be in my day, that my children may have
peace.” And our children may live in peace if we will do our part—
where we are, as we are.
I believe that religious witness is needed as much in a democ-
racy, and as much in Mississippi, as it is needed under fascism,
Nazism, or communism.
52
c h a pt er si x
1964–1984: An Indefatigable
Champion of Public Education
“If educated, people are our greatest asset.”
53
1964–1984: An Indefatigable Champion of Public Education
thereby, the “white flight” from public schools that was becoming
typical in other Mississippi communities was avoided.
While the aforementioned group could usually be found out
front of most civic endeavors, they were joined in their work for
Tupelo schools by such equally passionate and effective leaders in
the African American community as Palmer Foster, Harry Gray-
son, Robert Jamison, Robert Hereford, Joseph and Lucinda Wash-
ington, and Vera Duke. A very determined and forceful group
of white females was also instrumental in the orderly deseg-
regation of the schools; its numbers included Louise Godwin,
Catherine Sadler, Edith Thomas, Frances Patterson, Cora Fields,
Mary Elizabeth Caldwell, Betsy Puckett, Joyce Beasley, and, not
surprisingly, Frances Reed, Jack’s wife, who was vice president of
the statewide group Mississippians for Public Education.
For Jack Reed, the desegregation of the state’s public schools
was merely a natural, albeit difficult, progression, and no one
spread the gospel of education for all more or more effectively
than Reed. His many speeches over the years on race relations
within the United Methodist Church coupled with his out spoken
support for public education within the Mississippi Economic
Council assured him a leadership position in the education battles
of the times.
Throughout the sixties, seventies, and eighties, Reed played
an extremely active role in the growth of the Community Devel-
opment Foundation, Tupelo’s economic development organiza-
tion made up of business and industry leaders in Lee County. He
served as chair in 1968–69 and on its executive committee for
more than thirty years. Based on the premise that community de-
velopment precedes economic development, CDF, with Reed as
one of its main spokesmen, began stressing the need for strong
public schools in Tupelo and Lee County. Even though its popu-
lation was only twenty thousand or so, Tupelo was still the “hub
city” for most of northeast Mississippi, and its message of progres-
sive public schools was picked up throughout the entire region.
Reed rarely strayed from his message, and he restated his for-
mula for successful schools time and again. “I believed then and
I still believe,” he says, that “Mississippi schools needed qualified,
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1964–1984: An Indefatigable Champion of Public Education
55
1964–1984: An Indefatigable Champion of Public Education
56
1964–1984: An Indefatigable Champion of Public Education
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1964–1984: An Indefatigable Champion of Public Education
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1964–1984: An Indefatigable Champion of Public Education
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1964–1984: An Indefatigable Champion of Public Education
It was during this speech that Reed introduced his set of “three
Rs” that he believed were holding back Mississippi. They would
become a central part of his presentations in the months and
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1964–1984: An Indefatigable Champion of Public Education
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1964–1984: An Indefatigable Champion of Public Education
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1964–1984: An Indefatigable Champion of Public Education
They seem to be the ones that get heard. They get more agitated
than reasonable people do. They are more strident, more emo-
tional, more frightening to elected officials.
So maybe we can be against ignorance and against poverty.
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1964–1984: An Indefatigable Champion of Public Education
64
c h a pt er sev en
1985–2006:
Making Measurable Progress
“We have too much at stake.”
On June 22, 1985, a little more than a year after being named to
the Mississippi Board of Education and being elected its chair,
Reed addressed the Mississippi Press Association at its annual
luncheon meeting in Biloxi. His purpose was twofold: to thank
the newspapers from around the state for their very vital part
in securing passage of the Education Reform Act of 1982 and
to give them a glimpse of things to come for Mississippi school-
children.
Although I have been introduced often this past year as “an impor-
tant person—chairman of the Mississippi Board of Education”—
consider, if you will, that we are last in dollars of pupil support,
last in teacher pay, last in most test scores, and last in statewide lit-
eracy. That is hardly a record that would make the chairman arro-
gant, is it? Sometimes, I’m surprised anyone would take the job.
And, philosophically speaking, I would hope that education and ar-
rogance would never go together. . . . So I am not arrogant about
public education in Mississippi—but neither am I apologetic.
Nor am I discouraged or pessimistic—though I’m not quite as
optimistic as the couple who went to city hall to see if their mar-
riage license had expired.
But I am a pragmatist. They say the difference in an optimist and
a pragmatist is that the pragmatist is better informed. And I have
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1985–2006: Making Measurable Progress
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1985–2006: Making Measurable Progress
Reed then summarized the highs and lows of the state board
of education’s first year, highlighting the hiring of Dr. Richard
Boyd as the state’s first appointed superintendent of education.
“We could not have hired a better man to serve in that role for
the first time,” Reed recalls. “The whole way of doing business
was new to all of us, and Dick was the perfect person to guide us
through those early days. They weren’t always easy and the board
didn’t agree on everything, but Dick Boyd made sure we kept our
focus on the children of Mississippi.”
As he continued his speech to the MPA, Reed said he and
many of his fellow board members were concerned about the im-
petus of Winter’s education reform losing steam. Earlier in 1985,
many Mississippi teachers, led by a group from Stone County in
south Mississippi, had voted to go on strike in the middle of the
legislative session. After several days of negotiations among the
teachers, the state board of education, and members of the leg-
islature, however, the strike had been averted.
Reed, though, was still worried about support for education
reform slowing, and implored the members of the press to con-
tinue focusing their editorial spotlights on public education.
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1985–2006: Making Measurable Progress
68
1985–2006: Making Measurable Progress
For the next nine years, Reed would serve on the board of edu-
cation, calling it “some of the most meaningful work I’ve ever
been involved in.” During those nine years, Mississippi did in-
deed climb off the very bottom of many education measuring
standards, as promised during the push for passage of the Edu-
cation Reform Act.
That Education Reform Act of 1982, Reed says, provided ed-
ucators in Mississippi—in the individual schools and in the state
department headquarters—“an awful lot of opportunities.” He is
adamant in his belief that most school people took advantage of
those opportunities, “or otherwise [Mississippi] would not have
shown the improvement it has for the past twenty years.
“I wouldn’t take anything for those years,” Reed says. “Gov-
ernor Allain was true to his word; it was a very rewarding job. I
am very grateful for having had the opportunity to serve in that
capacity. The budget problems and the teacher strike certainly
weren’t enjoyable, but overall it was a truly wonderful experi-
ence.”
He says the most pleasant surprise of his tenure was becoming
familiar with the staff of the Mississippi Department of Educa-
tion. “There were so many critics of the department that I didn’t
know what to expect. But it didn’t take me long to realize the
quality of the folks in the department and how dedicated they
were to improving education in Mississippi.”
Reed says he is most proud of the board’s work with establishing
kindergartens in the public school systems and with the teaching
assistants in elementary classrooms. Both programs, he hastens
to add, were passions of his mentor, George McLean, the vener-
able publisher of the Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal. His big-
gest regret, he says, was that the board was never able to persuade
the legislature to abolish elected local school super intendents or
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1985–2006: Making Measurable Progress
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1985–2006: Making Measurable Progress
In the fall of 2004, Reed, now eighty years old, was called on once
again to speak out on behalf of public education in Mississippi—
this time for the Coalition for Children and Public Education,
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1985–2006: Making Measurable Progress
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1985–2006: Making Measurable Progress
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1985–2006: Making Measurable Progress
were many legislators gathered, all saying the right thing: that
they fully intended to fully fund the MAEP and that they would
do it first. But the state’s budget woes were worse than antici-
pated, and the legislative champions were not successful. Full
funding did not pass.
Reed and Winter remained resolute, and both vowed to con-
tinue the good fight. “If you can’t stand up for your state’s chil-
dren,” Reed asks, “what can you stand up for?”
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c h a pt er ei g ht
1970–Present:
The Need for Leadership
“Only good people create good change.”
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1970–Present: The Need for Leadership
I was talking with one of your fathers the other day (I won’t say
who) and asked him what you were going to be when you finished
college. “At the rate he’s going now,” he said, “he’ll be an old man.”
And just this morning I asked one of your teachers if she had
any unusual students in her class. “Yes,” she responded, “I have
three who do their homework.”. . .
It is a challenge to speak to young people today. Movies, televi-
sion, cars, and greater personal freedom have made you the most
sophisticated fifteen-year-olds in history. Ann Landers says that if
Booth Tarkington were to write his famous book Seventeen today
he would have to call it Twelve! And I suspect she’s right.
Yes, you are sophisticated and well educated. On the average
you are bigger and stronger than your parents. You have more
money than they had. You have fewer rules and restrictions than
they had. And I daresay a few of you are even smarter and perhaps
better than we were.
But to be perfectly fair and honest, you will have to give your
parents and grandparents credit for this because what has gone on
before in times past is your heritage. . . . You are a unique class.
You are different, and in more ways than one. . . .
In spite of all that I have said about the past, no ninth-grade
class has ever graduated in Tupelo, Mississippi, that has the
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1970–Present: The Need for Leadership
But believe me, it won’t come in peace and joy and love unless
you help make it that way, and unless my generation helps make it
that way.
When “a new world comes,” it will come because the young
and old have worked together to make it so. You can never have
separate worlds for the young, for the old fogies of forty-five, and
another for the seventy-fives.
When Johnny Cash sings, “And . . . youth cries: What is truth?,”
the truth is that the world of tomorrow is going to be made by the
young and old working together. It has always been that way and
it always will be that way. And you and I had both better be doing
our part to bridge the generation gap.
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1970–Present: The Need for Leadership
We joke about it and cry about it and talk about it, but the
generation gap between you and me is only as wide as you and I
make it. . . .
Then Reed got to the heart of the matter. There were no more
oblique references, no more song lyrics. His words were words
the students had, no doubt, heard spoken in their living rooms
and dens and around their dinner tables—and, of course, among
themselves in the hallways, classrooms, locker rooms, and cafe-
teria at school, and at teen hangouts around town. But this time
they were hearing them from one of Tupelo’s leading citizens, a
man they knew to be actively involved in shaping the world they
were about to enter.
Let me tell you why you here in this class can really make a
greater contribution to this town than any class ever has before:
starting next fall, and certainly over the next two or three years
during which you will be finishing high school, the city of Tupelo
is going to have to effectively integrate our entire school system. I
don’t know how, but certainly to a much greater degree than is the
case today.
This will not be an easy job for anybody, but I am sure that the
school board and school officials will do the fairest job that they
can do. Yet I am sure that many students, both white and black,
will not like the new system as well as the old system that you have
grown up in and have become accustomed to. But you and I know
that this is the law of the land and that it must be done.
It is not a matter of choice for anybody. It is a question of neces-
sity for everybody.
And how well this school integration is carried out will deter-
mine how well this community gets along socially, economically,
and in every other way. This is something that only you can work
out, and you have done a fine job so far. But city hall can’t do it,
your teachers can’t do it, and your parents can’t do it. You must
do it. . . .
Do you realize that many of the student leaders of the Tupelo
school system for the next three years are sitting right in front of
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1970–Present: The Need for Leadership
Nearly twenty years and numerous speeches later, Reed was still
preaching the leadership gospel. In addressing a group of young
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1970–Present: The Need for Leadership
We must stay the course because it is a long one. The need will
not soon go away. There are no quick fixes in education. There are
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1970–Present: The Need for Leadership
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1970–Present: The Need for Leadership
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1970–Present: The Need for Leadership
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1970–Present: The Need for Leadership
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1970–Present: The Need for Leadership
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1970–Present: The Need for Leadership
world today needs men who have been instilled with a love of
country and a love of God, men who have been shown that “he
profits most who serves best.”
That’s the purpose of Scouting. It deserves our support, and I, as
do many others, consider it a great privilege to be a part of such an
organization.
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c h a pt er n i n e
For more than twenty years, there had been rumblings around
Mississippi that Jack Reed would run for governor. His promi-
nent leadership role in the Mississippi Economic Council and his
work with the board of education to reform Mississippi’s public
schools had placed Reed squarely in the state spotlight, and by
1986 murmurs of his candidacy for the governor’s office had
grown louder.
For years friends had tried to persuade Reed he should run for
governor, but he considered it mere flattery, enjoyed it and dis-
missed it. For the most part. Though he cared little for the life of
a politician, he was convinced a strong governor could make a dif-
ference in Mississippi.
It took a tennis injury, however, to slow him down long enough
that he could give serious consideration to a political campaign.
In the summer of 1986, Reed ruptured an Achilles tendon while
playing in a tennis tournament and wound up homebound and
in a cast for nearly a month. In the chronicle of his life that he
compiled for his family, Reed wrote: “For years I had intended to
read Dumas Malone’s six-volume biography of Thomas Jefferson
( Jefferson and His Time), but had put off getting started in it. Since
this seemed a good time for serious reading, I began. I was im-
pressed that Jefferson really did not want to go to Washington and
serve as president, preferring to stay at Monticello, but answered
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1987: The Plunge into Politics
the call to duty and did a wonderful job. His patriotism and desire
to be of service to his country appealed strongly to me, so much
so that upon my recovery I began to seriously consider a possible
candidacy.”
After serving on Winter’s Blue Ribbon Commission on Educa-
tion and on the Mississippi Board of Education, Reed says he was
often encouraged to run for governor—especially after Governor
Bill Allain’s surprising announcement that he would not run for
reelection.
“But that was not even in my mind at that time,” he says. “As a
matter of fact, I hadn’t even wanted to serve on the board of edu-
cation because I didn’t want to spend all that time in Jackson. But
I was so terribly concerned about the state of education in Missis-
sippi that I agreed to serve on the board, and that ultimately led
to my decision to run for governor.
“Ebbie Spivey, head of the Republican Party in Mississippi, was
particularly encouraging and persuasive about my chances of get-
ting elected with Republican support. I was not at all interested
in running for name recognition, or to launch a political career.
Moreover, if I had not thought I could win I would not have run.
That is probably a reflection on the size of my ego, but I suppose
that is a given for almost any candidate.”
His old friend Owen Cooper, the Yazoo City business leader,
was among the many urging Reed to run for the state’s highest
office. “Owen called me and told me that he thought next to him
I would be the best governor Mississippi ever had,” Reed recalls
with a chuckle.
“My family and I had a long discussion. I wasn’t going to do
anything this significant unless they were all behind me. It turned
out that they were all behind me; the children were all excited
and I knew Frances would support me. She was without a doubt
my greatest asset.”
So, on the night of January 29, 1987, with more than five hun-
dred friends and supporters gathered for a rally at the Ramada
Inn Convention Center in Tupelo to encourage him, Reed sent
a strong signal around the state that he would indeed be a can-
didate in the 1987 race for governor of Mississippi. People from
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1987: The Plunge into Politics
all around northeast Mississippi had come to what they only knew
was a fund-raiser for Reed’s candidacy. Before that night, he was
still not sure he would run. By the end of the night, however,
there was little doubt.
Even after the turnout in Tupelo, though, he only indicated he
was considering a run for the governorship. “I’m not going to an-
nounce my candidacy yet,” he told the Northeast Mississippi Daily
Journal, “but we are going to begin laying the groundwork.”
Lewis Whitfield and Billy Crews were cochairs of that first
event, and they had planned for a crowd of a hundred or so. To
everyone’s surprise, there were so many people on hand that an
adjacent room had to be opened to handle the overflow.
The financial impact was stunning. “We didn’t have any set
goal for that night,” Reed says, “but I think we were hoping that
we could raise a hundred thousand dollars. We wound up rais-
ing three hundred thousand, which we were told was the largest
amount ever raised at a single political fund-raiser in Mississippi
at that time.”
Not only had Reed not made his candidacy official, neither
had he announced which political party he would represent. Be-
cause of his work in public education and racial issues over the
years, many assumed he would run as a Democrat. However, he
surprised a great many when he finally said he would run as a cen-
trist Republican.
Reed, who had always considered himself an independent
thinker who disdained partisan politics, says his decision was a
pragmatic one: “I decided to run as a Republican mainly because
my biggest supporters and I thought we could more easily win the
Republican primary and make it into the general election.”
Research commissioned by Reed and his closest group of sup-
porters showed that statewide his name recognition was very low,
but that same poll indicated there was a good possibility that he
could overcome that and win the election.
While many of the business and industry leaders in the Tupelo
area were generous with their financial contributions and public
support, Reed relied heavily on a group of younger friends for
the energy necessary to run a statewide campaign; these included
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1987: The Plunge into Politics
Billy and David Crews, John Lovorn, Sonja Jenkins, Jamie Barnett,
Tom Wicker, Tom Pittman, Len Pegues, Joe Rutherford, Helen
Collins, Lex Jackson, Lori Culp, Glen McCullough, and many
others, and, of course, his family: son Jack and his wife, Lisa;
daughter Camille and her husband, Claude Clayton; daughter
Catherine and her husband, Paul “Buzzy” Mize, Jr.; son Scott and
his wife, Annette; and grandchildren Frances and Claude, Kirk
and Jack Reed III, Paul and Bennett Mize, as well as the families
of brothers Bob and Bill.
Reed also learned that in a nine-month, statewide race a can-
didate’s driver is his only constant companion, confidant, and
critic. In that capacity, Rory Reardon of Clarksdale proved to be
invaluable.
A couple of weeks after Reed’s Tupelo rally, Charles Pickering,
a former state senator from Laurel and one of Mississippi’s more
prominent Republicans, surprised many political observers by an-
nouncing that he would not be a candidate for governor. In his
announcement Pickering said he was “unable to generate the fi-
nancial support or burning desire” for such a race.
Pickering’s decision not to run seemingly cleared the way for
Reed, and on March 16, while speaking to the Lee County Repub-
lican Women, he said he would announce that he would indeed
be a candidate on March 31.
Buoyed by the support from his family and friends and by the
tremendous local turnout at the January rally, Reed and a group
of supporters chartered a bus and headed to Jackson, where he
stood on the steps of the capitol on a blustery Wednesday and an-
nounced to the state:
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1987: The Plunge into Politics
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1987: The Plunge into Politics
we must change with them. Winston Churchill said it well: “To im-
prove is to change. To become perfect is to change often.” I surely
will not promise you perfection—but I can promise you that with
the right leadership we do have the opportunity to improve.
Today, I am beginning my campaign to take my efforts from the
private sector to the public sector.
Why? Because I agree with Plato: “The punishment of the wise
who refuse to participate in government is to serve under a gov-
ernment of worse men.” (Now, remember, that quote is over a
thousand years old, so please don’t take that as a personal refer-
ence to any of my opponents.)
Although I have never served a day as an elected official and
never spent a day on the public payroll, I am running on my
record—my record in my community and region, in church, in
Scouting, in the United Way, in our community action agency, in
city planning, and in retailing and manufacturing and industrial de-
velopment.
And I’m running on my record at the state level—since 1963, as
the youngest chairman of the M.E.C., and as president of the Mis-
sissippi Retail Merchants Association, and as chairman of the Mis-
sissippi American Enterprise Center, and other statewide leadership
roles, and on my record today, as a member of the state board of
education and of the state board of economic development.
Home . . . family . . . church . . . community . . . state . . . and
country are the words that have guided—in fact, dominated—
my life.
Mississippi is my home. I know, firsthand, what our basic values
are and I am convinced that once we effectively let others know
what we have to offer in quality of life that we will join those sister
states that are prospering and ready to move confidently into the
twenty-first century.
The two cornerstones on which I will build my administration
are jobs and education—and to me, the two are indivisible.
Jobs—new jobs created by a coordinated, aggressive statewide
economic development plan (both short-range and long-range),
heavily involving the private sector, our junior colleges, and all of
our institutions of higher learning, and focused on the expansion
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supporters Jake Mills, Dick Hill, Bob Bennett, and Bo Gibens also
loaned me their airplanes from time to time.”
Walker’s contribution and unwavering support touched Reed
deeply. “Bill continued his support throughout the campaign,
and I took him with me when I visited the White House to get
President Reagan’s support,” Reed says.
The race didn’t start out too smoothly, though. Early in the
campaign Frances Reed was diagnosed with colon cancer and
had to have surgery. All campaigning came to a halt, and Reed
says he thought of dropping the whole matter. His wife, however,
would not hear of it, and after two weeks the race for the Gover-
nor’s Mansion resumed. In time, Frances would recover and not
only rejoin the campaign but charm audiences across the state
with her very simple but honest remarks similar to her speech at
the first fund-raiser in Tupelo:
I believe I know Jack better than anyone here knows him. Bill
and Bob have known him well—and longer than I—but I know
him best. I want to tell you one or two things I know about him:
He is smart—I mean very intelligent. He is a hard-working, ener-
getic optimist. He has a real gift of knowing how to communicate
with people, and he has a fine sense of humor.
To illustrate: Jack and I first met on a blind date. I didn’t want to
go and I’m sure he didn’t either. We went as a favor to a mutual
friend. We were with other friends and I thought it went pretty
well. Jack did not—he thought I did not pay enough attention to
him. Well, let me tell you folks, this was a real challenge to Jack!
He used his previously mentioned character traits—and in just over
a year we were married.
Now, Jack has received several fine honors and held some im-
portant positions in the last few years. But let me tell you, he paid
his dues. For twenty-five or thirty years he taught Sunday school,
went to about five thousand meetings of Boy Scouts, LIFT, CDF, and
other humanitarian, education, and economic development meet-
ings all over the state—and he did it with good cheer! After ob-
serving this year after year I realized he really cared about people,
both individually and collectively, and wanted to help.
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1987: The Plunge into Politics
Reed says he had never heard his wife speak in public before
that evening, but he wasn’t surprised by her poise in front of such
a large audience. “I knew she would be a great first lady, and I
didn’t mind telling people.”
Reed’s campaign was a family campaign in every sense of the
word. Sons and daughters and their spouses scattered about the
state with the candidate’s grandchildren in tow, speaking to any
and all, handing out bumper stickers and “push cards,” stabbing
campaign signs in every vacant piece of property.
“The entire family worked tirelessly six days a week for nine
months,” Reed recalls, with a good deal of amazement. “We tried
to take Sundays off to be together, but other than that the girls
traveled with Frances, and the boys often went with me or took
off on their own wherever they were needed.”
Before the November election, Reed and his wife would make
similar speeches to audiences large and small in every section of
Mississippi. “I don’t know of many towns of any size where we
didn’t speak before some group—a civic club, a women’s lun-
cheon, or just a speech on the courthouse steps somewhere. We
knew the only way for people to really get to know us was to go
out and meet them, and we tried awfully hard to meet as many as
we could.”
While Reed had received the enthusiastic endorsement of the
Tupelo newspaper, the Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal, K irsey
McLean, who had taken over as publisher after her husband,
George, had died, granted Billy Crews, the paper’s administrative
assistant, six months paid leave to serve as Reed’s campaign di-
rector for north Mississippi. ( Jamie Becker managed the Jackson
office and the south Mississippi campaign, with Will Feltus as cam-
paign consultant.)
“I couldn’t believe the volunteer support we got, particularly
in Tupelo,” Reed says. “Dozens of friends worked the phones ev-
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1987: The Plunge into Politics
ery night and those not at their jobs during the day helped at our
offices then.”
Reed believes his lack of “political connections” might have
been beneficial to his campaign. “Having never run for any office,
I was naïve in many ways,” he says. “However, it may have been
a blessing in that I was never involved in the intraparty disputes
and second-guessing that develops over the years of political in-
volvement.”
There was no lack of variety and experiences in Reed’s trav-
els following the January fund-raiser in Tupelo. They included
a near-death experience at Al Tuck’s camp near Maben, where
his manhood was tested by a challenge to eat chitlins and drink
bourbon on a flatbed truck.
And there was the ill-advised stop at Black Hawk in the Missis-
sippi Delta, where Reed was astonished to see his old nemesis, the
Citizens’ Council, operating a concession stand.
A perfect example of the demands on candidates came on
the Fourth of July when Reed appeared at the annual rally at the
Jacinto Courthouse in north Mississippi and later that afternoon
in the Mississippi Delta. The affair in the Delta was billed as “the
year’s most important political event, with airport facilities avail-
able.” “As well as I remember,” Reed recalls, “the crowd consisted
of Mike Sturdivant and me, and about twenty-five citizens.”
His campaign—as do those of many serious office seekers—
had Reed passing out handbills at 5 a.m. to shift workers at In-
galls Shipbuilding in Pascagoula, drinking tea later that after-
noon at receptions in the stately antebellum mansions, showing
up at high school football games on Friday nights, and worship-
ping in rural African American churches on Sunday afternoons.
And it didn’t end until the last night of the campaign at a
Pentecostal convention in Tupelo when he sang an impromptu
gospel duet with the presiding preacher—on a national radio
broadcast.
Paramount among all the campaign stops was the Neshoba
County Fair, the annual ten-day gathering unlike any other. Among
the many lasting traditions at the fair in east-central Mississippi,
just outside Philadelphia, are the two days set aside for political
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1987: The Plunge into Politics
speeches. While they are always lively events, those fairs held in
years of statewide elections are the liveliest. No candidate for any
state office would dare miss the Neshoba County Fair, no matter
that it’s held in the latter part of July when Mississippi tempera-
tures are generally at their highest.
The Reed campaign was there in full force, arriving with a bus-
load of supporters from northeast Mississippi to hear their candi-
date speak at the historic campgrounds. Reed knew of the impor-
tance of the moment and had prepared diligently for the speech.
It would not disappoint:
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jobs for their children. I submit to you quite frankly that not since
Hugh White have the people of this state had the opportunity of
electing a man with the qualifications, the experiences, and the
successes that I can offer to provide and develop jobs in Mississippi.
It’s true that I have been president of the M.E.C. and a member
of the state board of economic development, but my best and
most valuable experience has come from my thirty-five years as
president and executive committeeman of Tupelo’s Community De-
velopment Foundation, where I have served longer than any other
person.
In the late 1940s, when I returned home from the Pacific in
World War II, northeast Mississippi was one of the poorest sections
in the poorest state in the Union. We had few natural resources
and no urban cities to attract new jobs. What we did have was
community leadership with the desire and the resolve to move our-
selves ahead without waiting for help from the federal government
in Washington or the state government in Jackson. And we knew,
as my friend George McLean so often said, that “in community de-
velopment, there ain’t no Santa Claus.” We worked hard at it and
we still do.
Today, although only eleventh in size, we are fourth in retail
sales, third in wholesale sales, second in bank deposits, and second
in per capita income. This spring, in competition with thousands
of other organizations, the Wall Street Journal ran a front-page
story listing our C.D.F. as one of the top ten industrial development
groups in America.
As a merchant and as a manufacturer myself (with four ap-
parel plants in Mississippi) I also understand the value—in fact the
necessity—of keeping and expanding Mississippi’s existing indus-
tries, which are in fact the source of seventy-five percent of our
new jobs. We have, in Lee County alone, with new and expanded
industries, averaged five hundred new jobs a year for the last
twenty-five years and now have seventeen Fortune 500 companies!
That’s not political rhetoric; that’s not a political promise; that is a
fact! There is no other candidate in this race—none—who can of-
fer you that record of leadership, that record of success in job de-
velopment.
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So I say to you today, if you are crying out for jobs—jobs for
today and jobs for tomorrow—I hear you . . . and I am ready to
tackle the job of governor if you are ready to help me!
The second reason you should support Jack Reed for governor
is because of my record and commitment to education for the last
twenty-five years.
Thomas Jefferson said, “The monumental task of making de-
mocracy work cannot be accomplished in ignorance.” I believe
that—and I also believe that “the monumental task” of economic
development cannot be accomplished in ignorance. Education is
to economic development what fertilizer is to farming . . . and you
have to put that fertilizer in the ground first if you want to reap a
good harvest later.
My record is on the books for anyone to see. From 1963 on, I
have fought to keep our schools open and to improve the educa-
tional opportunities for all the children and adults of this state.
A record including being chairman of the Blue Ribbon Commit-
tee that in 1979 initiated education reform in Mississippi. Chairman
of the state board for our schools and junior colleges beginning in
1984 that for the last three years worked with the legislature to in-
crease teacher salaries twenty-seven percent—the highest increase
in the nation; the board that initiated teaching assistants and public
kindergartens. As chairman I have traveled America from Seattle to
South Carolina and from the Gulf to the Great Lakes learning how
to improve our schools, and leading the effort to do so.
I know the schools of this state, small and large. I know the
teachers and principals. I know what’s working well and I can tell
you we are making progress—measurably in elementary education
under the teaching assistant program, which, incidentally, I person-
ally helped launch in north Mississippi. Test scores have improved
fifty percent in just three years! I have also been a member of the
council on higher education working to improve our universities.
There simply is no other candidate in either party who can of-
fer our people that background, that leadership, that commitment,
that success in improving the quality of public education. That’s not
political rhetoric; that’s not a political promise. That’s a fact!
I have heard every politician since Theodore Bilbo say “our
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people are our greatest asset” and that’s half true. But as Benjamin
Franklin said, “Half the truth is often a great lie.” If educated, our
people are our greatest asset. If uneducated, they are our great-
est liability. So I say to you today, if you are crying out for better
schools graduating better students, I hear you! And I am ready and
prepared to lead that fight as governor. If you are ready to help me!
Finally, why should you support Jack Reed for governor? You
should support me because of my record of leadership in the areas
of community life and of family life that touch what’s best in the
hearts and minds of our people—that prepare a man or woman to
be the kind of leader our people will respond to and respect.
I didn’t start teaching a young couples Sunday school class in
our church in the 1950s because I thought it would sell well in
the governor’s race in 1987. I did it for the same reasons many of
you have done it—because I felt then, and I feel today, a responsi-
bility to make my family, my church, my town, the kind of place it
should be.
I didn’t help found our county’s United Way in the 1960s because
I thought it would make good political rhetoric twenty-five years
later. I did it because I felt then, as I do now, a compassion for our
fellow men and women and children and elderly who are fight-
ing for the bare necessities of life. I believe in building Habitat for
Humanity shelters for the homeless; I believe in Meals on Wheels
for the hungry; I believe in a safe sanctuary for battered wives and
abused children.
It may not be traditional politics for a conservative businessman
to go on record as being concerned about human needs, but I
haven’t lived all my life for politics—I’ve tried to live it for people—
and I’m not going to change just to win an election!
So, I say to you here this morning, and to the coast, and the hills,
from the Delta to Meridian, if you believe that our state’s people
are calling out for someone with a proven record and leadership
skills to bring us jobs, calling out for someone with the experience
and the understanding to develop one of the best educational sys-
tems in this country, but just as importantly calling out for someone
motivated not by what’s best for his career but by what’s best for
your careers, what’s best for your families and what’s best for your
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communities, and what’s best for our state’s future, then I say to
you today from Mississippi’s most famous platform: I hear you!—
and that I’m ready to give the job of governor of this great state
my best, and with your help, your support, and your prayers, we
can succeed—and we will succeed together!
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Coast [his House district] than I’d get in north Mississippi, and
judging by the number of Republicans down there that was no
idle boast. Not long after their meeting, however, I heard that
Lott told a group of reporters that he was considering running
for governor himself.
“Unfortunately, he made his statement in Washington during
one of our biggest campaign rallies on the coast, and that damp-
ened enthusiasm for my campaign,” Reed says. “I don’t know if
the timing was intentional or not. I certainly wasn’t very wise
politically, but a lot of people in the Republican Party said that
hurt me and I’m sure it did temporarily. I don’t know; he might
have been seriously thinking about running himself, but a lot of
people wondered about that. I wondered about it, too, but I never
took it personally. I just assumed it was political. Trent did call
me later to reassure me that he was not going to run and that he
did support me.” Whatever the reasoning, Reed consistently sup-
ported Lott in each of his subsequent political races, and over the
years they developed a strong personal relationship.
However puzzling Lott’s politics were, the most disappointing
aspects of the campaign came from two factions that Reed had
spent a great portion of his life speaking for and working on be-
half of—African Americans and public school teachers.
“I kind of knew early in the race that I wasn’t going to get a
lot of support among the black voters, and I didn’t,” he says. “I
remember after speaking to an audience at Alcorn State [a his-
torically black university in Lorman in southwest Mississippi] that
one of the professors came up to me and told me, ‘You seem like
a charming man but I don’t think it would be in our best interest
to support you.’ That’s pretty much the way it went all over the
state.”
Even after the Reverend Joseph Lowery, a revered civil rights
pioneer, issued a statement of support for his longtime friend,
Reed found little support in the African American community.
“I thought Joe’s statement would help me, but I don’t think they
paid any attention to it,” Reed says. Polls indicated he received 10
percent of the black vote. If he had received 15 percent the Gov-
ernor’s Mansion most likely would have been his.
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“That hurt Frances a lot,” he says. “But I didn’t blame them for
being suspicious of a white Republican businessman. I thought it
was unfair to label me with a generality, but I could understand
it.”
What Reed couldn’t fully understand was the aggressive attack
on him by members of the Mississippi Association of Educators.
He had spent his entire adult life fighting for public education in
Mississippi and in 1981 had received the MAE’s Friend of Edu-
cation Award.
One of his duties as chair of the Mississippi Board of Educa-
tion cost him much of the support from teacher organizations,
Reed says. “A few months before I announced for governor, the
board of education, at the insistence of the legislature, had re-
quired a ‘Mississippi Teachers Assessment Instrument.’ We’d done
so, even though we believed it was still too early after the passage
of the Education Reform Act, to get the legislature’s approval
of a teacher pay raise called for by the same law. We had a video
made explaining the MTAI, and since I was the chairman I was
the one who introduced it on the tape. The MAE didn’t like that
at all, and since I was the one on the tape I received most of the
blame for the MTAI, and some of the most militant opposition
came from the very group I’d been working so hard for all those
years.”
Reed says there were many teachers who were very supportive
and who worked on his behalf, “and I’ll always be grateful to
them.”
“I’m pretty sure the MAE had already committed to Mabus be-
fore I even announced, so it probably wouldn’t have mattered a
great deal,” he says. “Still, their opposition was so mean-spirited
that it was probably the most disappointing factor in the cam-
paign.”
Another frustration for Reed was not carrying northeast Missis-
sippi. Of the sixteen counties that comprise the region, Reed out-
polled Mabus in only five: Lee, Lafayette, Pontotoc, Oktibbeha,
and Union. “That was pretty hard to accept,” he says, “but I knew
northeast Mississippi was one of the most Democratic parts of the
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c h a pt er t en
1996: Humor—
His Oratorical Trademark
“He had taken the Sam Carnegie course three times.”
No one enjoys a good joke more than Jack Reed. No one enjoys
telling a good joke more than Jack Reed. And for that matter, no
one enjoys being the butt of a good joke as much as Jack Reed.
Though he is sought out as a speaker because of his vision, his ex-
perience, and his wisdom, Reed’s humor is his trademark.
In talking about the century-old family business, Reed loves to
quote the theory that every successful enterprise requires three
men: a dreamer, a businessman, and an S.O.B. “If Dad was the
dreamer and [brother] Bob was the businessman, I leave it to you
to complete the analogy,” he tells his audiences.
While he has been called on over the years to address such
weighty issues as race relations, economic development, and poli-
tics, in 1996 he was invited to speak to the Quinqs—a rather
sporty group of fifty-year alumni at Vanderbilt University, many
of whom are longtime friends. While the speech was filled with re-
marks about—and to—personal friends, it was a perfect example
of Reed’s wit. The occasion called for absolutely no seriousness,
and Reed, who not too many years before had served as presi-
dent of Vanderbilt’s national alumni society, was pleased to be at
the lectern, opening with a quote from humorist Robert Bench-
ley: “It’s nice to be among friends, even if they aren’t mine.” And
with that, he took off.
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1996: Humor—His Oratorical Trademark
grades for cutting class. When I got my “D” I really wished some
friend had told me about it—but I suppose that was asking a bit
much. I probably wouldn’t have enjoyed Phi Beta Kappa anyway.
And I remember well Dr. Frank Owsley’s course American Sec-
tions, or “the Civil War.” In fact, having taken his course, I had not
realized that the South had actually lost the war until I watched
Gettysburg on educational television. As I recall, Dr. Owsley said
that Robert E. Lee had never intended to surrender—that when he
entered the room at Appomattox and saw Grant standing there in
uniform he thought he was the butler and courteously handed him
his sword. . . .
After sending three children to Vanderbilt, I realize that per-
haps the main difference in Vanderbilt today and yesterday is that
in 1941 it was much easier to get in than to get out. In fact, forty
percent of my fraternity pledge class failed to make their grades.
That is the main difference, other than in social changes. When
you look at today’s coed dormitories it gives real poignancy to the
phrase “being born thirty years too soon.” I remember well when
Jack, Jr., was a freshman in 1969, that with parental permission
you could entertain girls in your dorm room. Jack beseeched us by
saying that he and a Baptist preacher’s son from Sparta, Tennessee,
were the only two boys on his floor that didn’t have permission.
Frances said, “Bring that boy home with you for Thanksgiving.
He’s our kind!”
Another Quinq told me last night that when his daughter
punished his grandson, “She sent him to bed without his girl-
friend.”. . .
You may have noticed that there is some confusion in the pro-
gram where I am listed variously as class of ‘45, ‘47, and even ‘43.
Since my education was interrupted by the Great War, that has be-
come a rather effective way of avoiding exact detection by the
alumni office when seeking a pledge.
But reunions are fun. I recall that at the 1980 reunion, Gus
Turbeville, class of ‘45, said he got kissed by the girls he couldn’t
get close to when they were dating.
I heard a good story told on Art Stegall, class of ‘46, when he
returned in the seventies. Arthur had gone to Arizona and become
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It was golden for my brothers and me. It was golden for three
of my children. It was golden for a niece, a nephew, and a god-
child. And I believe it was golden for you or you wouldn’t be here
tonight.
I had never heard that poem when I was an English major at
Vanderbilt. But I well remember another poem most all of us had
to memorize in freshman English under Dr. Mims. It was Tennyson’s
“Ulysses.” And it speaks to us here today, not of the past but of
the future—where we are going to spend the rest of our lives. And
if you remember it, I invite you to join with me (and Dr. Mims) in
this recitation.
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. . . Come, my friends,
‘Tis not too late to seek a newer world.
Push off, and sitting well in order smite
The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
Of all the western stars, until I die.
It may be that the gulfs will wash us down:
It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,
And see the great Achilles, whom we knew.
Tho’ much is taken, much abides; and tho’
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven; that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
“Being able to give a speech like that was a lot of fun,” Reed
recalls. “It’s not often you get to devote your whole time to mak-
ing jokes, even though I did throw in a few verses of poetry just
to keep everyone on their toes. But I do think humor is the best
tool a speaker can have, even during the most serious of times. It
puts the audience at ease. People like to laugh, and if you can’t
laugh at yourself, what can you laugh at?”
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c h a pt er el ev en
1948–Present:
Always a Businessman
“I felt that I ought to be getting to work.”
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love the business after fifty-seven years. I honestly did not feel that
we had been much of a success, and that both J. C. Penney and
McRae’s had opened the same year as Reed’s, and look where they
are today.
Then I thought for a minute and realized there were no more
McRaes in McRae’s or Penneys in Penney, but there are still four
Reeds in Reed’s. Furthermore, as we approach one hundred, it
might be appropriate to take a look back at what got us here.
My father was one of seven boys and a girl, the children of a
country doctor in Itawamba County. Dad finished school (about
nine or ten years, all told) and took and passed the state teachers
exam. But he was too young to be a teacher.
He sold histories of the Spanish-American War—while the war
was still on, and he even sold one set to a blind man. Then he
opened a country store in partnership with his father in the late
1890s in Tilden.
At the urging of Mr. J. J. Rogers, his grocery supplier, Dad came
to Tupelo in 1905 and opened a grocery store next to Rogers. He
saw a men’s store across the street selling neckties for more profit
than he got from a fifty-pound barrel of flour and realized it was
a lot easier to lift a necktie than a fifty-pound barrel of flour, so he
opened a dry goods store, where Reed’s remains today.
Dad was a truly great salesman. He was hard working, enthu-
siastic, and fired with an ambition to succeed. He reminded me of
what football coach Vince Lombardi once said: “If you aren’t fired
with enthusiasm, you will be fired with enthusiasm.”
In the following years he brought four of his brothers into the
store. With his encouragement, three of them went down the street
and opened a wholesale dry goods business which later became
Reed Brothers Garment Plant, which my two brothers and I bought
in 1960 as our uncles reached retirement age.
Dad worked very hard and very long hours, but still became in-
volved in practically all the civic activity in Tupelo. He sold Tupelo’s
first “ready-made” dress and had Tupelo’s first air-conditioned
store. He expanded his business to other towns, including Water
Valley and Oxford, but sold the branches in the Depression.
He had what proved to be in the Southeast the first “day and
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c h a p t er t w elv e
For the most part, Reed has indeed stayed home since his ten-
ure on the Mississippi Board of Education and his run for gov-
ernor. He still spends his days in his office at the department
store, breaking each morning to meet with his compatriots in
the Downtown Tupelo Coffee Club that he, his brother Bob,
and Son Puckett began in 1947. The group has included nearly
every prominent Tupelo businessman and civic leader during its
sixty years—“and,” Reed says, “I’m sure we’ve solved most of the
world’s problems by now.”
These days, Reed’s biggest source of pride is his family, particu-
larly his grandchildren: Kirk Reed Forrester and Jack Reed III;
Frances Clayton and Claude Clayton III; Paul Mize III and Bennett
Mize; Dakin Reed and Lilla Reed; and Rollin Sloan, Shipman
Sloan, Spencer Sloan, and Crofton Sloan III.
“One thing you can always count on during holidays,” Reed
says, “is that there is never a dull moment. Any time we have a
family get-together it’s quite an event. As one old farmer said, ‘I
know four children and eight grandchildren ain’t no record, but
it ain’t no hobby either.’”
Besides his ongoing and very public support for full funding
of the Mississippi Adequate Education Program, Reed’s only re-
cent statewide adventure came in early 2001 when he served on
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Building and the Texan boasted they had bigger outhouses in Texas.
To which the New Yorker replied, “By God, sir, you need them!”
But I would also caution you not to underestimate a community
just because it overestimates itself, as we sometimes tend to do in
Tupelo. Besides, I can only speak with authority from my own expe-
rience and involvement over the last fifty years.
The facts are that since 1947, Tupelo and Lee County have ac-
complished the following: have three times been voted an All-
American City; ranked second in Site Selection magazine’s Top 100
List of Small Towns for New and Expanded Corporate Facilities; for
the last twenty-two years Lee County has averaged over one thou-
sand industrial jobs each year—75 percent of which have come
from expansions. . . .
Lee County has become the most industrialized county in Mis-
sissippi with populations greater than seventy-five thousand. (Like
many of you, we have lost over two thousand jobs in recent years,
many in my plant, yet we still have seventeen thousand manufac-
turing jobs and a total of fifty-two thousand jobs.)
During that period we have also secured or developed:
• a community college
• a branch of the University of Mississippi
• a world-class advanced education center
• the nation’s largest nonmetropolitan hospital
• a nine-thousand-seat coliseum
• a symphony, art museum, community theatre
• an outstanding school system
• a revitalized downtown
• a successful regional mall
• two or three high-priced restaurants
I am not trying to impress you. I am just validating the point I
am trying to make today—that sustained economic success does
not happen in a vacuum, nor does it happen when a major industry
comes to town. It is, rather, the result of a longtime commitment
to total community development which, I am convinced, must pre-
cede and accompany economic development.
It takes more than a good physical plant site and infrastructure—
as important as they are—to attract, keep, and grow industry. It
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origin of the Tupelo Spirit: “Every man owes a duty to the town
in which he resides, to advance its prosperity and to make it the
abode of kindly sentiments and brotherly and neighborly feel-
ings. . . . It is a shame for a man to use his community as a shep-
herd uses his sheep, merely to shear the wool. That man is a dis-
grace to the 19th century whose every act is regulated by the
thought, ‘Can I better myself at the expense of the community to
which I belong?’ ”
The early days were not easy in Mississippi or in Tupelo. When
I graduated high school in 1941, only one in four white Missis-
sippians graduated, and only one in forty black Mississippians
graduated. . . .
It was in the Depression that George McLean bought the Tupelo
Journal—“a bankrupt newspaper from a bankrupt bank.” A social
science teacher and former ministerial student, George had a clear
vision, boundless energy, and great commitment. . . .
(I read once that it takes three people to make a successful en-
terprise: a visionary, a businessman, and an S.O.B. For various people
George filled all three roles in the C.D.F.) He was certainly our vi-
sionary and our sparkplug that ignited the C.D.F., our economic en-
gine. He was dissatisfied with the big business domination of the
chamber of commerce, and it was George’s idea that the chamber
be replaced with a Community Development Foundation with a
much broader mission than the chamber of commerce—with the
emphasis on job creation and public education. That is still our phi-
losophy today. . . .
George had the rare virtue of not only speaking out often, but
also of putting his money where his mouth was, even in the early
days when he had very little money. He used his newspaper to con-
stantly push his progressive ideas. In the process he also became
my mentor.
When I was president of the Mississippi Economic Council in the
sixties and people asked me what I did, I said I raised money and
defended George McLean, which was a full-time job!
Actually, without many natural advantages our early leader-
ship consciously decided that if anyone was going to move Tupelo
ahead, we had to do it ourselves. . . .
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during the cold war, the Department of Defense wired the mayor
of a small Mississippi town and asked what was their plan for nu-
clear defense. “We have no fear of nuclear attack,” the mayor
wired back. “Our chamber of commerce has successfully driven
off everything that has come our way for the last twenty years!”)
We realized from the start that in a city of ten thousand to fifteen
thousand there is not enough good leadership to fragment our ef-
forts. So we focused our strongest leadership on C.D.F.: we did
not allow proxies. We met on call, day after day, night after night.
(Membership on the C.D.F. executive committee was not then, and
is not now, an honorary position. You are expected to work and
you will.) We have no prima donnas in the C.D.F. We are in it to-
gether. We hired a professional staff and have kept it professional.
We served as an umbrella for other organizations and spun them
off when there was sufficient support.
We started with 151 charter members and we now have more
than 1,000. In 1947, our budget was $28,000; in 1958 it was
$44,000 . . . In the 1960s we asked the county for one-half mill,
which brought us $12,500, and we later asked for a full mill, which
brought us $25,000. By 1981, that one mill brought us $162,000
and today it brings us more than $500,000. Our C.D.F. budget to-
day is more than $2,000,000.
And we established a close relationship with our supervisors,
and made heroes of them by having three industrial park locations
in Lee County that serve all five districts so each supervisor had in-
dustrial development in his district. We constantly worked for good
city-county relationships.
In the late ‘40s and ‘50s, when most communities offered “two
hundred breathing bodies and a bond issue,” Tupelo offered plant
sites with medium-size plants hiring men, detailed building costs
information, immediate warehousing space for early start-ups, and,
frankly, did whatever it took. . . . We did not talk “cheap labor.”
We did stress “our work ethic and productivity.”
We are trying to meet the current challenge of global compe-
tition aggressively. Eight years ago we formed the Northeast Mis-
sissippi Regional Commission to improve the quality of life in our
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I know full well that Tupelo’s growth and favorable publicity can
be a little hard to take when Lee County announces five hundred
new jobs and your county just announced a plant closing. . . .
But that isn’t anything new. When I was in school and Tupelo
High played Corinth, I can remember well having the air let out of
our tires during the game. Those were simpler times when shoot-
ing each other seemed extreme. But then I fell in love with a Cor-
inth cheerleader, married her, and realized to my surprise, Sandy,
that there were wonderful people in Alcorn County.
Of course, when I ran for office and failed to carry northeast
Mississippi, I realized I still had a little personal work to do!
But we do indeed have much to learn from each other. Each of
our counties has its own assets and successes which can benefit us
all, and our good progress should be shared. On tough issues like
roads and infrastructure, environmental measures, legislators from
both Jackson and Washington respond most quickly to a united
front. . . .
In fact, we have so much in common that it strikes me as ridicu-
lous to dwell on what separates us. What we have going in this or-
ganization is that we are united in a common cause, and there is
joy and satisfaction. . . .
I am proud to be associated with people who have a vision that
is defined and realistic, and who are working to make that vision a
reality. And I am grateful that in years gone by we have had people
in each of our communities who have cared enough to make a
difference—many of whom are here today.
There is a verse in the Talmud that says, “It is not up to you to
finish the work, but neither are you free not to take it up.” Your
presence here today indicates your willingness to do just that.
When I think of our legacy in our region I inevitably think of
George McLean, from whom we all continue to benefit years after
his death. . . . Fifteen or twenty years ago, George spoke to the
Mississippi Economic Council on quality of life, which is really our
main concern in this commission. I think you will be interested in
what he had to say:
“We need to stress as never before the necessity for honesty
and efficiency both in government and in business and professional
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life. What you and I do, or fail to do, will determine the fate of the
state in the years ahead. The true principle for quality of living or
for enlightened private enterprise is the statement found in Luke,
chapter six: ‘Give and it shall be given to you. For the measure you
give will be the measure you will get.’
“We must freely give of our time, our abilities, and our money
to the development of our state. Otherwise, we shall certainly con-
tinue to remain at the bottom among the American states.
“No one can lift Mississippi except Mississippians.”
And many years before George, John Ruskin gave a challenge
that speaks to us here in this room (and after watching two senior
grandchildren graduate last night it speaks to me): “When we build,
let us not build for present use and present delight alone, but let
it be such works that our descendants will thank us and say, ‘See,
this is what our fathers did for us.’ ”
143
1998–Present: Still Speaking Out
14 4
1998–Present: Still Speaking Out
145
1998–Present: Still Speaking Out
146
1998–Present: Still Speaking Out
147
A F TERWOR D
A Son’s Perspective
149
Afterword
150
Afterword
151
ACK NOW LEDGM EN TS
This book could have never been completed without the constant
support of Jack Reed, Jr. This was his brainchild to begin with,
and it was his passion for our project that kept me going through
a rough period in my life. I am indebted to him for sticking with
me. Indeed, the entire Reed family—its numbers are legion—
has my eternal gratitude, and I am a lucky man indeed to have
them as friends.
As always, my own family—wife, Lee, son and daughter-in-law,
Drew and Kim, and daughter, Katie—has been there for me, bless
their hearts. Our tribe even grew during the final stages of writ-
ing with the arrival of Hannah Grace McKenzie. She is a beau-
tiful and perfect first grandchild.
There are those—Joe Rutherford, Joe White, Dale Thorn, Andy
Mullins, Jere Nash, and Mac Gordon—whose professional ad-
vice was invaluable. I always appreciated it and sometimes took
it. Without Lucia Randle, there might not have been any photos.
I owe her.
And a special thanks goes to K irk Reed Forrester, who com-
bined her incomparable skills as an editor with her love for her
grandfather and turned a manuscript into a book. After spend-
ing thirty years in the newspaper business, I know about editing.
Kirk’s efforts were remarkable.
153
Acknowledgments
One night at a party a few years back, Frances Reed and I sat
on the sofa, oblivious to the considerable merriment all around
us, and had a long talk about life in general. Before rejoining the
festivities, she gave me a kiss on the cheek, and for a brief mo-
ment that will last a lifetime I understood how lucky her family
was. She was a special person.
154
INDEX
155
Index
156
Index
157
Index
158
Index
159
Index
Reed, Bill, 5, 11, 53, 92, 115, 125 Schwab, Charles, 140
Reed, Bob, 5, 11, 53, 92, 122–23, 125– Schweitzer, Albert, 82
26, 131 Scott County, Miss., 111
Reed, Camille. See Sloan, Camille Reed segregation: as Christian problem, 33;
Reed, Catherine. See Mize, Catherine “moderate” position toward, 36; as
Reed vital issue, 31
Reed, Dakin, 131 Selah, W. B., 25, 41
Reed, Frances, 5, 11, 22, 54, 90, 97, 99– Senate Concurrent Resolution No.
100 506, 63
Reed, Jack, Jr., 56, 88, 92, 118, 123, 126 Seventeen (Tarkington), 77
Reed, Jack, III, 92, 131 Shakespeare, William, Julius Caesar, 68
Reed, K irk. See Forrester, K irk Reed Shannon, Oscar, 85
Reed, Lilla, 131 Sheffield, Phillip, 85
Reed, Lisa, 92 Sillers, Walter, 4
Reed, R. W. “Bob,” 85, 88, 115, 122, Sloan, Camille Reed, 56, 92, 126
124–27 Sloan, Crofton, III, 131
Reed, Scott, 56, 88, 92, 126 Sloan, Rollin, 131
Reed Manufacturing, 122–23 Sloan, Shipman, 131
Reed’s Department Store, 10, 88, 122– Sloan, Spencer, 131
30, 133 Smith, Frank, 26
Republican Party, 90–91, 113–14 Smith, Fred, 12, 26
Riley, Frank, 45 Smith, Ron, 132–33
Robbins, Jerry, 45 Smith, Roy, 25
Roberts, Lucimarian, 64 Southaven, Miss., 98
Robertson, James, 45 Special Committee on Public School
Robertson, Jan, 45 Finance and Administration. See Blue
Rogers, J. J., 124 Ribbon Committee on Education
Rogers, Katie B., 26 Spivey, Ebbie, 90
Rogers, Landis, 41 Stafford, Howard, 85
Rogers, Nat, 35, 39 Stafford, J. P., 25
Rogers, Will, 130 Stanley, John, 85
Roosevelt, Franklin D., 117 state legislature. See Mississippi legis-
Roosevelt, Teddy, 130 lature
Ross, Joe, Jr., 64 states rights, 6
Rotary Club, International, 129–30 Stegall, Art, 118
Rote, Kyle, Jr., 128 Stennis, John, Jr., 8
Rumbarger, David, 140 Student Nonviolent Coordinating Com-
Rural Community Development Council mittee (SNCC), 31
(R.C.D.C.), 137 Sturdivant, Mike, 101, 108
Ruskin, John, 143 Sun Herald, 111
Rust College, 30–31 Swayze, M. B., 21
Rutherford, Harry, 9, 10, 53 Syrus, Publilius, 55
Rutherford, Joe, 92
Talmud, 142
Sadler, Catherine, 54 Tampa, Fla., 50
San Antonio, Tex., 50 Tarkington, Booth, Seventeen, 77
Sansing, David, Making Haste Slowly, 12 teachers, 109–10
Sarratt, Madison, 119, 128 technology, 82, 146
Sayers, Gale, 83 Tennyson, Alfred Lord, “Ulysses,”
schools. See public schools 120–21
160
Index
161