By DAHLEEN GLANTON
PHILADELPHIA, Miss. — In small towns, news always travels fast. So it didn’t take long for the hordes of visitors in town for the Edgar Ray Killen trial to find out about Peggy’s Restaurant.
The restaurant, in a white stucco house three blocks from the Neshoba County Courthouse, quickly became a favorite lunchtime hangout—a place where you could get all the fried chicken, fried okra, fried pork chops that you wanted, or just about anything else cooked in oil, for $7.
The food was good, but what people seemed to like most about Peggy’s is its Southern charm. There is no cash register. Customers pay on an honor system by dropping money in a basket on the way out. There is no one to seat you at a table. You grab a space on a bench or take a chair at a big round table and dine with whomever happens to be sitting there.
People in Mississippi take pride in being true Southerners. So for months, as the trial grew closer, residents decided this was as good a time as any to show outsiders that Philadelphia is more than just the place where three civil rights workers were killed in 1964.
“Being in the Deep South, we are known for our Southern hospitality, and we wanted to treat people as our guests and welcome them to the community,” said Cindy Brown, the tourism director for Philadelphia and Neshoba County. “We’re not doing this necessarily because of the trial. This is just who we are.”
Not everyone buying it
Not everyone was impressed. George Roberts, president of the NAACP in neighboring Kemper County, called it “window dressing.”
“They do what they do to accomplish a mission. And that mission is to make Philadelphia look as though there has been a transformation,” Roberts said. “But really, the facts are that there is as much hatred and racism here as there was in the ‘60s.”
With more than a hundred journalists from around the world in Philadelphia for two weeks, volunteers opened a media center in the former Magnolia restaurant downtown, stocking it daily with home-baked lemon-iced tea cakes and other sweet treats.
The refrigerator was filled with cold bottled water. The thermostat in the room was kept at 50 degrees, offering a comfortable retreat from the scorching Mississippi heat. The center was the brainchild of Patsy Brumfield, who temporarily left her job as news editor at the Daily Journal in Tupelo to serve as the self-proclaimed “house mom” to the visiting media.
According to Brumfield, it is important to Mississippians that the world sees them in a positive light. During the summer of 1964, Brumfield was a 15-year-old growing up in McComb when CBS News anchorman Walter Cronkite dubbed her hometown “the church-bombing capital of the world,” she said, a label that town never has lived down.
“I know that if you make things convenient and help reporters be as comfortable as you can, they will do a good job and report things fairly,” Brumfield said. “We would have been hospitable anyway, but we were motivated to do what we could to help erase that negative impression people have of Philadelphia.”
Some limits to hospitality
Susie Hammendorp extended the hours of her Coffee Bean Cafe across the street from the courthouse. And she got around to something she had been meaning to do since she opened the coffee and sandwich shop in an old department store six years ago—getting wireless Internet installed.
Hammendorp said she tried to get the county supervisors to consider allowing restaurants to serve beer and wine, but in this Bible Belt state where many counties are dry, no one was willing to talk about it. Still, the Starbucks-style cafe was the second-most popular spot behind Peggy’s.
“People have been coming in here from all over the world, so it’s been real interesting for us,” said Hammendorp, who grew up in Starkville, about 60 miles from Philadelphia. “We knew people had to eat, and I wanted my shop to be clean and presentable. We’ve had a bad image as far as the trial, so everyone is trying to do what they can to get rid of some of the gray clouds.”
Almost every street was blocked off around the courthouse square, turning the downtown area into a traffic nightmare. While some businesses closed during the trial, most stayed open. The locals, however, stayed away in droves.
Teresa Pace, one of the owners of Stribling Printing, said she knew she wouldn’t get much business once the trial started. But prior to it, she had the job printing media passes. She made 220 picture identification cards, charging $5 apiece. After that, there was not much left to do.
“June is a slow month for walk-ins anyway. ... If [the trial] had happened in March or April, it would have killed me,” Pace said, referring to the graduation and wedding rush. “By now, the June brides have gotten their invitations and they’re good to go.”
A 4-decade surprise
Mayor Rayburn Waddell, who was elected to his third term two weeks ago, said he is proud of the progress made in Philadelphia in the 41 years since Michael Schwerner, James Chaney and Andrew Goodman were killed, and he wants the world to know it.
“Over the last four decades, people have looked at Philadelphia as not a good place to be from. They were afraid to come here and be on the street at night,” Waddell said. “Those perceptions are far from being correct. We have very hospitable people here, and we want everyone to leave and be surprised that Philadelphia is very different from what they thought it would be.”
Dahleen Glanton, national correspondent, covered the Killen trial for the Tribune.
