These are some of my favorite interviews I conducted while writing for Planet Weekly.
David Banner (producer, rapper, actor)
David Cobb (2004 Green Party presidential candidate)
Darrah Johnson (Survivor contestant)
Harvey Johnson (mayor of Jackson, Mississippi)
Dr. Ronald Mason, Jr. (president of Jackson State University)
Rebekah Potter (multi-media artist)
Showing posts with label interview. Show all posts
Showing posts with label interview. Show all posts
Sunday, June 7, 2009
Interview with Rebekah Potter (Artist)
This was unquestionably my most informal interview - and it seemed perfect for the subject. We met in her kitchen while she made pizza dough, and I questioned her with off-hand comments. I considered it an interview version of her work - "not a rectangle." She liked it well enough that gifted me with a 5' x 4' piece of art that I had admired in her studio. It's vaguely rectangular, has no real corners, is folded in places, stitched, battered, taped (and all this the way she made it), and goes everywhere with me. Like all great art, wherever I hang it, it's perfect.
Rebekah Potter does not believe in rectangles. Instead, she prefers to let the borders of her art become part of the art itself. Using scrap wood – complete with gashes, tears, and protrusions – she creates pieces that purposefully reach beyond the boundaries our minds impose. Many of her paper and cardboard collage pieces have no shape, reaching out and folding back in on themselves, helping turn the medium into the message. She sews stitches into many of her pieces, adding texture and drawing your eyes to places they would not necessarily go. And yes, she does have some rectangular pieces, but only because it suits her to do so.
Potter has been called an intrepid wanderer, living alone around the world, yet always touching base in Jackson, where she lived for six years. Perhaps because of her infrequent visits home, she has remained near the edges of Jackson’s vibrant art scene, yet she has many devotees and numerous individuals collect her work. She often reaches inside herself to find her subject matter, which vividly reflects her state of mind at the time.
On Thursday, June 2nd, Potter will return to Fondren Traders, inside the Rainbow Whole Foods building, for a show of her newest work, called Vis.Queen.Wonder.Land. (See The Art Scene for details.) When I first spoke with her in early May about doing this piece, she was simply in Jackson for a visit. By the time of the interview, she had decided to return to Jackson permanently – or as permanently as she ever is.
As is her wont, our interview was extremely informal. PW sat in a kitchen while she prepared her own pizza crust for a dinner party; we discussed her travels, her work, and her belief in “art for no reason.”
Planet Weekly: How would you define your art?
Rebekah Potter: I’m a mixed media artist. I do 2-dimensional work with paint, but I also do collages with found material – everyday life objects; things you maybe should take out of context in order to better appreciate.
PW: What brought you to that style of work?
RP: When you first start out, you want to try to be a painter’s painter, to paint things classically. For me, it got to where that just wasn’t enough. Robert Rauschenberg was taking painting beyond just paint and I liked that.
PW: Your art reflects who you are?
RP: A lot of it has been really autobiographical; in a sense, I’d say selfish. Now I feel like I’m trying to bridge – the word bridge and the word bound; those two words I’ve been thinking about – with the viewer and maybe start addressing issues larger than myself. When I was in school, I thought it was cliché; I thought it was what you were supposed to do. Now, it’s a matter of following my curiosity, following my interests.
PW: You mention found objects. What do you use?
RP: Mainly for me it’s recycled paper, cardboard – things you take for granted. In San Francisco, when you walk around, you can see tons of valet stickers on the ground. I collect them because I was always walking around. I was really into them.
PW: How long did you live and work in San Francisco?
RP: For six years. I went to school at Arizona State, I went to San Francisco, went to Japan, then Los Angeles. Now I’m coming back here.
PW: Are you from Mississippi?
RP: I was born in Mobile, Alabama. My family moved around. I remember we lived in West Virginia. I remember some of South Carolina; we lived in Charleston. I remember Atlanta. We lived in Oklahoma City for a couple of years. By the time I reached the sixth grade, we were here. I graduated high school here.
PW: Why come back?
RP: It’s gotten big enough that I can handle it. Before, it was so small; I couldn’t. It wasn’t enough for me. You have to go out there and find yourself and discover who you are. I think you have to go out of your comfort zone and that’s what I did.
But here, the cost of living is so much cheaper. It’s more interesting than it used to be. Jackson has interesting characters.
PW: I suppose you don’t know that, population-wise, Jackson is actually a little smaller.
RP: I didn’t know that. How come it seems so much bigger?
PW: That’s what I’m asking you.
RP: I guess there is more here, as far as shopping, performance venues, and people from other places. There are a lot more people from other places. Jackson has become more cosmopolitan.
PW: I’m assuming you find that more appealing.
RP: Yeah. There are certain things; I can’t get over the fact that there isn’t a Trader Joe’s here. There are those little things that can make a city great. You can go to all these different little places and get all kinds of interesting food, wine, clothes. You can see independent films you can’t see here. There’s a lot more going on in L.A. than in Jackson.
PW: Then, was there something in particular that drew you back here?
RP: People. There are people who have been a consistent inspiration: my friend the glass blower, my friend the writer, and my friend the architect. There are good people here doing interesting things. Besides the glass blower, the others have left Jackson and experienced other things and places, and they’ve been brought back here for some reason. You wonder what’s wrong with you; why do you come back here? But there is something about Jackson. I don’t know what it is. I feel different here.
PW: Is that a positive different?
RP: Yeah. It’s interesting to me. In L.A., I wake up and drink Yerba Maté – Brazilian rainforest tea that tastes like bark – with rice milk. I have something soy; an overly L.A. kind of breakfast. Here I have coffee, maybe an egg with hormones. I really can’t quite imagine drinking Yerba Maté here. But in L.A., I’m not a drinker. Here, I like a drink at night. I like to watch the rain. The other night I told [the architect] I hadn’t seen a thunderstorm since I can’t remember. It’s been forever. I sat outside and watched it. We didn’t have the weather out there. There are no trees to make that noise when the leaves are blowing. I love that. The South is more sensual.
PW: How does that affect your work?
RP: It makes it more tactile. You’re not supposed to touch a painting, you know. But I’m avid about doing that. With the process I’m using, I like the way they feel. I like people touching them; it feels like skin. My work is more 3-dimensional here. I’ve incorporated the sewing; the sense of lighting is different. L.A. is very bright, but it lacks depth – it’s flat, shiny, hard.
I’m here for the life. There’s more soul here. I’m an oddball. I don’t look like Jackson, but I feel comfortable here, and I feel that no one would harass me about it.
PW: What kind of work will you be showing?
RP: A few different styles. They’re bridging together. Some of them I started before I got here; they’re autobiographical, reflecting what I was going through in L.A. That whole series brought me here. I finished a couple of pieces here, so they’re half-and-half, and there are pieces that I’ve started here – equines. For me, horses are passion.
PW: That’s a female thing.
RP: It is. That fine with me, because I like being a girl.
PW: She says while kneading dough.
RP: I know. That’s been a shift in me. I see a shift in my work, too. I can’t sew and suddenly I’m obsessed with sewing. I want to learn to sew. Now I’m sewing in my work. For me, I’ve been such a tomboy, but now I’m starting to feel more okay with womanly things, domestic traits. I don’t see it as being a bad thing; it’s something that adds strength and balance.
PW: How active were you artistically in these other locations?
RP: In San Francisco, I was the most active; I was part of a studio group, the Blue Studio. Now it’s on Mission Street, but it used to be near PacBell Park [home of the San Francisco Giants]. It was a work-only space and I lived there. My friend built me a Murphy bed and I joined the gym up the street [for bathing facilities]. There, we would go to the Art Walks, participate in the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts shows. That’s when things started to click for me. I did a lot of auctions and benefits. It’s weird: I don’t know why, but for a year, I quit painting and took a corporate job selling furniture. Then I lost it and went to Japan.
PW: Lost your job?
RP: Lost my mind.
PW: What did you do in Japan?
RP: I taught English. It was exciting; Japan is beautiful in every way. I wouldn’t want to live there forever, but I liked it. It was visual splendor.
PW: How did this affect your work?
RP: I was unaware of how much I liked everything Japanese until I got there. I like the food; I had Japanese prints. I had started to collect wooden Japanese carpenter tools.
I’d say Western art is 3-dimensional; it wants to create space, volume. Japanese prints are very flat. I liked that. I started recognizing that in my own work. When I got back from Japan, I had my first show at Fondren Traders and it was all very Asian looking. It gave me a good experience at documenting a place and a feeling. That series I would like to own myself; it was natural and fluid. It came out of me. It had all the elements: it was personal, but it could match your couch. I had to tell myself to get off the Asian theme.
PW: There is still some Japanese influence in your current work. The layout hints at it. In one, there is an Oriental-looking fish…
RP: And a pagoda. It’s hard for me to shake. You’ll catch me on the Internet, looking at scenes from Japan.
PW: You took imagery and concepts from Japan. What did you take artistically from San Francisco?
RP: There, I was influenced by a good group of peers, some amazing painters. One guy had a very established style by the time he finished school – very Basquiat-influenced. I used to watch him paint a couple hours a day. He was very free with me and I learned a lot from that. Another friend was a hyperrealist painter. He thought about art very formally, about what school taught you to do. All those things influenced me. I pick, choose, borrow, and steal whatever I want. I was a sponge.
It’s more intuitive that way. I don’t like formula. It’s shallow and small-minded. You want to have an experience. Have the guts to make art for no reason – for no reason. I think who you are and what you appreciate translates less literally than people think.
PW: What did you take away from L.A.?
RP: Ruins. When I got there, I loved it for the first year and a half; the industrial look, the interesting colors. But then I felt like I’d never experienced the reality out there. If you’re not in the film industry, everyone seems crazy to you. They’re obsessed with these people, and these people are jerks, in this industry where everyone gets all this money and notoriety. I was just struggling to survive. I couch-surfed the first year I was out there, and there were a lot of nights in the car. I will say I met one friend who was a photographer there with a lot of heart and soul
I have to say, L.A. is known for the second-best art scene, next to New York. As far as painting, I didn’t see much that impressed me. I feel like L.A. set me up to move here. It stripped away the fluff and brought me down to the essentials.
Jackson is very real. I can live my life my way. I want to create my own world. I want my place, my paintings. I want to take them anywhere and everywhere. That’s what I want.
Rebekah Potter does not believe in rectangles. Instead, she prefers to let the borders of her art become part of the art itself. Using scrap wood – complete with gashes, tears, and protrusions – she creates pieces that purposefully reach beyond the boundaries our minds impose. Many of her paper and cardboard collage pieces have no shape, reaching out and folding back in on themselves, helping turn the medium into the message. She sews stitches into many of her pieces, adding texture and drawing your eyes to places they would not necessarily go. And yes, she does have some rectangular pieces, but only because it suits her to do so.
Potter has been called an intrepid wanderer, living alone around the world, yet always touching base in Jackson, where she lived for six years. Perhaps because of her infrequent visits home, she has remained near the edges of Jackson’s vibrant art scene, yet she has many devotees and numerous individuals collect her work. She often reaches inside herself to find her subject matter, which vividly reflects her state of mind at the time.
On Thursday, June 2nd, Potter will return to Fondren Traders, inside the Rainbow Whole Foods building, for a show of her newest work, called Vis.Queen.Wonder.Land. (See The Art Scene for details.) When I first spoke with her in early May about doing this piece, she was simply in Jackson for a visit. By the time of the interview, she had decided to return to Jackson permanently – or as permanently as she ever is.
As is her wont, our interview was extremely informal. PW sat in a kitchen while she prepared her own pizza crust for a dinner party; we discussed her travels, her work, and her belief in “art for no reason.”
Planet Weekly: How would you define your art?
Rebekah Potter: I’m a mixed media artist. I do 2-dimensional work with paint, but I also do collages with found material – everyday life objects; things you maybe should take out of context in order to better appreciate.
PW: What brought you to that style of work?
RP: When you first start out, you want to try to be a painter’s painter, to paint things classically. For me, it got to where that just wasn’t enough. Robert Rauschenberg was taking painting beyond just paint and I liked that.
PW: Your art reflects who you are?
RP: A lot of it has been really autobiographical; in a sense, I’d say selfish. Now I feel like I’m trying to bridge – the word bridge and the word bound; those two words I’ve been thinking about – with the viewer and maybe start addressing issues larger than myself. When I was in school, I thought it was cliché; I thought it was what you were supposed to do. Now, it’s a matter of following my curiosity, following my interests.
PW: You mention found objects. What do you use?
RP: Mainly for me it’s recycled paper, cardboard – things you take for granted. In San Francisco, when you walk around, you can see tons of valet stickers on the ground. I collect them because I was always walking around. I was really into them.
PW: How long did you live and work in San Francisco?
RP: For six years. I went to school at Arizona State, I went to San Francisco, went to Japan, then Los Angeles. Now I’m coming back here.
PW: Are you from Mississippi?
RP: I was born in Mobile, Alabama. My family moved around. I remember we lived in West Virginia. I remember some of South Carolina; we lived in Charleston. I remember Atlanta. We lived in Oklahoma City for a couple of years. By the time I reached the sixth grade, we were here. I graduated high school here.
PW: Why come back?
RP: It’s gotten big enough that I can handle it. Before, it was so small; I couldn’t. It wasn’t enough for me. You have to go out there and find yourself and discover who you are. I think you have to go out of your comfort zone and that’s what I did.
But here, the cost of living is so much cheaper. It’s more interesting than it used to be. Jackson has interesting characters.
PW: I suppose you don’t know that, population-wise, Jackson is actually a little smaller.
RP: I didn’t know that. How come it seems so much bigger?
PW: That’s what I’m asking you.
RP: I guess there is more here, as far as shopping, performance venues, and people from other places. There are a lot more people from other places. Jackson has become more cosmopolitan.
PW: I’m assuming you find that more appealing.
RP: Yeah. There are certain things; I can’t get over the fact that there isn’t a Trader Joe’s here. There are those little things that can make a city great. You can go to all these different little places and get all kinds of interesting food, wine, clothes. You can see independent films you can’t see here. There’s a lot more going on in L.A. than in Jackson.
PW: Then, was there something in particular that drew you back here?
RP: People. There are people who have been a consistent inspiration: my friend the glass blower, my friend the writer, and my friend the architect. There are good people here doing interesting things. Besides the glass blower, the others have left Jackson and experienced other things and places, and they’ve been brought back here for some reason. You wonder what’s wrong with you; why do you come back here? But there is something about Jackson. I don’t know what it is. I feel different here.
PW: Is that a positive different?
RP: Yeah. It’s interesting to me. In L.A., I wake up and drink Yerba Maté – Brazilian rainforest tea that tastes like bark – with rice milk. I have something soy; an overly L.A. kind of breakfast. Here I have coffee, maybe an egg with hormones. I really can’t quite imagine drinking Yerba Maté here. But in L.A., I’m not a drinker. Here, I like a drink at night. I like to watch the rain. The other night I told [the architect] I hadn’t seen a thunderstorm since I can’t remember. It’s been forever. I sat outside and watched it. We didn’t have the weather out there. There are no trees to make that noise when the leaves are blowing. I love that. The South is more sensual.
PW: How does that affect your work?
RP: It makes it more tactile. You’re not supposed to touch a painting, you know. But I’m avid about doing that. With the process I’m using, I like the way they feel. I like people touching them; it feels like skin. My work is more 3-dimensional here. I’ve incorporated the sewing; the sense of lighting is different. L.A. is very bright, but it lacks depth – it’s flat, shiny, hard.
I’m here for the life. There’s more soul here. I’m an oddball. I don’t look like Jackson, but I feel comfortable here, and I feel that no one would harass me about it.
PW: What kind of work will you be showing?
RP: A few different styles. They’re bridging together. Some of them I started before I got here; they’re autobiographical, reflecting what I was going through in L.A. That whole series brought me here. I finished a couple of pieces here, so they’re half-and-half, and there are pieces that I’ve started here – equines. For me, horses are passion.
PW: That’s a female thing.
RP: It is. That fine with me, because I like being a girl.
PW: She says while kneading dough.
RP: I know. That’s been a shift in me. I see a shift in my work, too. I can’t sew and suddenly I’m obsessed with sewing. I want to learn to sew. Now I’m sewing in my work. For me, I’ve been such a tomboy, but now I’m starting to feel more okay with womanly things, domestic traits. I don’t see it as being a bad thing; it’s something that adds strength and balance.
PW: How active were you artistically in these other locations?
RP: In San Francisco, I was the most active; I was part of a studio group, the Blue Studio. Now it’s on Mission Street, but it used to be near PacBell Park [home of the San Francisco Giants]. It was a work-only space and I lived there. My friend built me a Murphy bed and I joined the gym up the street [for bathing facilities]. There, we would go to the Art Walks, participate in the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts shows. That’s when things started to click for me. I did a lot of auctions and benefits. It’s weird: I don’t know why, but for a year, I quit painting and took a corporate job selling furniture. Then I lost it and went to Japan.
PW: Lost your job?
RP: Lost my mind.
PW: What did you do in Japan?
RP: I taught English. It was exciting; Japan is beautiful in every way. I wouldn’t want to live there forever, but I liked it. It was visual splendor.
PW: How did this affect your work?
RP: I was unaware of how much I liked everything Japanese until I got there. I like the food; I had Japanese prints. I had started to collect wooden Japanese carpenter tools.
I’d say Western art is 3-dimensional; it wants to create space, volume. Japanese prints are very flat. I liked that. I started recognizing that in my own work. When I got back from Japan, I had my first show at Fondren Traders and it was all very Asian looking. It gave me a good experience at documenting a place and a feeling. That series I would like to own myself; it was natural and fluid. It came out of me. It had all the elements: it was personal, but it could match your couch. I had to tell myself to get off the Asian theme.
PW: There is still some Japanese influence in your current work. The layout hints at it. In one, there is an Oriental-looking fish…
RP: And a pagoda. It’s hard for me to shake. You’ll catch me on the Internet, looking at scenes from Japan.
PW: You took imagery and concepts from Japan. What did you take artistically from San Francisco?
RP: There, I was influenced by a good group of peers, some amazing painters. One guy had a very established style by the time he finished school – very Basquiat-influenced. I used to watch him paint a couple hours a day. He was very free with me and I learned a lot from that. Another friend was a hyperrealist painter. He thought about art very formally, about what school taught you to do. All those things influenced me. I pick, choose, borrow, and steal whatever I want. I was a sponge.
It’s more intuitive that way. I don’t like formula. It’s shallow and small-minded. You want to have an experience. Have the guts to make art for no reason – for no reason. I think who you are and what you appreciate translates less literally than people think.
PW: What did you take away from L.A.?
RP: Ruins. When I got there, I loved it for the first year and a half; the industrial look, the interesting colors. But then I felt like I’d never experienced the reality out there. If you’re not in the film industry, everyone seems crazy to you. They’re obsessed with these people, and these people are jerks, in this industry where everyone gets all this money and notoriety. I was just struggling to survive. I couch-surfed the first year I was out there, and there were a lot of nights in the car. I will say I met one friend who was a photographer there with a lot of heart and soul
I have to say, L.A. is known for the second-best art scene, next to New York. As far as painting, I didn’t see much that impressed me. I feel like L.A. set me up to move here. It stripped away the fluff and brought me down to the essentials.
Jackson is very real. I can live my life my way. I want to create my own world. I want my place, my paintings. I want to take them anywhere and everywhere. That’s what I want.
Interview with Dr. Ronald Mason, Jr. (President of Jackson State University)
Over about a year, Planet Weekly was doing a series of interviews with the presidents of the local colleges and universities: Belhaven College, Millsaps College, Hines County Community College, Tougaloo College, and Jackson State University. Each school was done by a different writer (which turned out well), and I was assigned Dr. Mason of JSU. It is my belief that he has the most dangerous intellect I've ever seen. He is brilliant and knows exactly what he's saying and doing. I still remain in awe of his brain.
Dr. Ronald Mason, Jr. became the President of Jackson State University on February 1, 2000. In his five years, he has led the school into a period of growth, economic development, and heightened reputation and respect. In this time, Jackson State has reorganized many of its schools and colleges, reached into the community to create a Jackson State-based technology cluster, and begun sweeping programs to increase economic and community development. The student body continues to grow and more and more alumni of this historic institution are making names for themselves in the world of business, public service, and the arts.
Dr. Mason’s inaugural address was “Rivers of History, Rivers of Hope,” in which he spoke of two rivers that came together in Mississippi, one of white history, one of black history. He compared the conflicts and meshing of two vastly different societies as a confluence of rivers that could drown a people or could lead them to a broader, unified river. The confluence was Jackson State University and the state of Mississippi and the one river – our future together. It was a clarion call to all that he was a man with ideas to implement, and that he believed Jackson State was more than just a place; it had a purpose, one that it must achieve.
Before coming to Jackson State, Mason worked and studied extensively in the fields of higher education, community development, and law. He earned his B.A. and J.D. degrees from Columbia and was a graduate of the Harvard Institute of Educational Management. He worked for 18 years at Tulane University, as Vice President of Finance and Operations, and as Senior Vice President and General Counsel. During his time at Tulane, he established the Tulane-Xavier-Loyola-Dillard universities Martin Luther King Week for Peace and brought the school the Amistad Research Center – one of the largest collections of original documents and artwork on the minority experience in the U.S.
In 1996, Mason created the Tulane-Xavier National Center for Urban Community. The center took over New Orleans’ housing authority and the students, staff, and faculty developed model programs to assist the residents through several means, including a Ford Foundation public school reform planning initiative, an Annie E. Casey neighborhood development and family strengthening initiative, and a welfare-to-work initiative funded by the U.S. Department of Labor.
Planet Weekly met with Dr. Mason at his office, high atop the Administration Tower on the JSU campus, to talk about his five years in office and future plans for the university. Mason proved to be dynamic, passionate, and forthright, with a deadpan delivery and sense of humor.
Planet Weekly: When you first came on five years ago, you spoke about a five-year strategic plan for Jackson State. Has that come to fruition?
Dr. Ronald Mason, Jr.: We did a strategic plan in 2002. It was called “Beyond Survival: the Millennium Agenda for Jackson State University.” It had five broad strategies: Remodel the Learning System, Fully Integrate Technology, Enhance Management and Resources, Tell the Jackson State Story, and Create a Model Living and Learning Environment. We took those strategies, broke them into 24 programs, and broke those up into about 200 action steps. That’s how we’ve been moving forward; we follow the plan.
PW: Are you setting your sights for another strategic plan?
RM: We’re actually in the process of updating the strategic plan now. About every two or three years you have to reexamine one. As far as implementing our plan, I’d give us a good solid “B.”
PW: Will these updates stay the current course or expand in new directions?”
RM: I think the plan did anticipate what needed to be done at Jackson State to transform it into a model urban university, which is what the task was. I think we’ve narrowed the problem down to one now – money. I tell folks we don’t have any problems that money wouldn’t solve. The key for us is to be able to do something never done before at Jackson State, and that’s to raise private funds. The trick for us is that we’ve always been given the job to educate, basically, poor people and public servants and most of those poor people are African-Americans. There’s just not a lot of wealth among our alumni, so I have a tricky task: I have to raise money for Jackson State from people who graduated from Ole Miss and Mississippi State.
PW: We know this has been problematic, but are you seeing any increases in funding?
RM: We are and we aren’t. The biggest capital campaign Jackson State had was about $10 million several years ago. Allstate abandoned a processing center on Raymond Road. It’s a 200,000-square foot facility on 30 acres of land. It was worth almost $21 million and we got them to sell it to us for $3 million, which made it about a $17 million dollar donation. This, plus the other cash we’ve raised – we’ve raised about $25 million since we started. We’ve had some successes and what we’ve been selling is the truth: there’s only one university in the largest metropolitan area and capital city in the state of Mississippi – and that’s Jackson State University. Central Mississippi isn’t going to go anywhere until Jackson State rises to the occasion to be what it needs to be for this area. That’s in everyone’s interest, whether you’re white, black, from Mississippi State, Ole Miss, or wherever else.
PW: And what does Jackson State need to be?
RM: We need to be what everyone says they want it to be. The theme of the strategic planning process was “Clarity and Consensus.” Everybody said they wanted Jackson State to be the premiere urban university or Mississippi’s urban university. What that means is that we have to be a bona fide, high-quality institute of higher learning for central Mississippi. For us, it’s a sort of special balancing act we have to play: we’re a historically black institution that needs to serve a mostly-white business community in this area. When I first got here, I thought the disconnect between the business community and Jackson State was that they didn’t like Jackson State. But after while I realized that it wasn’t that they didn’t like it, it’s that they didn’t see it at all. It wasn’t a part of their Mississippi. So part of our job has been to help them see Jackson State, and when you see it, there’s a lot to be said for what is going on here.
PW: So part of the problem is that JSU is a sort of invisible university?
RM: It has been that. The other challenge we’ve had is that they’re not quite sure how to make Jackson State right without making it white. It’s not in their realm of reality that an urban university for Mississippi would also be a historically black institution. But I think we’ve made some progress. I was at a speech the governor made. He said we have two goals for Jackson State. One was to make it the number one historically black college or university in America and the seconds was to make it the premiere urban university – and there is no contradiction between the two. So at least intellectually we’re making progress.
We have some very, very bright students here. They can go to school anywhere. Many of them come from large urban areas; Jackson is probably the smallest. If you go up the railroad tracks to Detroit, through Memphis, St. Louis, and Chicago – that’s where our kids come from. They come from these broken K-12 systems and we’ve had to take them where they are and give them what they need to be successful. That’s the mission we embrace and will always stay true to. We don’t judge by who comes in the door as much as by who walks out.
PW: You have expressed some concerns about Jackson’s K-12 system. Do you feel that the problems are in the curriculum, faculty, administration, student body, or is it pandemic?
RM: Even with the challenges that Jackson Public Schools has, it’s nothing close to what I saw in New Orleans. I did a lot of work in the public school system there. We had kids taking classes in bathrooms; that’s how bad it was.
It’s what you said and more. It has a lot to do with money and the tax base, and the fact that in 1954, all the white folks started these private academies and a lot of their kids aren’t in the system now. That ends up being a challenge for us. What we did was put together our own K-12 academy. We partnered with JPS and created the Mississippi Learning Academy, which is two elementary schools, a middle school, and a high school, all within about half a mile of here. We got some money from the federal government and we got some private money. To attract some bright students to the College of Education, we give them a free ride in exchange for teaching in the Mississippi Learning Academy when they graduate. We rolled it out last year in the elementary schools. We started with 114 kids on the at-risk list and ended up with 7. They raised their test scores by about 25 points on average.
PW: And this goes along with Jackson State’s e-City. What is the e-City?
RM: It’s basically our neighborhood; a five square mile area around Jackson State we call the e-City – the Electronic City. We’ve got some money to do a master plan for it. The short name for the school system we’re putting together is e-City Schools. Our thought is that if you fix the schools, the rest will take care of itself – the housing, the business development. Everybody wants to send their kids to good schools.
RM: Is part of that creating a technology cluster in the area?
PW: We already did it. The e-Center – the abandoned Allstate facility – is the western anchor. If you go out there now, what was an abandoned building is now full of all sorts of high-tech stuff. We have research labs, a digital television station. We have the only tier one commercial data center in Mississippi renting space out there. We’ve got the Mississippi Technology Alliance, a high-tech business incubator. There are 18 businesses incubating out there. On the east is the new TelComm Center and Convention Center. We’re planning a single-family subdivision to our northeast, between here and downtown. Going west, the hope is we’ll incubate the businesses in the e-Center, and they’ll start to locate permanently along Lynch Street. What was once a viable community can become a new viable community, a university neighborhood. We have plans for Lynch Street with restaurants, new student apartments. We just finished one over here. This sounded crazy five years ago, but it’s actually happening as we speak.
PW: Does this give Jackson State an identity as a research and technical school?
RM: Absolutely. There were a lot of surprises I found at Jackson State, and they were all pleasant surprises. I knew the problems before I got here. One thing I saw here was a twist of history. Because of the lack of funding by Mississippi over the years, [JSU] had to go out and get a lot of federal money to build the place. When I got here and saw the stuff funded by the state, like the Public Relations office, it had one person in it. Which is why people never knew anything about Jackson State. But they had all these neat federal centers, all well funded. Among the seven research-intensive historically black institutions in the country – that’s the second level of research universities; the first is research-extensive – for federally funded grants and contracts, Jackson State is number one. We’re not far behind Howard University, which is the only research-extensive school. We’re the fastest growing producer of African-American Ph.D.’s, number two overall behind Howard in Historically Black Colleges and Universities, and number seven nationally, of all white and black schools.
PW: JSU isn’t just a technical school, though. Can you get a good liberal arts education here?
RM: Yes. Two years ago, we opened up the new School of Liberal Arts; we reorganized. Now we have a College of Liberal Arts with a School of Performing Arts and a School of Life and Natural Sciences. That’s our biggest school. But when you talk about research and federal dollars, most of that comes out of the College of Science, Engineering, and Technology. We just opened our School of Engineering three years ago. Now it’s got almost 300 students.
PW: What is your opinion of No Child Left Behind?
RM: If you talk to educators – and remember, the Secretary of Education who just resigned was a Jackson State graduate, which is how we were able to get funding to get this thing started over here – in concept it’s hard to argue with. There is more accountability, competency-based training for teachers. The problem really is the funds for implementation. We were able to pull it off in the schools we’re working in, because we had the money. We had money to train teachers, to redevelop curriculum, and to buy handheld computerized assessment tools, but everyone doesn’t have that. That’s really the complaint from the education community. I don’t think they mind the concept, the accountability, or the subject-based competency for teachers. The problem is how you do it. How do you get every math teacher with a specialty in math and every English teacher with a specialty in English when you’re trying desperately just to find teachers, period. If you’re a teacher from a School of Education, how could you possibly agree with someone who gets a Bachelor’s and a six-week certification course and goes straight into the classroom, when you’ve spent three years just learning how to teach? And you have to learn how to teach; that’s what separates the good teachers from the bad ones. The devil is in the details. As a broad concept it’s hard to argue with, but in the classroom, struggling to find paper and pencils, to also have to stretch to meet these other requirements, so your school doesn’t end up as Level 3 or Level 2, it’s a real challenge. Whether the system will adjust to meet the realities of the situation, it’s hard to say.
PW: What about merit-based pay?
RM: It’s kind of like merit-based hiring. What’s merit, and are the people deciding qualified enough to determine if someone is meritorious enough in the first place? It’s a tough one. Politicians can throw out words that sound great, but it’s the people doing the work every day who have to live the reality of those words, and sometimes there’s a disconnect between the two – like No New Taxes.
PW: What is the current status of Historically Black Colleges and Universities?
RM: As an industry, we’re stronger than we’ve ever been. The leadership across the board is as strong as it has ever been. On the other hand, we have some that have fallen by the wayside, and I think we may see some more, especially among the private schools. It’s very difficult for the privates to survive, just because of the lack of wealth among our alumni. But I think there’s a growing recognition, especially since 9/11, that people we produce for America is a vast, untapped resource. People are struggling to find Americans just to get the work of America done. Out of necessity, they’ll have to look at us. We enroll something like 13 percent of all African-American students, but we graduate something like 30-40 percent. We get them ready to work and that’s what America is looking for right now – workers at all levels. We won’t all make it, but I think the ones that will, will be strong.
PW: Does the fact that JSU is a historically black university keep white students away?
RM: I don’t think that in and of itself. We have these white-only scholarships that come out of the Ayers desegregation case and we can’t keep them away. They line up as long as we give them the scholarships. Apparently it’s not theological why they don’t want to come. What the facilities are like because of underfunding, the quality of life because of underfunding, the availability of scholarships because of underfunding; the more we fix those things, the less and less people will want to drive three hours to go to school when they have the convenience right here.
PW: Why do think JSU is seeing a boom in the nontraditional students?
RM: It’s place-based. Most of them are losing a job, lost a job, or are in transition from one job to another. Our fastest-growing school is our College of Lifelong Learning, which is nontraditional – online courses, certificates instead of degrees, non-credit training courses, those kinds of things. We have a facility off Ridgewood Road. A lot of the white students go there and don’t actually ever see the campus. My sons have two friends, white twins who are at the house all the time. They all like to play basketball. We wanted to come here and play basketball, but they wouldn’t drive here. They assumed if they parked their car here it would get stolen. A lot of people think that; they’ve never been to the campus. They come out here and are shocked. The more people who come here, the less think their car will be stolen, but it’ll take some time. I think we’ve gone from 1.5 to 3 percent white. With other races, we have about 9 percent. Every year, there’ll be more and more. That’s pretty clear.
PW: What is JSU’s enrollment this year?
RM: 8300 total. We jumped 500 this year.
PW: Growth here has been consistent, correct?
RM: Part of it is just demographics; part of it is that we’re just kind of hot.
PW: You’re staying ahead of population growth.
RM: Even with tuition going up. About a third of our tuition goes back into scholarships.
PW: What is tuition currently?
RM: Tuition is $3612 per year. Out of state students pay $4000 [extra]. The dormitory is $2700 and the meal plan is $2000. It’s a good value.
PW: During the past year, we’ve talked to numerous people in the city about development and redevelopment in Jackson. One thing everyone talks about is work at Jackson State. But it’s generally mentioned as ‘work to be done’ or ‘work we hope to see done.’ What doesn’t get mentioned as often is ‘work that is happening.’ Is the work actually happening?
RM: If you don’t see the work, you’re missing it. Right here, we had this old cottonseed oil factory that had been there for 50 years or so – two big, ugly, white storage tanks. We set out a goal of getting rid of the tanks and ended up with a new apartment complex. This was the first new construction in Washington addition in years. West Jackson CDC is building houses along Pearl as we speak. They’ve just announced a new 400-unit single-family subdivision on Raymond Road. We’re putting up a new student apartment facility on campus, with one, two, and three bedrooms. We’re about to build a new campus union right here on the corner of Lynch and Dalton. It’ll have a really great bookstore, convenience store, food court, and bowling alley. A lot of these empty lots around here are ours and we’ll be filling them in as we go. Given the fact that nothing was built here over the last three decades, this is a construction boom. When they finish the parkway from downtown, that’ll take you straight from the central business district right into campus.
Whether I would have done it that way if I had been there back then is another question, but the answer then to urban blight was to buy it up and tear it down – move the people out. Philosophically, I probably would have been against it, but fortunately the question was answered before I got here.
PW: Why aren’t these developments better known? Is it because Jackson State is often seen only from the outside, and the projects are seen as individual ones only?
RM: Certainly if you see it, and you add up all the news stories that have trickled out, the campus has changed dramatically; there’s no question about that. Clearly the part of the city between the campus and the railroad tracks has changed dramatically; there’s nothing there anymore – it’s open land. People would see that if they’d bother to cross the railroad tracks. I think the parkway will take care of some of that. I think as word gets out, which it is, that’ll take care of some of it. Our goal is to make Jackson State a destination, and Jackson needs destinations. By the time we’re done, when Farish Street is there, when the Convention Center is there, when the Civil Rights Corridor or Freedom Corridor – whatever they’re going to call it – from Terry into the campus is there, and there is a new campus union, a pedestrian mall, and we stretch from the campus to the e-Center on Lynch Street, I think Jackson will have exactly what it has asked for: a premiere urban university that is a destination that attracts people to Jackson; not a teachers’ college, not an underfunded challenge that makes successes out of America’s failures. I think we will be the urban university for Mississippi that happens to be black. We can pull that off.
In my inaugural speech, I said this is where the two rivers meet. We’re not going to come out of the confluence of rivers unless we all get together and make it happen. If it happens, it’ll be because we all made it happen.
PW: And you believe it can happen?
RM: I think it’s happening now. Though I’m not sure I believed it when I said it.
PW: So you pleasantly surprised yourself?
RM: I did. In some cases I shocked myself. Some of it is just timing, some of it is initiative, and some of it is hard work. If we just do what I know will in fact happen, we’ll go a long way toward getting us where we need to go. It won’t lock it down; we still have to raise some money. If we can’t do that, all this is a waste of time.
PW: Why did you leave the Tulane-Xavier Center to come to Jackson State?
RM: I’ll give you the short version. I was at Tulane for 18 years. I was Senior Vice President and General Counsel. By 1996, I had run out of things to do three times. I had been there too long.
PW: You were bored?
RM: Yes. I had even asked for Affirmative Action to report to me. I wanted to do something. We came up with this idea of doing some work in the neighborhood. In a conversation with the Secretary of HUD [Henry Cisneros], we ended up actually taking over the Housing Authority in New Orleans. Tulane got $10 million over five years to do university-based programs in the public housing projects. Half of me went to public housing for that. I was basically working two full time jobs for four years. It was out of that project that the center started – the Tulane-Xavier National Center for Urban Community. Candidly, a lot the things we’re doing at Jackson State we tried to do through that center in New Orleans.
PW: You tried?
RM: We tried. The difference is that I wasn’t the president of Tulane; I don’t have anybody to argue with here. It’s still hard work, but there we were institutionally constrained. We’re less constrained here, partly because of who the president is, partly because it’s just a different kind of institution. We are more community-oriented, and we are more part of what goes on around us. Everybody that lives around us went to, or works at, Jackson State.
PW: Is it easier or more difficult working at Jackson State than it was in New Orleans?
RM: It’s more manageable. People in Jackson think they have a lot of problems. We had 750 blighted houses when I got here. In New Orleans, we were dealing with 37,000. It’s a different scale of challenge.
PW: There is a sort of ‘sky is falling’ attitude about Jackson.
RM: And a lot of badmouthing about the city from people who want to make money off of selling property in the suburbs. I think Jackson can be a quality small city. I don’t think I’d like it to be anything else. I go to New Orleans now; it’s crowded, dirty, and traffic-infested. I can’t wait to get back to Jackson.
PW: How did you get to Jackson State?
RM: I was running the center. I had my life set up like I wanted; I was going to work in polo shirts and we had bought a little house and were running the center out of that house. It was good. The new president of Tulane came to me – Scott Cowen; we’re good friends. He called me to his office and said, “Ron, you have to choose. You have to be either the Senior Vice President and General Counsel or the Executive Director of the center.” I said I really wanted to run the center. He said, “I really want you to be the Senior Vice President and General Counsel.” Just about that time, somebody called me about this job. I wasn’t even thinking about [taking a new job]. In fact, I had just turned down a presidency six months before at Chicago State. The weather was a problem.
PW: Did you have any worries about taking the position here?
RM: Not really. I studied it pretty thoroughly; I knew what I was getting into. I was really surprised by the potential this school had that no one knew about – pleasantly surprised. It’s good work here. It’s a labor of love, but it’s a labor. I’ve never worked as hard in my life, but I whistle when I come to work every morning.
Dr. Ronald Mason, Jr. became the President of Jackson State University on February 1, 2000. In his five years, he has led the school into a period of growth, economic development, and heightened reputation and respect. In this time, Jackson State has reorganized many of its schools and colleges, reached into the community to create a Jackson State-based technology cluster, and begun sweeping programs to increase economic and community development. The student body continues to grow and more and more alumni of this historic institution are making names for themselves in the world of business, public service, and the arts.
Dr. Mason’s inaugural address was “Rivers of History, Rivers of Hope,” in which he spoke of two rivers that came together in Mississippi, one of white history, one of black history. He compared the conflicts and meshing of two vastly different societies as a confluence of rivers that could drown a people or could lead them to a broader, unified river. The confluence was Jackson State University and the state of Mississippi and the one river – our future together. It was a clarion call to all that he was a man with ideas to implement, and that he believed Jackson State was more than just a place; it had a purpose, one that it must achieve.
Before coming to Jackson State, Mason worked and studied extensively in the fields of higher education, community development, and law. He earned his B.A. and J.D. degrees from Columbia and was a graduate of the Harvard Institute of Educational Management. He worked for 18 years at Tulane University, as Vice President of Finance and Operations, and as Senior Vice President and General Counsel. During his time at Tulane, he established the Tulane-Xavier-Loyola-Dillard universities Martin Luther King Week for Peace and brought the school the Amistad Research Center – one of the largest collections of original documents and artwork on the minority experience in the U.S.
In 1996, Mason created the Tulane-Xavier National Center for Urban Community. The center took over New Orleans’ housing authority and the students, staff, and faculty developed model programs to assist the residents through several means, including a Ford Foundation public school reform planning initiative, an Annie E. Casey neighborhood development and family strengthening initiative, and a welfare-to-work initiative funded by the U.S. Department of Labor.
Planet Weekly met with Dr. Mason at his office, high atop the Administration Tower on the JSU campus, to talk about his five years in office and future plans for the university. Mason proved to be dynamic, passionate, and forthright, with a deadpan delivery and sense of humor.
Planet Weekly: When you first came on five years ago, you spoke about a five-year strategic plan for Jackson State. Has that come to fruition?
Dr. Ronald Mason, Jr.: We did a strategic plan in 2002. It was called “Beyond Survival: the Millennium Agenda for Jackson State University.” It had five broad strategies: Remodel the Learning System, Fully Integrate Technology, Enhance Management and Resources, Tell the Jackson State Story, and Create a Model Living and Learning Environment. We took those strategies, broke them into 24 programs, and broke those up into about 200 action steps. That’s how we’ve been moving forward; we follow the plan.
PW: Are you setting your sights for another strategic plan?
RM: We’re actually in the process of updating the strategic plan now. About every two or three years you have to reexamine one. As far as implementing our plan, I’d give us a good solid “B.”
PW: Will these updates stay the current course or expand in new directions?”
RM: I think the plan did anticipate what needed to be done at Jackson State to transform it into a model urban university, which is what the task was. I think we’ve narrowed the problem down to one now – money. I tell folks we don’t have any problems that money wouldn’t solve. The key for us is to be able to do something never done before at Jackson State, and that’s to raise private funds. The trick for us is that we’ve always been given the job to educate, basically, poor people and public servants and most of those poor people are African-Americans. There’s just not a lot of wealth among our alumni, so I have a tricky task: I have to raise money for Jackson State from people who graduated from Ole Miss and Mississippi State.
PW: We know this has been problematic, but are you seeing any increases in funding?
RM: We are and we aren’t. The biggest capital campaign Jackson State had was about $10 million several years ago. Allstate abandoned a processing center on Raymond Road. It’s a 200,000-square foot facility on 30 acres of land. It was worth almost $21 million and we got them to sell it to us for $3 million, which made it about a $17 million dollar donation. This, plus the other cash we’ve raised – we’ve raised about $25 million since we started. We’ve had some successes and what we’ve been selling is the truth: there’s only one university in the largest metropolitan area and capital city in the state of Mississippi – and that’s Jackson State University. Central Mississippi isn’t going to go anywhere until Jackson State rises to the occasion to be what it needs to be for this area. That’s in everyone’s interest, whether you’re white, black, from Mississippi State, Ole Miss, or wherever else.
PW: And what does Jackson State need to be?
RM: We need to be what everyone says they want it to be. The theme of the strategic planning process was “Clarity and Consensus.” Everybody said they wanted Jackson State to be the premiere urban university or Mississippi’s urban university. What that means is that we have to be a bona fide, high-quality institute of higher learning for central Mississippi. For us, it’s a sort of special balancing act we have to play: we’re a historically black institution that needs to serve a mostly-white business community in this area. When I first got here, I thought the disconnect between the business community and Jackson State was that they didn’t like Jackson State. But after while I realized that it wasn’t that they didn’t like it, it’s that they didn’t see it at all. It wasn’t a part of their Mississippi. So part of our job has been to help them see Jackson State, and when you see it, there’s a lot to be said for what is going on here.
PW: So part of the problem is that JSU is a sort of invisible university?
RM: It has been that. The other challenge we’ve had is that they’re not quite sure how to make Jackson State right without making it white. It’s not in their realm of reality that an urban university for Mississippi would also be a historically black institution. But I think we’ve made some progress. I was at a speech the governor made. He said we have two goals for Jackson State. One was to make it the number one historically black college or university in America and the seconds was to make it the premiere urban university – and there is no contradiction between the two. So at least intellectually we’re making progress.
We have some very, very bright students here. They can go to school anywhere. Many of them come from large urban areas; Jackson is probably the smallest. If you go up the railroad tracks to Detroit, through Memphis, St. Louis, and Chicago – that’s where our kids come from. They come from these broken K-12 systems and we’ve had to take them where they are and give them what they need to be successful. That’s the mission we embrace and will always stay true to. We don’t judge by who comes in the door as much as by who walks out.
PW: You have expressed some concerns about Jackson’s K-12 system. Do you feel that the problems are in the curriculum, faculty, administration, student body, or is it pandemic?
RM: Even with the challenges that Jackson Public Schools has, it’s nothing close to what I saw in New Orleans. I did a lot of work in the public school system there. We had kids taking classes in bathrooms; that’s how bad it was.
It’s what you said and more. It has a lot to do with money and the tax base, and the fact that in 1954, all the white folks started these private academies and a lot of their kids aren’t in the system now. That ends up being a challenge for us. What we did was put together our own K-12 academy. We partnered with JPS and created the Mississippi Learning Academy, which is two elementary schools, a middle school, and a high school, all within about half a mile of here. We got some money from the federal government and we got some private money. To attract some bright students to the College of Education, we give them a free ride in exchange for teaching in the Mississippi Learning Academy when they graduate. We rolled it out last year in the elementary schools. We started with 114 kids on the at-risk list and ended up with 7. They raised their test scores by about 25 points on average.
PW: And this goes along with Jackson State’s e-City. What is the e-City?
RM: It’s basically our neighborhood; a five square mile area around Jackson State we call the e-City – the Electronic City. We’ve got some money to do a master plan for it. The short name for the school system we’re putting together is e-City Schools. Our thought is that if you fix the schools, the rest will take care of itself – the housing, the business development. Everybody wants to send their kids to good schools.
RM: Is part of that creating a technology cluster in the area?
PW: We already did it. The e-Center – the abandoned Allstate facility – is the western anchor. If you go out there now, what was an abandoned building is now full of all sorts of high-tech stuff. We have research labs, a digital television station. We have the only tier one commercial data center in Mississippi renting space out there. We’ve got the Mississippi Technology Alliance, a high-tech business incubator. There are 18 businesses incubating out there. On the east is the new TelComm Center and Convention Center. We’re planning a single-family subdivision to our northeast, between here and downtown. Going west, the hope is we’ll incubate the businesses in the e-Center, and they’ll start to locate permanently along Lynch Street. What was once a viable community can become a new viable community, a university neighborhood. We have plans for Lynch Street with restaurants, new student apartments. We just finished one over here. This sounded crazy five years ago, but it’s actually happening as we speak.
PW: Does this give Jackson State an identity as a research and technical school?
RM: Absolutely. There were a lot of surprises I found at Jackson State, and they were all pleasant surprises. I knew the problems before I got here. One thing I saw here was a twist of history. Because of the lack of funding by Mississippi over the years, [JSU] had to go out and get a lot of federal money to build the place. When I got here and saw the stuff funded by the state, like the Public Relations office, it had one person in it. Which is why people never knew anything about Jackson State. But they had all these neat federal centers, all well funded. Among the seven research-intensive historically black institutions in the country – that’s the second level of research universities; the first is research-extensive – for federally funded grants and contracts, Jackson State is number one. We’re not far behind Howard University, which is the only research-extensive school. We’re the fastest growing producer of African-American Ph.D.’s, number two overall behind Howard in Historically Black Colleges and Universities, and number seven nationally, of all white and black schools.
PW: JSU isn’t just a technical school, though. Can you get a good liberal arts education here?
RM: Yes. Two years ago, we opened up the new School of Liberal Arts; we reorganized. Now we have a College of Liberal Arts with a School of Performing Arts and a School of Life and Natural Sciences. That’s our biggest school. But when you talk about research and federal dollars, most of that comes out of the College of Science, Engineering, and Technology. We just opened our School of Engineering three years ago. Now it’s got almost 300 students.
PW: What is your opinion of No Child Left Behind?
RM: If you talk to educators – and remember, the Secretary of Education who just resigned was a Jackson State graduate, which is how we were able to get funding to get this thing started over here – in concept it’s hard to argue with. There is more accountability, competency-based training for teachers. The problem really is the funds for implementation. We were able to pull it off in the schools we’re working in, because we had the money. We had money to train teachers, to redevelop curriculum, and to buy handheld computerized assessment tools, but everyone doesn’t have that. That’s really the complaint from the education community. I don’t think they mind the concept, the accountability, or the subject-based competency for teachers. The problem is how you do it. How do you get every math teacher with a specialty in math and every English teacher with a specialty in English when you’re trying desperately just to find teachers, period. If you’re a teacher from a School of Education, how could you possibly agree with someone who gets a Bachelor’s and a six-week certification course and goes straight into the classroom, when you’ve spent three years just learning how to teach? And you have to learn how to teach; that’s what separates the good teachers from the bad ones. The devil is in the details. As a broad concept it’s hard to argue with, but in the classroom, struggling to find paper and pencils, to also have to stretch to meet these other requirements, so your school doesn’t end up as Level 3 or Level 2, it’s a real challenge. Whether the system will adjust to meet the realities of the situation, it’s hard to say.
PW: What about merit-based pay?
RM: It’s kind of like merit-based hiring. What’s merit, and are the people deciding qualified enough to determine if someone is meritorious enough in the first place? It’s a tough one. Politicians can throw out words that sound great, but it’s the people doing the work every day who have to live the reality of those words, and sometimes there’s a disconnect between the two – like No New Taxes.
PW: What is the current status of Historically Black Colleges and Universities?
RM: As an industry, we’re stronger than we’ve ever been. The leadership across the board is as strong as it has ever been. On the other hand, we have some that have fallen by the wayside, and I think we may see some more, especially among the private schools. It’s very difficult for the privates to survive, just because of the lack of wealth among our alumni. But I think there’s a growing recognition, especially since 9/11, that people we produce for America is a vast, untapped resource. People are struggling to find Americans just to get the work of America done. Out of necessity, they’ll have to look at us. We enroll something like 13 percent of all African-American students, but we graduate something like 30-40 percent. We get them ready to work and that’s what America is looking for right now – workers at all levels. We won’t all make it, but I think the ones that will, will be strong.
PW: Does the fact that JSU is a historically black university keep white students away?
RM: I don’t think that in and of itself. We have these white-only scholarships that come out of the Ayers desegregation case and we can’t keep them away. They line up as long as we give them the scholarships. Apparently it’s not theological why they don’t want to come. What the facilities are like because of underfunding, the quality of life because of underfunding, the availability of scholarships because of underfunding; the more we fix those things, the less and less people will want to drive three hours to go to school when they have the convenience right here.
PW: Why do think JSU is seeing a boom in the nontraditional students?
RM: It’s place-based. Most of them are losing a job, lost a job, or are in transition from one job to another. Our fastest-growing school is our College of Lifelong Learning, which is nontraditional – online courses, certificates instead of degrees, non-credit training courses, those kinds of things. We have a facility off Ridgewood Road. A lot of the white students go there and don’t actually ever see the campus. My sons have two friends, white twins who are at the house all the time. They all like to play basketball. We wanted to come here and play basketball, but they wouldn’t drive here. They assumed if they parked their car here it would get stolen. A lot of people think that; they’ve never been to the campus. They come out here and are shocked. The more people who come here, the less think their car will be stolen, but it’ll take some time. I think we’ve gone from 1.5 to 3 percent white. With other races, we have about 9 percent. Every year, there’ll be more and more. That’s pretty clear.
PW: What is JSU’s enrollment this year?
RM: 8300 total. We jumped 500 this year.
PW: Growth here has been consistent, correct?
RM: Part of it is just demographics; part of it is that we’re just kind of hot.
PW: You’re staying ahead of population growth.
RM: Even with tuition going up. About a third of our tuition goes back into scholarships.
PW: What is tuition currently?
RM: Tuition is $3612 per year. Out of state students pay $4000 [extra]. The dormitory is $2700 and the meal plan is $2000. It’s a good value.
PW: During the past year, we’ve talked to numerous people in the city about development and redevelopment in Jackson. One thing everyone talks about is work at Jackson State. But it’s generally mentioned as ‘work to be done’ or ‘work we hope to see done.’ What doesn’t get mentioned as often is ‘work that is happening.’ Is the work actually happening?
RM: If you don’t see the work, you’re missing it. Right here, we had this old cottonseed oil factory that had been there for 50 years or so – two big, ugly, white storage tanks. We set out a goal of getting rid of the tanks and ended up with a new apartment complex. This was the first new construction in Washington addition in years. West Jackson CDC is building houses along Pearl as we speak. They’ve just announced a new 400-unit single-family subdivision on Raymond Road. We’re putting up a new student apartment facility on campus, with one, two, and three bedrooms. We’re about to build a new campus union right here on the corner of Lynch and Dalton. It’ll have a really great bookstore, convenience store, food court, and bowling alley. A lot of these empty lots around here are ours and we’ll be filling them in as we go. Given the fact that nothing was built here over the last three decades, this is a construction boom. When they finish the parkway from downtown, that’ll take you straight from the central business district right into campus.
Whether I would have done it that way if I had been there back then is another question, but the answer then to urban blight was to buy it up and tear it down – move the people out. Philosophically, I probably would have been against it, but fortunately the question was answered before I got here.
PW: Why aren’t these developments better known? Is it because Jackson State is often seen only from the outside, and the projects are seen as individual ones only?
RM: Certainly if you see it, and you add up all the news stories that have trickled out, the campus has changed dramatically; there’s no question about that. Clearly the part of the city between the campus and the railroad tracks has changed dramatically; there’s nothing there anymore – it’s open land. People would see that if they’d bother to cross the railroad tracks. I think the parkway will take care of some of that. I think as word gets out, which it is, that’ll take care of some of it. Our goal is to make Jackson State a destination, and Jackson needs destinations. By the time we’re done, when Farish Street is there, when the Convention Center is there, when the Civil Rights Corridor or Freedom Corridor – whatever they’re going to call it – from Terry into the campus is there, and there is a new campus union, a pedestrian mall, and we stretch from the campus to the e-Center on Lynch Street, I think Jackson will have exactly what it has asked for: a premiere urban university that is a destination that attracts people to Jackson; not a teachers’ college, not an underfunded challenge that makes successes out of America’s failures. I think we will be the urban university for Mississippi that happens to be black. We can pull that off.
In my inaugural speech, I said this is where the two rivers meet. We’re not going to come out of the confluence of rivers unless we all get together and make it happen. If it happens, it’ll be because we all made it happen.
PW: And you believe it can happen?
RM: I think it’s happening now. Though I’m not sure I believed it when I said it.
PW: So you pleasantly surprised yourself?
RM: I did. In some cases I shocked myself. Some of it is just timing, some of it is initiative, and some of it is hard work. If we just do what I know will in fact happen, we’ll go a long way toward getting us where we need to go. It won’t lock it down; we still have to raise some money. If we can’t do that, all this is a waste of time.
PW: Why did you leave the Tulane-Xavier Center to come to Jackson State?
RM: I’ll give you the short version. I was at Tulane for 18 years. I was Senior Vice President and General Counsel. By 1996, I had run out of things to do three times. I had been there too long.
PW: You were bored?
RM: Yes. I had even asked for Affirmative Action to report to me. I wanted to do something. We came up with this idea of doing some work in the neighborhood. In a conversation with the Secretary of HUD [Henry Cisneros], we ended up actually taking over the Housing Authority in New Orleans. Tulane got $10 million over five years to do university-based programs in the public housing projects. Half of me went to public housing for that. I was basically working two full time jobs for four years. It was out of that project that the center started – the Tulane-Xavier National Center for Urban Community. Candidly, a lot the things we’re doing at Jackson State we tried to do through that center in New Orleans.
PW: You tried?
RM: We tried. The difference is that I wasn’t the president of Tulane; I don’t have anybody to argue with here. It’s still hard work, but there we were institutionally constrained. We’re less constrained here, partly because of who the president is, partly because it’s just a different kind of institution. We are more community-oriented, and we are more part of what goes on around us. Everybody that lives around us went to, or works at, Jackson State.
PW: Is it easier or more difficult working at Jackson State than it was in New Orleans?
RM: It’s more manageable. People in Jackson think they have a lot of problems. We had 750 blighted houses when I got here. In New Orleans, we were dealing with 37,000. It’s a different scale of challenge.
PW: There is a sort of ‘sky is falling’ attitude about Jackson.
RM: And a lot of badmouthing about the city from people who want to make money off of selling property in the suburbs. I think Jackson can be a quality small city. I don’t think I’d like it to be anything else. I go to New Orleans now; it’s crowded, dirty, and traffic-infested. I can’t wait to get back to Jackson.
PW: How did you get to Jackson State?
RM: I was running the center. I had my life set up like I wanted; I was going to work in polo shirts and we had bought a little house and were running the center out of that house. It was good. The new president of Tulane came to me – Scott Cowen; we’re good friends. He called me to his office and said, “Ron, you have to choose. You have to be either the Senior Vice President and General Counsel or the Executive Director of the center.” I said I really wanted to run the center. He said, “I really want you to be the Senior Vice President and General Counsel.” Just about that time, somebody called me about this job. I wasn’t even thinking about [taking a new job]. In fact, I had just turned down a presidency six months before at Chicago State. The weather was a problem.
PW: Did you have any worries about taking the position here?
RM: Not really. I studied it pretty thoroughly; I knew what I was getting into. I was really surprised by the potential this school had that no one knew about – pleasantly surprised. It’s good work here. It’s a labor of love, but it’s a labor. I’ve never worked as hard in my life, but I whistle when I come to work every morning.
Interview with Harvey Johnson (Mayor of Jackson, Mississippi)
I seemed to happier with this piece than most of our readers. I think this was because it was originally planned as one thing, but became another. There really is no one to blame for that; it just happened. I'd been doing a series of interviews on Jackson's Urban Redevelopment. I thought a nifty third part would be talking to the only mayor in history who'd taken an active role in trying to clean up the city. That was the plan. However, we also decided to use the interview to go along with the first issue of a new graphical look, and it was the beginnings of election season. As such, the series was faded into the background and it looked like more of a stand-alone interview. Because of that, I was accused of tossing softball questions at the mayor, which I can't deny. Worse yet, I was a Harvey Johnson supporter, which I won't deny. I wish the interview had come out more like I had originally planned, but I've always been personally pleased with it.
Jackson Mayor Harvey Johnson has, in two terms, become one of the most visible mayors in the history of the city. He has elected to take an active role in public education and economic development of the city, pushing to make Jackson the Best of the New South – a city of excellence. Born in Vicksburg, Johnson received his first degree in political science from Tennessee State University and followed that up with a Masters’ Degree in political science from the University of Cincinnati. He has studied toward a doctorate in public administration at University of Southern California’s Washington Public Affairs Center in Washington, DC.
Johnson spent 25 years in the field of planning and community development, served as an assistant professor of political science at Jackson State University, and was a member of the Mississippi State Tax Commission and the Mississippi Gaming Commission. He also served his country as a Captain in the United States Air Force.
In 1997, Johnson was elected the first African-American mayor in Jackson history, a fact that made national headlines. He serves on the Democratic National Committee, the United States Conference of Mayors Homeland Security Task Force, the National Conference of Democratic Mayors, and is president of the National Conference of Black Mayors. He serves on the Board of Directors of the Mississippi Municipal League, the Metro Jackson Chamber of Commerce, and National Urban Fellows, Inc. He has served on numerous other boards, including the American Red Cross of Central Mississippi, Union Planters, and Smith-Robertson Museum. Johnson is a charter member of 100 Black Men of Jackson. He is married to Kathy Ezell Johnson and they have two adult children, Sharla and Harvey III.
We met with Mayor Johnson on December 30, in the busy time between Christmas and New Year’s.
Planet Weekly: The next term of office for Jackson’s mayor is likely to be an important one, with many ribbons to cut on several new projects. Does this affect your continued desire to be the mayor?
Mayor Harvey Johnson: I would like to see a number of projects that have been born, if you will, during our second term come to fruition, but that’s not the only driving force. This is a very rewarding job. I think there are things that still need to be done in the city of Jackson, besides just the physical projects that are going to take place over the next four years, and I’m prepared to do those things. There is a lot of momentum and I’d like to be a part of continuing that momentum.
PW: What sorts of things need to be done?
HJ: I think public education is a very important part of what we have to look forward to. Trying not only to improve the physical facilities we have, but improving other aspects of public education. It needs more supporters in our city. We need to face that challenge and get more people to rally around public education in our community.
PW: How?
HJ: If I had a road map, it’d be done by now. The first thing you do is to try to raise everyone’s awareness that there is a need. Public education impacts so many things. It impacts the ability to attract business and industry to your city, because they want a trained or trainable workforce. It impacts crime, especially if crime is committed by youth. It impacts the stability of the community. Educating young people who will not only go to college and do great things, but will do these great things when they come back home. It is a key to a lot of issues we need to deal with.
PW: What is your role in bringing this awareness to the city?
HJ: The mayor has a bully pulpit. My role is to use that bully pulpit to make people aware of the need to support public education, and how important it is to the future of our city. I have been to every public school in the city of Jackson, some of them two or three times. I’m committed to try to do what I can to make sure people are aware of the need.
PW: How should they support public education, financially?
HJ: Financially is one way. Obviously at some point in time, a bond issue is going to have to be put on the ballot to expand or replace some facilities. There are some other ways to support it. The Adopt-a-School program is a great effort on the part of businesses to lend support. Mentoring is another very important aspect. I think after-school programs are important. A lot of the students in the school system can use that time for recreation, but also for tutoring and studying and basically for staying out of trouble. A better rubric for this whole discussion is Youth Development, not just public education.
PW: What else needs to be done?
HJ: The creation of jobs and the stabilization of our tax base is a critical issue, one that people like to simplify. ‘Just get another Big Box and put it here and you’ll have more sales tax,’ but it’s a larger issue than that. It was just announced that we have a major subdivision being planned for South Jackson. This is an important aspect, not only for stabilizing our tax base, but also creating households and putting them close to the MetroCenter, which has enjoyed some pretty hard times of late.
PW: Residential development does appear to be lagging behind commercial development in Jackson. What should we do to get people to put homes here?
HJ: We have to encourage developers and educate them on what’s happening in our city. We’re doing that. The market that we’re missing is the middle market, and that’s what’s so exciting about the planned subdivision in South Jackson – these are $100,000-$150,000 homes. We aren’t lacking development in the upper scale and we aren’t lacking for affordable homes. But that middle market, where you want a $150,000 house, you have to go outside of the city. That’s what we have to focus on. We reach out to the developers and see how we can incentivize a project. It could be infrastructure – roads, water, and sewers. We’ve been entertaining a lot of proposals on how we can facilitate development with these kinds of homes.
PW: You see this as something that will increase during the next term?
HJ: Oh yes, no question. This is something we’re starting to see the fruits of. There’s been a lot of emphasis on downtown, but we’re also planning on how we can provide incentives to encourage these housing developers to move into our city and do the kinds of things that have been proposed in South Jackson.
PW: The MetroCenter area appears to be the next sort of project. There is already some activity happening there. Is this new subdivision related to it?
HJ: It’s related. It places a significant number of households 10-15 minutes away and that’s what retailers are looking for. In an area of the city where the perception is that people are moving away, it’s good to see new development come, because it means that people are moving there.
PW: Don’t the numbers back up the fact that people are moving away from Jackson?
HJ: The census numbers do indicate a loss of population, but if you look at our building permits, it indicates that new building is very strong here. Over a five-year period, we’ve averaged over $100 million in building permits. I meant the perception of moving away specifically from the West Jackson/MetroCenter area. People are shifting away, but the shift is taking them to South Jackson, the fastest growing area in the city. But obviously there has been a decrease in population from census to census. People are moving into our city from Madison and Rankin [Counties] and surrounding areas, but it’ll take a process to reverse the trend. It didn’t just start in 2000. Our highest population total was in 1970 and it’s been downward since then. That’s common to a lot of central cities throughout the country, so we’re not unique in that regard.
PW: Even so, the suburbs are all growing.
HJ: Yes, yes. But we still represent the trunk of the tree. Someone was at the [City] Council meeting the other day talking about deposits in the area. There may be $6 billion in deposits in the metro area, but $4 billion of that is in the city of Jackson. What impressed me was the scale, that there is still a considerable amount of economic activity in Jackson.
PW: Regardless of anything else, to some Jackson’s biggest problem is crime.
HJ: What the city government focuses on – whether it’s me or the chief – has to be on apprehending those people who commit the crimes in such a way that they receive their just due, and preventing crime to the extend that we can within the system. That’s why we are concerned about after-school programs. We operate nine centers in the city and try to give children something to do. We have a lot of programs that ultimately, we hope, will lead to the prevention of crime. I personally go into those schools and give anti-gun violence messages to those students. I think that crime is a problem throughout the country. I’ve said all along that what we need to be concerned about is making people feel safer and that’s the difficult part. We’re doing that by getting more police officers on the street. When I came into office, we had 350-370 officers and now we have 500, and that’s on top of losing 250 to attrition over those several years. I’ve increased the police budget by 30 percent. We’ve come up with a plan to map out what we can do to reduce crime. We have technology – computers in the police cars, video cameras, and Comstat, a computerized crime tracking mechanism that lets up better deploy our officers. The numbers indicate that crime is down. People sort of pooh-pooh the numbers. If you say that crime is down and your next door neighbor is robbed, you’re not going to believe it. But the fact is that there is a significant drop in crime in Jackson. One indicator is auto thefts. Three years ago we were number six of the top 100 metro areas in auto thefts. The latest report said we were number 74. That’s not getting any play in the papers. When we improve – probably the most significant improvement in the country on just that one indicator – nothing is said about it. It’s very frustrating to get that kind of information out.
PW: There are many who think the biggest crime problem is a backlog in the judicial system.
HJ: We have met with judges, prosecutors, and people from the sheriff’s office to try to get that system improved, and I think it is improving. I think we can use better technology as far as sharing data, and we’re slowly moving into that kind of system. We probably need to move a little faster. I think there’s a much better working relationship between these different tentacles of the criminal justice system. There’s a coordinating committee that we’re pushing for to try to make sure we have ample communication between all the parties in that system. Very early on this year, we looked at our bail system, which was allowing clerks to make decisions about certain offenses without the judges having a say-so in it. We came up with a new system for bailing people out for certain violent crimes. A judge now has to look at that case so you don’t have a sort of rubber stamp.
PW: Which led to some very bad press this year.
HJ: Exactly. We’re improving on that system. Certainly more can be made, but we’re in a better position now to make those improvements because of the level of communication between all parties than we were a year ago.
PW: Development in the city is something you will justly get credit for. There appears to be a real push to continue development and redevelopment. Does the city have room for more?
HJ: When I came into office, I said one of the things I wanted to do was to put Jackson into development mode. Is there room for more development? Yes. We have a fresh plan for downtown economic development strategies. We have a comprehensive plan adopted this year by the city council, an overall master plan for the city. We’ve taken small plans, like the entertainment district, Union Station, the Convention Center, and West Jackson housing, but now we’re in a mode to look at larger plans and how it all pieces together. We’re ready to move ahead and that’s exciting to me. We do need to make sure that deals are pushed by this office. Developers, citizens, and businesspeople need to know that we’re serious about the future of this city and our future hinges on our ability to develop and redevelop.
PW: What sort of identity should the Farish Street entertainment district take?
HJ: My goal with Farish Street is to capture the hope and promise it had 50 or 60 years ago, because it was a self-contained community for African-Americans. It allowed business to be transacted, it allowed entertainment, eating out, going to church; it allowed for all those things. My vision is to try to recapture that and use the entertainment district to anchor that. Another anchor is housing. Certainly another anchor is the religious institutions there. The oldest African-American church in the city is located there. We have a challenge to maintain the district. With the state of the housing, it has been neglected. We have a program we’re putting together to stabilize housing there.
PW: If any project has your name on it, figuratively speaking, it is the convention center. What do you think it will actually do for the city?
HJ: It’s going to create jobs. It’s going to create a venue where people will come to our city who perhaps wouldn’t have had the opportunity to come. But perhaps what it’s going to do is to indicate to the city, the metro area, and perhaps the whole state as to what can be done; what’s possible in the capital city. There are people who think that nothing can happen in the capital city. But with a convention center, with people coming from all over the state, the region, and the nation to this state-of-the-art meeting facility that’s right smack dab in the middle of Jackson, I think this will cause people eventually to stick out their chests a little further. This is something that the people of Mississippi can feel proud about.
PW: Right before election time, we received word about the businesses coming to Farish Street and about agreements being signed regarding the King Edward. Was this fortuitous or was there some planning involved?
HJ: Timing is an important aspect of any endeavor and we have been blessed with good timing, and some of the things that have been planned are coming into fruition. Of course, this was on the drawing board a long time. Did I push to make sure that we could point to that as an accomplishment? I certainly wanted it to happen not two weeks after November 2. If it happened two months before, two weeks, or two days, it didn’t matter to me. But it was important to me that we had some indication that things were moving forward in the city. Again, this comes back from my background as a planner, to say to folks, ‘the plan is fine, but when are we going to get it done?’ That’s what I’m saying to the people involved with Farish Street, the Telcomm Center, the Convention Center people, and it’s what we said about Union Station: ‘Fine, we have the plan, let’s get it done.’ So yes, I was pushing that development on Farish Street as hard as I could to make sure it got done. I’m glad it got done prior to the election, when it happened. Had I not pushed, maybe it wouldn’t have gotten done. I don’t know, but I’m just pleased it turned out the way it did.
PW: Has any sort of management group for the King Edward been selected?
HJ: Not a management group, but the developer has been selected. That will be left up to Historic Restorations. You’re supposing it would be a hotel?
PW: Actually, I’m of the opinion that it will be a mixed-use facility, which I think is a good idea.
HJ: I don’t think it will be a hotel, but I think that HRI will be responsible for it. It’ll be their baby, so whatever other groups or resources they need, they’ll have to come up with.
PW: Certain businesses are rumored to be ready to go in, even though there is no one to run it yet, no one to sign any sort of contracts to bring people in.
HJ: I’ve heard that as well, that businesses are looking to locate there. I’m not sure that the point where we are in this speculation process, whether it’s absolutely necessary to have a management group. What needs to happen first is that kind of interest being displayed, so the developers will feel comfortable spending the money they’re going to have to spend and the city will feel comfortable spending the money that it’s going to have to spend, knowing there is interest out there. I think that kind of speculation is healthy, because we’ve gone from ‘let’s tear it down’ and ‘when are you going to do something about it’ to ‘wouldn’t it be a good idea to have this business here.’
PW: When the King Edward agreement was signed, was it for the entire development or only for the early phases?
HJ: Right now we’re looking at the early phase – the environmental abatement and some limited demolition. With the holidays, I’m really not to sure where we are with that final document that will carry it all the way through to completion, but that will be the next document. When I talked to people a few weeks ago, they said that it would be finished by the end of the year. I don’t know where it is, but it could slip to early January.
PW: What sort of future do you see for the city of Jackson?
HJ: The future looks very good. I think we’re at a point in our history we haven’t been before. We have an infusion of private investment. We’ve had it before, but we haven’t had it in recent years at the level we have now. I think that the citizens of our city believe that we can work together to make our city better. To me, those things indicate that the future is very bright, because people have to believe that the future is bright. Part of my job is to convince people of that, to be a cheerleader and an ambassador and whatever I can be to convince people that we’re moving ahead in the city, that we’re becoming the Best of the New South, and we need to keep working. We have to work at it every day. If we can convince people that we are striving for excellence, and that’s what we’re trying to do, reaching our potential, we’re in good shape and I think that people are seeing that we can reach that goal.
Jackson Mayor Harvey Johnson has, in two terms, become one of the most visible mayors in the history of the city. He has elected to take an active role in public education and economic development of the city, pushing to make Jackson the Best of the New South – a city of excellence. Born in Vicksburg, Johnson received his first degree in political science from Tennessee State University and followed that up with a Masters’ Degree in political science from the University of Cincinnati. He has studied toward a doctorate in public administration at University of Southern California’s Washington Public Affairs Center in Washington, DC.
Johnson spent 25 years in the field of planning and community development, served as an assistant professor of political science at Jackson State University, and was a member of the Mississippi State Tax Commission and the Mississippi Gaming Commission. He also served his country as a Captain in the United States Air Force.
In 1997, Johnson was elected the first African-American mayor in Jackson history, a fact that made national headlines. He serves on the Democratic National Committee, the United States Conference of Mayors Homeland Security Task Force, the National Conference of Democratic Mayors, and is president of the National Conference of Black Mayors. He serves on the Board of Directors of the Mississippi Municipal League, the Metro Jackson Chamber of Commerce, and National Urban Fellows, Inc. He has served on numerous other boards, including the American Red Cross of Central Mississippi, Union Planters, and Smith-Robertson Museum. Johnson is a charter member of 100 Black Men of Jackson. He is married to Kathy Ezell Johnson and they have two adult children, Sharla and Harvey III.
We met with Mayor Johnson on December 30, in the busy time between Christmas and New Year’s.
Planet Weekly: The next term of office for Jackson’s mayor is likely to be an important one, with many ribbons to cut on several new projects. Does this affect your continued desire to be the mayor?
Mayor Harvey Johnson: I would like to see a number of projects that have been born, if you will, during our second term come to fruition, but that’s not the only driving force. This is a very rewarding job. I think there are things that still need to be done in the city of Jackson, besides just the physical projects that are going to take place over the next four years, and I’m prepared to do those things. There is a lot of momentum and I’d like to be a part of continuing that momentum.
PW: What sorts of things need to be done?
HJ: I think public education is a very important part of what we have to look forward to. Trying not only to improve the physical facilities we have, but improving other aspects of public education. It needs more supporters in our city. We need to face that challenge and get more people to rally around public education in our community.
PW: How?
HJ: If I had a road map, it’d be done by now. The first thing you do is to try to raise everyone’s awareness that there is a need. Public education impacts so many things. It impacts the ability to attract business and industry to your city, because they want a trained or trainable workforce. It impacts crime, especially if crime is committed by youth. It impacts the stability of the community. Educating young people who will not only go to college and do great things, but will do these great things when they come back home. It is a key to a lot of issues we need to deal with.
PW: What is your role in bringing this awareness to the city?
HJ: The mayor has a bully pulpit. My role is to use that bully pulpit to make people aware of the need to support public education, and how important it is to the future of our city. I have been to every public school in the city of Jackson, some of them two or three times. I’m committed to try to do what I can to make sure people are aware of the need.
PW: How should they support public education, financially?
HJ: Financially is one way. Obviously at some point in time, a bond issue is going to have to be put on the ballot to expand or replace some facilities. There are some other ways to support it. The Adopt-a-School program is a great effort on the part of businesses to lend support. Mentoring is another very important aspect. I think after-school programs are important. A lot of the students in the school system can use that time for recreation, but also for tutoring and studying and basically for staying out of trouble. A better rubric for this whole discussion is Youth Development, not just public education.
PW: What else needs to be done?
HJ: The creation of jobs and the stabilization of our tax base is a critical issue, one that people like to simplify. ‘Just get another Big Box and put it here and you’ll have more sales tax,’ but it’s a larger issue than that. It was just announced that we have a major subdivision being planned for South Jackson. This is an important aspect, not only for stabilizing our tax base, but also creating households and putting them close to the MetroCenter, which has enjoyed some pretty hard times of late.
PW: Residential development does appear to be lagging behind commercial development in Jackson. What should we do to get people to put homes here?
HJ: We have to encourage developers and educate them on what’s happening in our city. We’re doing that. The market that we’re missing is the middle market, and that’s what’s so exciting about the planned subdivision in South Jackson – these are $100,000-$150,000 homes. We aren’t lacking development in the upper scale and we aren’t lacking for affordable homes. But that middle market, where you want a $150,000 house, you have to go outside of the city. That’s what we have to focus on. We reach out to the developers and see how we can incentivize a project. It could be infrastructure – roads, water, and sewers. We’ve been entertaining a lot of proposals on how we can facilitate development with these kinds of homes.
PW: You see this as something that will increase during the next term?
HJ: Oh yes, no question. This is something we’re starting to see the fruits of. There’s been a lot of emphasis on downtown, but we’re also planning on how we can provide incentives to encourage these housing developers to move into our city and do the kinds of things that have been proposed in South Jackson.
PW: The MetroCenter area appears to be the next sort of project. There is already some activity happening there. Is this new subdivision related to it?
HJ: It’s related. It places a significant number of households 10-15 minutes away and that’s what retailers are looking for. In an area of the city where the perception is that people are moving away, it’s good to see new development come, because it means that people are moving there.
PW: Don’t the numbers back up the fact that people are moving away from Jackson?
HJ: The census numbers do indicate a loss of population, but if you look at our building permits, it indicates that new building is very strong here. Over a five-year period, we’ve averaged over $100 million in building permits. I meant the perception of moving away specifically from the West Jackson/MetroCenter area. People are shifting away, but the shift is taking them to South Jackson, the fastest growing area in the city. But obviously there has been a decrease in population from census to census. People are moving into our city from Madison and Rankin [Counties] and surrounding areas, but it’ll take a process to reverse the trend. It didn’t just start in 2000. Our highest population total was in 1970 and it’s been downward since then. That’s common to a lot of central cities throughout the country, so we’re not unique in that regard.
PW: Even so, the suburbs are all growing.
HJ: Yes, yes. But we still represent the trunk of the tree. Someone was at the [City] Council meeting the other day talking about deposits in the area. There may be $6 billion in deposits in the metro area, but $4 billion of that is in the city of Jackson. What impressed me was the scale, that there is still a considerable amount of economic activity in Jackson.
PW: Regardless of anything else, to some Jackson’s biggest problem is crime.
HJ: What the city government focuses on – whether it’s me or the chief – has to be on apprehending those people who commit the crimes in such a way that they receive their just due, and preventing crime to the extend that we can within the system. That’s why we are concerned about after-school programs. We operate nine centers in the city and try to give children something to do. We have a lot of programs that ultimately, we hope, will lead to the prevention of crime. I personally go into those schools and give anti-gun violence messages to those students. I think that crime is a problem throughout the country. I’ve said all along that what we need to be concerned about is making people feel safer and that’s the difficult part. We’re doing that by getting more police officers on the street. When I came into office, we had 350-370 officers and now we have 500, and that’s on top of losing 250 to attrition over those several years. I’ve increased the police budget by 30 percent. We’ve come up with a plan to map out what we can do to reduce crime. We have technology – computers in the police cars, video cameras, and Comstat, a computerized crime tracking mechanism that lets up better deploy our officers. The numbers indicate that crime is down. People sort of pooh-pooh the numbers. If you say that crime is down and your next door neighbor is robbed, you’re not going to believe it. But the fact is that there is a significant drop in crime in Jackson. One indicator is auto thefts. Three years ago we were number six of the top 100 metro areas in auto thefts. The latest report said we were number 74. That’s not getting any play in the papers. When we improve – probably the most significant improvement in the country on just that one indicator – nothing is said about it. It’s very frustrating to get that kind of information out.
PW: There are many who think the biggest crime problem is a backlog in the judicial system.
HJ: We have met with judges, prosecutors, and people from the sheriff’s office to try to get that system improved, and I think it is improving. I think we can use better technology as far as sharing data, and we’re slowly moving into that kind of system. We probably need to move a little faster. I think there’s a much better working relationship between these different tentacles of the criminal justice system. There’s a coordinating committee that we’re pushing for to try to make sure we have ample communication between all the parties in that system. Very early on this year, we looked at our bail system, which was allowing clerks to make decisions about certain offenses without the judges having a say-so in it. We came up with a new system for bailing people out for certain violent crimes. A judge now has to look at that case so you don’t have a sort of rubber stamp.
PW: Which led to some very bad press this year.
HJ: Exactly. We’re improving on that system. Certainly more can be made, but we’re in a better position now to make those improvements because of the level of communication between all parties than we were a year ago.
PW: Development in the city is something you will justly get credit for. There appears to be a real push to continue development and redevelopment. Does the city have room for more?
HJ: When I came into office, I said one of the things I wanted to do was to put Jackson into development mode. Is there room for more development? Yes. We have a fresh plan for downtown economic development strategies. We have a comprehensive plan adopted this year by the city council, an overall master plan for the city. We’ve taken small plans, like the entertainment district, Union Station, the Convention Center, and West Jackson housing, but now we’re in a mode to look at larger plans and how it all pieces together. We’re ready to move ahead and that’s exciting to me. We do need to make sure that deals are pushed by this office. Developers, citizens, and businesspeople need to know that we’re serious about the future of this city and our future hinges on our ability to develop and redevelop.
PW: What sort of identity should the Farish Street entertainment district take?
HJ: My goal with Farish Street is to capture the hope and promise it had 50 or 60 years ago, because it was a self-contained community for African-Americans. It allowed business to be transacted, it allowed entertainment, eating out, going to church; it allowed for all those things. My vision is to try to recapture that and use the entertainment district to anchor that. Another anchor is housing. Certainly another anchor is the religious institutions there. The oldest African-American church in the city is located there. We have a challenge to maintain the district. With the state of the housing, it has been neglected. We have a program we’re putting together to stabilize housing there.
PW: If any project has your name on it, figuratively speaking, it is the convention center. What do you think it will actually do for the city?
HJ: It’s going to create jobs. It’s going to create a venue where people will come to our city who perhaps wouldn’t have had the opportunity to come. But perhaps what it’s going to do is to indicate to the city, the metro area, and perhaps the whole state as to what can be done; what’s possible in the capital city. There are people who think that nothing can happen in the capital city. But with a convention center, with people coming from all over the state, the region, and the nation to this state-of-the-art meeting facility that’s right smack dab in the middle of Jackson, I think this will cause people eventually to stick out their chests a little further. This is something that the people of Mississippi can feel proud about.
PW: Right before election time, we received word about the businesses coming to Farish Street and about agreements being signed regarding the King Edward. Was this fortuitous or was there some planning involved?
HJ: Timing is an important aspect of any endeavor and we have been blessed with good timing, and some of the things that have been planned are coming into fruition. Of course, this was on the drawing board a long time. Did I push to make sure that we could point to that as an accomplishment? I certainly wanted it to happen not two weeks after November 2. If it happened two months before, two weeks, or two days, it didn’t matter to me. But it was important to me that we had some indication that things were moving forward in the city. Again, this comes back from my background as a planner, to say to folks, ‘the plan is fine, but when are we going to get it done?’ That’s what I’m saying to the people involved with Farish Street, the Telcomm Center, the Convention Center people, and it’s what we said about Union Station: ‘Fine, we have the plan, let’s get it done.’ So yes, I was pushing that development on Farish Street as hard as I could to make sure it got done. I’m glad it got done prior to the election, when it happened. Had I not pushed, maybe it wouldn’t have gotten done. I don’t know, but I’m just pleased it turned out the way it did.
PW: Has any sort of management group for the King Edward been selected?
HJ: Not a management group, but the developer has been selected. That will be left up to Historic Restorations. You’re supposing it would be a hotel?
PW: Actually, I’m of the opinion that it will be a mixed-use facility, which I think is a good idea.
HJ: I don’t think it will be a hotel, but I think that HRI will be responsible for it. It’ll be their baby, so whatever other groups or resources they need, they’ll have to come up with.
PW: Certain businesses are rumored to be ready to go in, even though there is no one to run it yet, no one to sign any sort of contracts to bring people in.
HJ: I’ve heard that as well, that businesses are looking to locate there. I’m not sure that the point where we are in this speculation process, whether it’s absolutely necessary to have a management group. What needs to happen first is that kind of interest being displayed, so the developers will feel comfortable spending the money they’re going to have to spend and the city will feel comfortable spending the money that it’s going to have to spend, knowing there is interest out there. I think that kind of speculation is healthy, because we’ve gone from ‘let’s tear it down’ and ‘when are you going to do something about it’ to ‘wouldn’t it be a good idea to have this business here.’
PW: When the King Edward agreement was signed, was it for the entire development or only for the early phases?
HJ: Right now we’re looking at the early phase – the environmental abatement and some limited demolition. With the holidays, I’m really not to sure where we are with that final document that will carry it all the way through to completion, but that will be the next document. When I talked to people a few weeks ago, they said that it would be finished by the end of the year. I don’t know where it is, but it could slip to early January.
PW: What sort of future do you see for the city of Jackson?
HJ: The future looks very good. I think we’re at a point in our history we haven’t been before. We have an infusion of private investment. We’ve had it before, but we haven’t had it in recent years at the level we have now. I think that the citizens of our city believe that we can work together to make our city better. To me, those things indicate that the future is very bright, because people have to believe that the future is bright. Part of my job is to convince people of that, to be a cheerleader and an ambassador and whatever I can be to convince people that we’re moving ahead in the city, that we’re becoming the Best of the New South, and we need to keep working. We have to work at it every day. If we can convince people that we are striving for excellence, and that’s what we’re trying to do, reaching our potential, we’re in good shape and I think that people are seeing that we can reach that goal.
Interview with Darrah Johnson ("Survivor" Contestant)
Darrah was Mississippi's first entry into the world of Survivor - and was fondly remembered as 'the girl that took the shower.' She was very pretty, genuinely very sweet, and - trust me - a lot smarter than you thought she was. When I did this short interview, she was already becoming a canny interviewee.
This year’s Grand Marshal of Mal’s St. Patrick’s Day Parade is Darrah Johnson, the first and so far only Mississippi contestant on “Survivor,” the current reigning champion of the reality TV sweepstakes.
On the show, Johnson played her game quietly, allowing others to take the spotlight – and promptly be shot down – time and again. She kept somewhat to herself, allowing others to come to her and propose alliances and deals. In her Delta-infused accent, she made nice with almost everyone else, at least until it was time not to.
Late in the game, she rose to the occasion, winning three immunity challenges in a row and taking control of the game while simultaneously scaring the hell out of her opponents. She made the final four, lost the next challenge, and was immediately voted out by the others.
She met us at the Jackson Zoo for a photo shoot and interview. Clearly used to the attention, the girl from Liberty, Mississippi proved as comfortable in front of the tape recorder as she did in front of the camera.
PLANET WEEKLY: “You’re living a bit closer than Liberty now. Where do you call home?”
DARRAH JOHNSON: “I moved to Ridgeland about three years ago to go to school. I’ve been up here ever since.”
PW: “What brought you here?”
DJ: “I came up here to go to funeral service school. I graduated with my funeral service degree, then got out and couldn’t get a job. So now I’m going back to school to get a degree in dental hygiene.”
PW: “Are you in school now?”
DJ: “I’m taking some classes right now at Holmes. Hopefully in August, I’ll get into UMC.”
PW: “Malcolm [White] told me when he invited you to be the Grand Marshal, you told him that this would be your first time to the parade. True?”
DJ: “This is my first time. I’ve never been, but I have a lot of friends that go, and they told me it’s a big deal. Malcolm told me about 50,000 people come. I’m looking forward to it, but I don’t know what to expect yet.”
PW: “Are you doing a float?”
DJ: “We are. I’m going today to pick up the print and the materials. We’re going to decorate Thursday and Friday. It’s me and about fifteen or sixteen friends who are going to be on it.”
PW: “What can you tell us about it?”
DJ: “It’s going to be a little bit of a surprise, because I don’t even know what is going to be on it just yet. [The designer] has a print of it, and she hasn’t explained what it will look like.”
PW: “What made you try out for “Survivor?””
DJ: “I’ve been crazy about the show ever since it started. I didn’t see the first season, but from the second season on, I’ve been crazy about it. I was in school at the time, so I just thought I’d apply and see what happened, not thinking I’d ever get picked. I filled out an application, sent it in, sent in an audition tape, and got a call and had to go to New Orleans for some interviews. They narrowed it down from 65,000 to eight hundred, and then to fifty. Then I had to go to California for ten days for extensive interviews. They narrowed it down from fifty to forty, and then to sixteen. I was excited.”
PW: “When they cut it down, did they tell you why they kept you?”
DJ: “No. I think maybe my funeral service work had a part to do with it. They’d never picked anybody from Mississippi, so I was the first. Maybe me being a little country girl, I guess that’s what caught their eye.”
PW: “What we saw on TV; was that natural?”
DJ: “Who I was on the show is pretty much who I am, except for the fact that if somebody makes me mad, I usually speak out and tell them exactly what I think. But you’re playing a game and you can’t do that.”
PW: You probably went further than anyone has by playing under the radar. You never seemed to break cover, except at the end. Was that your plan?”
DJ: “My plan was not to go to people to form alliances, but for them to come to me. That way people couldn’t say I was trying to get anybody off. That was my whole strategy and that’s what happened. Until it got toward the end, when I was winning immunities, and I could say, “Hey, I’m voting so-and-so off. You can go with me or you’re gone.” They had to go with me.”
PW: “Is the show as hard as it looks?”
DJ: “It’s a lot harder than what you really see.”
PW: “Is this something you’d do again?”
DJ: “Oh, yeah, I’d definitely do it again. [Laughs] I had a lot of fun out there.”
PW: “Was there anyone you really bonded with?”
DJ: “Actually, there’s T [Tijuana], Osten, Andrew, and Ryan. I just came back from California, seeing them. We travel together and stay with each other. We are real, real close.”
PW: “After the show started, did people ask you to tell them what happened?”
DJ: “Yeah. Oh, yeah. When I got back, people wanted to know who made it. I told them, “You don’t want to know.” It would ruin it. I didn’t tell anybody.”
PW: “Did you ever want to kick Jeff Probst in the face, knowing that he was coming from an air-conditioned building somewhere?”
DJ: “No. He’s a super nice guy. We’d ask him every night what he had for supper. He didn’t want to tell us, because he didn’t want to aggravate us.”
PW: “Are you planning on doing what other Survivors have done, and move to L.A.?”
DJ: “No, no. L.A. is not for me.”
PW: “Are you going to stay in Mississippi?”
DJ: “Right here for right now, unless something comes up. I’m going back to the finale of this one in May. All the Survivors will be there from every season.”
PW: “Where’s that?”
DJ: “May 9th, in New York. Madison Square Garden.”
PW: “Any advice you’d give to anyone who wants to be on the show?”
DJ: “Go for it. It’s a once in a lifetime thing. I don’t know what strategy to suggest, but go out there and do it. Play as hard as you can.”
This year’s Grand Marshal of Mal’s St. Patrick’s Day Parade is Darrah Johnson, the first and so far only Mississippi contestant on “Survivor,” the current reigning champion of the reality TV sweepstakes.
On the show, Johnson played her game quietly, allowing others to take the spotlight – and promptly be shot down – time and again. She kept somewhat to herself, allowing others to come to her and propose alliances and deals. In her Delta-infused accent, she made nice with almost everyone else, at least until it was time not to.
Late in the game, she rose to the occasion, winning three immunity challenges in a row and taking control of the game while simultaneously scaring the hell out of her opponents. She made the final four, lost the next challenge, and was immediately voted out by the others.
She met us at the Jackson Zoo for a photo shoot and interview. Clearly used to the attention, the girl from Liberty, Mississippi proved as comfortable in front of the tape recorder as she did in front of the camera.
PLANET WEEKLY: “You’re living a bit closer than Liberty now. Where do you call home?”
DARRAH JOHNSON: “I moved to Ridgeland about three years ago to go to school. I’ve been up here ever since.”
PW: “What brought you here?”
DJ: “I came up here to go to funeral service school. I graduated with my funeral service degree, then got out and couldn’t get a job. So now I’m going back to school to get a degree in dental hygiene.”
PW: “Are you in school now?”
DJ: “I’m taking some classes right now at Holmes. Hopefully in August, I’ll get into UMC.”
PW: “Malcolm [White] told me when he invited you to be the Grand Marshal, you told him that this would be your first time to the parade. True?”
DJ: “This is my first time. I’ve never been, but I have a lot of friends that go, and they told me it’s a big deal. Malcolm told me about 50,000 people come. I’m looking forward to it, but I don’t know what to expect yet.”
PW: “Are you doing a float?”
DJ: “We are. I’m going today to pick up the print and the materials. We’re going to decorate Thursday and Friday. It’s me and about fifteen or sixteen friends who are going to be on it.”
PW: “What can you tell us about it?”
DJ: “It’s going to be a little bit of a surprise, because I don’t even know what is going to be on it just yet. [The designer] has a print of it, and she hasn’t explained what it will look like.”
PW: “What made you try out for “Survivor?””
DJ: “I’ve been crazy about the show ever since it started. I didn’t see the first season, but from the second season on, I’ve been crazy about it. I was in school at the time, so I just thought I’d apply and see what happened, not thinking I’d ever get picked. I filled out an application, sent it in, sent in an audition tape, and got a call and had to go to New Orleans for some interviews. They narrowed it down from 65,000 to eight hundred, and then to fifty. Then I had to go to California for ten days for extensive interviews. They narrowed it down from fifty to forty, and then to sixteen. I was excited.”
PW: “When they cut it down, did they tell you why they kept you?”
DJ: “No. I think maybe my funeral service work had a part to do with it. They’d never picked anybody from Mississippi, so I was the first. Maybe me being a little country girl, I guess that’s what caught their eye.”
PW: “What we saw on TV; was that natural?”
DJ: “Who I was on the show is pretty much who I am, except for the fact that if somebody makes me mad, I usually speak out and tell them exactly what I think. But you’re playing a game and you can’t do that.”
PW: You probably went further than anyone has by playing under the radar. You never seemed to break cover, except at the end. Was that your plan?”
DJ: “My plan was not to go to people to form alliances, but for them to come to me. That way people couldn’t say I was trying to get anybody off. That was my whole strategy and that’s what happened. Until it got toward the end, when I was winning immunities, and I could say, “Hey, I’m voting so-and-so off. You can go with me or you’re gone.” They had to go with me.”
PW: “Is the show as hard as it looks?”
DJ: “It’s a lot harder than what you really see.”
PW: “Is this something you’d do again?”
DJ: “Oh, yeah, I’d definitely do it again. [Laughs] I had a lot of fun out there.”
PW: “Was there anyone you really bonded with?”
DJ: “Actually, there’s T [Tijuana], Osten, Andrew, and Ryan. I just came back from California, seeing them. We travel together and stay with each other. We are real, real close.”
PW: “After the show started, did people ask you to tell them what happened?”
DJ: “Yeah. Oh, yeah. When I got back, people wanted to know who made it. I told them, “You don’t want to know.” It would ruin it. I didn’t tell anybody.”
PW: “Did you ever want to kick Jeff Probst in the face, knowing that he was coming from an air-conditioned building somewhere?”
DJ: “No. He’s a super nice guy. We’d ask him every night what he had for supper. He didn’t want to tell us, because he didn’t want to aggravate us.”
PW: “Are you planning on doing what other Survivors have done, and move to L.A.?”
DJ: “No, no. L.A. is not for me.”
PW: “Are you going to stay in Mississippi?”
DJ: “Right here for right now, unless something comes up. I’m going back to the finale of this one in May. All the Survivors will be there from every season.”
PW: “Where’s that?”
DJ: “May 9th, in New York. Madison Square Garden.”
PW: “Any advice you’d give to anyone who wants to be on the show?”
DJ: “Go for it. It’s a once in a lifetime thing. I don’t know what strategy to suggest, but go out there and do it. Play as hard as you can.”
Interview with David Cobb (2004 Green Party Presidential Candidate)
If I'm being honest, this is probably my favorite interview of all time. One day I was off and got a phone call from Carey Miller, our editor-in-chief. He asked if I wanted to interview David Cobb, the Green candidate. I said I would. He asked if I could do it an hour and a half. I agreed to do it, did a fast bit of research and met Carey, Mr. Cobb, and Mr. Fleitas at a tiny old cafe on Farish Street in downtown Jackson. Planet Weekly had long given space to candidates of the smaller parties, and we had a longstanding relationship with the state's Greens. As such, I was lucky to already have a good background of Green politics and Mr. Cobb proved to be a very knowledgable interviewee. I didn't go easy on him, which prompted an off-record interruption in the middle to ask how many words we were going to use. I told them we were going to do 1500 words in print and 2500 online (our issue was already planned - and this was a bonus we had to squeeze in there). When we were finished, Mr. Cobb thanked us and said he was used to getting a thorough interview in New England, or Washington State, or California, but not anyplace like Mississippi. I won't lie and say I voted for the man; in fact, I told him I wasn't going to. But I will say I understood him and think the world of him.
David Cobb is the Green Party candidate for President of the United States this year. Unlike four years ago, when Ralph Nader ran, Cobb’s candidacy has been below the radar, relying on the Greens’ own grassroots efforts and many stops around the country to get out his name. Cobb, a Houston native, knows he has no viable chance to win, but he stands tall in his belief that, though other parties might stop on November 2, he will continue to campaign – not so much for the possession of a single, vital office, but for increased numbers of extremely valuable members across the country.
On Monday, October 11, when Cobb was in town to speak at Millsaps College and Jackson State, Planet Weekly was invited to sit down and interview the candidate. Mississippi gubernatorial candidate Sherman Lee Dillon said the offer was made because Planet Weekly was the only newspaper “to give a fair shake” to the other parties.
It’s often said that one of the best ways to decide whom to vote for is to decide with whom you would rather sit down and have a drink. It’s almost unheard to be given that opportunity, but we were, meeting candidate Cobb, Dillon, and Victor I. Fleitas – a Green running for Election Commission in Lee County – at Fields Café on Farish Street. Mr. Cobb had bottled water, but we felt the opportunity to have a beer with a presidential candidate was too good to pass up.
Planet Weekly: You were a lawyer…
David Cobb: I was a community organizer, a lawyer, a dishwasher, a shrimp boat deckhand, and a construction worker.
PW: What kind of legal work did you do?
DC: I was an insurance defense lawyer, a trial lawyer. I represented clients at the courthouse.
PW: How did you get out of corporate law?
DC: In 2000, Ralph Nader asked me to manage his presidential campaign in the state of Texas. I asked for a leave of absence from my corporate employer. They refused to give it to me, so I quit on the spot and I have dedicated my entire practice and professional life to growing and building the Green Party ever since.
PW: Did that friction lead you to the position you hold regarding the “corporitization” of America?
DC: No. To tell you the truth, I had known – like so many others – that corporations were hijacking our government for many years. But like so many others, I felt tied to it; I had to make money. You know, I worked on the Jesse Jackson campaign in 1984 and 1988, and I worked on the Jerry Brown campaign in 1992 before I quit the Democratic Party, because I realized that corporate money had hijacked that party and you couldn’t do real progressive politics in that party. So I realized that corporations were a fundamental problem, but that moment in 2000 was the push I needed to say, “Instead of just continuing to make money, I’m going to dedicate my life to trying to build a society that I think we deserve.”
PW: That was a point of no return?
DC: It certainly was.
PW: You won’t return to the corporate world is someone offered you large sums of money to do so?
DC: No, sir. For the past four years – going on five years – I have sustained myself as a community organizer. I use my law degree and my experience as I travel around the country, organizing people and helping them develop strategies and tactics for local grassroots groups that are trying to challenge corporate harm and abuse, and to build a movement that will be sufficient to actually challenge the legal doctrines that underpin a legal system that protects corporate harm and abuse in the first place.
PW: What sort of grassroots events do you get involved in?
DC: For example, I’ve helped write ordinances that forbid corporations from being able to own farmland in local communities. I’ve helped draft ordinances that actually attempt to nullify several provisions in the Patriot Act. In fact it’s true, the first-ever binding ordinance that makes it illegal for the police department, library, or city clerk to comply with the federal Patriot Act has been passed in Arcata, California, thanks to Green Party elected officials. I have also helped write ordinances that forbid corporations from participating in politics by making campaign contributions to the political process. I have traveled around the country doing workshops on the social, legal, and historical context of what a corporation is, how it’s hijacked our government and our culture to become the dominant institution of our times, and how, under the law, we have a legal system that protects the property rights of the wealthy elite and their corporations rather than the human rights of ordinary citizens. So you see, I have actually for the past going-on-five years, been even busier than I was as a practicing trial lawyer, using my legal knowledge and background, but helping be a movement lawyer and a people’s lawyer.
PW: Because of the election in 2000, how much grief do you get from the Democratic Party?
DC: A lot. Let’s put it this way. In 1996 when I joined, there were only 10 state Green Parties in the country. Only five of those states had a ballot line and there were 40 elected Green office holders at the time. In 2000, brick by brick, step by step, we had grown to 21 organized state Green Parties, 10 of them had a guaranteed state ballot line, and there were 87 elected Green office holders at the start of the campaign. In 2000…let’s be clear what happened. Al Gore won a presidential election. Not just the majority of the popular vote, he won Florida if all the votes had been counted in Florida. Al Gore won the presidential election; George Bush stole the presidential election. And Al Gore and the Democratic Party, instead of fighting to secure the election they won, harassed and harangued the Green Party incessantly, calling us “spoilers” and gnashing their teeth. In 2004, in that hostile environment, we grew to 44 organized state Green Parties, we started this campaign with 23 guaranteed ballot lines, and there are currently 207 elected Green officeholders.
You ask me do I get a lot of grief for 2000. Yes, constantly. And here is my response, calmly but repeatedly: what others call spoiling, Greens call participating. We’re going to exercise our democratic right to participate in elections. If anybody really believes our participation is a problem, the solution cannot be to squelch the Green Party voice or to restrict voter choice. We desperately need more voices and more choices. The solution is to change the voter system, so people don’t feel like they have to vote against what they hate.
PW: Away from the two-party system?
DC: Come out of the two-party system. Instant runoff voting is a preferential voting system that empowers the voters to rank order their preferences – my first choice, my second choice, my third choice. We like to say it’s as easy as 1-2-3, because voters just rank order their preference. It’s a super easy system used all over the world.
PW: Not in this country.
DC: Well, it’s used in Cambridge, Massachusetts. It will be used in November in San Francisco, thanks to the Green Party, and it’s currently used by the Utah Republican Party, because the Utah Republican Party wanted a voting system that would guarantee a majority winner in only one election. We’re saying to the Democratic Party, if you think this is a problem, you’d better get behind instant runoff voting because that’s the solution to the real problem.
PW: You started the campaign with 23 states with Green Party ballot lines. Do you have more now?
DC: Right now we have 29 certified, with one more in court: Utah. Here’s something else interesting: of those 207 people, they come from 21 different states. The Greens are growing against all odds.
PW: Is it true that you are practicing a “safe states strategy,” where you avoid campaigning in the swing states?
DC: Actually that’s not true. I’ve been very clear from the get-go that my goals are to grow and build the Green Party, to register more people into the Green Party, to help local Greens get elected, and to run a campaign that articulates the Green Party’s progressive agenda of peace, racial and social justice, real democracy, and environmental protection. Some people have called this the “safe states strategy” because I tell the truth, and here’s the truth: John Kerry is a corporatist, militarist sellout who voted for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. John Kerry voted for the Patriot Act, assaulting our civil liberties. John Kerry voted for NAFTA, which is destroying our economy. John Kerry voted for No Child Left Behind, which is destroying public education in this country. John Kerry is opposed to universal health care and opposed to raising the minimum wage to a living wage. That’s the truth, but here’s another truth: as bad as John Kerry is, from my perspective, George W. Bush is qualitatively worse. The American people need much better. George W. Bush is a dangerous threat to the planet, but at the end of the day, he is a very big problem, but not the problem. The core problem is a social, political, and economic system that we know is literally destroying the planet and creating a racist, sexist oppressive world order. That’s the problem, and the Green Party has to figure out a way to navigate this very dangerous election cycle, where so many of our people, people who share progressive values are caught up with this Anybody But Bush virus, where they can’t see anything past that.
PW: So that would be an unqualified “no,” then?
DC: It’s an unqualified “no” for the “safe states strategy,” but it’s also a willingness to say, “Yes, Bush is worse than Kerry.” What kind of moron would not admit that?
PW: You don’t seriously expect to win, but you’ve stated that your campaign goes far beyond November 2.
DC: Absolutely. The Green Party is getting larger, stronger and better organized with every election cycle and I absolutely believe we will continue to grow. We’re already registering more into the Green Party than ever before.
PW: What sort of numbers are you talking about nationwide?
DC: You can only register Green in about 20 states. In those states, we have 300,000 registered Greens right now. If you count all the other states – memberships and participation – our best guess is we have about half a million people who are actively self-identified as Greens, and that number is growing. On the issue, we’re the only political party calling for universal health care, publicly funded elections – to get the corporate fat cats out of our government, calling to raise the minimum wage to a living wage, and we join the Libertarian Party in calling for an end to war in Iraq and for a repeal of the Patriot Act. Our progressive agenda is drawing more and more people in. Most who join aren’t former Democratic or Republican Party operatives; they’re ordinary people who have never participated before, who say, “Here is a party I can get behind.”
PW: Were you arrested in St. Louis for civil disobedience at the presidential debate?
DC: I’m proud to say this is not my first time. I’ve gone to jail for justice, and I’ll go to jail for justice again. You don’t get social change just by asking for it. Power concedes nothing without a demand; never has, never will. “You show me the exact amount of injustice that a people are willing to tolerate, and I’ll show you the exact amount of injustice that a people will be subjected to.” That was Frederick Douglass who said that, but it was true then and it’s true now. Yeah, I’ve been to jail for justice and I’ll go again if I have to. The real crime wasn’t me crossing police barricades in order to participate in a presidential debate as a legally registered candidate – or even being refused a place in the crowd to ask a question – the real crime was the corporate takeover of the debate process and that sham that is perpetrated on the American people. That Commission on Presidential Debates is a corporation controlled by the Democratic and Republican Parties. They control everything. Those were infomercials, not really debates.
PW: Your running mate, Patricia LaMarche, has an arrest record that doesn’t involve civil disobedience, doesn’t she?
DC: She does.
PW: Does this cause you trouble?
DC: Media folks who do their homework know about it. It doesn’t come up all the time. But she has an arrest for driving while intoxicated.
PW: And she spent four days in jail.
DC: That’s exactly right. She’s not perfect. Neither am I perfect. It’s been several years; it was a mistake. She acknowledges it as a mistake. I think if we want to start digging into anybody else’s past, I think George Bush’s clear drug abuse ought to be talked about and I think—
PW: It has been.
DC: No, no, I know. The thing is, it doesn’t really seem to be an issue now. It’s been brought up and brushed aside. Pat has a DWI – not proud of it, but there it is. But let’s also talk about her record as an advocate for homeless issues, abused women and children’s issues. She’s been a tireless advocate for those issues and she’s a very powerful woman. You’re right, it occasionally gets brought up by people who do their homework, but it’s not something that caused me any problems. It doesn’t cause me any embarrassment at all, because I don’t expect perfection.
PW: What do you say to inform people who think of the Green Party as a far-left organization?
DC: We’re not left or right. We’re really out in front, in thinking about government, politics, and economics. For example, how else to square the circle that says the Green Party agrees with Pat Buchanan on opposition to NAFTA, the World Trade Organization, the International Monetary Fund, and the World Bank, the Green Party agrees with the Libertarians on the Patriot Act as a violation of our constitutional civil liberties, and the Green Party agrees with local control, which is typically considered to be a conservative position – which, by the way, is anathema to the No Child Left Behind act, which imposes national testing on local controls? We really are not easily categorized in a two-dimensional left-right dichotomy; we are a kind of third dimensional way of looking at politics. On some issues, we’re taking positions that are typically liberal and we take some positions that are considered conservative. At the end of the day, what we are doing is taking positions that we think are in keeping with our core principles and values. It’s important to recognize this: on many issues, we already represent the majority view. The majority want universal health care, the majority want to see the minimum wage raised, and the majority want out of Iraq. We already have majoritarian positions there. But we’re also taking genuinely visionary positions. Our support of the right of same-sex couples to marry is, in fact, a visionary position, but damn it, it’s the right position. Just like 25 years ago, it was a visionary position to fight against Jim Crow segregationist laws and it was the right thing to do. We had to create a movement and some people had to provide leadership. I’m proud that the Green Party takes some issues that are majoritarian and other issues that are genuinely visionary and provide leadership of them, because we know it’s the right position to take.
David Cobb is the Green Party candidate for President of the United States this year. Unlike four years ago, when Ralph Nader ran, Cobb’s candidacy has been below the radar, relying on the Greens’ own grassroots efforts and many stops around the country to get out his name. Cobb, a Houston native, knows he has no viable chance to win, but he stands tall in his belief that, though other parties might stop on November 2, he will continue to campaign – not so much for the possession of a single, vital office, but for increased numbers of extremely valuable members across the country.
On Monday, October 11, when Cobb was in town to speak at Millsaps College and Jackson State, Planet Weekly was invited to sit down and interview the candidate. Mississippi gubernatorial candidate Sherman Lee Dillon said the offer was made because Planet Weekly was the only newspaper “to give a fair shake” to the other parties.
It’s often said that one of the best ways to decide whom to vote for is to decide with whom you would rather sit down and have a drink. It’s almost unheard to be given that opportunity, but we were, meeting candidate Cobb, Dillon, and Victor I. Fleitas – a Green running for Election Commission in Lee County – at Fields Café on Farish Street. Mr. Cobb had bottled water, but we felt the opportunity to have a beer with a presidential candidate was too good to pass up.
Planet Weekly: You were a lawyer…
David Cobb: I was a community organizer, a lawyer, a dishwasher, a shrimp boat deckhand, and a construction worker.
PW: What kind of legal work did you do?
DC: I was an insurance defense lawyer, a trial lawyer. I represented clients at the courthouse.
PW: How did you get out of corporate law?
DC: In 2000, Ralph Nader asked me to manage his presidential campaign in the state of Texas. I asked for a leave of absence from my corporate employer. They refused to give it to me, so I quit on the spot and I have dedicated my entire practice and professional life to growing and building the Green Party ever since.
PW: Did that friction lead you to the position you hold regarding the “corporitization” of America?
DC: No. To tell you the truth, I had known – like so many others – that corporations were hijacking our government for many years. But like so many others, I felt tied to it; I had to make money. You know, I worked on the Jesse Jackson campaign in 1984 and 1988, and I worked on the Jerry Brown campaign in 1992 before I quit the Democratic Party, because I realized that corporate money had hijacked that party and you couldn’t do real progressive politics in that party. So I realized that corporations were a fundamental problem, but that moment in 2000 was the push I needed to say, “Instead of just continuing to make money, I’m going to dedicate my life to trying to build a society that I think we deserve.”
PW: That was a point of no return?
DC: It certainly was.
PW: You won’t return to the corporate world is someone offered you large sums of money to do so?
DC: No, sir. For the past four years – going on five years – I have sustained myself as a community organizer. I use my law degree and my experience as I travel around the country, organizing people and helping them develop strategies and tactics for local grassroots groups that are trying to challenge corporate harm and abuse, and to build a movement that will be sufficient to actually challenge the legal doctrines that underpin a legal system that protects corporate harm and abuse in the first place.
PW: What sort of grassroots events do you get involved in?
DC: For example, I’ve helped write ordinances that forbid corporations from being able to own farmland in local communities. I’ve helped draft ordinances that actually attempt to nullify several provisions in the Patriot Act. In fact it’s true, the first-ever binding ordinance that makes it illegal for the police department, library, or city clerk to comply with the federal Patriot Act has been passed in Arcata, California, thanks to Green Party elected officials. I have also helped write ordinances that forbid corporations from participating in politics by making campaign contributions to the political process. I have traveled around the country doing workshops on the social, legal, and historical context of what a corporation is, how it’s hijacked our government and our culture to become the dominant institution of our times, and how, under the law, we have a legal system that protects the property rights of the wealthy elite and their corporations rather than the human rights of ordinary citizens. So you see, I have actually for the past going-on-five years, been even busier than I was as a practicing trial lawyer, using my legal knowledge and background, but helping be a movement lawyer and a people’s lawyer.
PW: Because of the election in 2000, how much grief do you get from the Democratic Party?
DC: A lot. Let’s put it this way. In 1996 when I joined, there were only 10 state Green Parties in the country. Only five of those states had a ballot line and there were 40 elected Green office holders at the time. In 2000, brick by brick, step by step, we had grown to 21 organized state Green Parties, 10 of them had a guaranteed state ballot line, and there were 87 elected Green office holders at the start of the campaign. In 2000…let’s be clear what happened. Al Gore won a presidential election. Not just the majority of the popular vote, he won Florida if all the votes had been counted in Florida. Al Gore won the presidential election; George Bush stole the presidential election. And Al Gore and the Democratic Party, instead of fighting to secure the election they won, harassed and harangued the Green Party incessantly, calling us “spoilers” and gnashing their teeth. In 2004, in that hostile environment, we grew to 44 organized state Green Parties, we started this campaign with 23 guaranteed ballot lines, and there are currently 207 elected Green officeholders.
You ask me do I get a lot of grief for 2000. Yes, constantly. And here is my response, calmly but repeatedly: what others call spoiling, Greens call participating. We’re going to exercise our democratic right to participate in elections. If anybody really believes our participation is a problem, the solution cannot be to squelch the Green Party voice or to restrict voter choice. We desperately need more voices and more choices. The solution is to change the voter system, so people don’t feel like they have to vote against what they hate.
PW: Away from the two-party system?
DC: Come out of the two-party system. Instant runoff voting is a preferential voting system that empowers the voters to rank order their preferences – my first choice, my second choice, my third choice. We like to say it’s as easy as 1-2-3, because voters just rank order their preference. It’s a super easy system used all over the world.
PW: Not in this country.
DC: Well, it’s used in Cambridge, Massachusetts. It will be used in November in San Francisco, thanks to the Green Party, and it’s currently used by the Utah Republican Party, because the Utah Republican Party wanted a voting system that would guarantee a majority winner in only one election. We’re saying to the Democratic Party, if you think this is a problem, you’d better get behind instant runoff voting because that’s the solution to the real problem.
PW: You started the campaign with 23 states with Green Party ballot lines. Do you have more now?
DC: Right now we have 29 certified, with one more in court: Utah. Here’s something else interesting: of those 207 people, they come from 21 different states. The Greens are growing against all odds.
PW: Is it true that you are practicing a “safe states strategy,” where you avoid campaigning in the swing states?
DC: Actually that’s not true. I’ve been very clear from the get-go that my goals are to grow and build the Green Party, to register more people into the Green Party, to help local Greens get elected, and to run a campaign that articulates the Green Party’s progressive agenda of peace, racial and social justice, real democracy, and environmental protection. Some people have called this the “safe states strategy” because I tell the truth, and here’s the truth: John Kerry is a corporatist, militarist sellout who voted for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. John Kerry voted for the Patriot Act, assaulting our civil liberties. John Kerry voted for NAFTA, which is destroying our economy. John Kerry voted for No Child Left Behind, which is destroying public education in this country. John Kerry is opposed to universal health care and opposed to raising the minimum wage to a living wage. That’s the truth, but here’s another truth: as bad as John Kerry is, from my perspective, George W. Bush is qualitatively worse. The American people need much better. George W. Bush is a dangerous threat to the planet, but at the end of the day, he is a very big problem, but not the problem. The core problem is a social, political, and economic system that we know is literally destroying the planet and creating a racist, sexist oppressive world order. That’s the problem, and the Green Party has to figure out a way to navigate this very dangerous election cycle, where so many of our people, people who share progressive values are caught up with this Anybody But Bush virus, where they can’t see anything past that.
PW: So that would be an unqualified “no,” then?
DC: It’s an unqualified “no” for the “safe states strategy,” but it’s also a willingness to say, “Yes, Bush is worse than Kerry.” What kind of moron would not admit that?
PW: You don’t seriously expect to win, but you’ve stated that your campaign goes far beyond November 2.
DC: Absolutely. The Green Party is getting larger, stronger and better organized with every election cycle and I absolutely believe we will continue to grow. We’re already registering more into the Green Party than ever before.
PW: What sort of numbers are you talking about nationwide?
DC: You can only register Green in about 20 states. In those states, we have 300,000 registered Greens right now. If you count all the other states – memberships and participation – our best guess is we have about half a million people who are actively self-identified as Greens, and that number is growing. On the issue, we’re the only political party calling for universal health care, publicly funded elections – to get the corporate fat cats out of our government, calling to raise the minimum wage to a living wage, and we join the Libertarian Party in calling for an end to war in Iraq and for a repeal of the Patriot Act. Our progressive agenda is drawing more and more people in. Most who join aren’t former Democratic or Republican Party operatives; they’re ordinary people who have never participated before, who say, “Here is a party I can get behind.”
PW: Were you arrested in St. Louis for civil disobedience at the presidential debate?
DC: I’m proud to say this is not my first time. I’ve gone to jail for justice, and I’ll go to jail for justice again. You don’t get social change just by asking for it. Power concedes nothing without a demand; never has, never will. “You show me the exact amount of injustice that a people are willing to tolerate, and I’ll show you the exact amount of injustice that a people will be subjected to.” That was Frederick Douglass who said that, but it was true then and it’s true now. Yeah, I’ve been to jail for justice and I’ll go again if I have to. The real crime wasn’t me crossing police barricades in order to participate in a presidential debate as a legally registered candidate – or even being refused a place in the crowd to ask a question – the real crime was the corporate takeover of the debate process and that sham that is perpetrated on the American people. That Commission on Presidential Debates is a corporation controlled by the Democratic and Republican Parties. They control everything. Those were infomercials, not really debates.
PW: Your running mate, Patricia LaMarche, has an arrest record that doesn’t involve civil disobedience, doesn’t she?
DC: She does.
PW: Does this cause you trouble?
DC: Media folks who do their homework know about it. It doesn’t come up all the time. But she has an arrest for driving while intoxicated.
PW: And she spent four days in jail.
DC: That’s exactly right. She’s not perfect. Neither am I perfect. It’s been several years; it was a mistake. She acknowledges it as a mistake. I think if we want to start digging into anybody else’s past, I think George Bush’s clear drug abuse ought to be talked about and I think—
PW: It has been.
DC: No, no, I know. The thing is, it doesn’t really seem to be an issue now. It’s been brought up and brushed aside. Pat has a DWI – not proud of it, but there it is. But let’s also talk about her record as an advocate for homeless issues, abused women and children’s issues. She’s been a tireless advocate for those issues and she’s a very powerful woman. You’re right, it occasionally gets brought up by people who do their homework, but it’s not something that caused me any problems. It doesn’t cause me any embarrassment at all, because I don’t expect perfection.
PW: What do you say to inform people who think of the Green Party as a far-left organization?
DC: We’re not left or right. We’re really out in front, in thinking about government, politics, and economics. For example, how else to square the circle that says the Green Party agrees with Pat Buchanan on opposition to NAFTA, the World Trade Organization, the International Monetary Fund, and the World Bank, the Green Party agrees with the Libertarians on the Patriot Act as a violation of our constitutional civil liberties, and the Green Party agrees with local control, which is typically considered to be a conservative position – which, by the way, is anathema to the No Child Left Behind act, which imposes national testing on local controls? We really are not easily categorized in a two-dimensional left-right dichotomy; we are a kind of third dimensional way of looking at politics. On some issues, we’re taking positions that are typically liberal and we take some positions that are considered conservative. At the end of the day, what we are doing is taking positions that we think are in keeping with our core principles and values. It’s important to recognize this: on many issues, we already represent the majority view. The majority want universal health care, the majority want to see the minimum wage raised, and the majority want out of Iraq. We already have majoritarian positions there. But we’re also taking genuinely visionary positions. Our support of the right of same-sex couples to marry is, in fact, a visionary position, but damn it, it’s the right position. Just like 25 years ago, it was a visionary position to fight against Jim Crow segregationist laws and it was the right thing to do. We had to create a movement and some people had to provide leadership. I’m proud that the Green Party takes some issues that are majoritarian and other issues that are genuinely visionary and provide leadership of them, because we know it’s the right position to take.
Interview with David Banner (Producer, Rapper, Actor)
This interview was arguably the one I was best known for - and one of Planet Weekly's most memorable. Banner's record company linked their websites to our website, resulting in hundreds of comments from people who had no idea who we were. This being Mississippi, we also had a few disgruntled caucasians who lambasted us (me) for wasting paper & pixels on a 'guy who just makes stupid noises over thumps and calls it music.' The fact is, David Banner is one of the most intelligent people I've ever met, in any capacity, and one of the best interviews ever. He says what he means and he says it well. He couches it in language that his audience will listen, though, and anyone who doesn't get that is the one with the intelligence issue. I also found him to be direct, generous, and talented.
David Banner is not the average rapper. He is a producer who has worked with Snoop Dogg, Nelly, Trick Daddy, Busta Rhymes, and Nappy Roots. He is a local boy who began his career with Crooked Lettaz, one of the casualties of Tommy Boy Records.
He takes his name from the Hulk’s alter ego, the man who said, “You wouldn’t like me when I’m angry.”
He is a smart man, an educated non-intellectual who was the president of the Student Government Association at Southern University.
He is a man who combines production skill, an air of casual violence, and an inquisitive, thoughtful nature to create a style of Southern music that meshes hardcore rap, political soul, and a sort of frantic fire-and-brimstone street gospel. He puts his sex and violence on display, be he is not quite able to hide his reflective intelligence behind it.
In 2003, Banner signed with Universal Records and released Mississippi: The Album. It debuted at Number 3 on the Billboard 200 chart and at Number 1 on the R&B/hip hop chart. It was named one of Rolling Stone’s 50 best albums of 2003. The Source magazine gave it 4 out of possible 5. Notoriously picky Spin magazine awarded it a grade of B+.
“Like a Pimp,” Banner’s debut major-label single, was a house rocking, rump shaking anthem to strip clubs. It was a nasty piece of crunk, a slice of the Dirty South, and the song that kicked off the high-octane, if brain dead, 2 Fast 2 Furious.
Banner followed up with “Cadillac on 22’s,” probably the most reflective rap song since “Gangsta’s Paradise.” Wrapping questions about the existence of hell and the difficulty of always doing God’s will around an acoustic riff, Banner created a thoughtful lament to the bling-bling lifestyle.
Seven months after that release, Universal released MTA2: Baptized in Dirty Water to more good reviews.
In less than a year, Banner has gone from being a well-respected producer to a well-known rapper. He has brought Mississippi into the spotlight, and aggressively promotes his home state at every opportunity.
We met David Banner at Schimmel’s. He arrived exactly on time and offered to sit as long as we needed for the interview and photo shoot.
PLANET WEEKLY: How has the reaction been to MTA2: Baptized in Dirty Water?
DAVID BANNER: Great. I’ve been hearing it’s a better album, but until it sells more than the first one, I’m going with the first one. [laughs] I want to do Eminem numbers. I want to do 50 Cent numbers. I don’t think they’re so much better than me. I want to compete with Outkast. If I sold 9 million albums, I still would know I could do better.
PW: The first single from your new album is “Crank it Up.” How’s it that doing?
DB: It’s doing good. It’s been a little bit hard, because I released the second album a little too quick. It’s been hard because it’s so different from “Like a Pimp.” It’s very different musically.
PW: Speaking of different, tell us about “Cadillac on 22’s.” This was not a single that people were expecting.
DB: [laughs] It’s crazy. That was the song that all the kids in the hood were playing in the first place. They weren’t even playing “Like a Pimp” here. It was my favorite song, but you have to gauge by what the streets want.
“Cadillac on 22’s” was a letter to God. It was laid upon me that it was time, because no one else was doing music like that. At the time I just thought the world needed it, right then. To be honest with you, I think it was the best decision I’d ever made in my life.
But a program director told me that “Cadillac on 22’s” was the biggest drop-off of the last five years. He said that was a hit song, but it wasn’t pushed to the level it needed. But if that song had touched the masses the way it was supposed to, it would have flown. As a whole, it wasn’t accepted. But the crazy thing was – and this is what I don’t understand – is that every place that did play it, it was number one.
“Cadillac on 22’s” was the song most requested by white people on urban stations. White people would listen to the station, but not call in…until “Cadillac on 22’s.”
I think at the time it really changed perceptions about Southern music.
PW: What sort of perceptions?
DB: Our psyches have been affected. America still looks at the South the same way the leaders of the Civil War looked at the South. People still think you can look out the window right here and see the Klan walking. They look at Mississippi Burning and that’s what they think of Mississippi today. I know there’re a lot of adverse things that happened in Mississippi, but that was in the past.
PW: Those kinds of adverse things still happen.
DB: It may be things are still happening on some levels, but it’s not the way that people have it in their heads. You know, we still have problems, but the thing I’ve learned from traveling is that it’s no worse here than it is in Boston.
PW: There’s a contest involved with the new album. What is the “Crank it Up” contest?
DB: I had the opportunity to give away $50,000. There are five gold tickets in the first 350,000 [Baptized] albums. If you get a gold ticket, you get a $10,000 scholarship. If you have gone to college already, or if you just choose that college is not for you, you can pass it along to somebody else, family, friends. It’ll be given to the school in someone’s name.
I was homeless two separate times in my life. Not because I wanted to be, but because that was path I chose. The first time I got out was education. The second time was music. I want to open up the same opportunities I had. Soon I’ll fade away. Soon the competition will fade away, but for the person who gains that college education, that’s something that will affect his life, and the lives of his family for a long time.
PW: What is your academic status now?
DB: I’m a semester and a thesis away from a Masters Degree.
PW: In what?
DB: Education. My goal was always to come back and be a teacher. Now I always thought in my heart that I was going to make a lot of money some way. But the thing was, I always wanted to come back and teach kids.
PW: What was your first degree?
DB: Business, at Southern University in Baton Rouge. I think that’s the greatest establishment on the face of the Earth.
PW: You did post-grad work at the University of Maryland.
DB: I was in an accelerated Master’s program.
PW: That’s not what people tend to think of when they think rap music.
DB: That’s the biggest blessing. If a policeman pulls over a young black man in baggy shorts, maybe he’ll think before harassing him.
I was living out on Lakeland, in one of those $700 apartments, selling my CDs out of my trunk. Do you know I got pulled over at least twice a week, going home? No speeding, nothing. I remember one time I got mad and asked, “Why the fuck do you guys keep pulling me over?”
He says, “Because you came down this street two times in one hour.” I told him, “I stay here! You want me to go home and stay for two hours, just to make you happy? Fuck that!”
PW: Do you still live in Mississippi?
DB: I live on the tour bus. But Jackson, Mississippi is home.
PW: No plans on relocating any time soon?
DB: I may end up moving to L.A. for a while, just because I’m about to start acting.
PW: What kind of acting do you want to do?
DB: I want to be an action hero.
PW: Back to the music. Duets are common in the rap world. Would you do a duet with Mariah Carey?
DB: Oh, hell, yes! I’m trying to do a song right now with Justin Timberlake. I am trying to cross over. That is the point. “Like a Pimp” was a nasty-ass street song and Thank You Lord for it. But it went pop. The only way something goes pop is for popular culture to embrace it. It doesn’t matter what the music is. If popular culture embraces it, it’s pop.
PW: You’ve said that you think violent music has a place.
DB: In a lot of communities, the white kids can’t skateboard. We can’t hang out in front of clubs. If we walk in Northpark [Mall] with more than three people, we’re a gang. Kids don’t have ways to vent. They’ve cut back on the school programs, the after-school programs, the band, the football team, and stuff like that.
To be honest with you, music is what kept me from being violent. If I could get that aggression out by going to the club and throwing a couple elbows, that would get me through the day.
There are people who are so gullible to be controlled by music. Those are the same people, that if you took the music out of the equation, they’d only put violent movies in. You take the movies out, and they’ll put soap operas in. If you have that level of weakness in you, something is going to substitute for that. You’re only using music as your excuse to do what you really want to do.
PW: Isn’t this a bleak outlook?
DB: We have been so trained and socialized to deal with this right here [points to skin] when there is something so much bigger going on. It’s really about the elite and the not elite. It’s about who has, who wants, and who wants everything.
If you want to see how the world is, look at the Wild Kingdom. Look at how animals act in the wilderness. That’s really how society is, but since we’re humans, it’s a little prettier.
One thing that America does to its leaders is to either talk about them like dogs or make them so squeaky clean that a kid doesn’t think it’s attainable for him. People need to know that Malcolm X was a pimp. People need to know Martin Luther King was a womanizer. People need to know that so they can see they can make mistakes in their life and still be someone. It’s about doing what’s right. But America gets you into all these other side issues.
The issue is, “Did you do what was right when it was time?”
PW: Thank you. You’re a big Mississippi supporter. But have you had support from Mississippi?
DB: Oh, yeah. Most everyone. Most. Do you know I was in the New York Times before I was in the Clarion-Ledger? They did a whole story on “Cadillac on 22’s.” Do you know how hard it is for anybody – not just a rapper, but any musician – to get a story in the New York fucking Times? I was there before I was in the Clarion-Ledger. That crushed me. At the time, I didn’t need to be in the Clarion-Ledger, but it meant the world to me, because to the older black people, the Clarion-Ledger is the news.
You know, even if I become dead broke, nobody can take away what I did last year. I was on the cover of The Source. Rolling Stone had me as the number four album in the whole of last year. Nobody can take that from me.
I see people walking around with “Mississippi” on their shirts now. I see it in Atlanta. I see it in the clubs. I only wanted for it to be documented, so when my kids do research on their father, they’ll have something to be proud of.
PW: Do you have kids?
DB: Not yet.
PW: Thank you.
David Banner is not the average rapper. He is a producer who has worked with Snoop Dogg, Nelly, Trick Daddy, Busta Rhymes, and Nappy Roots. He is a local boy who began his career with Crooked Lettaz, one of the casualties of Tommy Boy Records.
He takes his name from the Hulk’s alter ego, the man who said, “You wouldn’t like me when I’m angry.”
He is a smart man, an educated non-intellectual who was the president of the Student Government Association at Southern University.
He is a man who combines production skill, an air of casual violence, and an inquisitive, thoughtful nature to create a style of Southern music that meshes hardcore rap, political soul, and a sort of frantic fire-and-brimstone street gospel. He puts his sex and violence on display, be he is not quite able to hide his reflective intelligence behind it.
In 2003, Banner signed with Universal Records and released Mississippi: The Album. It debuted at Number 3 on the Billboard 200 chart and at Number 1 on the R&B/hip hop chart. It was named one of Rolling Stone’s 50 best albums of 2003. The Source magazine gave it 4 out of possible 5. Notoriously picky Spin magazine awarded it a grade of B+.
“Like a Pimp,” Banner’s debut major-label single, was a house rocking, rump shaking anthem to strip clubs. It was a nasty piece of crunk, a slice of the Dirty South, and the song that kicked off the high-octane, if brain dead, 2 Fast 2 Furious.
Banner followed up with “Cadillac on 22’s,” probably the most reflective rap song since “Gangsta’s Paradise.” Wrapping questions about the existence of hell and the difficulty of always doing God’s will around an acoustic riff, Banner created a thoughtful lament to the bling-bling lifestyle.
Seven months after that release, Universal released MTA2: Baptized in Dirty Water to more good reviews.
In less than a year, Banner has gone from being a well-respected producer to a well-known rapper. He has brought Mississippi into the spotlight, and aggressively promotes his home state at every opportunity.
We met David Banner at Schimmel’s. He arrived exactly on time and offered to sit as long as we needed for the interview and photo shoot.
PLANET WEEKLY: How has the reaction been to MTA2: Baptized in Dirty Water?
DAVID BANNER: Great. I’ve been hearing it’s a better album, but until it sells more than the first one, I’m going with the first one. [laughs] I want to do Eminem numbers. I want to do 50 Cent numbers. I don’t think they’re so much better than me. I want to compete with Outkast. If I sold 9 million albums, I still would know I could do better.
PW: The first single from your new album is “Crank it Up.” How’s it that doing?
DB: It’s doing good. It’s been a little bit hard, because I released the second album a little too quick. It’s been hard because it’s so different from “Like a Pimp.” It’s very different musically.
PW: Speaking of different, tell us about “Cadillac on 22’s.” This was not a single that people were expecting.
DB: [laughs] It’s crazy. That was the song that all the kids in the hood were playing in the first place. They weren’t even playing “Like a Pimp” here. It was my favorite song, but you have to gauge by what the streets want.
“Cadillac on 22’s” was a letter to God. It was laid upon me that it was time, because no one else was doing music like that. At the time I just thought the world needed it, right then. To be honest with you, I think it was the best decision I’d ever made in my life.
But a program director told me that “Cadillac on 22’s” was the biggest drop-off of the last five years. He said that was a hit song, but it wasn’t pushed to the level it needed. But if that song had touched the masses the way it was supposed to, it would have flown. As a whole, it wasn’t accepted. But the crazy thing was – and this is what I don’t understand – is that every place that did play it, it was number one.
“Cadillac on 22’s” was the song most requested by white people on urban stations. White people would listen to the station, but not call in…until “Cadillac on 22’s.”
I think at the time it really changed perceptions about Southern music.
PW: What sort of perceptions?
DB: Our psyches have been affected. America still looks at the South the same way the leaders of the Civil War looked at the South. People still think you can look out the window right here and see the Klan walking. They look at Mississippi Burning and that’s what they think of Mississippi today. I know there’re a lot of adverse things that happened in Mississippi, but that was in the past.
PW: Those kinds of adverse things still happen.
DB: It may be things are still happening on some levels, but it’s not the way that people have it in their heads. You know, we still have problems, but the thing I’ve learned from traveling is that it’s no worse here than it is in Boston.
PW: There’s a contest involved with the new album. What is the “Crank it Up” contest?
DB: I had the opportunity to give away $50,000. There are five gold tickets in the first 350,000 [Baptized] albums. If you get a gold ticket, you get a $10,000 scholarship. If you have gone to college already, or if you just choose that college is not for you, you can pass it along to somebody else, family, friends. It’ll be given to the school in someone’s name.
I was homeless two separate times in my life. Not because I wanted to be, but because that was path I chose. The first time I got out was education. The second time was music. I want to open up the same opportunities I had. Soon I’ll fade away. Soon the competition will fade away, but for the person who gains that college education, that’s something that will affect his life, and the lives of his family for a long time.
PW: What is your academic status now?
DB: I’m a semester and a thesis away from a Masters Degree.
PW: In what?
DB: Education. My goal was always to come back and be a teacher. Now I always thought in my heart that I was going to make a lot of money some way. But the thing was, I always wanted to come back and teach kids.
PW: What was your first degree?
DB: Business, at Southern University in Baton Rouge. I think that’s the greatest establishment on the face of the Earth.
PW: You did post-grad work at the University of Maryland.
DB: I was in an accelerated Master’s program.
PW: That’s not what people tend to think of when they think rap music.
DB: That’s the biggest blessing. If a policeman pulls over a young black man in baggy shorts, maybe he’ll think before harassing him.
I was living out on Lakeland, in one of those $700 apartments, selling my CDs out of my trunk. Do you know I got pulled over at least twice a week, going home? No speeding, nothing. I remember one time I got mad and asked, “Why the fuck do you guys keep pulling me over?”
He says, “Because you came down this street two times in one hour.” I told him, “I stay here! You want me to go home and stay for two hours, just to make you happy? Fuck that!”
PW: Do you still live in Mississippi?
DB: I live on the tour bus. But Jackson, Mississippi is home.
PW: No plans on relocating any time soon?
DB: I may end up moving to L.A. for a while, just because I’m about to start acting.
PW: What kind of acting do you want to do?
DB: I want to be an action hero.
PW: Back to the music. Duets are common in the rap world. Would you do a duet with Mariah Carey?
DB: Oh, hell, yes! I’m trying to do a song right now with Justin Timberlake. I am trying to cross over. That is the point. “Like a Pimp” was a nasty-ass street song and Thank You Lord for it. But it went pop. The only way something goes pop is for popular culture to embrace it. It doesn’t matter what the music is. If popular culture embraces it, it’s pop.
PW: You’ve said that you think violent music has a place.
DB: In a lot of communities, the white kids can’t skateboard. We can’t hang out in front of clubs. If we walk in Northpark [Mall] with more than three people, we’re a gang. Kids don’t have ways to vent. They’ve cut back on the school programs, the after-school programs, the band, the football team, and stuff like that.
To be honest with you, music is what kept me from being violent. If I could get that aggression out by going to the club and throwing a couple elbows, that would get me through the day.
There are people who are so gullible to be controlled by music. Those are the same people, that if you took the music out of the equation, they’d only put violent movies in. You take the movies out, and they’ll put soap operas in. If you have that level of weakness in you, something is going to substitute for that. You’re only using music as your excuse to do what you really want to do.
PW: Isn’t this a bleak outlook?
DB: We have been so trained and socialized to deal with this right here [points to skin] when there is something so much bigger going on. It’s really about the elite and the not elite. It’s about who has, who wants, and who wants everything.
If you want to see how the world is, look at the Wild Kingdom. Look at how animals act in the wilderness. That’s really how society is, but since we’re humans, it’s a little prettier.
One thing that America does to its leaders is to either talk about them like dogs or make them so squeaky clean that a kid doesn’t think it’s attainable for him. People need to know that Malcolm X was a pimp. People need to know Martin Luther King was a womanizer. People need to know that so they can see they can make mistakes in their life and still be someone. It’s about doing what’s right. But America gets you into all these other side issues.
The issue is, “Did you do what was right when it was time?”
PW: Thank you. You’re a big Mississippi supporter. But have you had support from Mississippi?
DB: Oh, yeah. Most everyone. Most. Do you know I was in the New York Times before I was in the Clarion-Ledger? They did a whole story on “Cadillac on 22’s.” Do you know how hard it is for anybody – not just a rapper, but any musician – to get a story in the New York fucking Times? I was there before I was in the Clarion-Ledger. That crushed me. At the time, I didn’t need to be in the Clarion-Ledger, but it meant the world to me, because to the older black people, the Clarion-Ledger is the news.
You know, even if I become dead broke, nobody can take away what I did last year. I was on the cover of The Source. Rolling Stone had me as the number four album in the whole of last year. Nobody can take that from me.
I see people walking around with “Mississippi” on their shirts now. I see it in Atlanta. I see it in the clubs. I only wanted for it to be documented, so when my kids do research on their father, they’ll have something to be proud of.
PW: Do you have kids?
DB: Not yet.
PW: Thank you.
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