Old school has good bones
For Dr. Janice Barton, the empty old Cockrum school house at the corner of Miss. 305 and Holly Springs Road in eastern DeSoto County holds a sweet, if slightly painful, memory.
“This is where I got my first and only paddling,” said Barton, retired principal at Oak Grove Central Elementary in Hernando, recalling an incident from 1955-56 as she paused recently in what was Cockrum’s first- grade classroom in the circa-1928 brick building.
In those days, f irstthrough fi fth-grade students were taught on the south side and sixth through eighth graders on the north side. Between was a spacious auditorium and stage, where the pipe for the potbellied “warm morning” wood/coal stove is still intact, as well as a century-old upright piano.
Olive Branch police shot an armed man about 3 p.m. June 25 after being called about a dispute in a neighborhood in the eastern part of the city.
The man was taken to the Regional Medical Center at Memphis, Chief Don Gammage said. His name
“I was in first grade and we were at the reading table,” Barton recalled. “Our teacher told us no one was to come to her desk. But then I noticed some students from another class were at her desk, and my curiosity got the best of me and I had to see what was going on. Three of us got a paddling from the teacher.
“And she said to me, ‘Don’t tell anyone you got this paddling,’ because she knew if I told my parents I got a paddling at school, I’d get another paddling at home.”
But it’s more than memories that tie her and other and condition were not available.
The shooting occurred at Charlotte Drive and Dogwood Manor after a man called police about 1:30 p.m. That man and the gunman had been inside a home on Valerie Drive, argued and wrestled with a gun, Gammage said.
“The man who was apparently doing some work Cockrum-area activists to the school and the twoacre grounds, given by the County School District to the community when new schools opened north toward Olive Branch. Advocates envision the building, closed as a school in 1957-58, graduating to a central role in community life:
Meeting place. Regional museum and library. Venue for artisan and produce markets and weddings. Tea room. Senior citizen center. Theater and music on the restored stage (locals recall a long-ago country show by Dusty in the home managed to get out of the house and go next door and call 911,” Gammage said. “We still don’t know why the suspect showed up at the home or his connection, if there is one, with the man inside.”
The man with the gun had left the home by the time officers arrived, but two detectives saw a man on the street they thought Anna Hudson and Bill Allen share stories about the old Cockrum School at Miss. 305 and Holly Springs Road. A group plans to restore the deteriorating school as a community center. Rhodes and 10-cent movies).
A group to oversee care of the site was formed in the 1980s. It was reactivated in 2010 as Cockrum Civic Center Inc.
Land adjacent to the school has been designated as a county park and a DeSoto Greenways trailhead. The school house in April received the state’s loftiest historic recognition — designation as a Mississippi Landmark by the Mississippi Department of Archives and History’s Board of Trustees — which builds a buffer against bulldozers. might be the suspect.
“We have witnesses that stated and also our officers stated that they gave the suspect verbal commands to drop the weapon that he pulled from his waistband and pointed it at the officers,” Gammage said. “At that time, one of the officers returned fire, one shot striking the suspect.”
Mississippi and DeSoto County leaders broke along predictable lines June 25 in their reactions to the U.S. Supreme Court decision that certain state and local governments no longer need federal approval for changes to election laws or procedures.
A majority of justices said the Voting Rights Act of 1965 doesn’t reflect racial progress made over the past half century.
The act requires Mississippi and several other states, mainly in the South, to get Justice Department approval for changes that might adversely affect the voting rights of minorities.
Mississippi Secretary of State Delbert Hosemann, in a news conference at the state Capitol in Jackson, said he plans to move ahead with plans to implement a controversial voter ID law because of the change, possibly having the requirement in place for the June 2014 federal primary elections.
“We’re not the same old Mississippi that our fathers’ fathers were,” said Hosemann, a Republican and the state’s top elections official.
Other Republicans agreed, including Kevin Blackwell, chairman of the DeSoto County Republican Party.
“It was a long time coming,” Blackwell said of the court’s decision. “I agree with the justices that things have changed enough that such direct supervision isn’t necessary.”
But Democrats, both locally and at the state level, held a different view.
“Today’s Supreme Court decision will make it harder for many Americans to exercise their constitutionally guaranteed right to vote,” Rep. Bennie Thompson, the only black member of Mississippi’s congressional delegation, said in a release.
Samuel Williams, chairman of the DeSoto County Democratic Party, said it was only necessary to look as far as municipal elections earlier this month to see that disparity still exists.
Republicans, all white, made a clean sweep of offices in DeSoto County cities, many of them not even facing general election competition.
“I think the Supreme Court is out of touch with the feelings of people here,” Williams said. “Look at the number of minorities elected locally and tell me if there’s really no need for measures that ensure equality.”
Mississippi’s population is about 37 percent black, and its voting-age population — those 18 or older — is about 35 percent black. In the House map drawn in 2012, about 34 percent of districts are majorityblack.
In the Senate map, about 29 percent of the districts are majority-black. The Associated Press contributed to this story.