MID-SOUTH MEMORIES

25 years ago — 1995

Atlanta – Civil rights activist Jesse Jackson said Saturday his Rainbow Coalition will mount an aggressive voter registration drive in 50 congressional voting districts where conservatives won election last November. He told the coalition’s annual conference that he will seek a meeting with President Clinton, Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole, R-kan., House Speaker Newt Gingrich, R-GA., and Attorney General Janet Reno to discuss options for addressing the country’s social ills.

50 years ago — 1970

Audio-visual tapes of the WMC-TV program Face to Face, featuring discussions of contemporary and controversial problems facing Memphis citizens, have been presented to the oral history department of the Memphis Public Library. The oral history department has added the recorded tape programs to the collections of Tennessee political figures as an adjunct to the manuscript collection of former Sen. Kenneth D. Mckellar. Major works now available, in addition to the Gordon W. Browning transcripts, include the words of Edward Hull Crump, rated Tennessee’s most powerful politician of the first half of the century, and Adm. Harold M. Martin, a World War II aircraft carrier commander. Transcripts of a taped interview with Mrs. Alvin York are being prepared.

75 years ago — 1945

In the somber beauty of National Cemetery among rows of white markers denoting the last bivouac of men who defended with their lives causes they deemed just, Memphis yesterday paid tribute to its war dead in the fourth annual memorial service sponsored by the Legion and other patriotic organizations. Justice Frank H. Gailor of the Tennessee Supreme Court delivered the eulogy to the war dead.

100 years ago — 1920

Moscow, Tenn. – Forty members of the Moscow Chamber of Commerce yesterday pitched in and helped improve two miles of bad road on the Muscle Shoals Highway.

125 years ago — 1895

The juvenile burglars who have been operating near Main and Beale for the past several months were tried and bound over to Criminal Court yesterday on charges of larceny and housebreaking. Known as the Rotten Eggs, the gang was organized by West Jones, the oldest and craftiest member, being 12. The other members ranged in age from 5 to 9 years old.

THE COMMERCIAL APPEAL From left, J.D. Springer, Melvin Conley, Richard Bowden and Ida Ghoston reminisce at the Douglass Park reunion at The Peabody on May 28, 1982. The event included anyone who had ever lived in the Douglass Park Community or gone to Douglass High School and drew people from as far away as California. Springer was principal of the school from 1951-59 and was followed by Conley in 1959-60. The school was closed in September 1981.