My grandfather had money...self made contractor from Smith.. county ...Pineville..originally..his home is now the Reformed Seminary on Clinton Blvd..got lucky building military bases in buildup to WWII..all from a card game in Artesia NM...died young at 52 left big business with assets but no cash and loads of debt but enough of the material trappings left over for us to know we had it a bit different...I grew up about a mile from yudan behind Mynelle Gardens in what is now serious hood. His daddy was my LL coach. We moved north in 72 when the White Rock road projects were announced knowing that would kill us off...Northeast Jackson was a different world but my dad did not make real money till the 80s and after merging with an outfit in Nashville area and they moved up here while I was at Ole Miss...but I was around serious rich folks at Prep and Ole Miss. I don't get the take they were all snobs but some were...no question and I got a bit of that moving from Hardy Jr High to Prep....names anyone in Mississippi would know...but some of the very rich were actually less snotty. Snobbiness here in Nashville is less common...maybe a bit in Belle Meade...Nashville has more an elitism problem...ie libs. I prefer snobs actually to that anyhow.
My mom's folks were poor...Crackerneck...Smith County halfway tween Raleigh and Pulaski...near Burns on what is now called 481....one became a lawyer at night school and ended up pretty successful...most were blue collar.
My mom met dad at Clinton HS and it was all Disney from then on...her Miss Mississippi...him All American and etc etc
I am sorely disappointed in how Jackson has collapsed....it was sure not what anyone hoped and my dad's family were moderates...my grandfather had a paternal relationship with blacks and took many in...orphans even...gave them jobs and a place to stay and all that and promoted them as did my dad and endured the wrath of the klan and refused to join the WCC...
But they both were alarmed at how things went...from King to Civil Rights acts and then federal troops and then entitlement programs and so forth....views I now share....I was idealistic in my youth too. First time I witnessed unprovoked black hostility was in Manhattan in 1980...only to be surpassed by Yankee snottiness and indignation...which was worse...hard to say.
My beef with the Help is from the book and it sounds like the movie softened Stockett’s tongue a bit. All my cousins in Jackson area read it and were livid about how poorly it reflected on folks (like us) who grew up with old black women cooking and ironing or had black gardeners etc...my grandfather...not us though my mom did have “help”...just one lady...Violet Davis..and her husband Moses. I recall all their names...benevolent folks very kind to me...I can look back now and realize I was living in a fleeting time but unlike MS Stockett I have no guilt over it...though she actually is just writing about what she heard about.
So anyway...my rant.
For what it is worth...Metro Nashville at it's lower white strata is in piss poor shape culture wise...it is Godawful.
When I go home it seems like in Mississppi, it's not as bad. White thug kulture or "wiggers" ...there really is no better word..boys and girls are what folks once derisively called rednecks...they might have been 50 years ago from that same opportunity level but they have nothing in common ...no dignity whatsoever...like they have become feral and Nashville is eat up with it. I saw a wee bit in Pearl a few months ago but when we see it in Mississippi...we notice it...here it's the norm. Am I just paying attention in Jackson or my nostalgia getting the best of me?
When listening to the book on CD, I got the impression that the white women being described were the 'society' women, not a typical middle class white family who could afford 'help' on a regular basis, but were not at all in the "Junior League" class of family, which was always conscious of what others might say about them.
Hubby's Mama employed a black woman who truly helped raise her kids, when she had to return to work to help the family's finances. All of the kids still speak fondly of Ida Mae, for whom hubby's Mama set up a Social Security account, and paid into it, while she was working for them. We have a family picture in which Ida Mae is holding my hubby, when he was just a toddler. They also had a gardener, Mr. Fred, and when he became too ill to work for them anymore, hubby's parents still gave him money, and she took food to his house on a regular basis. I remember going to his house, when hubby and I were first dating. He was a very nice man, and had a lovely garden at his own house, which he was just barely able to keep up, at that point.
Hubby's Mama once told me that she thought the South was able to 'get over' the racial changes more quickly than the North ever did because many white people in the South had known, and loved, black people all their lives. Nothing changed for them, except the public trappings; their private behavior simply went on as before.
I never really knew much about Jackson, growing up. I was born and raised in Hattiesburg, and know more about the Coast, where we have a family Fish Camp, and spent most of our summers. My s-i-l has lived in Pearl, and worked in Jackson, for almost 30 years, and she hates what has happened to the city.