Truth Will Out
Every day, a new headline contains an egregious, outrageous and mind twisting claim that turns the truth inside out. And yet truth will out.
One of the 100 WOMEN DBA members sent 100 Men Hall rack cards to Welcome Centers across Mississippi. A few of the centers are closed for renovation, and yesterday, I got a call from one in Natchez saying our rack cards arrived, the address had been incorrect, and she didn’t know when or if the welcome center would be up and running.
She said she didn’t want to throw away the rack cards, so she was calling to say I could pick them up. I made a plan to send her a self-addressed stamped package to return them to us. And before I hung up the woman said, “I read your letter, and I was fascinated by the story of 100 Men Hall. I don’t know if you ever heard of Haney’s Big House in Ferriday, Louisiana, but it also was on the Chitlin Circuit. In the early 40s and through to the 60s, Ray Charles, Solomon Burke, Big Joe Turner, and Irma Thomas played there.
“In 1964, there was a bombing by the KKK of a shoe shop just a few doors down from Haney’s, when the Fire Department showed up the water had been turned off. A couple of years later, Haney’s Big House was set on fire and burned down. They didn’t arrest anyone, but everyone knew it was the KKK. Jerry Lee Lewis talked about Haney’s. As a child, he would go listen to acts there. He said he saw Fat Domino play. If it weren’t for Haney’s Big House, there might not have been a Jerry Lee Lewis.”
Ever heard of the chaos theory: if a butterfly flaps its wings it could cause a typhoon in another part of the world. There is always cause and effect. The history of 100 Men Hall, one of the few standing buildings on the Chitlin Circuit, is a true story about how people behaved in the past. It’s also about how people survived those dark ages. Haney’s Big House, burned to the ground, and yet, its story stands today, told by a Southern white woman to another on the telephone.
People behaved horribly in the past. History repeats itself. People behave horribly today. The stories are as old as the wind. Lies are told. Truth will out.
