It is healthy for a society to occasionally pause and reflect on its history. History can teach us gratitude when we reflect on the technological advances that we enjoy today. History can also teach us to learn from our mistakes and how to do things better in the future. A century is an excellent time period to look back on. It feels like a long time when compared to the average human lifespan; but when compared to the whole history of human civilization, 100 years seems like the blink of an eye.
People that live to be 100 years old are known as centenarians. There are only about 90,000 centenarians living in the United States today. In a nation of over 330 million people, living to be 100 is a great accomplishment. I have never personally known someone who lived to be 100 years old, but I did have a great-grandfather live into his 90s. He lived most of his life in a white wood framed house that he built himself on South George Street in Petal. George Street was still a dirt road when he built it. I remember him telling me stories about his early life. He used to cut down pine trees, float them down the river to the sawmill, sell them, and walk back home. I remember him telling me about getting the first family automobile and traveling to Jackson to visit his brother in the tuberculosis hospital. It was a different world, life was more rural, families were larger, and the economy more agrarian. Penicillin had yet to be invented. Radio was the cutting edge of technology. Less than half of young people in America attended school.
One hundred years ago the Petal community was getting its first brick road. In 1923, the Forrest County Board of Supervisors funded a project to brick Central Avenue. Petal was a small community at the time; Central Avenue was the only major road. Petal would not be incorporated into a city for another 51 years.
Bricking a road was no easy feat a century ago. It required a substantial number of county workers putting in long days. It was back-breaking work, using only simple hand tools: shovel and pickax. Brick-paved streets were an improvement over the old dirt roads. Heavy rain frequently washed out the old dirt roads. Even modest rains would make dirt roads into stretches of unpassable mud puddles. Future economic prosperity and public safety can be linked to the improvements in road quality.
At approximately the same time, the City of Hattiesburg was moving into the current city hall building. In January 1923, Hattiesburg Mayor W.S.F. Tatum led a small parade of city officials and guests to the new city hall for a dedication ceremony. The building was beautiful and thoroughly modern by standards of the day. The Jackson Daily News called the new city hall “one of the prettiest and most substantial buildings in (the) south.” The newspaper added that: “the lighting, plumbing, and heating fixtures of the new hall surpasses anything of its kind in the state.”
Old photographs confirm the stately beauty of the building. As originally designed and built, Hattiesburg City Hall had two grand entrances with stairs and large stately white columns: one facing Front Street and one facing Forrest Street. Unfortunately, a “renovation” project in the early 1960s removed the beautiful Front Street entrance and replaced it with a bricked-up elevator shaft. While adding an elevator for the elderly and physically disabled was a worthy idea, there must have been a better way to incorporate an elevator into the historic building. Regardless of that design misstep, the Hattiesburg City Hall building has remained the center of Hattiesburg government for 100 years.
The biggest story nationally in 1923 was the death of American’s 29th president, Warren G. Harding. Harding was on a cross country tour when he died suddenly in a San Francisco hotel. Most people speculated that he died from a heart attack or stroke. Vice President Calvin Coolidge was visiting his extended family in Vermont when he got word of Harding’s death. Coolidge was sworn into office as the nation’s 30th chief executive by his father. Millions of Americans would gather alongside the train tracks to pay their respects to Harding as his body was returned from the West Coast to Washington, D.C. At the time of his death, Harding was a popular president presiding over the economic prosperity of post-World War I America; however, various scandals would come to light after Harding’s death and tarnished his legacy.
Some people incorrectly believe that history is just a list of dates. History is really the story of our resilience against challenges. It is the narrative of our collective community. The next time you see a historical marker around the Pine Belt, pause and read it. You’ll probably learn something about our story as a community.
Keith Ball is a local attorney and a lifelong resident of the Friendly City.
