Hidden History Of Jackson

The history of Jackson is filled with gripping tales of horrors and heroism. Join Ryan Starrett and Josh Foreman as they reveal the hidden past of the City with Soul. A recording company founded in the mid-1960s with the expectation of competing with New Orleans and Memphis was a national success, outlasting its better-funded rivals. Known as the "Devil's Backbone," the Natchez Trace is the graveyard for countless travelers slain by the road's numerous serial killers, brigands and land pirates. Yet one mass grave stands above the others: the Boyd Mounds, which hold the remains of thirty-one Choctaws. Although legend has it that the father of Jackson, Louis LeFleur, was a Canadian trapper famous in high society for his dancing, the truth is even stranger.

The history of Jackson County brims with colorful characters and noteworthy episodes nearly lost to time. Jackson abolitionists used their barns, houses and hidden compartments to harbor freedom seekers traveling on the Underground Railroad. One even repelled an armed posse from Kentucky. A prominent druggist murdered his mother in 1889 and a jail guard in 1893. Evidence suggests he murdered his father too. First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt traveled to Brown's Lake for relaxation in 1935, but a media mob had other plans. A popular Blackman Township roadhouse has a longstanding tradition of entertaining pioneers, stagecoach drivers and mobsters, but its secret guests are even stranger. Join local historian Linda Hass as she delves into these and other entertaining and often-overlooked stories.

Since prehistory, the bluffs of Natchez have called to the bold, the cruel and the quietly determined. The diverse opportunists who heeded that call have left behind more than three hundred years of colorful and tragic stories. The Natchez Indians, who inhabited the bluffs at the time of European contact, made a calculated but ultimately catastrophic decision to massacre the French who had settled nearby. William Johnson, a Black man who occupied a tenuous position between two worlds, found wealth and status in antebellum Natchez. In the wake of Union occupation, thousands of the formerly enslaved became the city's protective garrison. Join authors Ryan Starrett and Josh Foreman and rediscover the people who toiled and bled to make Natchez one of the most unique and interesting cities in America.

Sail into the Mississippi Sound with Bienville, the Frenchman covered in serpentine tattoos. Meet the heroes of the Sound: fearless Father LeDuc, who faced down Yankee pillagers; the wild woman of Horn Island, who could shoot as well as any man; Joseph T. Jones, the baron who willed Gulfport into existence; and Ray Nosaka, who fed his body to the dogs of war, all in service of his country. Glimpse a school of the Sound's own patron fish, the striped mullet, Biloxi's bacon. But don't get too comfortable on the beach--a hurricane is always on the horizon. Inside are thirteen little-known tales from the Gulf Coast from Lake Borgne to Mobile. Join authors Josh Foreman and Ryan Starrett on this journey into the hidden history of the Mississippi Sound.

The Volunteer State plays politics according to its own particular set of rules. Witness the rise and fall of the lost state of Franklin, Tennessee's first instance of secession. Pull back the curtain on the disputed election of 1894 and get the inside scoop on the acerbic editorial cartoons of James Pinckney Alley. Glad-hand influential figures like Andrew Jackson and Kate Bradford Stockton, the state's first female gubernatorial candidate. Pick through filibusters and fiercely partisan quarrels as James B. Jones navigates the twists and turns of Tennessee's political heritage.

The history of New Orleans is one of contrasts--heroes and villains, catastrophe and celebration, sinners and saints. In this New Orleans, a serial-killing axeman threatens to murder anyone not playing jazz. A fearless band of missionary nuns pushes to civilize the frontier. During World War II, Nazi U-boats lurk off the coast, while Denton Crocker's battle with local mosquitoes contributes to victory in the Pacific. From the streetcar strikers who lined the thoroughfares with IEDs to the unsung heroine of the Battle of New Orleans, Ryan Starrett and Josh Foreman offer a dose of history that would be hard to believe if it hadn't happened here.

The history of New Orleans is one of contrasts--heroes and villains, catastrophe and celebration, sinners and saints. In this New Orleans, a serial-killing axeman threatens to murder anyone not playing jazz. A fearless band of missionary nuns pushes to civilize the frontier. During World War II, Nazi U-boats lurk off the coast, while Denton Crocker's battle with local mosquitoes contributes to victory in the Pacific. From the streetcar strikers who lined the thoroughfares with IEDs to the unsung heroine of the Battle of New Orleans, Ryan Starrett and Josh Foreman offer a dose of history that would be hard to believe if it hadn't happened here. --Back cover.