Oren Dunn City Museum looks to study West Shake Rag history
Jun. 21—TUPELO — Filmmaker Baz Luhrmann's new biopic, "Elvis," will give the world a glimpse of Tupelo's former African American community credited with the rock and roll legend's musical beginnings; at the Oren Dunn City Museum, the task is to preserve and rebuild that community's memory.
The Tupelo museum is currently seeking financial support from the Mississippi Humanities Council to collect an oral history of West Shake Rag, one of many Black communities to form after emancipation. Once completed, the project will be a part of the museum's ongoing efforts to preserve the community's history.
That history, according to Oren Dunn City Museum Curator Leesha Faulkner, represents a vital chapter in Tupelo's story. Faulkner's overall mission is looking at not just Shake Rag, but other communities as well.
"Shake Rag is just one dot," Faulkner said. "Shake Rag is a dot here, Mill Village is a dot, downtown is a dot, and pretty soon, when we put the dots together, we begin to see a whole picture."
Documenting Shake Rag's history has been an ongoing project for the museum, and the work is far from finished. It's still early days of finding databases, microfilm, meeting minutes — anything that adds to the overall picture of what life was like for the residents of Shake Rag.
The museum has hosted two informational sessions, where 25 to 30 residents helped identify who might have lived in those former residences.
Faulkner said the work they're doing is, at heart, genealogy.
"We're telling the story of Tupelo through different people," Faulkner said.
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There have been other attempts to document Shake Rag's history, although none as comprehensive as what the Oren Dunn City Museum is attempting. In 2003, documentarian Charles "Wsir" Johnson made the film "Blue Suede Shoes in the Hood" detailing some of Shake Rag's history. In a May 2003 article, Johnson told the Daily Journal that in the documentary's making, he interviewed nearly 45 people.
Getting a deeper look at its exact connection, or lack thereof, to Elvis is something the museum is still working to confirm. Shake Rag was known for its music — blues, jazz and gospel. Some stories even speak of a young B.B. King and other legendary musicians performing at community venues.
For Johnson, that connection was indisputable.
"It's the Elvis story and the Shake Rag story," Johnson said in 2003. "You can't separate the two."
Although impoverished, some of Shake Rag's former residents remember the community as rich in other ways. In a June 2015 Daily Journal article, Shake Rag resident Leroy Springer remembered his home as nurturing, where the neighborhood helped raise its children. Others remember it for what it had, such as the Dixie Belle Theater; the place where they went for ice cream; or how churches like Rising Star Baptist Church and Emmanuel Church of God in Christ.
"Shake Rag was a unique place," the Rev. Robert Jameson told the Daily Journal in a January 2017 article. "It was a place where everybody fought, but everybody loved. We fought neighbors, we fought friends, we fought the government. But I'll tell anybody I would not have changed one experience that I had while growing up in Shake Rag.
After being chosen as the state's first urban renewal project with 1958 legislation, Shake Rag was burned in the spring of 1962, according to "The Day Shake Rag Burned and Mississippi Shook" by William T. Miles. Through research, the local museum uncovered additional facts about the area's last days, including an unsuccessful attempt by a resident to challenge the right of eminent domain in court.
On the day it finally burned, Shake Rag was a 60-acre tract that contained 169 families, another 60 individuals and 43 businesses, according to Miles. Most of this land was sold to private developers, with a portion going to the city to build city facilities such as a police station, jail and central fire station, Faulkner said.
Its residents and businesses were relocated, with urban renewal covering the costs. Part of the museum's goal is finding who those residents were, where they lived and where they went. In previous sessions, residents shared their stories of relocation, Faulkner said.
"Some will tell you it was the first time they had indoor toilets when they went into public housing and that life was much better for them," Faulkner said. "Others said, yes, it was better because we didn't know what we were really missing."
What mostly remains of Shake Rag are photos. The late Howard D. "Blue" Long, executive director of Tupelo Housing Authority, kept meticulous records with photos of the urban renewal process. The Oren Dunn City Museum is also studying Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps, which are often color-coded according to building material and symbols, to find the names of streets that are no longer there or have been renamed.
It's through the combination of memories, maps, old newspapers and other sources where they can build an idea of what West Shake Rag was and, in turn, tell its story.
"That, I think, is key to knowing Tupelo's history," Faulkner said.
