Blues, haints and bayous: snippets from the Deep South: White gold, black slaves

We are now in Mississippi - the heart of the Deep South. In the early eighteen hundreds these southern lands had one of the richest economies in the world thanks to 'white gold' -- cotton. The planters became hugely wealthy, their slaves were the cogs in the wheels of the enormous economy. To maintain their hold and power the southern power brokers thought to secede. So vital were slaves to the south that when an upstart presidential candidate like Abraham Lincoln came along threatening to emancipate their workers they chose not to put him on their ballot papers. So, Lincoln came to be elected by the north.

The rift between the south and north eventually led to the Civil War. Men chose sides depending on their allegiances. Dr Borroums of Mississippi, worked for both sides,his great grand-daughter, Camille, informed me: for the north when he was captured, for the south when he was free. When the war was over he headed home on horseback but, on reaching Corinth, he was invited by an old friend to join a medical practice there. This he decided to do. Having established a practice, he needed drugs, so he set about making this own and having others shipped to town for prescription. To keep this efficient he opened Borroum’s Drug Store. It still stands today. In the main street. Not far from the rail crossing called the Crossroads where two railway lines intersect in the heart of town: one going east-west; the other, north-south.

Its walls display collections of the civil war arms and armaments that Dr Borroums and other family members used in the war: scabbards and swords, muskets and powder horns are among their collections. There are also ancient cobalt blue glass pharmaceutical bottles and medical labels, written in Latin, in gold leaf. The medicine cabinetry goes way back, custom built and and brought down from Canada as that was where the good wood was, Camille informed me, with smooth sliding medicine drawers and glass fronted display cabinets stretching along the vast length of wall. In near pristine condition still. After 130 years.

In all that time a Barrooms’ family member has run Dr Borroun’s Drug Store. Today, Camille, herself a qualified pharmacist, is 89 years old but energetic, vital, and working still, despite a recent broken pelvis. She is also the oldest practising pharmacist in the United States. She has children and grandchildren to carry on whenever she retires. History lives long in the south. Especially in places like Corinth.

And tied to the Civil War era still, we came across a park in the back of Corinth, which tells the tale of slaves making their move towards freedom. Slaves had been escaping the south, in ones and twos, since the earliest slave ships arrived along the coast, often running north, with little or no protection other than their desperate need to be free. After Lincoln’s presidency, and with his Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation in 1862, the numbers of plantation slaves on the run increased.

The Union army, the army of the north, occupied Corinth at the time. And as more and more slaves fled through here the army set up an area of land on the edge of town called the Corinth Contraband Camp to accommodate them. The escaped slaves were the ‘contraband’. Here, black men, women and children on the run set about making decisions about how to live freely. They planted vegetables and cotton. They built houses, a church, a hospital and a school. Children, and adults, learned to read with the help of benefactors. In their first year alone their contraband camp made over $4,000 profit from their labours. The union army hired many for their labours for the armed forces: including security guard duty for the camp. They were earning money for the first time in their lives. Many of the men came to be trained in, and formed, the first regiment of African Descent as part of the Union Army. Moving forward to a free life.