Rediscovering Jewish Heritage along the Mississippi River: Jewish Cultural Corridors

Judaism and the Deep South. Two cultures not typically thought of in the same breath for most students of history. Yet, the contributions made by this small segment of the South’s society are significant. In danger of being lost and forgotten forever as the Jewish population in many southern towns diminished to near extinction, the Jewish heritage of the South is now available for discovery by travelers of all faiths thanks to the Museum of the Southern Jewish Experience (MSJE) in Jackson, Mississippi (population 196,600).

The museum exhibit Alsace to America explains the immigration and settlement of French and German Jews to the South during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The lives of Jewish peddlers, merchants, plantation owners, soldiers, and activists and their roles as social leaders, Civil War fighters and victims, agriculturists, and Civil Rights leaders are documented and recounted. Some may think that such a museum would lack broad appeal, but visitorship and funding prove otherwise. In 1998, 65 percent of visitors to the museum in Jackson were not Jewish. Furthermore, 65 percent of the museum’s funding came from non-Jewish individuals or organizations.

In 1998, the museum expanded this exhibit beyond the building’s walls to incorporate 15 towns of Jewish historical interest. Two Cultural Corridor Tours direct visitors along Route 61 to towns from Jackson, north to Memphis, Tennessee, and south from Jackson to New Orleans.

MSJE’s Cultural Corridors encourages people “to get off of the main Interstate, take a second look at Mississippi, and stay in state another day,” says Macy B. Hart, MSJE executive director. “The Corridors introduce the history of an additional ethnic group in what has always been seen as a polar society of black and white.”

To promote the tours, MSJE launched a media campaign of rack cards, brochures, and posters in welcome centers, hotels, restaurants, museums, and congregations throughout Mississippi and Louisiana. Cultural Corridor brochures also went out in direct mail campaigns and were distributed at other MSJE exhibits. The museum’s advertising and public relations budget of $159,750 was leveraged to secure more than a million dollars worth of publicity.

The tours, conducted through a partnering bus company, have generated increased tourism income for all towns along the route. After the summer of 1998, 77 percent of survey respondents indicated that they stayed overnight or spent money in restaurants, shops, and hotels in Jackson, Natchez, Utica, Vicksburg, Port Gibson and/or Woodville because of their interest in southern Jewish history and the Cultural Corridors. Approximately 26,000 people saw one of MSJE’s exhibits during the summer of 1998 generating an estimated economic impact of $7.9 million for the region.

MSJE’s Cultural Corridors program, which continues today, is made possible with grants and support from the Mississippi Humanities Council, Mississippi Arts Commission, Metro Jackson Convention and Visitors Bureau, the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians, Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities, Natchez Convention and Visitors Bureau, and the Mississippi Division of Tourism.

Contact the Museum of the Southern Jewish Experience at (601) 366-6352 or online at www.msje.org.