Meridian Forges Its Future while Remaining Mindful of Its Past

December 17, 2024 A restored building in downtown Meridian. Photo by Stephen Nowland

Civic leaders are taking steps to transform greater Meridian, Mississippi, from a waystation in a piney forest to a regional center of culture, education, healthcare, and employment.

Their efforts could move Meridian toward the stature it attained during the Gilded Age. Back then, timber and cotton, manufacturing, and railroads fueled an economy that attracted so many workers and their families that the town's moniker was "Queen City," a nod to its standing as second in population only to the state capital, Jackson. Meridian's fortunes shifted after the 1920s as agriculture and its related industries became less profitable and railroads gave way to highways.

Meridian's potential was recognized decades ago

A push to restore the town's faded luster began in the 1970s. Meridian's 1986 update to a 1979 application for a federal historic designation described downtown as containing Mississippi's "most significant collection of buildings associated with the growth of a railroad economy and light rail streetcars, " demonstrating that civic leaders recognized decades ago the potential value of refurbishing downtown.

An urban renaissance began to blossom in the mid 2000s, spurred by the opening in 2006 of the first phase of the redevelopment of the historic Marks, Rothenberg & Co. department store, and the attached Grand Opera House, into the Mississippi State University Riley Center. Momentum continued in 2018, with the opening of the Mississippi Arts and Entertainment Experience, followed in 2021 by the reopening of the 1929 Art Deco Threefoot Building as a hotel and opening of the Mississippi Children's Museum. Next up was this autumn's opening of a healthcare education facility on the Riley Campus of the Mississippi State University.

The Grand Opera House. Photo by Stephen Nowland

Atlanta Fed president Raphael Bostic and a handful of staffers from the Atlanta Fed visited Meridian in November with the goal of learning from business and civic leaders how the postpandemic economy and revitalization efforts are unfolding. In addition, the Atlanta Fed and regional leaders discussed opportunities such as the Southern Cities Economic Inclusion Initiative, a program led by the National League of Cities and three philanthropies in partnership with the Atlanta Fed, who is providing expertise.

Economic, demographic changes reverberate

Atlanta Fed staff had done their homework before they reached Meridian. They knew about the economic contrasts in the Meridian micropolitan area, located about 93 miles east of Jackson and consisting of Clarke and Lauderdale counties. Census data reveal that the region's estimated population has fallen 14.9 percent between 2018 and 2023. Meanwhile, as area residents moved away, the region's median household income increased by 29 percent, to $48,819. Still, household income in Meridian is less than two-thirds of the national median income of $77,719, according to Census estimates.

About one in five Meridian residents lives below the poverty level, which is twice the national figure, according to Census estimates. The poverty rate among White Meridian residents, at about 16 percent, is half the rate among the area's Black or African American residents. Rates of higher education lag the nation: about 22 percent of Meridian residents aged 25 years and older report having earned a bachelor's degree or higher, compared to almost 36 percent nationwide, according to Census estimates.

Bostic met with local leaders at four roundtables to hear their view of this landscape. Discussion topics included local economic drivers and conditions, healthcare and healthcare education, the banking environment, and other community concerns. Meridian leaders described their vision for the area to the Atlanta Fed team. Their plans for economic development extend beyond the city's current major employment sectors of military, healthcare, and education. Local leaders are in negotiations to land a major employer. Part of their pitch to this employer-as it is with any of their recruitment efforts-is the education level and size of the labor force. Mississippi StateUniversity-Meridian and Meridian Community College help the city punch above its weight in this regard.

Traditional metrics obscure the size of the regional workforce. Although about 75,000 workers reside near the possible site of the employer in negotiation to come to Meridian, the number reaches upwards of 300,000 when the home-to-job commute is measured in minutes, not miles. In the lightly populated rural region, workers dispersed across 14 counties can cover considerable distances in an hour or less. "We may drive 45 miles to go to work, but that's a 40-minute drive, as opposed to in Atlanta, where a 10-mile drive can take 90 minutes," said Bill Hannah, a former metro Atlanta resident now serving as president and CEO of the East Mississippi Development Corporation.

Planned improvements to the area's railroad system will benefit local shippers. The work is part of a newly approved long-haul freight railroad corridor linking the Southeast with Mexico's manufacturing centers as far south as the automaking plant in Toluca, just west of Mexico City. Currently, a portion of the rail line near Meridian is speed-restricted to 10 mph, and the track cannot be used when daytime temperatures exceed 95 degrees, sometimes forcing trains to operate only at night. The Canadian rail company CPKC plans a $155 million, multiyear program to improve the rail infrastructure and bridges intended to raise maximum sustained speeds to 25 mph, according to a decision released in October by the Surface Transportation Board.

The state is bolstering the region, as well. In November, Mississippi's governor announced funding for greater Meridian in three categories: developing workforce training programs in the fields of artificial intelligence and technology, improving roadways, and helping pay for the ongoing restoration of the Wechsler School, the state's first public school building for Black students.

Eyeing the future while mindful of the past

The Meridian visit provided Bostic and his team with a perspective on the city's efforts to reconcile its past with the present and future.

The town of Meridian was founded in 1831 on land ceded, but not vacated, by Choctaw Indians under terms enabled by the federal Indian Removal Act of 1830. A few decades later, the Civil War and its aftermath convulsed the area. Union soldiers destroyed the town's structures and railroads in 1864, Congress investigated the violent 1871 Meridian race riot, and a yellow fever epidemic in 1878 gripped the town and much of the Mississippi River region. In the 1960s, two civil rights cases were handled at the now-shuttered federal courthouse in Meridian: the initial hearings of James Meredith's lawsuit to gain admission to the University of Mississippi, and the federal prosecution of civil rights violations committed against three Freedom Summer volunteers slain by members of the Ku Klux Klan in adjacent Neshoba County.

A visible symbol of reconciliation is the Hollywood-style Walk of Fame. Bronze stars recognize three dozen artists and entertainers, including native son Jimmie Rodgers, whose page on the Country Music Hall of Fame website calls him the "father of country music." The honorees are from various racial and ethnic backgrounds, and the Walk of Fame connects two tentpoles of Meridian's cultural district: the MSU Riley Center and the Mississippi Arts and Entertainment Experience. One common thread among these notables is their determination to use their work to examine the joy, pain, confusion, and questioning born of a distinct cultural legacy.

Playwright Tennessee Williams's star on the Walk of Fame in downtown Meridian. Photo by Stephen Nowland

The major building blocks of Meridian's renewal are the work of longtime families and their foundations. In the close-knit town, their representatives tend to serve on one or more of the five boards that oversee many civic improvements, as well as Meridian Community College. Three names of note are Hardin, Riley, and Rush.

The Hardin Foundation has funded a host of education programs for K-12 and college classrooms, with more than half the resources provided in greater Meridian. The Riley name is associated with a hospital and the redeveloped opera house and cultural center on the campus of Mississippi State University-Meridian. The Rush name is associated with a hospital and its foundation, as well as an orthopedic pin Dr. Leslie Rush developed in 1936 to mend broken bones, an innovation still in use around the world.

As modern Meridian seeks to move forward, civic leaders acknowledge the complicated context of their place and time. They live alongside an observation of the past penned by noted Mississippi novelist William Faulkner: "The past is never dead. It's not even past." The city's visitor's website notes the city "regrets some of its history" and goes on to observe that Meridian, still Mississippi's Queen City, "presents itself as one big, contradictory, spellbinding, ever-changing, and absolutely authentic museum of the South-and of America-in the 21st century."

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