7 Facts About Jewish Mississippi
Image by AP Images
1. Mississippi’s first official Jewish religious service is believed to have occurred in the port town of Natchez in 1800.
2. Perry Nussbaum, rabbi of Congregation Beth Israel in Jackson, was heavily involved in the civil rights movement. In September 1967, the synagogue in Jackson was bombed by Ku Klux Klan members. In November of that year, the KKK bombed Nussbaum’s house while he was sleeping. He and his wife survived.
3. Sam Rosenthal, nicknamed Mr. Sam, was the mayor of Rolling Fork, Mississippi from 1924 to 1969. After the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927, the most destructive flood in American history, Rosenthal evacuated the town’s citizens on a train to Vicksburg and stayed to watch over the city.
4. In 1950, Leonard and Phil Chess, Jewish immigrants from Poland, founded Chess Records in Chicago. The label signed and recorded some of the most seminal blues artists in history, and many of them, including Muddy Waters, Bo Diddley, Chuck Berry, and Sonny Boy Williamson, were born in Mississippi.
5. Late actor Eli Wallach acted in several of Tennessee Williams’ plays, including “The Rose Tattoo,” “Camino Real,” and the film “Baby Doll.” Williams was born in Columbus and spent his early childhood in Clarksdale.
6. Jack Cristil, long-time radio announcer for the Mississippi State University Bulldogs, called most of the university’s football and basketball games from 1953 to 2011. He passed away this year on September
7. Mississippi’s Jewish population dropped from 5,000 in 1900 to 1,550 in 2012. Jews are now only about 0.1% of the state’s population.
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.
If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.
Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
