BW: Well, of course, I was born in Corinth and I've lived in Corinth all
my life. All my children were born in Corinth. All my grand-children
were born in Corinth, and most of my great grand-children were born in
Corinth.
BE: Then there are several generations (of your family) in Corinth?
BW: Yes, there are four generations in Corinth named Ben Frank Worsham,
which is my full name.
Two of my three sons lived in - have their homes- on the old home place
where I was born and the third son has his home immediately across the
street, so, all three of them are living just a stone's throw from
where I live.
Beginning from April 6th, 1884, I, of course, have been practicing
law since 1906.
BE: I didn't realize that.
BW: I retired some six or seven years ago. Now do very little legal
work-- mostly what my sons' business might request me to do.
I can remember many, many things. I guess maybe most amusing thing
would be with reference to Old Colonel Inge, who was an out-standing
lawyer. His home was where Stanley Fielder now lives, at the corner
of Linden and Polk. He had a way. When he- wanted to get--he'd go up
to the railroad and have his drink. He did, and on this occasion he
lost his roll of money. About six of us boys went up there to the old
swimming hole and found his money and it turned out to be eight
hundred dollars.
BE: That's quite a "roll".
BW: So, we carried it back to him because we knew he was the one that had
lost the money. He thanked us and bragged on us, told us what fine boys
we were and that we were started out on the right direction. He appre-
ciated it very much and as a token of his appreciation he gave the five
or six of us one dollar for finding his money and bringing it back to
him. That impressed me very much!
BE: Was there any one person or family other than your parents that made
an "impression" on you back then?
BW: Yes. I was very closely associated with Mr. John W. Taylor, who was
the banker in Northeast Mississippi. He owned the bank in Corinth,
one at Iuka, Ripley and Booneville-- four banks. And, in the money
panic of 1907 he got caught and was crushed.
BE: Lost his money?
BW: He paid deposits as long as he could. And when he finally closed, the
combined deposits in the four banks was $169,000. He owned two water
mills, two-three compresses and I would guess at least one hundred
rent houses in Corinth.
BE: One hundred rent houses?
BW: Yes, and several stores down town. He was a very special kind of man.
BE: Do you know if he has any living relatives now?
BW: He has a grand-son named A. H. Taylor, Bob Taylor, who lives here in
Corinth. That's his great grand-son. No, it's his grand-son. It's
told about him, of course, that Jesse James told about his father, who
owned the bank before him and Jesse James (maybe the Younger brothers)
held up the bank here, which is a fact. But I don't remember quite
that far back!
I had just started practicing law in 1906, and Mr. Taylor took a liking
to me and gave me lots of little business matters to handle for him. I
started off on 1907 with a fairly good practice, mainly on Mr. Taylor's
account and his influence. He was a brilliant man, a Cornell graduate
and a calamity it was to the city when he and his industries, his banks,
and so forth, went down. Then I was very closely related with Mr. S. H.
Curlee.
BE: The person whom the Curlee house is named after?
BW: Yes, the owner of the Curlee home here. He had his factory here at
Corinth before going to St. Louis. His factory was on Cruise Street
down there where Durm's Office Supply house is. He had a three story
building there. Moved from here to St. Louis. He really didn't have
enough money to pay the moving and one of his close friends staked him
to $10,000.00, which was an enormous lot of money in 1904. He moved
with that to St. Louis and from the very beginning was a successful
man and one of the leading clothing men of the United States in later
years. The man who let him have the $10,000 got his $10,000 back and
he had some stock in the Curlee Clothing Company. He was treasurer of
the company for many years, the decent salary and nothing to do because
he lived here, and operations were all in St. Louis. But that parti-
cular man died a wealthy man from the Curlee Clothing Company.
BE: I wanted to ask you-I know you mentioned, of course, that you've been a
lawyer for quite a while, but did you hold any jobs or business that
were of any interest?
BW: No, you refer to me as a business man. I did finance some in the lumber
business way back yonder. When we got through with it and the business
folded (with circles and songs).
BE: Most of it (your career) has been in law then?
BW: Altogether, yes, practically all of it. Only thing I ever made a living
out of is practicing law, but it took me ten years to pay off everything
I lost in the lumber business. So that was my business mind, my business
affairs. I was, however, mayor of the city of Corinth from 1942 - 1946
during World War II.
BE: I didn't realize that you were mayor. Did you encounter any major prob-
lems at that time?
BW: Well, they were all problems--hard times. The war was here and we were
suffering just like everybody else. But I think we came through, the city
came through.
BE: Do you think Corinth is growing too fast now, or could it use more growth
at this point? How has industry changed? I realize we have more industry
now...
BW: That's right. Like I told you, Mr. Taylor was industrial-minded and he
built the oil mill, which is still down there as far as that's concerned,
out where he built but that's where it was and he had a compress here
and a compress over in Como. He had an oil mill in Okalona, and I imagine
he had at least twenty-or twenty-five gins. through-out the territory to
feed his compresses.
BE: Do you recall the first industry of the ones we have now, to come to
Corinth? Was it ITT, Wurlitzer?
BW: No, I don't think so. I believe it was Wurlitzer. Those came along in
my waning years and I was trying to retire for ten or fifteen years because
I was played out.
BE: One question. I know this is a touchy situation. On race problems in
Corinth, do you recall many race problems in this area?
BW: No, we didn't have any through-out my life ... until the last several years.
We didn't have any race troubles. We did have murders, rapes and we did
have three or four public hanging of the Negroes. We had one rape-murder
case.
BE: Nothing like it is now?
BW: No, nothing like now. But this is one I was going to tell you about, the
famous Whitfield murder. The Whitfields' home was in the industrial park,
with the property down there. It was rather a lonely road down there and
this murder-a negro raped her and murdered her-a horrible murder. By the
way, it happened in the fall that I entered Ole Miss.
BE: When did you go there?
BW: In 1902. This murder-rape was probably a week or two before I went into
Ole Miss., and I was in Ole Miss., there and didn't see the tail end.
But we had Pinkerton detectives here for three or four weeks investigating
and, relating it to racial troubles. There was a Negro named Anderson
Hayes, who was a very successful Negro merchant. Lots of white people
traded with him. We had several-simon Wood, and several good, prosperous
men, and they entered into our meetings, all of our meeting, planning to
try and help in our efforts-to locate the culprit, you see, and, my re-
collection is that this Anderson Hayes I'm telling you about contributed
five hundred dollars to the fund, and just Negroes on top of Negroes
entered into it. No race-racial problems--if it had been a white man we'd
all have done the same thing.
BE: They just wanted to catch this fellow.
BW: Finally the negro got drunk and beat up his wife and she told on him and
they got him. I'd already now gone to school, when this happend. They
had him in jail and they had the jail pretty well surrounded. So, Sunday
afternoon, after having sent bulletins, little handbills, to Selmer,
Savannah, Middleton, Port Hunter, Booneville, Rienzi and everywhere else
around here, they notified that on Sunday afternoon they were going to
"burn the nigger", and they did. They loaded him up with a couple of
what we called "drays", and they had the boxes to make the fire, and they
carried him out there where the East Corinth school is at two o'clock in
the afternoon, And, from what I heard I imagine there were at least
15,000 people in the town. Negro, white, all went out to the burning. So
we had no racial problems really.
Be: It was simply executing a criminal then?
BW: That's right. It had no racial discrimination-no racial overtones.
BE: I was talking to Mr. Gentry. Do you know Claude Gentry?
BW: I know him, yes.
BE: He seemed to think there was more of a problem with the youth rather
than with the races. I think he said "there's too much fire in them".
I think those were his words.
BW: Well, I have an old Negro that keeps house for me. I live by myself
since my wife died, and she'll do anything for me. But, I think that's
confined; that relationship is largely confined to the older members of
the race.
BE: We've seen a lot of changes in politics in the last few years. How do
you think politics nowadays compares with the politics of, say twenty,
thirty, forty years ago? Think it has changed very much around here?
BW: Yes and no. Of course, we are living in a volatile age, and have for
the last ten or fifteen years. Faster than we have any business living in,
according to my notion. I think we've over-stepped ourselves -in many,
many things. But, politics, generally speaking, out-side of the old
timey Ward politician--they would give him over two or three hundred
dollars and held go out and carry a certain box out in the country some-
where, or something of the sort. -But, we didn't have the type of money
spending that we have today.
BE: Thousands of dollars?
BW: No, nothing like that. And, so far as the town is concerned to my way
of looking at it, there has been very little money spent over the years
actually in town. The townspeople were, well, they divided their vote
more because it was a serious thing to them then, more so then to some
of the others. But I don't think politics has fundamentally changed.
It's the eternal battle of the "outs" trying to get the "ins" out so
they can get in. The eternal battle always. And, of course, we have
so much more money today and so many different things than we had. We
had nothing like that when I grew up.
BE: This has always been a pretty strong Democratic section of the country.
BW: Oh, absolutely. My daddy,when Al Smith ran for President back there,
it was a religious proposition, he was a catholic, you see, and my daddy
was sort of anti-catholic; certainly anti-republican. So, he went to
Jacinto that day (election day) so that he couldn't vote. He wouldn't
vote for Al Smith because he was a Catholic. He wouldn't even vote.
I don't think we have those hard-headed gentlemen but they were of the
highest order, as far as that's concerned. No other generation, I don't
think, ever has or ever will, hold a light to them. The generation that
survived reconstruction in the South was the ( ) people that ever in-
herited this land over -here, as far as that's concerned, which of course
included my father.
BE: I wonder if you are a very religious man, a church-going man?
BW: Yes. I-am a dyed-in-the-wool Methodist. I've been a member of the First
Methodist church in Corinth since June, 1893, eighty-one years ago. This
is my church and I am a religious man. I claim to be a consistent
Christian. There's little difference between religion and Christianity.
BE: Yes, you're right.
BW: There has been a considerable change in the attitude of people as to
the ordinary things we held so sacred in days gone by.- In other words,
virtue was really a demand as far as that's concerned in the days gone
by. The morals are a bit looser-than they were. Not the people---
the people are good people--but the values of things are different. Of
course, I'm old time and I'm a little prejudiced along a good many lines,
but that's the way I feel about it. However, it appears to me that we
are in a trend of coming back to the old days.
BE: Getting back to the old days and values?
BW: Yes, the old values.
BE: Do you think it's a good thing?
BW: Oh, I think so. Yes. We're too liberal and it leaves much to be desired.
BE: Then being too liberal can be bad:
BW: Oh, yes, sure. Over-doing any good thing is bad, you know, and that's
what a lot of youngsters are doing.
BE: Do you ever "tip"'?
BW: No. If I wanted to I would, but I don't want to.
BE: You don't make a practice of it. Have you ever met any "famous or
"infamous"people?
BW: I've known a good many of them. The ones I've named, for instance, Mr.
Curlee was quite a famous man, a successful man. He has been one of
the very few old-timers from,Rienzi, down in there, Jacinto. His daddy
would practice law at Jacinto along -while Jacinto was a court-house, and
he had a love for Rienzi particularly, and Alcorn County. That's demon-
strated by his making a home here and turning back around and his grand-
son comes off and donates the Curlee home, the Curlee block, to the city
itself. It's handed down and he's rather a famous man in my mind. He's
a great, smart, brilliant and successful business-man.
BE: Did you not mention that you knew Private John Allen?
BW: Oh, yes, I knew him very well. I've been in his home.
BE: Tell me-something about him.
BW: I know so many darn years. I'll tell you one. Maybe it ought not be in
here, but I'll tell you anyway.
BE: We can take it out if it's too much!
BW: He'd been in Congress for a good many years, eighteen or twenty years.
He wanted to retire, so he had his brother-in-law, Judge Cox of Baldwyn,
to run for congress against our man Candler here in Corinth, and Candler--
I'm a small man, but he was considerably smaller than I--but, he had a
loud voice and he could cry, oh, he could cry, and his arguments and his
talks. And, he beat Judge Cox! Well, Mr. Allen went on back to Washington
after the election and they kept on after him. Said "well, John, we have
not met this man that beat you down there". Of course, he (Candier) had
not beaten him. Well, he stood it as long as he could and he said, "Well
sir, let me tell you something. Mike and Pat went into the saloon and
got a glass of beer. While enjoying the beer, why, Mike says to Pat,
"Let's get a cigar", so, they got cigars and finally got finished with
the beer and sill had the cigars. They walked out of the saloon and
Pat lost his cigar. He dropped it, and it rolled on down in the gutter,
where horses had been around-there in recent hours. So. Pat says to
Mike in faith-be Jesus, did you ever taste horse quarters, bitters? He
says, no, I never did. So Pat says,, well, you haven't missed much!" That
was one of Johns. He called-me one morning from the depot down
here. Five o'clock in the morning-he had just gotten off the train
coming from Washington -got me out of bed at five O'clock in the morning,
and says, "Frank, you'll have to get up!" I said, "What do you want Mr.
John?" He said, "You'll have to get up and get me a bottle of liquor,
that's all there is to it." "Why, Mr. John, I can't get you no liquor. I
don't fool with these boot- leggers. I don't fool with them." "It don't
make any difference whether you fool with them or not--get up and go get
me a bottle of liquor!" And he said, "I'm just in a hell of a shape.
Coming out of Washington I had plenty of liquor and everybody on the
train was a friend. And me and my liquor very promptly accumulated lots
of friends, but my liquor gave out before my friends did, and I haven't
had a drink in twenty-four hours, and I gotta have a drink, that's all
there is to it!"
BE: He needed that drink?
BW: So, I got up, went down and saw an old man an that I knew had liquor. He
gave me a bottle of liquor and-I carried it to Mr. John.
BE: He was quite a person!
BW: I could tell joke after joke about him!
BE: He was well known for his humor, and wit, wasn't he?
BW: Oh, yes he was. Daws, now. Daws, the vice president, was his personal
friend and Davis was a Republican. I think he was vice president for
Harding, wasn't he? Maybe.
BE: I don't know.
BW: Anyway, he took Mr. Allen along with him to entertain the crowd, you
know. I think he was ambassador to England at one time and he took him
over there to that. He had to take in all conventions of the Republicans
and he was a dyed-in-the-wool Democrat, of course, but he took in the
Republicans, too, and he went to Chicago for the Republican Convention.
He drank so much up there and got so drunk that he just passed out. He
was a big man, so they-put him in the bath tub, put two or three bell
hops around him to keep him from drowning. He finally came to. He said-
looking up and saw one of there"Where am I?" He said why, you are in
the Morrison Hotel in Chicago. What the Hell am I doing here? Well, you
came to the Republican convention. You've been here for the convention.
"What is today?" The bell hop said, "Tuesday." He said, I know but is
it next Tuesday or last Tuesday? He was involved in a case involved
with a lot of expert testimony and said, Gentlemen of the jury, there
are three kinds of liars, one of em's just an ordinary liar. Like, you
and me go out, stay out til one or two o'clock in the morning, and we
come back in. Your wife asks you where you been. You don't tell her
where you been. But that's an ordinary liar. Then there's the kind that
you term a damn liar. He is the kind of liar that by his lies he in-
tends to hurt someone. He has got it in for 'em. And then, the greatest
liar of all is the expert! Boy, I could tell 'em time and again.
BE: This area was known as Buford Pusser's area. Did you ever meet him?
BW: Well, I been in meetings where he was but I don't believe I ever personally
met him.
BE: Was this area as wild as they say it was when he was around?
BW: Well, the area was up on the line. The line up there was known as Foam
City. That was the name for it. Foam City, beer joints up there you see.
My oldest son, Frank, was in Ole Miss. at the time and the board had de-
cided to get rid of all the professors over Ole Miss., and put new ones
in. They transported a Professor Coladny from Mississippi State to Ole
Miss. Mike was in engineering school. When they did that, why, in the
whole engineering school there weren't but eight pupils. That's all that
was left there. All the rest of 'em ouit. Well, Frank@and I decided he
could live at home and go to a Mississippi School regardless. Of course--,
they took away the accreditation,and everything, so he stayed on, and he
and Coladny became very good friends. This was the only time that I've
ever gone to Foam City. Coladny came up and he and his wife spent the
weekend with us and Coladny said, "I've just gotta have some-beer, that's
Ell there is to it." I'll try to get some for you. I don't know if I
can get it for you or not. He said, "Hell, you can get it. Come on,
I know where to get it." I said, "Where is it?" He said, "Why, on y'all
state line,. And we did. That's the only time I ever had dealings out
there. He drank two or three bottles, and they had slot machines all
around and he picked out the two-bit machines and the darned cuss hit the
jackpot and I guess got twenty or thirty dollars worth of quarters but
he stayed there 'til he had lost every one of 'em and I almost lost all
my quarters support in him! He lost everything! That was the last time.
But it was very, very dangerous. Now, of course I'm an older timer here.
Over the years, particularly until the last fifteen or twenty years
everybody knew everybody. Having been in public life, as long as I have,
and as active as I've been in city, church, and everything else, as far
as that is concerned, and everybody knew me, you see. I do not know.
I've enjoyed the friendship of thousands and thousands of people. Very
close relationships with a good many of them.
SOURCE: Bruce Evans and Margaret Green Rogers. CORINTH VOICES,
Vol. I. Corinth, Mississippi: Northeast Regional Library,
June, 1979.
Data transcription by: David Sandy Corinth, MS - June 26, 1993