JACKSON, Miss.—While summer brings soaring temperatures to Mississippi each year, Jackson residents like Dorothy Davis are working with others to cool down Farish Street in an effort to revitalize the historic Black neighborhood that once flourished there.
“Farish Street was the Mecca for Jackson, especially for the Black community,” Davis told the Mississippi Free Press. “This is where all your Black millionaires used to live and had their practices and businesses, and the poor people, too. And so it was a one-stop.”
Davis came of age in that era of the Farish Street neighborhood. Images of shopping among bustling crowds and eating Frosted Flakes at the corner restaurant remain scattered through her memories of the area.
Now, boarded-up building facades and historical markers are some of the last remaining traces of many of the area’s once-vibrant store fronts. The overflowing sidewalks have long since slowed to a trickle, and the murals beside them are only fading in the Mississippi sun.
Davis heads Farish Street Community of Shalom, a nonprofit dedicated to improving the Farish Street Historic District. The Jackson Redevelopment Authority joined Shalom’s efforts to restore the area about nine years ago, Davis told the Mississippi Free Press.
While Shalom and the JRA worked to restore the area, 2C Mississippi, a nonprofit dedicated to building climate resilience in the Jackson area, performed a heat study on Jackson. Farish Street’s fried patches of grass foreshadowed the study’s results; it was one of the hottest areas in the city.
“It was hard to really bring people back into the community with no shade, nowhere to really hang out,” Davis told the Mississippi Free Press. “… Who wants to be out in the hot sun? I hate sweating.”
On Monday, one of the projects working toward correcting those conditions—Farish Street Green—will come to life at its 10 a.m. grand opening ceremony.
Solving the Heat Island Problem
The area around Farish Street is what scientists call a “heat island,” an area in a city hotter than the surrounding neighborhoods. 2C Mississippi’s heat study found more than a 12-degree Fahrenheit difference in temperatures between neighborhoods throughout Jackson.
Things like high concentrations of buildings, dark-toned streets and other structures—which absorb and emit the sun’s heat more than natural material—alongside a low concentration of vegetation exacerbate temperature differences, the EPA said in its guide to heat islands.
Jackson residents and nonprofits are working together to build another public green space to help counter these conditions on Farish Street, project architect Travis Crabtree told the Mississippi Free Press.
Crabtree designed the gardens to include a variety of native plants, suited to Mississippi heat, to help with the cool-down of the area.
Jackson Redevelopment Authority Chief Economic Officer and Executive Director Alex Lawson is hopeful that the resulting temperature drop will help mitigate heat-related challenges community organizers face there.
“There are Juneteenth festivals and back-to-school festivals, so there are things that take place on the street already, but there have been multiple (events) that have had to either alter their plans or cancel because it was too hot, and so this has a direct impact on that.” Lawson told the Mississippi Free Press.
Community members depend on nearby churches and other venues for event relocations, Lawson said.
Lawson recalled “one of those weekends where it’s triple digits, and the call was made that it would be too hot to have people out in the blazing sun.”
“We needed them to have some type of cover, so in those cases, they’ll usually just move to a church parking lot like Miss Davis’s (church) where you can put more tents or have more tree cover or move it inside one of the buildings there,” Lawson told the Mississippi Free Press.
In the meantime, outdoor vendors like William “Peanut Man” Shoulders create their own shade with umbrellas and canopies to handle the Mississippi heat. Shoulders began selling produce in the area to support himself following Hurricane Katrina, he told the Mississippi Free Press, and depends on the money he makes on Farish Street to pay his utility bills.
Much like other nearby business owners, Shoulders needs to bear the heat of Farish Street to make a living.
Community Input
2C Mississippi founder Dominika Parry went into Farish Street knowing past revitalization attempts in the area largely failed.
“We knew very well the history of Farish Street, and also the history of attempts to revitalize it that all failed because there was not enough proper community outreach and development,” Parry told the Mississippi Free Press.
Parry and the Mississippi State University Department of Architecture held monthly community meetings for 18 months, coordinating with residents to co-design the space, Parry told the Mississippi Free Press.
“What is really important is that this is not a case where we are coming to Farish Street, and we are developing it the way we wanted,” Parry told the Mississippi Free Press. “We were co-designing with community members how those spaces should look like, what they should be providing, and now we are getting to the point where soon the whole project is actually going to be standing and ready for people to use.”
The portion of the park on the west side of Farish Street, dubbed Farish Street Green, will include a central lawn space, benches, a stage for community events and a wooden shade trellis, alongside a variety of plants on the west side of the street.
“That shade trellis will grow native species along with wisteria vines, so it will definitely be a moment that people want to photograph, get pictures taken, and that sort of thing,” Crabtree told the Mississippi Free Press.
While the stage has yet to be built and workers are still in the process of sealing the wooden trellis, plants and benches are already in place.
The portion of the park on the east side of Farish Street, dubbed the Urban Forest at Farish Street Green, includes gravel walking paths and most of the park’s trees.
Plans for environmental aspects of the park included planting sycamore, cypress, sumac and red bud trees alongside a prairie garden modeled after Mississippi’s natural state, much like the views along the Natchez Trace Parkway.
“The prairie is native to Jackson—they call it the Jackson Prairie, which is basically what Mississippi and Jackson used to look like before development, pre-development, and pre (urbanization)—which is a bunch of grasses,” project designer Travis Crabtree told the Mississippi Free Press. “We’ve got everything from pink or muley grass to little blue stem grass.”
Hopes for Future Improvements
While the project is primarily aimed at solving Farish Street’s heat problem, lowering temperatures is not the only goal for the new green space.
“The hope out of (this project) is you’re solving some of the environmental challenges through reducing urban heat island and creating pollinator habitat and managing storm water better, but you’re also creating a new sort of vibrant green space that is in the center of a lot of vacant properties at the moment that are adjacent to it,” project designer Travis Crabtree told the Mississippi Free Press.
Development of the site was funded by a $1.5-million grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture Forest Service. The U.S. Forest service offers grants and agreements to mutually beneficial projects selected through their partnership program in nine regions throughout the nation.
The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, a philanthropy dedicated to improving health outcomes in communities affected by structural racism, CoBank and Nissan provided additional funding for the project.
“We’re hoping to do more of these projects in Jackson, so I’m grateful for these nonprofit organizations that are investing in this,” Crabtree told the Mississippi Free Press.
Jackson Redevelopment Authority Chief Economic Officer and Executive Director Alex Lawson sees the new green space as one of the first steps in restoring the Farish Street Historic to its former glory.
“The buildings themselves need a lot of work, and there’s a lot that has to be done,” Lawson said, describing the greenspace project as a ‘low hanging fruit’ when it comes to restoration.
Lawson expects a bookstore to open nearby soon, in addition to the installation of new murals in the area, Lawson told the Mississippi Free Press. A residential building is also in the process of construction on Farish Street.
Lawson and the JRA put out a call for community input into potential future improvements on Farish Street on Sept. 1.
The proposal submission period will end on October 30.
Follow the Mississippi Free Press’ coverage of Farish Street and read past stories here.
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