Nancy Luke Carpenter and the Board of the Columbus Cultural Heritage Foundation have allowed the birthplace of Tennessee Williams to fall in utter disrepair. Please email the board and tell them to remove Carpenter as CEO and to do the right thing to repair the building and to be transparent in their actions.

Board President Brenda Willis: [email protected]

The Tombigbee River was the path to freedom for many escaped enslaved people. Their directions were found in a folk song: 

It was in this Black Belt Prairie impoverished environment that many great Blues musicians rose to prominence.

Hickory Sticks is one of the oldest homes if not the oldest home still in existence in Columbus, MS. Built between 1815-1820, the home has a spectral visitor during Valentines each year. Who is it and why is he insistent on going upstairs to bed every year?

Wisteria Place has a man who walks up the road out of the foggy mist of early morning leading a horse carrying a man in confederate gray bent over the saddle. They disappear once they turn in the back drive. Who are they? 

The Princess Theatre in Columbus, MS is known for significant paranormal activity. It is thought to be Mr. Kuykendal, the former president of the Motion Pictures Theater Owners of America from 1932 until his death in 1946. 

Henry Betts' execution at the Lowndes County Courthouse was botched. He was a large Black man who was accused of murder. He weighed over 300 lbs and stood 6'6" tall. He was most probably railroaded into a conviction. He "confessed" to save his brother. 

Charles Baskerville, chemist and college professor, was born (1870) at Deerbrook, Noxubee County, Mississippi, the son of Charles Baskerville, a physician and former CSA captain, and his wife, Augusta Johnson. He was educated in Columbus, MS. and raised by his paternal grandparents. Charles would lay claim to the discovery of two chemical elements. 

Pleasant Bowler was a scam artist and flim flam man who posed as a Baptist minister and helped found the Shiloh Baptist Church in Burns Bottom in Columbus, Mississippi after the Civil War. He murdered Sheriff Cline in a struggle and was brought before a Reconstruction Era Judge from Ohio and an all Black male jury in the Lowndes County Courthouse in 1869. This jury is alleged to be the first all Black jury in US history. 

The Tennessee Williams building has been so neglected under the reign of Nancy Luke Carpenter that the floor joists are completely rotted under the building and so all renovations are at a complete standstill.