Forget Elvis – Tupelo’s Real King Is Its History of Charitable Giving

Amid the chill of a foggy day, throngs of people seek refuge in a tile-walled Salvation Army gym, where they eat

soup and talk about the virtues of charity.

Here, on the other side of the tracks from the bustle of the mills and plants in this town of 35,000 — on the edges of a neighborhood pockmarked by small, boarded-up houses and where street corners are dotted with dawdlers — the Salvation Army of Tupelo has reserved the gym not for those in need, but for those who give.

At the annual Empty Bowl lunch, which raises funds for the hungry, the soup is gourmet, donated by local restaurants, and the bowls are the products of area artisans. For $10 per person, 1,300 charity-minded

people from in and around Tupelo cram in to eat.

“We’ve done this for five years, but this is by far the largest one we’ve ever had,” Capt. Philip W. Swyers, the local Salvation Army’s commanding officer, says, shortly after the event. Not that the charity has had trouble raising money during its 30 years here. “We get regular donations from companies and well-heeled individuals,” says Mr. Swyers. “But even those of little means give here. We get $1 or $5 in the mail accompanied by notes saying, ‘That’s all I have this month.’ That tells you a lot about Tupelo.”

Known for giving the world Elvis Presley, who was born in a shotgun shack on the east side of town, Tupelo has also earned some renown for giving to charities, churches, and causes.

Representatives from Southern counties and towns regularly pop up in Tupelo — hailed throughout the South as a haven for charitable causes and as an incubator for manufacturing — in search of a model to emulate. Some say the town’s twin success stories are intertwined.

“Tupelo is unique in that it has no real salable geographical features or resources, yet it has made itself into an industrial gem,” says Vaughn L. Grisham Jr., a professor of sociology at the University of Mississippi, who has written a book on the town. “Charitable giving has been a very important part of its success.”

Many Sources for Donations

According to a Chronicle study of federal tax records and Labor Department surveys covering the 3,091 counties nationwide, Lee County, where Tupelo accounts for about half of the population of 76,000, ranks No. 43 for charitable giving. The average Lee County resident who itemizes deductions on his or her tax return gives 15 percent of his or her income to charity — more than $9,000 per tax return.

Unlike many other areas in the South, where charity flows mainly to churches or emanates from the gifts of rich individuals, Tupelo benefits from a combination of types of charitable donations. With nearly 300 congregations, many of them Baptist, Tupelo echoes much of the Deep South in its emphasis on tithing, townsfolk say. But gifts from factory owners and donations from the rank-and-file employees who work there represent a tradition of charity that dates back more than half a century. The development of a giving tradition has been mirrored by the growth of local philanthropic organizations formed by the town’s business leaders.

Tupelo can boast its own symphony, museum, choral society, university branch, and hospital. North Mississippi Medical Center, with 600 beds and 6,000 employees, is the largest rural hospital in the country.

Even as many charities across the country suffer during hard economic times, Tupelo organizations continue to show signs of vitality and innovation. Leaders of those organizations cite:

• High giving levels to charities. The United Way of Northeast Mississippi, in Tupelo, set a goal of $1.5-million for the 2002 fiscal year, then raised an all-time local record of $1.61-million. Only three other United Ways of similar size brought in more than Tupelo’s United Way last year. The United Way of Northeast Mississippi, aided by the Create Foundation, in Tupelo, is now trying to raise money to finance an endowment to take care of its administrative costs so that all donations earmarked by givers will eventually go to charities. “We realize how fortunate we are to be here, where we can even think of doing that,” says Melinda Tidwell, the United Way’s executive director.
• Support for public education. As middle-class people in many towns have pulled their children out of public schools, Tupelo residents and business leaders continue to back public education — not merely with tax dollars, but through the Association for Excellence in Education, a local charity that hands out $100,000 in grants annually to public-school teachers who develop innovative programs and approaches to their subjects. The group, founded in 1983, now numbers 400 individual members who support efforts to improve education for the town’s 13 public schools and its 7,500 students, which includes the children of many of the town’s wealthiest residents. The organization’s mission reflects a commitment to public schools made by many local business leaders, such as L.D. Hancock, a local fabrics magnate who gave $2-million during the 1980s.
• Substantial government help for neighborhood causes. In Haven Acres, a working-class black neighborhood of 600 people, a Baptist church, a Boys & Girls Club chapter, and other charities were aided in their drive to build a $1.2-million community center by a matching gift from the town. City Hall’s $120,000 donation helped neighborhood residents encourage regional banks and individuals to give, says George O. Pritchard, pastor at the Morning Star Missionary Baptist Church, which donated the land for the center. The facility, which features activities geared toward youths, opened in February.
• The dispersal of Lee County philanthropy to neighboring counties. The Create Foundation, a community foundation established in 1972 by the owner of the town’s local newspaper, George A. McLean, has sponsored a regional commission that has offered $100,000 matching grants to each of 16 Mississippi counties, most of them poor, to form their own community foundations. So far, eight counties have raised the necessary $200,000 to tap into the Create-supported grants. By encouraging regional grant making and economic development, the foundation has engendered a spirit of cooperation. “When Tupelo would get a company to commit to building a plant here, someone over in Tippah County would get upset,” says Jack R. Reed Sr., a Create Foundation board member. “Now, we’ve helped change that by creating solidarity.”

Building Philanthropy

The overwhelming force in Tupelo giving has been the businesses that the late Mr. McLean, Mr. Reed, and others have helped bring to Lee County. Preceded by two momentous events — a tornado that nearly wiped out the town’s center in 1936 and the arrival of Mr. McLean a few years later — the influx of manufacturing companies and banks rebuilt a poor town surrounded by sharecroppers’ fields and dotted with low-paying textile mills.

Mr. McLean, a sociologist who had been chased from Memphis after trying to start a firewood cooperative for the poor in a nearby Arkansas town, was initially deemed too radical by many here.

Undaunted, Mr. McLean began to encourage residents, very few of whom were wealthy, to give to charities and get involved with boosting the town’s economy. He turned the local Chamber of Commerce into a community-development foundation that helped recruit businesses to put the town’s unemployed men, whose wives worked low-wage jobs at textile mills, to work.

“We used to say that men in Lee County were real go-getters,” recalls Mr. Reed, a former Mississippi gubernatorial candidate and owner of a generations-old Tupelo department store and a shop that makes men’s apparel. “They’d drop their wives off at the textile factories, then go get them after work.”

Mr. McLean then encouraged the companies to give to local charities and become involved in the development of Tupelo. “Whenever a new company would come to town, we would include them in our civic associations,” says Mr. Reed. “We’d put their chiefs on committees and make them chairs.” By doing so, Mr. McLean hoped to make them part of the town’s fabric, parts that would be at least as responsible for its well-being as longtime residents.

One result is a town of 35,000 at night, but 55,000 by day, when workers from surrounding areas drive in to work at Tupelo’s furniture, fabric, and tire plants. Those workers, encouraged by their companies, have traditionally taken part in on-the-job charity drives in droves.

But some nonprofit leaders worry that the generous traditions set forth by Mr. McLean and other Tupelo leaders may be endangered.

Younger folks say they don’t have the time to volunteer, which Tupelo residents have tended to do regularly. The area’s business leaders are graying, and hope that their children will continue their charity work, as Mr. Reed’s children have done with the United Way and other charities.

“Tupelo has to continually retell its story, as well as continually re-learn it,” says Mr. Grisham.

Others say that they see no drop off in generosity — or even the warning signs of one.

“What I’ve found is that it’s basically a matter of matching a need with a donor,” says Mr. Swyers, of the Salvation Army. “That’s the blessing of living in Tupelo.”