The blood of Jesus
The Jackson-Rayburn railroad bridge on the south side of Meridian hadn’t seen a train in 20 years.
That made it a popular place for holy meets and profane gatherings. People came from miles around to hear preachers cast down demons and drink free lemonade at the expense of crooked politicians.
Best attended one in the history of Meridian was that Sunday morning, August 18, 1931. Crows lined the north-side, top support beam, bobbing their tiny black heads as they waited to feast. The summer heat and the slow, sluggish mosquitoes shimmered off the calm, green brackish water 40 feet below.
Shouting and cheering and the singing of Christian hymns cut through the woods on the west bank. A photographer appeared in his Sunday best, lugging a camera and heavy case on his back. Then came the throng of singing white people, wild-eyed women, buck-toothed children and crazed men, fighting for position near the center of the black-iron bridge.
“What can wash away my sin? Nothing but the blood of Jesus; What can make me whole again? Nothing but the blood of Jesus. Oh! precious is the flow, that makes me white as snow; No other fount I know, Nothing but the blood of Jesus…”
The photographer’s shirt was drenched in sweat as he struggled to protect his delicate equipment. Mercifully, the people made a space for him. He stopped and planted his camera’s wooden tripod on two iron beams. The bridge went silent as he slipped the heavy black-leather case off his back, placed it carefully on the tracks and unhooked the leather straps. When he found the right lens he shut the case and looked up…
A black woman wearing a white sack painted with a devil’s face and tightly bound over her head, stripped to the waist and covered with cigar burns and whip scars, was standing on her tip-toes on the south iron rail. A clear man’s voice rang out from somewhere on the bridge.
“This is our world!”
The crows took flight as the bridge shook from the roar of the mob. The Photographer posed a pin-eyed, black-tongued farmer beneath the bound and hooded woman.
“This is our life! This is our way! Are we gonna let these animals run loose?”
Satisfied, the photographer returned to his camera and made adjustments to the position.
“We gonna let these lions hunt us down and exterminate us? Not me!”
Another roar from the mob swept the bridge as the photographer draped the black cloth over his head and put his eye to the lens.
“We are God’s chosen servants! We are agents of wrath! We will punish the evildoers!”
The photographer pressed a button. The lens clicked and snapped shut. Then a rope cracked.
Men howled and fired their guns.
Children laughed and women cried tears of joy.
The bellowing roar of the mob soon disappeared and the singing started up again.
“Oh! precious is the flow, that makes me white as snow;
No other fount I know, Nothing but the blood of Jesus…”
