This spring, a consortium of archivists, historians, and museum workers from across West Tennessee will gather in McNairy County. The group meets quarterly to share resources, build capacity, and discuss subjects that bear on their work. A panel at the upcoming meeting will tackle the topic, “Interpreting Difficult History.” It’s no coincidence that this particular issue is being addressed in McNairy County, Tennessee.
The recent revelation that Adamsville, Tennessee’s hometown hero, Sheriff Buford Pusser, of Walking Tall fame, is implicated in the murder of his wife, Pauline Pusser, shook the community to its foundation, raising important questions about civic identity. What puts a place on the map? How does that happen? Who gets to decide? Can small towns live with the image they project once the tourists have gone home? How does shifting culture affect community identity?
All good questions that deserve careful consideration. Tourism and development groups would do well to take a page from the archivists’ playbook. Building and sustaining rural identity can be challenging, and it’s hard to make good decisions in a crisis. In the long run, thinking through potential pitfalls before they arise will almost always yield better results.
Local identity matters. It might play a role in whether an individual or family leaves or stays in a community. It could mean the difference in business and industry relocating or avoiding certain places. Community identity figures prominently into cultural tourism planning, quality of life, property values, and much more. Oftentimes, more than one of these factors comes into play at once.
Chance or Premeditation?
We were watching a local potter throw an exquisite vessel when I struck up a conversation with an older couple who turned out to be recent transplants from an urban area. Like my family, they were eager participants in a weekend studio tour that featured the area’s best craft artisans.
When I asked if they were surprised to find organized arts programs like that in a rural community, they said no, it was one factor in their decision to relocate to the area. The promotion of the region’s rich handcraft and folk music heritage was a big draw for the couple who were naturally thinking about how to spend the time liberated by recent retirement. It’s worth thinking about how that happened.
The couple had previously traveled to the area to take part in the studio tour, which helped them make the decision to relocate. They enjoyed the small town vibe and the friendly people; they liked the favorable tax rates and property value, but they were particularly dialed into local identity. They were considering other properties in the region, but the presence of working artisans and old-time musicians was my county’s thumb on the scale. These fine folks bought a 200-acre farm just north of my hometown and settled down to spend the rest of their lives fueling the tax base and enjoying the county’s cultural amenities.
It was all I could do to refrain from making a beeline from the potter’s studio to the economic development offices to share the news. Evaluating the success of traditional and folk arts programs may not be high on the list of a chamber or industrial board’s priorities, but they certainly understand retirees moving in, buying property, and investing resources locally. If the decision is based on positive associations with local identity, that’s one more tool in their development tool chest.
Just Ask
Simply asking residents what they value about their community can be remarkably effective for determining an authentic and pleasing sense of place. Many federal and state development agencies offer simple toolkits and templates that may be adapted for local placemaking use. What that typically looks like in practice is a series of public meetings where a broad cross-section of local stakeholders is asked to identify the features of local culture they believe best represent their town or region.
A community is what residents make it, and “culture” doesn’t have to mean fine art museums and opera houses. It might mean strong identification with local foodways or pride in a region’s history. It might mean valued traditions, stories, festivals, or vibrant small-town commercial districts. It might mean scenic natural areas or welcoming public art environments. All communities are multidimensional if anyone bothers to dig beneath the surface, and do-it-yourself asset mapping often turns up an astounding variety of cultural attributes residents may rally around for placemaking or tourism promotion.
More than just refining a public-facing image or attracting visitors, this sort of consensus-building can help cultivate and develop shared spaces that reinforce meaningful local identity and pride of place. In my experience, that’s a healthier, more practical way to build and strengthen community. However effective a short-term public relations campaign or marketing strategy may be, it is only satisfying and ultimately sustainable when those who inhabit the place can latch onto it.
The One Certainty: Change
Viewed in the right light, every place has its own appeal. But it’s important to remember that light shifts over time, and from the differing vantage points of viewers. Culture evolves; generations come and go; demographics change; ideas have their moment. Consequently, local identity is ever-changing. That doesn’t have to be a threat; it just means vigilance, good decision-making, and adaptability are required by community planners.
To use a tried and true rural aphorism, it is unwise to put all your eggs in one basket. No matter how it evolved, at some point, aligning with the legend of Buford Pusser was a one-basket decision for Adamsville, Tennessee. There were always other options, but the allure of a Hollywood movie script and the narrow interests of a few dominated local identity for half a century. It didn’t have to be that way.
The story always had its pitfalls—many of them predictable—but Buford Pusser indisputably had his moment. And it’s hard to argue that the community didn’t benefit in some ways from wide interest in the Sheriff’s high-profile career, especially in the immediate aftermath of the successful Walking Tall movie franchise.
Even so, some wonder if the long-term promotion of an image based on organized crime and vigilante justice hasn’t done more harm than good. Now that Pusser’s fifteen minutes of fame have morphed into a moment of infamy, the town and county have hard decisions to make about local identity and tourism promotion. The two aren’t always the same, and I believe civic leaders are doing the right thing by asking residents for input.
No Past Too Distant
70 million years ago, McNairy County was completely underwater. As the tide receded to the modern-day Gulf of Mexico, it left behind one of North America’s most important marine fossil deposits. Coon Creek Science Center, just north of Adamsville, regularly hosts public digs and student discovery camps. Enraptured paleontologists sometimes come and stay for weeks at a time. It’s not everyone’s thing, but if you are into Cretaceous marine fossils, there’s no better place on earth to learn about them.
Native Archaic and Mississippian cultures left behind magnificent earthen mounds and well-preserved archaeological sites all over the region. Generations later, the Bell Route of the Trail of Tears moved through the heart of McNairy County. In November 1838, a detachment of approximately 700 Cherokee and other Indigenous peoples was paraded through what is now Main Street in Adamsville, halting just west of town to acquire supplies before resuming the forced march to Oklahoma.
On April 8, 1862, the last shots of the Battle of Shiloh were fired as generals W.T. Sherman and N.B. Forrest clashed in southern McNairy County at a place called Fallen Timbers.
In just three days, Shiloh produced 24,000 casualties, more than all other American military conflicts combined up until that point. The unprecedented bloodshed dispelled all notions that the Civil War would be shortly and neatly resolved.
Dewey Phillips was a legendary deejay who fearlessly integrated the Southern airwaves, and was the undisputed first broadcaster to play the records of Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash, Carl Perkins, and Jerry Lee Lewis—among others—on his pioneering Memphis radio program, Red, Hot, & Blue. Phillips was raised and went to high school mere blocks from the Buford Pusser Home and Museum.
Adamsville and the surrounding area are home to some of the most accomplished folk and fine artists of any region in the state. Handcraft, music, and plein air painting festivals in the county attract cultural tourists in droves. According to Americans for the Arts, McNairy County’s thriving art, music, and theater scenes make an enormous impact, pumping $12 dollars for every $1 invested in local cultural programs into the local tax base. That’s not chickenfeed for small businesspeople.
Though they were every bit as much a part of my heritage, I grew up in Adamsville, Tennessee, hearing little to nothing about these sorts of things. It’s not that anyone was trying to hide the assets, as much as the legend of Buford Pusser crowded out all other narratives. And that’s what it always was: one narrative among many that might have helped define my hometown.
The Trail of Tears and Civil War stories illustrate that history doesn’t have to be pleasant to figure prominently in an area’s authentic sense of place. The story doesn’t have to be warm and fuzzy to fulfill that purpose; it just has to be honest. And therein lies the rub: building identity on anything less is like building a house on shifting sand.
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