Sun Herald: ““Most people would have torn it down,” said Evans, who taught history at Boston College and in Massachusetts public schools while maintaining his roots as a sixth-generation member of the Turkey Creek community. “I didn’t. I knew it had to be historic.”
“ . . . It was almost predestined that what has happened would happen,” he said. “God’s hand was in it.”
Today, the old paymaster’s office is almost restored. The lone surviving structure in a 1943 plant explosion that killed 11 men, including 8 African-Americans, will serve as a memorial to those who died and a community center for the nonprofit Turkey Creek Community Initiatives.
The center will also be a repository for the history of the Black men who toiled in South Mississippi’s timber industry, at low pay and great risk to their physical safety, while many of their wives cleaned the homes and laundered the clothes of white families on the beach.
In a broader sense, the paymaster’s office will anchor a community with a rich history that dates to slavery, a history that has bound together residents for generations.
Turkey Creek, tucked away beside Gulfport’s busiest commercial corridor, is a place apart and a testament to the perseverance of Black Americans. The shared history of its residents, and the kinship that sprung from its founding families, created unique community ties that have survived for generations.
In Turkey Creek, residents have always shared the bounties of their gardens, watched over one another’s children, and worshiped at the same community church
Since the community’s founding in 1866, oral history has been a strong tradition. The old paymaster’s office will tie together stories of a community that withstood Jim Crow laws and segregation to preserve its identify as the city of Gulfport continues developing the commercial and industrial corridors that threaten to swallow it.
“Turkey Creek is God’s country,” said Raymond White Sr., an 87-year-old descendant of one of the founding families. “I think He smiled when He laid out that land there in Turkey Creek.””