Miko (Chief) of Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians

Miko Beasley Denson was born in the Conehatta Community and raised in the Standing Pine Community of Leake County.  Miko, the Choctaw term for leader, graduated from Choctaw Central High School and completed his postsecondary education at Hinds Community College and Mississippi State University.  

A fluent Choctaw speaker, Miko Denson served on the Tribal Council for five years in the capacities of both Secretary Treasurer and Vice-Chief. His participation within the Tribal government is extensive. He has served on numerous boards most notably, the Choctaw Housing Authority Board for ten years, the Tribal School Board for eight years, the Choctaw Credit Union Board for two years, the Choctaw Gaming Commission Board for two years, the Board of Directors for Chahta Wire Harness, the Choctaw Development Enterprise Board, the Choctaw Manufacturing Enterprise Board, and the Choctaw Utility Commission.  He also acquired positions on the National Indian Education Board and the Board of Directors for the United South and Eastern Tribes. 

Miko Denson now serves as the third democratically elected Chief since the adoption of the modern constitution.  He has a great passion for improving the quality of life on the reservation. He is working tirelessly to reduce the back log of tribal housing, to improve the health care system, and to upgrade the Tribe’s educational facilities.  His priorities are to provide more opportunities for tribal members, to enforce Indian preference policies, and to be an open, accessible leader.

Author, Journalist, Photographer 

Eric Etheridge is the journalist-photographer behind the newly published book, Breach of Peace. It features "then-and-now" photos of individuals who took part in the civil rights movement as Mississippi Freedom Riders in '61. It also includes extended interviews with the activists.

Etheridge grew up in Mississippi and is a Vanderbilt grad. He's worked as an editor at several magazines, including George, co-founded by JFK Jr., and Rolling Stone. He's also created Websites for Microsoft and The New York Times. For more information, www.ericetheridge.com.

Arthur Gardner
Professional Baseball Player, Major League Scout

Sue Gunter, born May 22, 1939, Walnut Grove, Mississippi, USA, was a women's college basketball coach. She is best known as the head coach of the LSU Lady Tigers basketball team.

In Gunter's 22 years as the head coach at LSU (1982-2004), the Lady Tigers played in 14 NCAA Tournaments and two WNITs. Gunter led LSU to one Final Four in 2004 and to the Elite Eight in 1986, 2000 and 2003. She lead the Lady Tigers to a championship at the WNIT in 1985 and to SEC Tournament Championships in 1991 and 2003. In addition, Gunter directed LSU to 14 seasons of 20 or more wins, including one 30-win season.

In the middle of the 2003-2004 season, she became ill and took a medical leave of absence in March 2004. She was later diagnosed as having emphysema and pneumonia. Gunter's longtime assistant coach and former player, Dana "Pokey" Chatman, was named acting head coach of LSU for the rest of the season. After the season, Gunter, who had been battling respiratory problems and chronic bronchitis for years, officially announced her retirement on April 2004. Chatman was later formally named head coach of LSU.

Gunter began her coaching career at Middle Tennessee State University where she led the Blue Raiders to undefeated seasons in both of her years there (1962-1964). Gunter then had a very successful coaching stint at Stephen F. Austin State University (SFA) in Nacogdoches, Texas. While at SFA, Gunter led the LadyJacks to a 266-87 mark in 16 years as head coach (1964-1980). In addition, she led SFA to four top 10 national rankings, including top 5 final rankings in 1979 and 1980. While at SFA, Gunter coached four sports - women's basketball, softball, tennis and track. Her basketball teams went to five Association of Intercollegiate Athletics for Women (AIAW) playoffs, won four state titles, and earned a regional crown. In 1980, she stepped down as coach at SFA and moved into the position of Director of Women's Athletics where she served two years before returning to the coaching ranks at LSU.

Gunter completed her career as the third winningest women's basketball coach in NCAA history with an overall record of 708-308 (behind only Jody Conradt and Pat Summitt). Gunter's LSU record was 442-221, making her the winningest coach in school history. She completed her career among the leaders in several NCAA coaching categories: seasons coached (No. 1 - 40); games coached (No. 3 - 1,016); wins (No. 3 - 708); and 20-win seasons (No. 4 - 22).

A fine player in her own right, Gunter played AAU basketball for Nashville Business College from 1958-1962 earning AAU All-America honors in 1960. She was also a member of the U.S. National Team, which competed against the Soviet Union, from 1960-1962.

In 1980, Gunter was selected as the head women's basketball coach for the United States Olympic Team. Gunter guided her team to the title at the Olympic Qualifying Tournament prior to the Games. However, Gunter and her team were denied a chance at a gold medal due to the United States' boycott of the Olympic Games, which were held in Moscow that year. Gunter tasted success at the Olympics, however, as she was an assistant coach on the 1976 U. S. Team which captured the silver medal in Montreal. She has also served as head coach for the U.S. National Team three times, as she led those squads in 1976, 1978 and 1980.

While at LSU, Gunter was named the SEC's Coach of the Year in 1997 and 1999. She was also the Converse Region IV Coach of the Year in 1983; the Basketball News National Coach of the Year in 1983; the Louisiana Coach of the Year in 1983, 1997, 2002, and 2003; the Carol Eckman Award recipient in 1994; and the Women’s Basketball Coaches' Association (WBCA) Regional Coach of the Year in 1999 and 2003.  In 2000, she was elected to the Women's Basketball Hall of Fame, located in Knoxville, Tennessee. On April 4, 2005, Gunter was elected into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Famein Springfield, Massachusetts. She was formally enshrined posthumously in September 2005.  Gunter died at her home in Baton Rouge, Louisiana on August 4, 2005, due to respiratory problems and emphysema. She was 66.

International Fashion Designer

Civil Rights Pioneer

excerpts from LA Times story. Winson Gates Hudson, a Mississippi civil rights pioneer who braved bombings, gun-toting nightriders and ostracism by fellow blacks as well as whites was a stalwart fighter for racial justice that she waged mostly in obscurity. Hudson, along with her sister Dovie, was a pillar of Harmony, a tiny pocket of civil rights activism in Mississippi. She instigated a Justice Department investigation in 1962 that toppled the state literacy requirement that had effectively barred blacks from the polling booth for decades. Hudson helped her sister file the first school desegregation lawsuit in a rural Mississippi county. She also served as president of the local chapter of the National Assn. for the Advancement of Colored People for nearly 40 years, beginning at a time when mere membership in the group could cost a person her livelihood, her home or her life.

At 85, she realized a lifelong dream of publishing her memoir. Co-written with attorney and activist Constance Curry, “Mississippi Harmony” won high praise from critics, such as The Times’ Kay Mills, who called Hudson’s story “history [that] cannot be told too often.” The sisters, who had the same last name because they both married men named Hudson, were known as the “Big Women from Leake County,” because of their stout build and formidable will. In a portrait by Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer Brian Lanker that was included in a 1989 show at the Corcoran Gallery in Washington, D.C., the sisters are seated side by side on straight-back chairs, wearing their Sunday finest. Winson, smiling slightly, stares steadily at the camera with eyes that hint of her unflinching nature. “When she is speaking to you, her eyes hold you; at the same time, they seem to be scanning the landscape,” novelist Alice Walker, who met Hudson in the 1960s, once wrote. “Her eyes tell a great deal about Mrs. Hudson, for she is one of the ‘sleepless ones’ found in embattled Mississippi towns whose fight has been not only against unjust laws and verbal harassment, but against guns and firebombs as well.” Hudson was born Anger Winson Gates, the 10th of 13 children of John Wesley Gates and Emma Kirkland. The mother died when Winson was 8, leaving her father to raise the large brood on the family’s 105-acre farm. It was not unusual for blacks to own so much land in Harmony, a tight-knit community near Carthage that sprang up in the years after the Civil War and gradually became an enclave of black landowners. Nonetheless, Hudson’s family remained vulnerable to deeply entrenched bigotry. They lost the farm when a white doctor called in a bank note he held on the land.

In 1936, Winson married Cleo Hudson, whose family owned 500 acres in Harmony. She went to work as a teacher and later as a lunchroom manager at Harmony School, the pride of the community. She ran afoul of the principal for giving free bread to hungry children but ignored his admonishments, the first of many acts of civil disobedience that, Hudson wrote years later, “helped prepare me for the good chances coming in the freedom movement of the 1960s.” Hudson had tried repeatedly to become a registered voter since 1937, when she turned 21. It would become a 25-year struggle. The registrar always had an excuse – the books were missing, the deadline had passed for the day. But the biggest barrier was the literacy test, which required applicants to copy and interpret a section of the state constitution. Whites were given a simple line, such as “All elections shall be by ballot.” Blacks, on the other hand, were given the most convoluted passage – a 206-word section drenched in legalese – so their failure was ensured. One time in 1961, Winson and Dovie went to the courthouse in another attempt to register. The entrance to the registrar’s office was blocked by a dozen burly white men. Unsure what to do, the women went to the basement and prayed, until Dovie said, “Let’s go. God’s got a shield over us, so they can’t touch us.” They walked back upstairs and squeezed past the men, who muttered insults at them. As they filled out papers, someone slipped them a little card with two red eyes on it and a sinister message: “The eyes of the Klan’s upon you. You have been identified by the White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan.” They left the courthouse unscathed, but without achieving their goal. Winson Hudson and others complained until, in 1962, the Justice Department sent two lawyers to Harmony. They told her to try to register again. This time, she didn’t fret over the troublesome passage of the constitution she was asked to explain. “It said what it meant, and it meant what it said,” she wrote. This time, she passed.

When the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which suspended literacy tests and provided federal registrars, was signed into law, Hudson led a massive registration drive in Leake County, signing up 500 new voters in one year. She made herself a beacon in a red dress who personally escorted scores of recruits to the courthouse to become voters. During the early 1960s, she also was heavily engaged in school politics. Local authorities had been trying for years to shut down the successful, all-black Harmony School. Town leaders appealed for help to Medgar Evers, NAACP field secretary in Mississippi. Instead of focusing on saving the community school, he urged them to fight for desegregation. In 1961, a lawsuit calling for integration of schools countywide was filed, with Hudson’s niece as plaintiff. Over the next three years, Hudson’s and her sister’s houses were bombed. But victory came in 1964, when the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals ordered the county to prepare for desegregation. Tensions were extremely high. Evers had been murdered by a white racist the year before in Jackson. Now Mississippi was entering Freedom Summer, when civil rights workers from the North flocked to the state. That summer, three activists – Michael Schwerner, James Earl Chaney and Andrew Goodman – were murdered not far from Harmony. Two of them had boarded for a time with the Hudsons. The father of the first Harmony student chosen to attend a white school that fall was beaten and his home burned. Teachers with ties to the NAACP were threatened with dismissal. “We’d walk down the street in Carthage, and you’d meet a black person going to borrow money, or especially a teacher – they’d see you coming, they’d turn back. Some of them even ran from us,” Hudson recalled. “It was a lonesome time, I tell you, a lonesome time.” But Hudson kept on fighting.

She brought the Head Start preschool program to Leake County in the 1960s and directed it until her retirement in the 1980s. She founded a sorely needed community health center with funds from the Nixon administration so the sick no longer had to travel 75 miles to the nearest hospital.

Harvey Hull, a Walnut Grove native, was a four-year starter at linebacker and defensive tackle, where he was renowned as one of the best in Mississippi State history.  Hull played for Coach Bob Tyler from 1973 to 1976.   Hull was drafted in 1977 to the Houston Oilers in the eleventh round.

Hull went to South Leake High School in Walnut Grove where he played under Coach Truman Moore.  In 2007, Miss State Coach Sylvester Croom brought Hull back on game day to serve as an Honorary Captain.   Hull is Director of Public Works for the City of Waynesboro.

Howard "Slim" Hunt

popular 1920s era string band

The Leake County Revelers was one of the most popular old-time string bands in Mississippi in the late '20s. The group was also among one of the earliest groups to make records in that state, hitting the jackpot with one of the first sides cut, the lovely "Wednesday Night Waltz." Like much of the blues and early country talent from Mississippi, the group was scouted out for recording by H.C. Speir, a man who is considered the Sam Phillips of Mississippi music in the '20s and '30s. Spier was involved quite early in the game of "talent broker," the job which would later become known in the record industry as artist and repertory development, or A&R man for short. He arranged a series of sessions for the Leake County Revelers that were released on Okeh and Columbia, and the string band's reputation spread quickly. They became known for tunes played in relaxed, slow tempos, which was exactly the opposite of all other string bands which highlighted rapid-fire breakdown numbers.

The Leake County Revelers recorded some 44 different sides between 1927 and 1930. Besides the initial success, these recordings have also enjoyed several new additional lifetimes through reissue ventures on labels such as Document and County. Not only has the group's entire output been made available via several volumes on these labels, various tracks by the group have emerged on a smorgasbord of compilation sets, including anthologies focusing on yodeling, early American string bands, and early country music. The group was quite famous for its original waltzes and complex vocal harmony arrangements, again in direct contrast to what has seemed like a distinct lack of vocalizing by other Mississippi string bands. In this case, the difference may have had more to do with the commercial desires of the record labels than the repertoires of the groups, since instrumental repertoire was always one of the selling points of most string bands, especially the shenanigans of hell-bent-for-leather fiddlers.

The blend of Jim Wolverton's five-string banjo and R.C. Moseley small banjo-mandolin is one of the most recognizable aspects of the group's sound, highlighted on tracks such as the ragtime instrumental "Dry Town Blues." The group humorously reveals their love of slow tempos by titling a piece of stately, almost Baroque parlor music "Mississippi Breakdown," even though the piece is as far from a breakdown as Seattle is from Mississippi. The previously mentioned "Wednesday Night Waltz" was the band's biggest hit, as well as one of the first two records issued by the group, first pressed in 1927. The song has been covered by many other artists, particularly fiddlers, and has become a dance warhorse, sometimes appearing under the title of "Kitty Waltz." It was performed frequently by Curly Fox on the radio in the '30s and '40s, and was later recorded by Leroy Canaday. In the '30s, politician Huey Long hired the Leake County Revelers to play for his campaign, using the down-home music to reinforce his image as a grassroots populist. In the '90s, the group was nominated for the Mississippi Hall of Fame and has inspired such modern-day string band revival groups as the Old Hat String Band and the Hinds County Revelers.

United States Senator from Mississippi 1817-1820

Mississippi Supreme Court Justice

3rd Governor of Mississippi 1822-1825

Though not a native of Leake County nor did he ever live in

the county, Governor Walter Leake is in the who's who list

because of his name.

Although his term began January 7, 1822, Governor Leake did not deliver his inaugural address until June 24 because the capital city was being relocated from Natchez. When he finally gave his address, the capital was temporarily situated at Columbia in Marion County. Five days later, the Mississippi Legislature located the state capital at the new town of Jackson, which was near a trading post on the Pearl River known as LeFleur’s Bluff. In December 1822 members of the legislature and other state officials moved to Jackson. During Governor Leake’s first year in office the state’s first capitol, a small two-story brick building on Capitol Street, was constructed at a cost of $3,000.

Walter Leake was born in Albermarle County, Virginia, on May 25, 1762, and came to the office of governor with a great deal of experience in political and governmental affairs. He was a Revolutionary War veteran and had served in the Virginia Legislature. After President Thomas Jefferson appointed him judge of the Mississippi Territory in 1807, Leake moved to Claiborne County. He represented that county in the Constitutional Convention of 1817.

Following Mississippi’s admission to statehood, Leake was appointed one of the state's first two United States senators. In 1820, after he resigned his Senate seat, Leake was appointed to the Mississippi Supreme Court to fill the vacancy caused by the death of Judge John Taylor. He served on the high court until his inauguration as governor in January of 1822.

During his first administration, Governor Leake signed a law abolishing imprisonment for debt, making Mississippi one of the first states in America to enact such a law. Governor Leake also tried unsuccessfully to persuade the legislature to pass a law prohibiting dueling in Mississippi.

Governor Leake arranged for the formal transfer of the federal land grant that had been given to Mississippi in 1819 to support a state university, and the state’s first major road system was begun during his term, with roads leading out from Jackson to Natchez, Vicksburg, Winchester (Yazoo City), Holmesville, Liberty, and to other points. The towns of Jackson (1823) and Vicksburg (1825) were incorporated during his administration.

In 1823, Governor Leake became Mississippi’s first governor to be re-elected for a second term. But in the second year of his second term, Governor Leake became ill and died November 17, 1825, at his home in Mt. Salus, now known as Clinton. He was succeeded by Lieutenant Governor Gerard C. Brandon.

Leake County and Leakesville, the county seat of Greene County, are named in honor of Governor Leake.

first to integrate Leake County School System

Debra Lewis, accompanied by her mother, Minnie E. Jackson Lewis, arrived at Carthage Elementary School sitting on the back seat of a light blue late model auto at 10:06 AM.  It was drive by Derrick Bell, NAACP attorney.  The child and her mother entered the elementary school and were directed to the principal's office.  There was tight security around the school.  All roads, leading into the school were closed except for the one they entered on.  There were 18 federal marshals and 9 FBI agents present  At 4:35 pm that day, the Leake County School Board, went into session shortly after Lewis had requested admission to the Carthage School, and announced they had agreed by unanimous affirmative vote to grant all applications for transfer including that of Debra Lewis who was assigned to Carthage Elementary.  She had previously enrolled at the all-black Jordan Attendance Center.   History had been made in Carthage and Leake County.

The son of a soldier and a night-shift nurse, Mr. Lewis was born in Walnut Grove, Miss., a place so small, he says, that you had to go to another town "just to be born."                 - Wall Street Journal (article)

Bank of America

former Chief Executive Officer, President, and Chairman

As CEO of Bank of America, Kenneth Lewis lead  one of the world's largest financial institutions and the twelfth most profitable company in the world in 2007. Bank of America serves more than 59 million consumers and business clients through more than 6,100 retail banking offices, 19,000 ATMs and an award-winning online banking and bill-pay service with more than 24 million active users. The company serves clients in 175 countries and has relationships with 99 percent of the U.S. Fortune 500 companies and 83 percent of the Global Fortune 500.

During his tenure, Bank of America has improved customer satisfaction significantly across every major line of business; annual revenue has increased from $33 billion to $66 billion; annual profit has increased from $7.5 billion to $15 billion; assets have increased from $642 billion to $1.7 trillion; market capitalization has grown from $74 billion to $183 billion; and total annual shareholder returns (including stock price growth plus dividends) have averaged 13.3%, doubling peers, the KBW Banks Index, the S&P 500 and the Dow Jones Industrial Average over the same period.

Lewis has been chief executive officer since 2001. He joined North Carolina National Bank (NCNB, predecessor to NationsBank and Bank of America) in 1969 as a credit analyst in Charlotte and served as corporate banking officer and Western Area director in the U.S. Department before being named manager of NCNB’s International Banking Corporation in New York in 1977.

He was named Middle Market Group executive in 1983 when the group was created and was responsible for expanding and improving service to middle market companies throughout the Southeast. He led the bank’s operations in Florida and Texas in the 1980s, served as president of Consumer and Commercial Banking and chief operating officer in the 1990s, and was named chairman, chief executive officer and president of Bank of America in April of 2001.

Lewis was born April 9, 1947, in Meridian, Mississippi and raised in Walnut Grove. He earned a bachelor’s degree in finance from Georgia State University, and is a graduate of the Executive Program at Stanford University.

Lewis was named to “The Time 100 List” in 2007 as one of the 100 most influential people in the world by Time Magazine. He is a member of the Financial Services Roundtable and the Financial Services Forum; the Fifth District’s representative on the Federal Advisory Committee; a member of the board and the executive committee and past chairman of United Way of Central Carolinas, Inc.; a member of the Committee to Encourage Corporate Philanthropy; a director of the Homeownership Education and Counseling Institute; vice chairman of the Corporate Fund Board of The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts; and past chairman of the National Urban League.

Lewis retired in December 2009.

Minister, Collegiate Basketball Standout,

Professional Basketball Player 

Young says his interest in history was sparked by his fourth grade teacher at the Walnut Grove school as his class studied Civil War battles.  Although he was not a history major in college and seminary, he admits that he always took history subjects for electives when possible.

Young, an ordained minister, served two churches in Mississippi as pastor while he attended seminary.   After graduation, he served Southern Baptist churches in Mississippi as Director of Association Missions at Waynesboro, Fayette, Natchez, and Meridian.   He retired in 1992 after forty years in the ministry.   After his retirement, Young was elected to the Board of Aldermen in the Town of Walnut Grove. He died in 2009.