Batman, The City of Jackson, and Jimmy Carter

The Adventures of a Broken Child

Batman is the story of someone who was broken as a child and felt separated from the world ever since. All he had left was a faithful servant, haunted dreams, and a city that became his identity.

I always read comics. The balloons break words up into bits digestible to dyslexic children. I was a Marvel kid. I thought DC Comics were too plastic and unbelievable. Superman was invulnerable except for this rare mineral that everyone seemed to have access to.

I met Christopher Reeve in 1979 when he was shooting “Somewhere In Time.” We were on Mackinac Island for two weeks on a YPO family trip, and they arranged for us teenagers to meet Reeve and Jane Seymour. I was more interested in Seymour. Besides the obvious pretty girl/teenage boy dynamic, she had been in a James Bond film and a Ray Harryhausen film, with whom I had recently struck up a correspondence.

Seymour was polite but impersonal and excused herself after signing autographs for whoever was closest. Reeve, however, spent most of the afternoon with us. He grabbed my trapezius muscle and said, “You must work out!”

I thought, “Damn, Superman said that.”

Despite what a decent human being Reeve was, I still had no interest in Superman, Batman, or any of the DC stable of characters. Although they had tried to make Batman a more serious character since the sixties, to me, he remained a cartoon. The X-Men, I thought, were profoundly political and psychological, and they had Wolverine. Am I right?

When I was a senior at Millsaps, a comic came out that changed not only my perception of comics but changed them for the entire world. I hadn’t picked up a comic in at least seven years, but a monster kid I knew was talking about this guy Frank Miller and his take on Batman.

Miller had a reputation for being deeply embroiled in the drug culture, hated Americans, and set his own rules. I’d been hearing about The Watchmen but hadn’t picked them up yet. It took a while to find a copy of The Dark Knight Returns #1, but I found a place that had the first two issues for sale.

Holy cow! This was a very different Batman. Older, he was close to the age I am now. Riddled with doubt and feelings of guilt about Robin’s murder, Bruce Wayne comes out of retirement because Gotham was his identity, and Gotham was returning to what it became after his father’s death.

I had heard Miller was political, but this comic had Ronald Reagan right in it, and not at all in a positive light. The English were having second thoughts about their own conservative revolution. Reagan featured heavily in the Land of Confusion video produced by the band Genesis. Still, this was a comic book, and I didn’t know how I felt about Reagan making Superman a spineless puppet and forcing Batman into retirement.

My father was not happy when, as a teenager, I came out in support of Ronald Reagan. Daddy had no love for Jimmy Carter, but even though he had some close friends that he admired who were becoming Republicans, he was not at all happy with what the emerging Republican Party was doing to Mississippi, in particular, with their ideas about education.

Publically, Daddy was very inscrutable and moderate about his political opinions. Daddy liked to drink. I did, too. We are actually Scottish, you know. When I got old enough to drive and old enough to keep secrets, Daddy figured out that we could go places, he could get plastered, and I would drive him home, and it’d all be good. If need be, he could even get somebody to call home and have me pick him up.

He didn’t do this with my brothers because they fought him on everything, and showing a little vulnerability wasn’t a good thing. He didn’t do it with my sister because she was a lady.

At a Trustmark event, both Daddy and Rowan were in their cups, so I was called into service. On the way home, Daddy said to Rowan, “You know that somebitch? (and he said the man’s name.) He’s not much more than just Ross Barnett in better clothes.” In Mississippi, “Ross Barnett” was code for racist, and “better clothes” was code for Republican, not the black-and-tan Repuplican of old or fiscally conservative Republicans like Jack Reed, but old Dixiecrat, new Republican. Reed was a strong proponent of public education at a time when many Mississippi Republicans were talking about doing away with the public schools.

“Don’t tell anybody what he said.” Rowan gestured toward me with a hand holding a to-go cup of The Famous Grouse. “Boyd minds his business,” Daddy said, which wasn’t entirely true. I’ve told the story where the whole world can see it, but you won’t get me to say the man’s name. I’m pretty sure my sister knows, even without knowing the rest of the story. When she dies, and I die, that little bit of history will be lost forever.

You’d think Daddy and Jimmy Carter would have gotten along. Daddy was from Mississippi, and Carter was from Georgia. Both were friends of Ivan Allen, although, in my Dad’s case, it was more like an apprenticeship. Both were moderate Democrats at a time when some people tried to paint them as communists. What could have separated them?

When these new Republicans/old Dixiecrats rose in Mississippi, their biggest goal was to break down the public schools and funnel all that money into private schools. This wasn’t a hidden agenda in any way. They were very open about it. They still are. At the time, they were very open about the fact that it was all about integration. These days, they try to say it’s about “wokeness,” but it’s still about integration.

The issue soon ended up in court several times. Daddy, the head of Mississippi School Supply Company, and the head of Mississippi School Book Supply had to either testify or give depositions every time. Guys he knew from Ole Miss and guys he knew from the Country Club began putting intense pressure on him to take their side “as a friend.” Daddy said he quit going to the Country Club because he realized his golf game wasn’t improving. I’m pretty sure the truth was that he was pretty tired of being cornered in the locker room about what they had started calling “school choice” bills.

My uncle Boyd ended up being one of the last member-presidents of the US Chamber of Commerce. By the late '60s, it became clear that the organization needed a professional leader and someone who lived in Washington. The Chamber went from a public relations effort to a serious lobbying effort and required a full-time guy who did just that.

Jimmy Carter ran on the promise of Universal Healthcare, which would have benefitted Mississippi, a very poor state. A moderate, Carter didn’t want a solution that involved increasing taxes and paying for Universal Healthcare out of the federal budget. He believed American Business should pay for it. Although the idea has evolved since Carter passed it on to Clinton, who passed it on to Obama, the idea that the money should come from business rather than the budget remains a significant part of the plan.

Big business had more resources to pay for this idea of federally mandated healthcare, but, even though my father wasn’t head of the US Chamber of Commerce like his Uncle, he was deeply involved, and it was his belief that Whatever big business could afford, the small businesses in the US Chamber of Commerce couldn’t.

Before Ronald Reagan's deregulation spree, most American businesses were small, and the Chamber of Commerce represented them. When Daddy died, I found some of the correspondence between him and Carter and some of Carter’s aids on the issue of Universal Health Care and the small businessman.

Missco offered its employees healthcare, but it was expensive, and their contribution was pretty high. Worst of all, Daddy had to deal with some guys he didn’t care for to make the deal, but he felt it was his responsibility. We never paid our warehousemen or drivers very much; the least we could do was arrange for them and their families to have healthcare.

By the time Clinton came along, Daddy had mended his fences with Jimmy Carter. Although Carter was ten years older than Daddy, he lived thirty years longer. It won’t be long before Jimmy Carter is the first hundred-year-old president.

At a NOPA meeting in Chicago, I had dinner with my father and explained I was beginning to have second thoughts about Reagan. “Even though Reagan says he doesn’t recall, the corruption seems to have been vast. And then there’s the impact his banking deregulation is having on thrift institutions in Mississippi.” I said. That was the first time I ever felt like my father was seeing me as an adult-thinking person.

The influence of Thomas and Martha Wayne made Gotham City far less corrupt. Gotham thrived when they were alive. When they died, corruption, poverty, and desperation began seeping in through the cracks.

When my father was a young man, Jackson was an incredibly corrupt place. Medgar Evers was shot dead in his driveway. Reverand Ed King and James Meridith had attempts on their life. Beth Israel synagog was bombed. The police shot boys at Jackson State. You don’t even want to know what Mayor Thompson was up to.

When Daddy was alive, an entire team of people worked to seriously change Jackson. In 1968, one hundred and fifty business, legal, religious, and medical leaders in Jackson signed a “Statement of Belief and Intentions” and sent it to the newspapers and the Mayor’s Office, stating unequivocally that things had to change in Mississippi.

I attached a copy of it here:
https://www.boydslife.blog/2023/06/random-google-search-returned.html

Things did change for a while. In the seventies, eighties, and nineties, Jackson, Mississippi, saw more progress, more profitability, and more equality than it had ever known. Corruption and decay were still a problem, but it didn’t prevent the city from growing.

Daddy died in 1992. Within five years, corruption and decay began taking over Jackson. In 2005, Frank Melton became Mayor on a strong anti-corruption campaign, but we soon discovered he was the most corrupt of them all. If Mississippi ever had a Batman villain, it was Frank Melton. He was Joker and Two-Face combined.

I was never a young Bruce Wayne. At that age, I was desperately trying to formulate a plan where I could separate myself from my family name and become something more than just a continuation of my father’s work. I had friends who resented that. They would have done anything to have that sort of boost to their career, and here I was trying to get rid of it.

When my mother died, and my wife left, I sold my house on the reservoir and moved to the heart of Jackson, in the upper reaches of an ancient Art Deco tower. I couldn’t save my city but was prepared to die there.

Everyone feels like Batman. Everyone feels some doubt and regret for letting the world become what it is. As you get older, it gets worse. I’m hardly the first to compare Jackson to Gotham.

With my legs the way they are, it’s unlikely that I’ll ever be the Bruce Wayne of The Dark Knight Returns, although I’ve spent my share of nights on rooftops, brooding over the fate of my city.

Diana Prince long ago returned to Themyscira and left us mortals to our fate. Selena Kyle grew old and fat, but her kiss could still heal and inspire Bruce. Oliver became a terrorist, and Clark gave his life when his new master tried to destroy the world, but the sun gave it back to him.

I’ve come to accept that Mississippi, like Gotham, is more than just a part of my identity. Corruption and decay are part of life. The only thing that keeps them from taking over is us.