Which makes the crowd at Frank Jones Corner a point of pride for its employees. Later that evening, Justin Sebren leans across the bar and shouts so that he can be heard over the blast of Michael Jackson: “I’ve bar tended at a shit-ton of bars in this town,” he says, “and this is the most diverse bar around.”
A quick census: In the corner is Michelle, a black woman, not quite middle-aged, who has brought her visiting girlfriends — because, she says, F. Jones has good drinks, good food and good music, all of it cheap. She’ll be leaving soon, because in the morning she’s got to lead a fleet of black women on a run with GirlTrek. (Her friends decide to stick around.) At the bar is Kyle, a white man a few years out of college, in town from Memphis. Last time he came to Jackson, he says, this was the only bar that stuck distinctly in his mind. Ty, his host, claims 200 years of genealogically verifiable Mississippi heritage.
“And I don’t believe in all that stuff,” he says. “I believe in rights, gay rights.”
And there, further down the bar, is the middle-aged black man who refuses to give his name. He just says that he’s been to 48 states, speaks four languages, and there’s no place he’d rather be than this bar.
“Mississippi is not a state,” he says. “It’s a club.”
All this, and it’s early yet, not even midnight. Everyone always says that it’s late night — or early morning — when Frank Jones Corner is at its best.
That, for me, is daunting. I am a creature of discipline and routine. My alarm each weekday is set for 6 a.m. But in this month, in this state, this is the bar I need.
I’ll tell you up front I’ve got an ulterior motive. After seven years here, I consider myself a Mississippian. I’ve gotten tired of the questions from friends back in New England, wondering if I’m going to stay another year. I’m miffed at the boycotts and the concert cancellations. There’s more to Mississippi, after all, than our hateful laws, and the way to change them is not to avoid the place; it’s to pack the state with people who will fight for change.
I want to show you a little bit of Mississippi’s appeal. So, discipline and routine be damned, I’m going to be up all night at Frank Jones Corner.
