Jack Myers stood at the forefront of gay rights in Mississippi for over fifty years, running a series of gay bars and clubs in the capital city of Jackson. In this interview Myers talks about the many places he ran and shares his memories of others. I finished radiology school, lived in Memphis for a while, lived in Eupora for a while, worked at the state hospital and at the VA. While I was at the VA they sent me to Duke for a year for in-service training, and was hoping for a position in Jackson, but they never got the position open.
I gave them 30 days to decide if they were going to give me more money, but they just kept putting it off, so I left after 30 days.
As a matter of fact, I had my 21 st birthday there. I was in X-ray school at UMC at the time. I remember T. Schilling, one of the first people I met when I came out here, he used to own Jackson Commercial College, and he talks of some places that he used to go and one was down there on West Capitol Street, and there was a place off Robinson Road, you know where East Ford used to be?
Where Robinson Road crosses Hwy. That was all wooded then, it had a drive that went up to this big old house; it was called the Mansion. The guy lived upstairs, and one side of the downstairs was the bar. The Glass Kitchen on Five Points was a popular restaurant. The entrance was on Farish. Then we bought the old Amite Theatre. There was a Dr. Wade Windham who opened a bar there, a straight bar called the City Dump, I think it was. They took old cars and made benches and booths out of them.
We sold them all for scraps. We completely remodeled it. It was called the Interchange when we had it. And then we moved on the corner across the street to that small building, opened it was the Interchange on Amite. There were bars years before I had one here. The road that goes by the train station, Amite, comes in at an angle there and crosses Capitol. Her name was Polly Wilmer. We talked for a while; she used to have that bar, it was on Robinson Road, I think, used to be a Waffle House or something that sat right in here.
