CARROLLTON — A stroll down historic Lexington Street in downtown Carrollton feels like a momentary respite from the 21st century. Here’s the old Gee Mercantile, and here’s Peoples Bank & Trust with its wooden cashier counter and tiled floor.
Next door is the “Conservative Office,” where Carroll County’s weekly newspaper, The Conservative, was based for more than a century. In the early 2000s, the newspaper’s owner, Emmerich Newspapers Inc., donated the building to the Carroll County Society for the Preservation of Antiquities after consolidating The Conservative’s operation with a sister paper in Winona.
In the tall front window of the building, there’s a new sign: Citizens Militia of Mississippi. Look closer and its motto is inscribed on a sampling of merchandise: “CMM — Any Fate But Submission.”
Pam Lee, the president of the Antiquities Society, said a member of the militia approached her in August about renting the building.
“We checked them out with the sheriff’s office and rented to them,” Lee said.
That was in September. In October, the militia group opened the doors to its new state headquarters and set up a tent during Pilgrimage weekend. On Sunday at 2 p.m., CMM has a meet-and- greet scheduled at the building.
Lee, who spends the bulk of her time working to preserve and protect over 60 nationally recognized structures in the Carrollton Historic District, sees good neighbors in the new tenants, but their appearance has raised some eyebrows.
Lee says those reservations are understandable, given the public perception of militias as outlaws, anti-government extremists and racists, but she believes that stereotype doesn’t apply to MCC.
In fact, she believes the two groups, the historic preservationists and the militia, can be mutually beneficial for one another.
“We understand that they are interested in historic preservation and do community service projects,” she said. “They’ve looked at our old jail, which we have a 99-year lease on. It’s in desperate need of some work, and they think they have the expertise to do the work.”
“There’s been some talk of making a bed and breakfast of it to raise funds.”
Lee would like to see the upstairs of the 1898 lockup turned into a museum.
Robert Mitchell of Panola County, state commander of CMM, agrees and says his members in Carroll County can help.
“We have a lot of carpenters, electricians, skilled labor, that kind of thing,” Mitchell said. “There’s a lot of history there in the jail, not all of it good.”
Mitchell, who worked in the state penal system after serving in the military from 1987 to 2000, says a jail museum could serve as both a historic site and a place to teach basic human rights.
“Kids need to know the mistakes we’ve made,” he said.
Mitchell founded CMM in 2013 and has seen it grow to 300 members and 15 chapters across the state since then.
It is one of 27 militia groups in Mississippi, according to a 2013 national study by the Southern Poverty Law Center.
Mitchell said his military career gave him a skill set he believes instills self-confidence in men who are interested in preparing themselves to be citizen soldiers, should they be called up to serve in any capacity. He cites Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath as an instance where a well-trained militia might have made recovery more efficient.
“I’ll be honest with you,” Mitchell said. “I take people out in the woods. I teach them basic soldiering skills. I teach them survival skills. It gives them self-confidence, and it makes them more self-sufficient.”
Mitchell said that confidence can be expressed in community service and political action, ultimately making people better citizens.
He came to Carroll County initially at the invitation of the militia’s local chapter in 2015 to hear Clint Walker make a campaign talk during his successful run for sheriff.
Walker said CMM’s members, in his opinion, are good neighbors to have in Carroll County. They participate in his reserve deputy program.
“They don’t operate on race lines,” he said. “They use a quote from Martin Luther King Jr. to represent their views, and they have African-American members.”
Mitchell said he understands why some people might be initially uneasy about the presence of a militia in town.
“I’m not surprised, and I’m actually glad that they’re paying that much attention to who’s in their town,” he said. “If I saw a militia setting up in my town, I’d be concerned, too. I’d be afraid they were what the media portrays militias to be — anti-government extremists, racists or plain old criminals.
“That’s why it’s in our by-laws that we want to return the good name of the militia. Its name is being tarnished, not just by the media but by groups that misuse the name and misrepresent its purpose.”
Mitchell said Carrollton has proven to be a great location for CMM’s state headquarters and he hopes to relocate there soon.
“There are a lot of members in the county,” he said. “The easiest way to tell a good group from a not-so-good one is that the ones like us that want to improve the community operate out in the open. The ones that are less than they say they are, they stay underground.”
•Contact Kathryn Eastburn at 581-7235 or keastburn@gwcommonwealth.com.
