“I was a part of the Campbell clan from Yazoo City. My grandfather was mayor of Yazoo City and my brother was a state representative. My other grandfather was a minister for about 25 years at the Episcopal Church and the fellowship hall was named after him. There were also four generations of Campbell attorneys in Yazoo City. 

I had a great childhood in Yazoo. We played games in our yards such as Piggy Wants a Signal and Color Wolf. For that one, the color wolf called out random colors: black, white, red, orange, cinnamon or magenta. If he called your color, you had to run. If you were caught, you were the color wolf. We learned a lot of uncommon colors for that game. 

There were three movie theaters downtown: the Yazoo, the Dixie, and the Palace. The Dixie had kiddie matinees on Saturday—they were always cowboy movies. It cost a quarter for a double-feature and a bag of popcorn, but kids performing a talent got in for free. Our group took tap dancing, so we always danced for our tickets.

My dad owned the Ren Theater. It was across the railroad tracks and the place for Blacks to watch movies in Yazoo City. We sat upstairs in the balcony seats. 

Friday was payday and everyone went shopping downtown on Saturdays. At Christmas there were beautiful scenes in Mr. Henick’s windows on Main Street. My dad opened a Christmas Club fund for each of his children. We put a quarter in every week and in December we got a check for $12.50 to buy presents at Woolworth’s for everyone in the family. 

I was 15 the first time I went out with Stanley Evans. He saw me and told a friend that he was going to marry me. He was a handsome senior, and I was impressed with him. His father owned the Tenderloin Grill, a dance hall in Yazoo that served steaks. 

On our first date, I wore a pink blouse and a pink linen skirt. My mother told me not to get so excited that I didn’t talk. After our double date to the picture show, he walked me to the door and asked me for another date. He kept asking. We went to dances all over the Delta to hear the Red Tops. My mother limited us to two dates a week, but it worked out.  We were married for 38 years.

Some of my favorite memories were with my group of eight girlfriends. We called ourselves the Yazoo Girls and stuck together all of our lives

During our first two summers in college, some of the Yazoo Girls went out west to work in national parks. The first summer we boarded the train in Yazoo City for a three-day journey. I was supposed to be a maid at Bryce Canyon National Park and clean cabins, but they loved my accent and put me to work in the curio shop. I guess I was the curiosity. 

The next summer, four of us drove to Yellowstone. One girl’s father managed a car dealership and got us an old Ford. It overheated at higher altitudes so there were many stops. Our parents were nervous about us driving from Yazoo to Yellowstone and mapped out where we should stop each night, but we went our own way. There was no cell phone and no way for them to reach us. 

Our job at Yellowstone was washing laundry, and our nickname became Bubble Queens. We fed wet sheets into a machine, and they came out hot and dry. We were so good that they sent us laundry from other places. We learned to slow down. I later taught my kids the Yellowstone way to fold sheets. 

The Yazoo Girls married and some of us moved away from Yazoo. Stanley and I moved to Pascagoula and had five kids. All of us got busy with families and jobs, and didn’t talk as much as we used to. 

I was 60 when Stanley died. Instead of coming to his funeral, the Yazoo Girls took a beach trip. We started traveling and spending time together again. 

I got into birding with one of the Yazoo Girls. My first birding trip was to the Ocean Springs sewage lagoon. We saw 85 species, and I was hooked. Since then, I have gone birding with my daughter to Italy, Mexico, Belize, and Costa Rica.

After Stanley died, I retired from teaching and took painting lessons from an artist in Ocean Springs. When I was a child, my mother was an artist and let me paint with her. Art was once an important part of my life, but I put away my brushes to become a mom and a 10th-grade English teacher. 

My children were surprised by this unknown side of me. My motto became, “She believed she could, so she did.” Art lessons gave me a new group of friends. It was also wonderful when people liked what I painted. 

Main Street Pascagoula asked for submissions for a mural. They selected my design, and I asked who was going to paint it. They said, ‘You are.’ I was 80 years old and had never painted a mural. I had to believe I could.

We borrowed an overhead projector from the school, and my daughter helped me draw the outline. All of my children painted parts of it, and I added shading, shadows, and details. I was so proud that we made that mural happen.

I am 84. Life has been filled with ups and downs, but there is good even in the downs. I was diagnosed with ovarian cancer during Covid and went through chemo during that time. I lost my hair, but they caught the cancer early. It could have been much worse. 

Hurricane Katrina was another one. It brought in five feet of water and destroyed the first floor of my house. My kids immediately gutted the first floor and scrubbed everything down. I set up a tent in the backyard with an arrangement of wildflowers for a little beauty. I later told my son there was a blessing in the hurricane because all of us were together, and people came from all over the country to help our community.  My son, who had done most of the ripping and tearing, asked, ‘Mama, were you in the same place that I was? It didn’t feel like such a wonderful experience.’ 

Hard times come and you work through them. I think there is a special hope and optimism in women from Yazoo and the Delta. You don’t have to be harsh on the outside to be strong on the inside.”

Mary Bet