Jim Crow-era water fountains will remain outside Mississippi courthouse after vote

An effort to relocate Jones County water fountains that were installed during the Jim Crow era was met with resistance from voters.

A referendum was placed on the ballot, asking Jones County voters whether to remove the fountains, which are outside the county courthouse in Ellisville, or let them stay.

The unofficial and incomplete tally on Thursday shows the measure failed 16,370 votes to 12,869 votes.

In Jones County, there are 44,362 registered voters. Of those, 30,202 voted as of Thursday — a 68% turnout so far.

Absentee ballots are still coming in, however, so the numbers are expected to change, Circuit Clerk Concetta Brooks said Thursday. 

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The measure appeared to be failing late Tuesday after ballots from the county's 37 precincts were counted, but with more than 4,000 absentee and affidavit ballots to be counted, it remained in limbo for two days.

The water fountains are believed to have been installed around 1930, more than 20 years after the courthouse was built in 1908. They were inscribed with the words "colored" on one and "white" on the other to indicate which racial groups could use which fountains.

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In July, the Jones County Board of Supervisors voted 4-1 to put the matter on the ballot after a former Ellisville resident brought the issue before the board.

Donnie Watts, 68, who now lives in Hattiesburg, had previously requested the fountains be moved, but his request was denied.

Watts could not be reached for comment Thursday afternoon, but his wife, 68-year-old Joyce Watts, had joined her husband's past and present efforts to get the fountains moved. 

She said the supervisors put it on the ballot this year because they knew Jones County residents would not vote to move them.

“It’s disappointing, embarrassing and hurtful,” Joyce Watts said. “I’ve been out and about in Hattiesburg and heard people talking about it today."

Joyce Watts said the vote to keep the fountains makes her sad.

“People are so hardhearted that they want people to remember those troubling times back when we were made to go to the back door (and) drink out of certain fountains,” she said. “You couldn’t eat at the lunch counters, and all of that is hand-in-hand the same thing. They voted for it because it’s Jones County.”

Joyce Watts said she hopes the people of Mississippi will eventually try to come together to support positive change.

“People try to hold on to the relics of the past,” she said. “It’s just hurtful, and I don’t know what people get out of trying to hurt another race of people. And they want to say it’s in the name of history.”

Even though the fountains will stay, the inscriptions no longer display the segregated labels. They were covered in 1989 with other historical plaques after an earlier Board of Supervisors voted to keep the fountains outside the courthouse.

The then-supervisors rejected an offer from the Mississippi Department of Archives and History to put the fountains in a museum and replace them with others, according to an Associated Press report.

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Five years later, the courthouse was named to the National Register of Historic Places. The water fountains at the front of the building are listed in the historical register documentation but are not part of the original building.

Watts said in an earlier story he wanted like to see the fountains relocated to the Mississippi Civil Rights Museum in Jackson. He said some people argue the fountains are part of history, and shouldn't be moved.

"Who would want to relive that part of history," Watts said. "I can see right through those plaques, I know what they say. If they were so gung-ho about keeping those fountains, why don't they take those plaques off where everybody can see the words 'colored' and 'white?'"

Contact Lici Beveridge at 601-584-3104 or lbeveridge@gannett.com. Follow her on Twitter @licibev or Facebook at facebook.com/licibeveridge.