Jackson Free Press

It took Malcolm White a few years to find the right place to anchor his St. Patrick's Day parade.

The first year, 1983, White and his friends started at CS's and paraded to George Street. The second year, CS's dropped out, and White and his fellow revelers started and ended at George Street.

At one point, they set up shop at the state fairgrounds. "We stayed down there for a number of years, but it never felt right. It didn't have an ambiance to it. It was cold and institutional," White said.

But when White and his brother, Hal, got the lease to the old railroad depot building on Commerce Street and turned it into Hal & Mal's, White moved parade operations to the restaurant.

"We headquartered it here just because it made perfect sense for everything that we were doing to have a physical place ... so it would have an address, so that we could have offices and phone lines and bathrooms and infrastructure," White said.

Over the years, Mal's parade has grown into the third largest St. Patrick's Day parade in the nation and the single largest annual event in the Jackson metropolitan area. Its success, combined with White's experience planning other major events, led him to join the Mississippi Arts Commission as in 2005, after Hurricane Katrina wrecked the Coast and, along with it, the region's arts economy (and his second home there). In 2013, Gov. Phil Bryant appointed White to heard the tourism division within the Mississippi Development Authority.

Recently, White talked with the JFP at Hal & Mal's, the restaurant he started with his brother, who passed away in 2013, about tourism, the future of the Mal's St. Paddy's Parade and how each is vital to telling the whole Mississippi story.

The parade started with you and your friends and has grown into this huge organism with lots of moving parts. How has the parade changed in terms of the planning that goes into it?

When I created it, I was in the business of creating events. It performed precisely as envisioned. As the years went on, I never envisioned that I would leave the private sector and go into the public sector. I never thought about running the (Mississippi) arts commission or being the state tourism director. That was never even a remote thought. So that evolution has changed a lot about the way I think about it. I have a full-time job.

My brother has passed, and we're into the next generation now of family that runs this place, and I'm frankly looking eagerly to the day when the parade is in the second generation. I have worked for years with the Jackson Convention and Visitors Bureau, Downtown Jackson Partners and honestly anybody who would talk to me about forming some sort of next generation for the parade.

But the bottom line is that nobody wants to work that hard. No one wants to take the responsibility, and it falls on me every year. If I didn't do it, nobody would do it.

I have a team of a lot of people. I do big ideas, and they do all the small details. We have multiple partners. Ardenland is a partner in the concert. Charley Abraham is one of the managing partners in the parade. Blair Batson Hospital for Children is a partner in the run, the fundraising, the registration of the floats. The city's a partner in inspecting the floats. The fire department is involved in the inspection. The county's involved in the cleanup. I bring a guy to run the children's festival. There's a staff of probably 20 key people that do key things that keep me from having to do it all. The restaurant does a lot in terms of the street after-party and Arden (Barnett) puts on the music.

These are volunteers?

Oh, yes. There's no full-time person responsible. It's not a full-time job. When I started it, I had a company called Malcolm White Productions. This is one of the many things I did. I did Jubilee! JAM, I did Zoo Blues, I did Wellsfest. I had a portfolio (of events) ... all over the state and down into Florida, and what I did was produce events, do fundraisers, book bands. My brother and I did this. But a decade ago, I got into public service and started to phase myself out of all of this stuff.

What was the thinking behind that? I can't imagine public service was more lucrative.

No, I took a huge pay cut. I went into state service because of Hurricane Katrina. My vision was that if the lower six counties of Mississippi were going to recover and re-envision themselves, then the art story piece had to be a huge part of that. And that was the reason I wanted to work at the Arts Commission. I planned on doing three years; I stayed seven. Then I was offered this opportunity to lead the tourism office, and I thought it was a logical next step for me, so I'm still going.

In that role, what's your sales pitch for Mississippi?

Our sales pitch is that Mississippi is an authentic, real place. The experiences that you can have here are unique and unparalleled--whether it's music, literature, architecture or food. Civil War. Civil Rights. The arts, sacred spaces, film ... it's a unique and curious place. It has abundant natural resources. It has an embarrassment of riches of a cultural story to tell. It's unparalleled in the number of musicians we produce, the number of writers we produce, sports figures we produce. It's a fascinating, powerful place.

As James Meredith said, Mississippi is the most powerful word in the English language. No one says "Mississippi," and there's no reaction. So my job is to encourage people to visit Mississippi. And, I think, to get them here, they have to rethink it. My job is about rethinking Mississippi. The way we intend to do that is by telling the whole truth, nothing but the truth and being honest about all of it. We're just as interested in civil rights tours as we are in golf tours. Our hardest job is to get people to come here the first time. But (once) we get people here the first time, we usually can get them back. My job is to get more people to come here and get them to stay longer. So we've got to promote our natural resources, we've got to promote our great culture. We've got to be open-minded about our past and include that as part of the story. We can't just leave out the 20th century. It's a difficult but fascinating opportunity. If it were easy, I wouldn't have been interested.

It's hard, and we have a lot of competition. Mississippi has the smallest advertising and promotion budget than any other state in the union by a long shot. We are tiny; it's miniscule.

What kind of number are we talking about?

Three million dollars. The next closest is about $8 million, $8.5 million. Part of the challenge is trying to tell the story and not really having any resources to tell it with. But that's fine. I accepted the job knowing this. So what I look at is social media, because it's affordable, and it's real time. (I look at) promoting what we have and starting to recognize who our new visitors are.

The current visitor to Mississippi is 52 years old ,and they stay 2.5 days. I want them to stay longer and start coming earlier.

I think international (tourism) is a great opportunity for us. Interestingly, when you say "Mississippi," people in Iowa will have an opinion. If you say it in Germany, not so much. Germany has a past that ours pales compared to, in terms of struggle. They understand struggle; they understand civil war. They know oppression. They know evolution. But internally, in the United States, Mississippi can be a tough sell. Externally, not so much. You mention Mississippi in Asia or Europe, they know about the river, they know about the blues, and they know a little bit about the civil-rights stuff. But they're intrigued and curious as opposed to turned off and appalled.

We have to focus on regional promotion. We want people from Texas and Tennessee and Florida and Arkansas to come. And we're going to get some people from New York and some people from California and from the Great Lakes. But I am more focused on Canada and Europe for new growth. Canadians can drive here, and their golf courses are frozen, and their food is rather bland, and they don't have the blues. But they want the blues. Europeans, Canadians, Asians know more about American music than the average Mississippians, and we're the birthplace of America's music.

That's why the Blues Trail has been so successful, the country music trail and the freedom trail and some of those projects. That's why the B.B. King Museum is so important, the Grammy Museum is so important. Mississippi is building the only other Grammy Museum outside of Los Angeles, and that's because we have more Grammy winners. We spend a lot of time allowing other people to tell our story and getting it wrong the whole time and poor-mouthing ourselves and selling ourselves short. I think we have a very powerful and compelling story to tell, and I think it's time we got busy telling it. Once we agree--if we can agree collectively--what that story is, there's a lot of power in that.

So developing international tourist interest is your main focus?

There's an initiative for Europe, there's an initiative for Canada, there's an initiative for Asia. They're all culturally different. But it's big, and it all requires resources and manpower, which we're short on.

We're really focused on 2014 as the year of the creative economy in Mississippi. We're launching this Mississippi homecoming campaign, and that's about how we tell our story and celebrating the things that are uniquely Mississippi. And inviting people to come and visit. We target successful creative Mississippians like Morgan Freeman and ask them to help bring people here. We target musicians and celebrity chefs and invite them home and celebrate creativity. And that's a state-supported initiative, from the governor's office down to the local CVBs (convention and visitors bureaus). And then we're all building toward 2017, when the state celebrates its bicentennial, 200 years of statehood. This summer, we celebrate Freedom Summer. We commemorated the Evers assassination, Freedom Riders. We treat all of that as part and parcel of our story.

Mississippi has the last free-flowing, unimpeded river system in the United States. It's called the Pascagoula River system and, for the outdoor enthusiastic, this a crown jewel.

We're inviting people to paddle and to camp, bird watch and get outside. Our barrier islands are an amazing resource, the Mississippi River is an amazing resource. We're finally getting outfitters set up so they can have a Mississippi River experience.

The Natchez Trace is covered in bicyclists. People come from all over the world to ride the Natchez Trace. These are gigantic assets that we have. We've never done a good job of promoting them.

A lot of people might be surprised, that as a Mississippi state official, you're willing to talk about the uglier parts of our history along with the positives.

I'm the director of optimism. I don't believe you can tell part of a story and expect people to trust you. You've got tell it all. We've got to tell the Emmett Till story as well as the John Grisham story. We've got a huge story to tell. Oprah Winfrey is a story of success; Medgar Evers is a story of disgrace, but they're both stories we have to tell. The Jimmy Buffet story a lot of people think is really interesting.

There are so many things that people don't even realize. The way Americans eat, and this whole phenomenon of the celebrity chef (that the Food Network has furthered) was created by three people: Julia Child, James Beard and a guy named Craig Claiborne. And Craig Claiborne is from the Mississippi Delta. One of the three people who have changed the way that Americans think about food was from Mississippi. He was the first food editor and food critic for The New York Times, and that's a big deal.

America gets credit for creating three art forms: modern dance, movie making, and jazz or American music. One out of the three came out of Mississippi.

What kinds of supports are there for someone who, say, has an idea for the next Mal's St. Paddy's Parade or similar arts events?

We don't take just anybody off the street who has a big idea. If someone comes to us with a fully fleshed-out business plan (for) a tourism-related project that looks like it can employ a significant number of people, that can create change, then sure. But government's role is not to be in the big-idea business. Government's role is to support people who have big ideas. And sometimes support doesn't mean a grant. Sometimes support means infrastructure, connecting dots and honoring--the year of the creative economy is about honoring creatives. (Like) Jim Henson, who is from Leland, Miss., who created the Muppets and Sesame Street and single-handedly taught more people to read and write than all institutions of education collectively, in my opinion, through his puppets and through his television presence. He didn't come to the MDA and say, "I've got this idea about the Muppets," but he was encouraged through teachers and his family to be imaginative. Then you go back and celebrate his accomplishments and to encourage other people to dream up big ideas.

The MDA is a large government agency that is not as flexible and nimble as, say, Hal & Mal's. But by the same token, its role is to grow the economy and create jobs and create opportunities, whether its in film or its in creative economy, manufacturing, the health-care industry.

So we are a place where ideas become realities and industries are launched--sometimes organically, and sometimes with us as their partner. My job in tourism is about promoting tourism-based businesses and encouraging people to come. Anybody brings me a big idea about a tourism event, I'm very interested.

Is the climate today better than when you started?

Yeah. When I started the St. Paddy's Parade, my contact was not the state tourism office. My contact was the Jackson Convention and Visitors Bureau. When I first started, the CVB helped me. They don't anymore, and they shouldn't. I'm a fully mature event: 32 years, 75,000 people. They need to be seed-funding somebody else. The state is there and available to help people with idea. We have a grant program where we fund all sorts of festivals and events around the state, from literary to music to civil war and civil rights stuff, arts festivals.

There's a group that wants to start a book festival, and we're very supportive. We helped them get started, given them some seed funding, sit on their committees ... some day we hope to have a book festival in Mississippi, and we can say we've done our part to support it.

You mentioned the next generation, in terms of the parade. Do you have plans for that?

If I knew the answer to that, I would have already put it in place. As I've mentioned, I've approached the (Convention and Visitors Bureau), Downtown Jackson Partners, and any other group I thought might have the bandwidth, range, capacity and ability to take it on. The city's not the right entity. It's probably going to have to be a group of family, some of these people who help manage it. The truth is, I don't know. I've been trying to figure that out. Now that the next generation is here, it would be logical for them to take it over--my daughter, my brother's son, his daughter and her husband. That's who's running this place and I would assume they would eventually take a leadership role in the parade. Like I said, we've got these other partners--Arden Barnett, Charley Abraham, Bob McFarland. The hospital itself--they do a lot. They organize the run, they organize the registration of the floats. And the city does a lot. It's just having somebody to manage all that, and I think we're getting closer to (figuring out) who that's going to be.

Do you think you'll stick it out in public service for a while?

Yeah. I don't have a plan for how long I want to be there. Like I said, I went in with a plan of staying three years, and I just entered my eighth. I'll stay as long as I think I can make a difference.

Is that why you've stayed so long--because you feel like you're making a difference?

I feel like progress is being made. Take the notion of the creative economy as an example. We did a study in 2011 when I was at the Arts Commission to look at creative class and creative enterprises in Mississippi. From that, I'm now in a position to work with the governor and have him declare the year of the creative economy and Mississippi homecoming. That is a progression of success.

The Blues Trail is probably the most successful initiative that the state of Mississippi has achieved, culturally, in my lifetime. The creation of this trail, leading people to museums, leading people to communities--the telling of the story of the birthplace of America's music. The B.B. King museum, the Grammy museum, the Elvis Presley birthplace. This is a gigantic global story that we have finally figured out how to tell. This trail leads people all over the state to share the good news, and it builds civic pride. It is a win-win-win-win-win-win-win. We're going to build a civil-rights museum and a new history museum. We'll be the only state in the union that has a state-supported civil-rights museum. We've invested in interpretive centers for the Emmett Till murder up in the Delta. We've invested in commemorating the life of Medgar Evers, and working to make his home a visitor's center. We are so on the right track here for telling the whole story and getting it right. The United States Poet Laureate is from Gulfport. That is a big damn deal--that Natasha Trethewey grew up and became the poet laureate of the United States of America. Gigantic. We need to be celebrating that. That's a big story.

We spend more time talking about what we don't have than talking about what we do have. My vision has always been to take this success we've had in the creative sector and use it to reinvent ourselves, to tell ourselves, to re-educate our children.

I always say that Mississippi is first on every list we want to be last on and last on every list we want to be first on. And we need to change that. That is about teacher pay raises, but it's also about acknowledging Freedom Summer. It is about jobs, but it's also about AIDS. And as the tourism director, I get to take it all on and talk about all of it, and have some influence and some impact.

The way I do that is through the storytelling. Mississippi is 2.9 million storytellers--we're all good storytellers. We need to use that ability that we have to encourage people to come visit us, to teach, to love each other, to care about each other.

I just think that if we're celebrating St. Paddy's Day or the ribbon cutting on a civil-rights museum, this is all really rich soil that we have an opportunity to plow together.

Man, if we ever get right, we're going to be hell on wheels. Medgar Evers used to say, Mississippi is going to be a great place when ... when people are treated fairly, when we are able to heal the past. That was 50 years ago, and it's still true.

I was talking to Myrlie Evers (Medgar's widow) yesterday, and she said, "I came home to be a part of the new Mississippi. I came home so we could get it right." I'm just on a big team of people who are trying to get it right and trying to put a positive spin on in, but no smoke and mirrors. No sweeping. Just telling it the way it is.

That's why I'm still here. (For) optimists like me, it doesn't take a lot of success to keep us motivated.