SHOW DESCRIPTION

Josh McManus has spent three decades working in post-industrial cities — Chattanooga, Detroit, Akron, New Orleans — and now he's brought that lens to Jackson, Mississippi. In this conversation, the urban strategist talks about JXN Rising, the community-driven process that produced more than 50 investable ideas for Jackson's future, and Better Together, the effort to bring architect Sambo Mockbee's personal archive of more than 300 artifacts back into public view for the first time in 25 years. McManus also makes the case for why Jackson is one of the most misunderstood cities in America, and why that might be its greatest asset. Equal parts urban theory and genuine affection for a city he keeps coming back to.

TRANSCRIPT

Note: Soul Sessions is produced as a podcast first and designed to be listened to. If you are able, we strongly encourage you to listen to the audio, which includes the emotion and inflection meant to be conveyed by human voice. Our transcripts are created using AI and human transcribers, but may contain errors. Please check the corresponding audio before quoting.

Intro

Every morning when Josh McManus puts on his overalls, he says it's a meditation on where he came from — a mill town in North Georgia where, if the factory was doing okay, everybody was doing okay. He's carried that calculus into every city he's worked in since. Hey, it's Paul Wolf with the front row seat to conversations on culture from Jackson, Mississippi. We call our podcast Soul Sessions. It's the people, places, and events that make the City With Soul shine. On today's show, we're talking with urban strategist Josh McManus — partner at M|B|P, co-creator of JXN Rising, and the driving force behind Better Together, the effort to bring architect Sambo Mockbee's personal archive back into public view for the first time in 25 years. Josh has spent three decades working in post-industrial cities from Chattanooga to Detroit, and now he's turned his attention to Jackson — not as an outsider with answers, but as someone who keeps showing up with tools and a blueprint.

Growing Up in Mill Town Georgia

Paul

You have described your career kind of in chapters, Chattanooga, then Detroit, and then a deepening focus on the deep South. So I want you to walk us through that arc and kind of what drew you to post industrial cities in the first place and what does it feel like when a city actually turns?

Josh

Yeah. So it started for me growing up in a small town in North Georgia, a couple thousand people, and it was built around a Goodyear factory. And if the mill was doing okay, then we were doing okay as a set of citizens, black, white, I wouldn't say any of us were rich, but you know, poor, more poor, less poor. That was sort of the town I grew up in. And that stuck with me.Which is, you know, every place is either gaining or losing. And that's what led me to Chattanooga and sort of chapter one in the new South. That work I learned from the folks that had already started there and how to stop population loss. That took me to Detroit, which led to Cleveland, Akron and surrounding areas and deployed what I'd learned in Chattanooga to try to be helpful.

And when I say try to be helpful, I'm usually, you know, coming into work that's gone on for at times 50 to 75 years. So my helpful is usually just as a fresh eyes, outside eyes and different perspective, but try to be really cognizant of all that has gone on, all that will go on and that I'm a small piece of any puzzle that I joined into. And after helping get population loss stopped in Detroit — we've three years now, 24, 25, and 26 have all been gaining years inside the city limits — I started thinking more about where the fastest population loss is in the country. So that's Memphis, Jackson, New Orleans. And also wanted to get back home towards the South. Missed trying to find a good biscuit. And so...

Paul

Hahaha

Josh

So that's what brought me back. You know, I've been coming to Jackson for a long time because my college roommate is from Jackson. We remain good friends. And so there's always been reason to stop by, but for the last year, I've been stopping by a little bit more often.

The Meaning Behind the Overalls

Paul

Okay. Two things in that: you talk about your small town Georgia upbringing. And we've talked about this before, but I have to ask the overalls. You're in overalls every time we see you — either white, they're black, they're blue. I, you probably have them in every color under the rainbow, but I love the story about what those overalls really mean to you.

Josh

Yeah, I mean, the quick answer is Thomas Edison said opportunity is missed by most because it's dressed in overalls and looks like work. And the little bit short answer is I remember distinctly, you know, when I, the first pair of Carhartts I bought with money that I had made mowing grass and busing tables. And I remember putting them on and the feeling of what it was like to, you know, to wear clothes that I had paid for myself and to become one with the grown men that were around me. And I've never lost that feeling. And so every morning when I put on overalls, you know, it's a little bit of a meditation on where I come from.

Paul

That is absolutely beautiful. Second question might get you in trouble. You said you're searching for a great biscuit. Have you found one in Jackson?

Josh

Oh man, I don't know that that's a first date question, Paul. Everybody's biscuit is important to them. And I've been making my way around, you know, my favorite meal and where I hide out most often is at Bully's. And so I'll say wonderful things about their biscuits and their cornbread.And, you know, Saturday morning I had that New York Times biscuit at Native Coffee. And I've had biscuit at Broad Street. Like I go all around looking for them. Actually, yesterday my biscuit was — I had half and half. I had half a biscuit at Sugar's and half a biscuit at Hen and Egg. And all of those have their high points.So I'm doing okay on my biscuit search inside of Jackson.

Paul

We'll let them all continue to duke it out.

Josh

Hahaha.

What Separates Cities That Turn From Those That Don't

Paul

So you've worked in Chattanooga and Detroit, Akron, Ohio, New Orleans, and even Cleveland, Ohio — places that I think most outsiders have probably written off at one point or another. So what is the common thread you find in cities that are actually making progress versus the ones who are kind of just going through the motions?

Josh

You know, I believe that what happened to American cities is something that began actually during World War II. And as you came through World War II, all of a sudden you had these automobiles, you started building these big freeways, and that changed the business model for cities, which then allowed for a whole lot of other things to happen, a lot of things that were driven by social causes — you had white flight slash resource flight, all sorts of things that happen in these cities. The difference between the ones that start to change and those that don't is at some point you stop fighting within yourself and start fighting with the larger global economy to try to position yourself accordingly. And Detroit, when I arrived in 2010, we were still very much fighting with ourselves and losing population really fast. And at some point there became, not everybody got along, but there became this idea of, we are gonna get down to the last person out, turn off the lights, unless we start taking some risks to work together.

Big Vision, Small Projects: The Redeemer's School

Paul

You said the next big thing — and I love this — is actually a million little things. And that real change comes from big vision, but small projects, not big vision and big bets. So can you give us an example of a small project that you've watched that you think has punched way above its weight?

Josh

Yeah, well, I'll tell you one that I'm excited about in Jackson. And we think about this from the grass tips and the grassroots — grass tips is, you know, you need a big plan right now. I think you've got something around 7,000 blighted properties in Jackson. It's going to take a big plan. And right now those are coming down to three, four or five at a time. But in Detroit, we had 40,000 blighted properties and we had to essentially design a whole ecosystem of how you take down that blight and figure out what's making that blight, stopping that blight. And so that's on the big plan in the spectrum. At the grassroots side, you need to go block by block.

And so the block by block that I'm most intrigued with right now is Jackson Public Schools didn't have enough students for the Chastain Middle School. They divested that, they sold it to the Redeemer congregation. Redeemer congregation stepped up and said, we will take our school that we've been nurturing here, which is a private Christian school where the bulk of the model is to make sure the tuition's affordable to all the students and the students come from immediately in the neighborhood by and large. And so that...

Spending time on that site, 21 acres there in the intersection of Broadmoor and Broadmeadow, and seeing what's coming to life in that gives me a tremendous amount of hope for what's possible for Jackson's future. The more block by block projects that happen alongside of some big plans, I think the better things can be. And look, there's people that have been doing it this way for a long time. I have great admiration for the work of the Worker's Center for Social Entrepreneurship. They have a big plan for a thousand rooftops, but then they go house by house and try to fix things one by one. And so that model is already working by folks that have long been pulling the oars in Jackson. And I just hope there can be more of it.PaulYeah, this is a beautiful project that really is going to revitalize a community in Jackson. And I think we're looking forward to seeing what comes out of that.

Sambo Mockbee and the Lens He Brought to Jackson

Paul

Jackson wasn't probably the next logical step after Detroit, or maybe it was, but you've been drawn into the work here partly through your connection to a renowned architect, a Jackson native and co-founder of Auburn's Rural Studio, Sambo Mockbee. And Sambo believed that design carried a moral responsibility. So I want to ask how did his thinking shape the lens that you have brought to Jackson before you ever even got here?

Josh

Yeah, I encountered Mr. Mockbee, I believe when he was on Charlie Rose, which would have been in the nineties. And I was thinking about what I wanted to do with my life. And I had always thought I wanted to be an architect. And here I saw this architect who wasn't using architecture to build monuments to wealth in major cities. He was using architecture to teach students to build housing with those who most need it in Hale County, Alabama, one of the least resourced counties in the country. And Mockbee showed us all what you can do with design to benefit humanity. And so I've always tried to learn from his work, following his footsteps.

So when I ended up back in Jackson working, and ran into one of his four children and then started meeting the rest of the family, looking at his archives and recognizing his art, his large format artwork, and realizing that it's not being seen by a broader public — I wanted to help out on that. And just one other thing I want to tell you about Mockbee is, you know, he had a personal transformation early in life where he had been raised in the Jim Crow South, and probably had been taught that people were not better together. And by his own reason and rationalization as he enlisted in the army and was there shoulder to shoulder with white and black soldiers, he recognized that we are all better together and put that message into everything that he did, his artwork, his teaching and his architecture. And so I think to carry that message forward is a very important job to do.

Better Together: Bringing the Archive to Light

Paul

In this passion project for you, you're leading the effort to bring his personal archive out — more than 300 artifacts, many of them never publicly exhibited — and it's actually called Better Together. His daughter Carol has always had people asking, where is your dad's work? So why has it taken 25 years and why does right now feel like the right time?

Josh

Yeah, well, the Mockbee family — Jackie, Mr. Mockbee's widow — has preserved his legacy with impeccable detail. And all of his children and Mrs. Mockbee have worked for years to preserve this. And here 25 years since the time of his passing, he passed at age 53 of leukemia. And we really lost a giant at a high point in his career. He was an AIA Gold Medal winner. He was a MacArthur genius. I think one of the only to ever pull out both of those feats. And the reason that his work is not yet seen in the public eye — I don't think that the family has been anything but working and working at putting it together and preserving it. It's now all put together. And I believe it's a moment in a broader culture where we are asking ourselves, are we better together, in so many different ways? I think that if you believe in intervention from the beyond, which I do, that this is the time right now to bring forward this message of better together.

Paul

You know, Mockbee wrote that the initial sketch is always an emotion, not a concept. His journals, his drawings, his correspondence — you've described what's in this collection as intentional down to every single detail. So what has sitting with that material done with the way you think about your own work in Jackson?

Josh

Yeah, I think that I see in his art, in his architecture, in his found object collections, a man who was wrestling with the gap between reality and what could be and trying to find ways to do something about that. And I find solace in that, in that that is old work that is now new work that is probably forever work. And I believe that if he was able to do it and had 30 years head start on me, then I can call and hold my work to that as well. And I believe that the co-founders of the project, which are Carol Mockbee and Jennifer Bonner, feel the same way. And we've had the tremendous support of the rest of the Mockbee family as we push all of this forward.

JXN Rising: 300 Voices, 50 Ideas

Paul

Let's talk about another big project that you have been involved in here in Jackson, the JXN Rising project. The city of Jackson commissioned this and brought together the principals, including you, to have 300 participants produce over 50 investable ideas. What is the detail around that? How did that come about? And what's been the most surprising thing to come out of that process? Maybe something that Jackson really surprised you with.

Josh

Yeah. Well, JXN Rising was initiated by the mayor with some money from the Kellogg Foundation. And it was a very simple task — hey, we need some big ideas for how we might ask for help from corporations and large scale philanthropy, because you can't just ask a corporation or philanthropy to give a check to a city, it doesn't work that way. You have to give them a proposal. And the mayor was like, we need some proposals. And he didn't want to just have one, two or three people do that. He was like, let's invite as many people as possible. We invited over 500 people, over 300 people were able to participate. Some from organizations, some from neighborhood organizations, some just independent citizens from all over the city, every corner of the city. They thought about things like blight, things like public safety, things like parks. And they came up with these 50 investable ideas that are at jxnrising.com. I think if you'll go look at those ideas, it's all pretty surprising and amazing — because these are not my ideas. As an outsider, it's not appropriate for me to be dictatorial about anything. What I was willing to do on that project was facilitate, just help referee the tables to be like, okay. And there were 500 ideas, which are actually in the long format report, all 500 ideas are on there. And the groups used democracy voting to get down to these 50 ideas. But what most surprised me is how far we could go with fairly small investment.

And so, you know, I think with $10 million, you could put some big dents in blight and some big dents in some neighborhood parks revitalization, some big dents in supporting neighborhood organizations, both in neighborhoods that have them right now and those that don't. Across Jackson, we have those needs right now. We have these small format capital needs. We've got libraries that need air conditioners right now. We've got parks that have dead trees in them. Those don't have to cost huge amounts of money. So I hope that anybody that's tied to a philanthropy, a corporation, will really take time to look at the stuff that's on jxnrising.com. It's open source. It's there to be taken.

And also if you get in there and you don't see an idea that you like, there's still an open submission form so you can submit more ideas. I also want to say about JXN Rising — it's a three month project that happened in the fourth quarter of last year. There were four team members who worked on it as contractors. We did that work. We turned in our work on December 21st and now it's out there for any institution, any organization to take and run with it. There is not a JXN Rising team, there's not a staff, it's not its own 501C3. It was a project at the Community Foundation. And so it's there for the taking if you want it. And I do hope that a lot of good comes from that work that all those people poured their time into.

What to Do in Jackson: A Love Letter to the City With Soul

Paul

Josh, I've got to put on my tourism hat for just a moment here. And if you had to sell the city, thinking about all the assets that the city has to someone who's saying, should I make a trip there? Should I check it out? Should I explore it? What do you love about Jackson? What would you tell people to do?

Josh

Yeah, there are so many things to love about Jackson. For me, I'm a sucker for the best bite. And the food culture in Jackson is just incredible. I think if you are a self-respecting Southerner, that you should make a pilgrimage trip to Bully's. I think it's — and it's not the only soul food spot in Jackson. I spend time moving my way across a number — but that's a storied location with an incredible civil rights history. And go out from there. And I can take you from a storied institution like that to, you know, I had one of the best bites that I've had in the last 20 years — the vegetarian, he doesn't call it vegetarian lasagna, but what is vegetarian lasagna that Chef Chaz Lindsay is making at Pulito right now is really, really special. And I spend most of my time in New Orleans, a place that's known as arguably the best food city in the United States. What Chaz is doing there is incredible. And on and on and on.

I can tell you between Bully's and Pulito, between the old school and always been there to the brand new, there's everything in between. And so come to eat, stay to learn about American cultural production. And what do I mean by American cultural production? American cultural production is the economy of what has made creativity in the United States. And so if you start tracking back writing, if you start tracking back film, if you start tracking back music, if you start tracking back visual arts — Mississippi is the fountain well of American cultural production. And you can start right in Jackson, not just the Two Mississippi museums, but going to the homes of individual artists, going to the homes of civil rights activists, legends, people that we should all lift up the names of and know their stories.

And so come for the food, stay for the history of American cultural production. And then in the in-between times, find a place that is, in my opinion, really misunderstood even by itself. And I was telling a group the other day, I took a walk all of State Street, like from up at Tougaloo all the way down to downtown. And the amazing life that exists — I don't know what that was, five, six, seven miles — the amazing set of things, the different vignettes on life and cultural production is incredible. And I don't think that Jacksonians, you know, sometimes we're so busy talking about what isn't working, we miss the opportunity to observe all that is working, all the small businesses, all of the cultural institutions.

You know, where I started that walk from — Tougaloo College — one of the secret best art collections probably in the world is there, that came because of the Civil Rights Movement. I mean, with every new day that I spend in Jackson, I find something new that's compelling, intriguing, that the rest of the world doesn't have. I, in some ways — and Detroit was similar — but I say a prayer that one day Jackson can see itself, because there's so much there to love. Sometimes in, you know, social media echoes this, but sometimes we spend way too much time talking about what's not right and should spend more time talking about what is.

Jackson Has Become Personal

Paul

So good. You have said the heart of the Mockbee project needs to stay right where his heart was — Mississippi. You've said a region cannot succeed with a hole in its heart. So it sounds to me like for you, Jackson has become really personal. And so what's the version of this city that you're working toward and what would tell you that all that work has been worth it?

Josh

So, you know, I'm a little boy from North Georgia. Jackson is not my home and Jackson is a lot of people that I meet every day's home. And so I'm always contemplative about how to answer a question like this. But my work has been about helping. And in helping, what I hope to see is that we reverse the trends of economic mobility for lifelong residents. Those numbers are studied by Dr. Raj Chetty at Harvard Opportunity Insights Laboratory. And how do we reverse the economic opportunity for lifelong residents? We provide pathways to prosperity. You have to do that through stabilizing housing prices, providing pathways to homeownership for those that don't own right now. You do that by helping create an environment where small businesses can easily be started. And then you have to create an environment where the GDP and the population start to grow again so that, for people that are lifelong residents, they can offer their children a better life than they had before them. And I think that's not just a Jackson problem, that's an American problem right now. So to the extent that I can help in Jackson, the intent is always to stop the population loss, to grow the GDP inside the city, and to try to impact the upward economic mobility starting with lifelong residents.

Tools and a Blueprint: Empowering Jacksonians

Paul

You know, when you first started coming to Jackson or in more recent times came to Jackson, you sat around tables with concerned citizens and people here who wanted to see Jackson be a better place. And I remember one of the ladies at the table looked at you — and I'm kind of paraphrasing here — but she said, don't come to town and give us hope white Jesus, and then leave us with nothing. And I remember your answer to that was very specific. You said, I'm going to bring you some tools and a blueprint. And if I get hit by a bus, you can do these things. You are empowering Jacksonians to shape their own destiny.

Josh

Yeah, I've had people say to me, they've raised the issue of, you know, outsider — and one of my favorite articles that's ever been written was Teju Cole's article about the white savior industrial complex. And I personally understand the long history of places with problems that were created by people that are in a body that looks a lot like mine. And I spend a lot of time trying to hold a mirror up to myself to ask the question, you know, should I just go back home? And should I just have a normal job?

But this work for me for the last 30 years has been a calling. And it's a calling built on sharing open source information. And I won't help where I'm not asked to help. And I do my best to learn when I make mistakes. And most importantly, I know that anywhere that I'm sharing and helping, I'm standing on the shoulders of giants who have worked to keep things where they are in that moment. But it has over time proven out to me that sometimes a fresh-eyed perspective and sometimes some information that was picked up in a place that is far away, but has similar problems — the things that happened in Detroit aren't that radically dissimilar from what's happening in Jackson. That sometimes those things can be useful. And that's why I'll probably keep showing up if I'm asked to.

Outro

That is Josh McManus, whose story is about what happens when you refuse to confuse movement with progress — and keep showing up anyway, in overalls, with open-source ideas and a willingness to be corrected. Josh came to Jackson through a college roommate, keeps coming back because of what he finds here, and now he's working on three of the most meaningful long-game projects in the city: JXN Rising, with its 50 investable ideas available right now at jxnrising.com; Better Together, the effort to bring Sambo Mockbee's archive of more than 300 artifacts into public view through the Mockbee Better Together Fund at the Community Foundation for Mississippi; and The Redeemer's School at the former Chastain campus — 21 acres being reimagined as a school and community hub for Broadmoor and beyond. We'll have links to all three in our show notes at visitjackson.com/soulsessions.

This podcast is produced by Visit Jackson, the destination organization for Mississippi's capital city. Our executive producers are Jonathan Pettus and Dr. Ricky Thigpen, and I'm our managing editor. There's always something great going on in Jackson, and we keep up with it at visitjackson.com.

I'm Paul Wolf, and you've been listening to Soul Sessions.

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