September 17, 2002
Grisham donates Belfry for African-American cultural center
Groups seek $600,000 for restoration costs
by Lucy Schultze
The Oxford EAGLE
Weathered and worn after nearly a century in existence, an
Oxford landmark is set to gain new life as a meeting place and
cultural center for the African-American community.
In a deal finalized last week, author John Grisham has
donated the Belfry building at 710 Jackson Avenue to the
Oxford-Lafayette County Heritage Foundation. That group plans to give
the building to the Oxford Development Association, an
African-American community organization, as soon as the ODA has
secured tax-exempt status.
"This is just like a dream for us to get the Belfry
building," said ODA President Cynthia Parham. "The dream of ODA has
always been to have a place to meet, a place to keep important papers
and artifacts and a place to tutor our children."
There may be no more appropriate place for people to gather
and history to be preserved than the Belfry building, which stands as
a point of pride and symbol of freedom for the African-American
community.
Built in 1910 as Burns Methodist Episcopal Church, it rests
on the site where ex-slaves first built their own house of worship,
organized in 1869 as Sewell Methodist Church. Their descendants in
the Burns congregation worshiped at that site until 1973, when space
constraints prompted a move to a bigger building on Molly Barr Road.
The Belfry was then sold and converted to office space.
Grisham purchased it in 1993 to use it as his Oxford office and
intended to renovate it. The author, who now lives in
Charlottesville, Va., later decided not to renovate the building.
With a prime location just steps from the Oxford Square, the
property was attractive to developers who were eager to take the
Belfry off his hands. But as preparations were made to close
Grisham's Oxford office earlier this year, his secretary Penny
Pynkala said the hopes of the black community were "in the back of my
mind."
"Till the end of time, I wanted to save the Belfry," said the
Oxford native. "I've seen too many buildings in Oxford torn down."
Pynkala provided a link between the author and the Heritage
Foundation, whose membership includes her brother, Jim Pryor. The
foundation is a non-profit group dedicated to the preservation,
restoration and stewardship of local historical assets like the
Belfry.
"We knew that a developer was very interested and we were
fearful it would be torn down," said Maralyn Bullion, president of
the Heritage Foundation. "We also knew that the members of ODA had
wanted it for a long time."
Gerald Walton, chairman of the Belfry committee for the
Heritage Foundation, wrote to Grisham in early June offering to hold
the building until it could be transferred to the ODA. He soon
received a favorable reply from the author, who said he wanted to
make sure the Belfry was preserved.
The deed transferring the property to the Heritage Foundation
was signed by Grisham on Aug. 22 and filed with the Lafayette County
Chancery Clerk last Wednesday.
Walton and others are now working on a grant proposal seeking
$500,000 from the Mississippi Department of Archives and History for
the restoration of the building. The grant requires a 20 percent
match - $100,000 - to be raised from private sources.
The building is eligible for the grant after being designated
last month as a Mississippi Landmark, Bullion said. It is already
listed on the National Register of Historical Places, and an effort
is in the works to have it named Oxford's first local landmark under
the city's recently revised Preservation Ordinance, she said.
Still to be determined is a fund-raising strategy for the
restoration, which will likely be a collaboration between ODA and the
Heritage Foundation. The ODA's president says she's confident the
money will be raised with no problem.
"I'm praying that once this community and other communities
find out, everybody will open their arms to us," Parham said. "We are
hoping not only the minority community but also the entire
Oxford-Lafayette community and surrounding counties will get excited."
Parham bases her confidence on the reputation of ODA, which
plans to use the Belfry as its base of operations. Founded in 1970 by
the Rev. Wayne Johnson, the 200-member organization serves as a
network of support and encouragement within the black community.
"The organization speaks for itself," Parham said. "So many
of the businesses and entrepreneurs here will already know where we
stand. We are committed to doing whatever we have to do to make this
dream come true."
As for the genesis of the effort to reclaim the Belfry,
Parham credits community leader and historian Susie Marshall, who
proposed the idea in a 1999 letter to Grisham and has been working
toward it ever since.
For her and many others, the Belfry is brimming with
potential - as a physical home for the ODA, a meeting space for other
groups, and a place to display photographs, letters and artifacts
that tell the story of local African Americans since Reconstruction.
But the building will need a great deal of work before it is
ready to take on its new life, according to assessments by architect
Tom Howorth, who is working on plans to restore the Belfry.
"The building is in pretty bad condition," he said. "It has a
deteriorating roof and deteriorating masonry. The wood studs behind
the brick are rotten, so the whole building will need to be carefully
shored, restructured and refinished."
Howorth said the building will be gutted and reconstructed,
replacing the plumbing, wiring, heating and air conditioning systems
and installing new sheetrock inside.
"It's an ambitious project, but it's also a worthy one," he
said. "It's an important building and it adds a lot of character to
the town. I'm hopeful we'll be able to save it."