Macy B. Hart

Macy B. Hart’s parents, owners and operators of the largest department store in their small Southern town, would gather their four children and drive the 160-mile round trip to bring them to Sunday School every Sunday morning. Every Jewish holiday they found somewhere for the family to be a part of the Jewish community. Every Friday they said the blessings over the candles, the wine, and the bread (challah was not available) to acknowledge that they were Jewish, even if they were the only Jewish family in the town of Winona, Mississippi. Their efforts made a lasting impression.

Macy found himself at the Henry Jacobs Camp as its new director four days after he graduated from the University of Texas. When he arrived, the grass hadn’t been cut, the buildings were there but not furnished. No program had been laid out for this brand-new camp for Jewish kids. He didn’t know where to start. So he jumped on a tractor in his nice clothes, excited to be there, and mowed the grass. In the heat his glasses fell off. He mowed down the glasses. His plan was to stay a few years and then go to law school. But he’s been there for almost 30 years.

At camp today there is a map that shows synagogues and temples that no longer exist because of population shifts in Mississippi, Arkansas, Louisiana, Tennessee, and Alabama. The vanishing landscape sparked his passion to found a museum to record and preserve these pieces of history. On a trip to Vicksburg in 1971 Macy Hart saw a beautiful wooden ark in a sanctuary and took immediate action. The Temple had already been abandoned, and he expressed interest in taking the ark back with him. A few months later, he received a letter offering him that ark. The building was to be demolished in two weeks. Macy took that ark and began the Museum of the Southern Jewish Heritage. Today the Vicksburg Ark sits in a prominent place in the museum’s sanctuary. He continues to add precious objects – a ner tamid (perpetual candle) from Port Gibson, Mississippi. Carved pulpit chairs from Canton, near Jackson, sit next to silver spice boxes from Pine Bluff, Arkansas. Macy explains, “We don’t want to be just a treasure chest of hundreds of objects. We want to recapture the history of and educate people about the Southern Jew.”