FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE--------------------------------------------

New Orleans, Louisiana. Friday October 15, 2005

TOMMY JOHNSON FAMILY DENIED RIGHT TO PLACE HEADSTONE
THREE YEARS AFTER DEDICATION. ---- MISSISSIPPI TOUT$ BLUES HERITAGE BUT TAKES NO ACTION TO AID FAMILY.

Three years after The Mount Zion Memorial Fund and the family of Tommy Johnson unveiled a headstone memorial in Crystal Springs, in 2001, the 600 lb., beautifully engraved, granite slab still sits in the Crystal Springs Library, miles from the cemetery where Johnson is buried.

The Copiah County Board of Supervisors, charged by law with maintaining the Warm Springs Methodist Cemetery because of its official historic status, has denied all access to the cemetery where dozens of African American gravesites are located, by refusing to reclaim a road which was “given” to a local farmer under dubious legal circumstances.

For the last three years the Mount Zion Memorial Fund has worked with Vera Johnson Collins, Tommy Johnson’s niece, through a series of legal roadblocks and delays and the State of Mississippi, fully aware of the situation, has done absolutely nothing.

The “Year of the Blues” has come and gone, and the Tommy Johnson Memorial, paid for by Ms. Bonnie Raitt, has remained on display at the Public Library, in mute testimony to the true history of Mississippi’s racial nullification, failure and neglect.

The Mount Zion Memorial Fund and the family of Tommy Johnson is asking that any and all groups or individuals who would like to support the effort to place Tommy Johnson’s headstone on his grave and to re-open this historic cemetery please write Governor Haley Barbour at  P.O. Box 139 Jackson, MS 39205
And demand that the State of Mississippi intervene immediately to correct this moral wrong and to finally do something honorable to get right with the Blues.

Skip Henderson             Butch Ruth

For more information please contact:
Skip Henderson, P.O. Box 3872, New Orleans, La. 70177 or email: mysterycity@earthlink.net <mailto:mysterycity@earthlink.net>
or Butch Ruth at: butch7480@yahoo.com <mailto:butch7480@yahoo.com>