Talk:Mule Day

"Other aromas include hillbilly sweat and festering mule dung."
This seems to me to be vandalism. Removing "hillbilly" which is generally offensive slang and "festering" which is incorrect usage might make it more correct. However, I would still argue that the addition would be vandalism. sinneed (talk) 23:57, 27 June 2008 (UTC)

No longer a stub.
I think it is clear that this article is not longer a stub. If there is an objection to removing the stub note, my apologies. As I don't expect to spend a lot of time here after adding a couple of links and making a couple of language changes, I am removing the tag now. Of course, anyone who disagrees may simply undo that edit, which I will leave on its own for ease of reversion. sinneed (talk) 00:39, 28 June 2008 (UTC)

Citation - NYT
This appears on my browser view not to be working. If it really simply does not work, I am sorry, and quite at a loss as to why. Help? Anyone? sinneed (talk) 04:58, 28 June 2008 (UTC)

AHAH! Smackbot fixed it! Yay! sinneed (talk) 14:39, 1 September 2008 (UTC)

Good job
sinneed,

Thank you for cleaning up this page. Your improvements are very appreciated!

Cmart2112 (talk) 17:48, 1 July 2008 (UTC)

You are very welcome, Cmart2112! :) Glad I could help.  sinneed (talk) 14:41, 1 September 2008 (UTC)

Attendance?
There are no firm figures it appears. I see estimates in the local press of 100k to 200k. There was an old item here in the Wiki article that said "300,000" but it was unsourced. I attempted to cite the online version of the "Visions for Maury County" magazine, but the site has a spam-block against it. (ouch). Anyone have a source? sinneed (talk) 23:46, 1 September 2008 (UTC)

Copy/Paste - columbiatn.com
I am writing to the web site to see if I can secure permission to use the content, since the article is likely to accomplish purposes helpful to Columbia TN, but if it is not given I think much of this will have to be rewritten.sinneed (talk) 15:13, 22 December 2008 (UTC)

Instead, I gave the section that appeared to be copied a complete rewrite. sinneed (talk) 16:29, 22 December 2008 (UTC)

on Mule Day and race relations
The implication here in Wikipedia that Mule Day is just a festival to celebrate trading of mules is incomplete. It also had a racial component, which unfortunately seems to have been expurgated from all written history. I grew up in a white family (of poor farmers) in rural West TN in the 1950's and 1960's, and my father told us children more than once (as part of his home-spun, quiet efforts to combat the racism that was all around us) that the important fact of Mule Day was that it was the only day of the year when black men were invited and allowed to come into town. Yes, for the purpose of buying and trading mules. The white men would meet them in the town. Women did not attend. Other than on this day, black men were expected and required to keep to "their" section of town, which had an unfortunate name starting with N.

It seems that in my town, somewhere in the 40's or 50's, Mule day was replaced by a themed festival, with a carnival, a beauty contest, food tents, and a parade (which still included some horses and mules straggling through at the end). It is around this annual spring festival that both my parents would remind us of the origins of the festival as having been Mule Day, which they claim was also celebrated on the same day in many small towns throughout the South. Our festival was in early April.

That black men especially were required to stay away from areas of white occupation simply isn't talked about--but it should be. Even in my childhood, blacks were not allowed to work in the many factories around town. The only work black men could get was farm work, namely picking cotton by hand. Black women were sometimes hired (for low wages) as cooks, housekeepers or babysitters, but only if they were highly deferential ("kept their place", the white folks would say). This was also the time when black folks could not enter white businesses, at least not through the front door. They could go into the movie theater, but only via a separate entrance, and they had to sit in the balcony and keep quiet, so the white folks below didn't see them. This slowly began to change in the 1960's, but I left the area and I don't know how far integration actually has made it. My impression is that most neighborhoods in my home town are still entirely segregated by race.

In my lifetime, the town's population has changed little, but the percentage of blacks living in the town has halved--a sure sign that things are still very difficult for them there.

Certainly, the town of Columbia was one of hundreds of towns that formerly celebrated something called Mule Day. Columbia is just the only town that had the nerve to keep the name and try to pretend that it was not something to cringe at.Harborsparrow (talk) 13:26, 20 June 2021 (UTC)
 * that's includeable if you have what wiki calls a reliable source. MisawaSakura (talk) 20:20, 3 April 2024 (UTC)


 * Well, this applies in particular to all the Southern U.S. states. Maybe not out West, I cannot say.  And, I'm an original source.  Not many people are willing to talk about this publicly, and so I don't have a source.  It is truly sad that this kind of racist past gets covered up because no one wants to admit it publicly.  In private, the people who enforced that kind of segregation (and their like) are plenty vocal, but if a person still living there were to speak out about it, things would not go well for them.  In this way, Wikipedia's source requirements leave something to be desired.  I am willing to write this all down using my real name and publish it somewhere as a primary source (witness, I guess), but where? Harborsparrow (talk) 20:41, 6 April 2024 (UTC)