Fix that clarifies bill gaither too, the gaither displays mayor told the crew. Melton told the woman someone would be coming around to take her down to the private University Club for supper. "You just go eat whatever you want to eat and charge it to my account," he said. "Thank you, Frank. "Melton walked back out to the street and turned his attention to finding his fugitive. He took aside a tattooed man with hard eyes and a white undershirt. They had a heated conversation some distance from the TV cameras. Then the man stomped off, agitated. "That's Maurice," Melton said, describing him as another former murder suspect who had recently been acquitted "I raised Maurice. He'll deliver [Sullivan] to me. "The denizens of Wood Street looked on as if this kind of thing happens all the time -- because it does. *Many Jacksonians are happy to see someone out in the streets where the trouble is. "Oh, he's great," said Kimberly Green, 24, as she sat on a Wood Street porch. "The last mayor, he never came out and did stuff like this. ""He's got people's attention about the crime issue," said Jay Schimmel, the owner of Schimmel's, a gourmet restaurant in the gentrifying Fondren District. "The normal way of doing things hasn't yielded results. "Jackson, Mississippi's largest city, was burned by the Union Army in 1863, but it retains hints of its antebellum past: A plaque on the white-columned City Hall notes that it was built by slaves.
These days, the central city is a sleepy place, and residents have been impatient with its modest strides toward urban renewal -- especially compared with other Southern cities like Birmingham, Ala. , and Atlanta. Civic leaders say some of the problem is the poor reputation the city earned during the civil rights era: This is where the Freedom Riders were arrested in 1961, and where, two years later, civil rights leader Medgar Evers was murdered by a white supremacist. Jackson also has been hobbled by white flight since 1970, when the U. S Supreme Court forced Mississippi schools to integrate bill and gloria gaither . From 1980 to 2000, the white population in Jackson fell from 52% to 28%. But during last year's mayoral campaign, the main issue was crime Incumbent Harvey Johnson Jr gaither vocal band . -- Jackson's first black mayor -- argued in the primary that it had decreased since he took office in 1997 gaithers . The statistics largely bore him out. For many voters, however, that wasn't enough: According to the FBI, the violent crime rate in 2004 was still about 50% higher than the national average. Melton charged that the old regime was painting an overly rosy picture of Jackson and pointed to vast tracts of urban blight. It was a message that resonated with Jackson's remaining whites, but also with inner-city blacks impatient over the continuing chaos in their neighborhoods gaither homecoming . After defeating Johnson in the Democratic primary, Melton won the general election with 88% of the vote. "Frank was really elected by the black have-nots," said Mark McCreery, a businessman and political consultant who volunteered on the Melton campaign. "And what did he talk about? The fact that everybody should have the right to be safe in their homes and their neighborhoods. "*Now all the mayor had to do was wait for Maurice to deliver the fugitive. In the meantime, Melton pointed the caravan in the direction of the Christian Brotherhood public housing complex.
Moms sat on stoops, men hung around in oversized football jerseys, and little kids rode bikes in circles bill gloria gaither . The sun had begun to sink. The mayor jumped out of the RV, cops and cameras behind him, and walked toward a group of kids They scattered. "Oh, don't go running," he yelled after them guy penrod . "You gonna talk to me. "Melton homed in on one young man Bill Gaither - gaither . "What's up, big guy?" Melton said, putting his arm around the boy "Why are your eyes red? Just tell the truth gaither music . What was it? A blunt? About an hour ago? And you're 18?"The boy confessed to smoking marijuana the gaithers . The mayor said he wouldn't bust him, because he was being honest. "If you want something to do, I can put you in Public Works," Melton said "I don't want to lose you. Fair enough? If you ever need help with that problem, call me. "Melton grew up in Houston's historically black 5th Ward neighborhood. His mother and father raised him with a stern hand, keeping him out of trouble and setting him on a path to college.
He worked his way up at a regional broadcasting company, becoming a manager and part owner That career brought him to Jackson in the mid-1980s bill & gloria gaither . Bill Gaither tickets It also made him wealthier than he could have ever imagined. He says it is a sense of guilt that drives him to walk the streets in search of lost kids, to invite them to live in his mansion with the indoor swimming pool and home theater straight out of "MTV Cribs. "He and his wife, Ellen, raised two children and sent them to college at the University of Texas His wife lives in Texas too, at their second home gaither dvd . Melton spends most of his time these days in the Jackson mansion with seven young men he is raising gaither vocal band music . He calls each of them "son. ""It's just what I do best," he said. It was dark now, and still no Sullivan So the caravan kept rolling gaither dvds . Melton smoked a cigarette and waved to the people ambling up the sidewalks. You watch how they respond to me, he said. The pedestrians waved back, some enthusiastic, some bemused. "Hey Frank!"The mayor traded ribald jokes with an older woman looking for a boyfriend. He took a tattered business card from a man with chipped teeth who was looking for a job hanging drywall.
On Lamar Street, he told a young man named Corey to stay out of trouble. "I can't search you in front of the media," he said to Corey, as the cameras rolled . "They'll make a big deal of it. "He stopped another teenager ambling down the sidewalk in an oversized Tupac T-shirt "Pull ya pants up on ya ass," Melton said gaither quartet . "Get them pants up . "He spent a half-hour sitting with homeless men in an empty lot downtown, asking them how he could help solve their problems gaither gospel series . He stopped at the house of a single mother named Linda McCloud, who was worried about her teenage son Bill Gaither - gaithernet . "He wants to do right," McCloud said . "But all of his friends are either on drugs or want to sell drugs. "A TV reporter caught up with Melton and asked him for an update on the Sullivan manhunt. We're still looking, the mayor told the viewers at home Bill Gaither . The caravan rolled on. The teenage work crew watched "Black Hawk Down" on the Mobile Command Center's widescreen TV.