ArtsNatchez’s October Artist of the Month rediscovers lifelong passion

After 45 years, Del Loy returns to the canvas
 
By Roscoe Barnes III
Natchez, MS, USA / ListenUpYall.com
Oct 6, 2026 | 12:37 PM

Artist Del Loy works on an oil painting in his studio. Loy's work blends elements of impressionism and realism. Photo courtesy of Del Loy. (Click on image to enlarge.)

NATCHEZ, Miss. -- Del Loy stopped painting in his early 20s to focus on his family and his career. Forty-five years later, he felt an urge he could not ignore: an unmistakable and unrelenting desire to pick up a brush and start painting again.
 
Since following that urge, he has found recognition and a ready audience for his work, while rediscovering a joy he once knew.
 
“A blank canvas invites me to explore,” Loy says. “While a sketch, photo reference, or live setting offers inspiring motifs, expressing emotion with pigment and texture is what drives my art.
 
“Whether building layers over time or getting it down all at once, painting is about interpreting the subject through composition and color. The goal is to inspire viewers to share my vision and enjoy the experience.”
 
Loy is ArtsNatchez Gallery's Artist of the Month for October. His paintings will be on display Saturday, October 10, at the gallery at 425 Main St., with a reception from 5 to 7 p.m. Refreshments will be served, and the event is open to the public.
 
Loy is an oil painter whose work blends elements of impressionism and realism. “I primarily do landscapes,” he says. “I do fine art. I enjoy doing Mississippi and Texas landscapes.”
 
Loy’s work as an impressionist is inspired in part by Claude Monet, whose image – and quotes – appear on the Del Loy Studio Facebook page.
 
On Saturday, visitors will see a selection of Loy’s work, including paintings of the Natchez Bluff with a steamboat in the background and various Mississippi landscapes. His centerpiece will be a large 36-by-52 painting of Stanton Hall, created specifically for this event.
 
Early career
 
Loy was born in Malvern, Arkansas, near Hot Springs. His family settled in Monroe, Louisiana, for a number of years before they moved to Natchez. Loy was in the 11th grade when he arrived in Natchez.
 
Loy says he grew up working in grocery stores. His father owned the Lewis’ Market chain, which grew from four stores in the Miss-Lou area to seven during his tenure.
 
After graduating from Natchez High School in 1971, Loy attended Gulf Coast Bible College in Texas, now Mid-America Christian University in Oklahoma City, where he earned a bachelor's degree in Christian ministry.
 
After completing his studies, Loy entered the ministry as a pastor. He served in California and Texas. He also engaged in church planting.
 
“I ministered for about 10 years and moved back to Natchez,” he says. “I went back to work for the family supermarket business and retired in 2020. Then I picked up my brushes again after 45 years.”
 
He and his wife Renae moved to Brookhaven five years ago to be near their son and family. Loy paints from his studio behind his home.   
 
Brown paper sacks
 
Loy is a self-taught artist who began drawing at an early age. “As a kid, I drew all the time on anything I could get my hands on,” Loy recalls. He recalls drawing on the backside of brown paper grocery bags. While in high school, he served as president of the art club.
 
Loy was 20 when he completed his first oil painting, and he still remembers the subject: a magnolia blossom. He next painted a portrait of his sister, Rhoda Gatson.
 
He painted for two or three years and then stopped.
 
“We started having kids and I put it aside. Family and career took over,” he says. But even then, he never lost interest in the arts. “When I was not painting, I was going to museums and reading books about art,” he says.
 
When asked what he likes most about painting, he says it comes from the soul.
 
“It’s something I should have done all my life. It’s something I feel compelled to do,” he says. “I spend 4 to 6 hours a day in my studio painting.”
 
Loy is a productive artist who skillfully juggles multiple projects at any given time. He explains how this is done in a note he shared on Facebook: “I work on up to five pieces at a time. While paint dries on one, I'll work on another.”
 
Awards and recognition
 
Since he returned to painting, Loy’s work has generated high praise. “The reaction from audiences has been quite good,” he says, noting he has sold several paintings since July and has sold many more through Facebook.
 
Loy is a member of the South Mississippi Art Association. In 2025, his entries in SMAA juried shows won two first place prizes in oil painting and in watercolor, one second place, and one honorable mention.
 
He held a solo exhibition of thirty-seven paintings at the Lucile Parker Galleria on the William Carey University campus in Hattiesburg in the fall of 2025 and will be the featured solo artist in Hattiesburg’s Festival South in 2027.
 
Loy says he’s pleased with his progress. Now in his early 70s, he hasn’t slowed down. In fact, his outlook may be summed up in a meme he posted on his Facebook page, which states, “Never underestimate an old man who still paints in his 70s.”
 
The quote makes Loy chuckle.
 
ArtsNatchez Gallery is open daily at 10 a.m. For more information, call 601-442-0043.
 

Untangling the birth date of Wharlest Jackson Sr.

Top of the Morning column published in The Natchez Democrat (Friday, October 2, 2026, page 4A) 
 

(Click on image to enlarge.)

Top of the Morning

 

Untangling the birth date of Wharlest Jackson Sr.

 

By Roscoe Barnes III

 

If you’ve done any reading or research on Wharlest Jackson Sr., the civil rights leader who died when his truck was bombed by the Ku Klux Klan on February 27, 1967, you have probably noticed different dates given for his birth. If you visit Minor Street at the site where his truck exploded, you’ll see a historical marker presenting 1937 as the year he was born.
 
Unfortunately, there’s quite a bit of conflicting information about the birth year of this important figure in Natchez’s civil rights history. This discrepancy is reflected not only on the marker, but also on his headstone and various websites.
 
In this column, I examine a discrepancy in the historical record concerning Jackson's date of birth and the information currently displayed on the historical marker honoring him.
 
Here are the different dates:
 
* The historical marker on Minor Street lists his birth year as 1937.
 
* The Find a Grave page lists his birth year as 1929.
 
 * His headstone at Natchez National Cemetery lists his birth year as 1930.
 
* The Veterans Legacy Memorial page also lists 1930.
 
In September 2025, I discussed these conflicting dates by phone with Denise Jackson Ford, Jackson’s daughter. She told me that her father’s birth certificate lists his year of birth as 1929, while his death certificate lists 1930.
 
According to Ford, his actual birthday was December 7, 1929, based on the birth certificate. Ford also explained the discrepancy on the historical marker on Minor Street. She said that 1937 was the birth year of her mother, Exerlena, and that it was mistakenly placed on the marker as Wharlest’s birth year.
 
If Wharlest was born on December 7, 1929, then he was 37 years old when he was killed on February 27, 1967, and not 36, as reported in some accounts.
 
Surprisingly, a number of highly respected sources continue to report that Jackson was 36 years of age when he died. One example appears in PBS Frontline's American Reckoning project. An article accompanying the documentary describes Jackson as a "36-year-old Korean War veteran and father of five." Another example appears in the 2015 Guardian article, “Families' wounds stay open as decades-old racist killings are left unsolved.” The article states: “Wharlest Jackson Sr died at 36 when a bomb went off under his car in 1967. His family is one of dozens still fighting for justice after tragedy.”
 
The age of 37 is also supported by the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice. In an overview of the case, the department describes Wharlest as a 37-year-old African American man who had recently been promoted to a new position at Armstrong Tire and Rubber Company. The department notes that the bombing occurred around 8 p.m. on February 27, 1967.
 
Wharlest had left the plant after working overtime on his day shift and had driven about six blocks when his pickup truck exploded. The FBI believes the bomb or other explosive device had been placed under the driver’s seat area outside the truck frame, according to the Justice Department.
 
The birth certificate information provided by Wharlest’s daughter, combined with the Justice Department’s account of the case, provides strong evidence that Wharlest Jackson Sr. was born on December 7, 1929.

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ROSCOE BARNES III, Ph.D., is the cultural heritage tourism manager at Visit Natchez.

Dread and Dreams: The Mississippi River and the Journey of Prince Ibrahima

(Click on image to enlarge.)

I was honored to speak about Prince Ibrahima at the Pilgrimage Garden Club Symposium held Saturday, September 26, 2026, at The Carriage House in Natchez, Mississippi. The program was held in memory of James McHenry Wade, curator of Longwood. Its theme was “The People, River, and History that Shaped Natchez.”

My presentation examines the Mississippi River as both a passage into bondage and a pathway toward freedom in the remarkable life of Prince Ibrahima, the West African Muslim prince who spent 40 years enslaved on a plantation near Natchez. His story reveals the river’s complex and often contradictory role, as a force that carried enslaved people into captivity and later became part of his journey toward liberation.

See the full presentation at this link:

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/414916514_Dread_and_Dreams_The_Mississippi_River_and_the_Journey_of_Prince_Ibrahima

(Click on image to enlarge.)

Wonderful time at 2nd Annual Pilgrimage Garden Club Symposium in Natchez, Miss.

Pictured here, from left, are Roscoe Barnes III, cultural heritage tourism manager at Visit Natchez; Becky Anderson, educator and historian at the Grand Village of the Natchez Indians; Dr. Maurice Nutt; and Dr. Terrel Williams, president of the Pilgrimage Garden Club. Anderson also spoke at the symposium. (Click on image to enlarge.)

On Saturday, September 26, 2026, I had the privilege of speaking at the Pilgrimage Garden Club Symposium, held in memory of the late James McHenry Wade. The theme was “The People, River, and History that Shaped Natchez.”

I was especially honored to meet Rev. Dr. Maurice J. Nutt, a Catholic priest and the great-great-grandson of Haller and Julia Nutt of Longwood.

It was a wonderful afternoon of sharing stories about the people and history that have helped shape Natchez.

Civil War slave trade topic of Tuesday meeting

Top of the Morning column published in The Natchez Democrat (Sunday, September 20, 2026, page 4A) 

(Click on image to enlarge.)

Top of the Morning

Civil War slave trade topic of Tuesday meeting

By Roscoe Barnes III

As the Civil War drew to a close, the trafficking of enslaved people continued.

Despite the many twists and turns of the American economy and changing landscape of cotton and the political upheaval across the country during the Civil War, human trafficking through the domestic slave trade continued right up to the end of the war.

To better understand the impact of chattel slavery, and the people caught up in the system, including the enslaved and the enslavers, Dr. Robert K.D. Colby has written a book that sheds new light on the subject.

Titled, “An Unholy Traffic: Slave Trading in the Civil War South” (Oxford University Press, 2024), the book explores the survival of the domestic slave trade during the Civil War. Colby uses wartime slave commerce to examine the endurance of Confederate nationalism, economic and social life during the war, and the contested onset of African American freedom.

Colby will discuss these issues – and others -- at the Tuesday, September 22, meeting of the Natchez Historical Society. The meeting will begin with a social at 5:30 p.m. and Colby’s presentation at 6 p.m. at the Historic Natchez Foundation at 108 S. Commerce St.

The event, part of the Grace MacNeil Lecture Program, is free and open to the public.

“An Unholy Traffic” is Colby’s first book, and it is especially relevant to Natchez because of the city’s history with the Forks of the Road, which was the second largest slave market in the Deep South during the antebellum period, as well as the role that the Mississippi River played in the domestic slave trade.

Natchez’s antebellum wealth was closely tied to the system of chattel slavery, making the city an important place from which to consider the larger story Colby tells.

The remarkable story of Prince Abdul Rahman Ibrahima may also come to mind when discussing the slave trade in Natchez. Ibrahima, a Muslim prince from West Africa, spent 40 years enslaved by Thomas Foster Sr. in the Natchez area before gaining his freedom in 1828.

Colby is associate director of the Center for Civil War Research and assistant professor of history in the Department of History at the University of Mississippi. Before taking this position at Ole Miss, he was a postdoctoral fellow in the Center for American Studies at Christopher Newport University.

Colby is a native of Virginia. He earned his bachelor’s degree from the University of Virginia and his master’s and doctoral degrees from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.

Colby’s book has been recognized as a significant contribution to the study of American history during the Civil War. It won the John L. Nau Book Prize from the Nau Center for Civil War History at UVA and also received the Nonfiction Award from the Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters.

“An Unholy Traffic” makes a powerful argument that suggests the slave trade provided a way for Confederates to keep their armies in the field.

Caroline E. Janney, author of “Ends of War: The Unfinished Fight of Lee's Army after Appomattox,” notes that Colby’s book presents a story that is centered on the persistence of the slave trade during the Civil War.

“Never believing that their cornerstone institution might be imperiled, both individual enslavers and the Confederate state continued to buy and sell the flesh of men and women up to and sometimes after the moment of defeat,” Janney writes. “This is essential reading for anyone wanting to understand both the grip slaveholding held on Confederacy and vice versa.”

For Natchez residents, Colby's work offers more than a study of the Civil War era. It provides a deeper understanding of how slavery continued to shape lives, economies and communities even as the Confederacy neared collapse, making his upcoming presentation particularly relevant to a city whose history is deeply intertwined with that story.

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ROSCOE BARNES III, Ph.D., is the cultural heritage tourism manager at Visit Natchez.

Jim Abbott, 'Paper Man,' and My Start in Journalism

A 1984 summer job at The Enterprise-Tocsin gave me my start as a news reporter and led to an unexpected mention in my former editor's memoir.

I'm pictured with David Rushing, center, and Jim Abbott. (Click on image to enlarge.)

I drove up to my hometown of Indianola on Wednesday, September 9, to see my friend Jim Abbott and celebrate the publication of his memoir, "Paper Man: Chasing the Truth in the Mississippi Delta" (2026, Nautilus Publishing), at the B.B. King Museum and Delta Interpretive Center. About 70 people attended the event, where Abbott was interviewed and reflected on his career in journalism in the Mississippi Delta.

 
Abbott is the former editor and publisher of The Enterprise-Tocsin. When he hired me as a reporter in 1984, he gave me my first job in journalism. I last saw him in the 1990s, so I was absolutely excited to see him again Wednesday. He is now 82.
 
I was also happy to see David Rushing, who was managing editor at the E-T. He and Jim took me under their wings and showed me the ropes of community journalism in general and investigative reporting in particular. I will always be grateful to these two men who gave me my start in journalism.
 
I was especially surprised — and honored — to discover that Jim mentions me in his book. He writes about the investigative stories I reported for the E-T during the summer of 1984, including the stories that earned a first-place award in investigative journalism from the Mississippi Press Association’s Better Newspaper Contest.
 
Jim’s account brought back some wonderful memories of my first summer as a newspaper reporter.

The page from "Paper Man" in which Jim writes about my first summer at The Enterprise-Tocsin. (Click on image to enlarge.)

Katherine Parker finds beauty from above

ArtsNatchez's September Artist of the Month to exhibit her aerial photography

by Mississippi Monitor | Sep 8, 2026 | Capital/River
By Roscoe Barnes III, Ph.D., Visit Natchez 

Photographer Katherine De'Na Parker, ArtsNatchez's Artist of the Month for September, poses with her aerial photograph of Longwood, one of her favorite pieces in the September 12 exhibit. (Click on image to enlarge.)

NATCHEZ, Miss. -- Katherine De’Na Parker has had a camera in her hands for as long as she can remember.
Born in New Orleans, she grew up in Slidell, Louisiana, and later Ellisville, Mississippi.
 
"My first camera was one of those little film point-and-shoot cameras we had in the 1980s," she recalls. "My mother was constantly telling me, 'Don't open that! You're going to expose the film!' Of course, I had absolutely no idea what she was talking about. I just wanted to know what was inside."
 
Since then, Parker has become a professional photographer known throughout Natchez for her bright smile, creative flair, and keen eye. She moves strategically from place to place at special events, photographing scenes and capturing portraits of individuals, families and groups.
 
When she's not taking photographs professionally, she uses her camera to create art.
 
Parker is ArtsNatchez Gallery's Artist of the Month for September. Her photography will be on display Saturday, September 12, at the gallery at 425 Main St. She will greet visitors during a free reception from 5 to 7 p.m. Refreshments will be served, and the event is open to the public.
 
‘Still in awe’
 
Parker says she was honored to be recognized for her photography, and she is still in awe. "There are so many extraordinarily talented artists associated with ArtsNatchez, and I am still very new to seeing myself as this kind of artist," she says.
 
Photography came naturally to her before she realized it could also become her art.
 
"To have ArtsNatchez recognize me as its September Artist of the Month, especially at this stage of that journey, is incredibly meaningful,” she says. "I am thankful to ArtsNatchez for giving me the opportunity to share work that, until now, largely existed inside my camera and my archives."
 
Although known for her work in public relations and studio photography, Parker says her specialty is aerial photography and capturing people, places and things in their most natural environments. She enjoys shooting images that depict movement while presenting candid storytelling about her subjects.
 
Most of the work represented in the ArtsNatchez exhibit comes from moments when she was either in a hot air balloon, an aircraft or on the river. “I love being in hot air balloons, helicopters, boats or aircraft and photographing the world while I am moving through it” she says. “There is nothing quite like it. People have actually asked whether some of my aerial photographs were taken with a drone. I tell them, ‘No. That was me trying not to drop my Canon out of a hot air balloon.’”

Her exhibit
 
Parker’s upcoming exhibit is titled “Reflections and Movement,” which aptly describes her body of work, some of which is already on display at ArtsNatchez. 
Much of the collection consists of aerial photography featuring architecture, wildlife, the Mississippi River and iconic Natchez landmarks. Among the featured works is an aerial view of Longwood, along with images of hot air balloons and their reflections.
 
Two of these pieces are titled "Reflection From My Balloon." They are different sizes, but they come from the same extraordinary experience, Parker says.
 
“My pilot was able to steady our balloon over a body of water long enough for me to photograph the reflection of our own hot air balloon below us,” she recalls. “You can see the balloon reflected in the water, but you can also see what appears to be the grass beneath the water. It gives the photograph an almost three-dimensional quality.”
 
Other photographs on display include inverted balloons. One of her favorites is the aerial photograph of Longwood, which allows one to see the top and sides of the structure and parts of the surrounding property.
 
“You can also see areas associated with the people who were enslaved there, and that part is difficult for me emotionally,” Parker says. “Longwood is beautiful architecture, but it is also history. History is not always comfortable. That property has stories within it that are beautiful, painful, complicated and important.”
 
Her inspiration
 
Parker was inspired by her mother to become a photographer. She says her mother pursued many creative endeavors over the years, including photography and modeling.
Parker began shooting professionally more than a decade ago while attending college. Her credentials include an associate degree in journalism from Jones County Junior College and a bachelor’s degree in journalism from the University of Southern Mississippi. She also completed graduate courses in corporate communications at Mississippi College.
 
In Parker’s view, a photograph is a tiny piece of history, and that’s one of the things she likes about her work – and her art. As a photographer, you capture a moment that will never happen exactly that way again, she says.
 
When it comes to cameras, Parker describes herself as a “Canon girl.” Her primary camera is a Canon EOS R mirrorless camera. Thanks to this camera, and the talent behind it, her work continues to grab attention while generating compliments.
 
“I am still getting used to people's reactions,” she says. “I have heard people describe my work as phenomenal and beautiful. I have found myself thinking, 'They're talking about my photograph. Mine? Wow, God. Just, wow!' That still blows me away.”
 
ArtsNatchez Gallery is open daily at 10 a.m. For more information, call 601-442-0043.