A Sign of Things to Come

Early one morning in Tupelo, Mississippi, a young man nailed his shingle on the old brick building across the street from the county courthouse. The sign read “Guy Mitchell, Lawyer” – a simple epigraph reflecting the character of the age. When the task was completed, the little assembly of shopkeepers, clerks and fellow lawyers that gathered to watch clapped with polite optimism. Then they set off to work. The year was 1904, and Guy Mitchell’s dusty little law office contained one idealistic Mississippi Law School graduate, a third-hand desk and an empty file cabinet. No one, perhaps not even Guy Mitchell himself, imagined that his final hammer tap would usher in more than a century of remarkable achievements.