The headline leapt from the yellowed page and pulled my mind on a momentary d/jˆ vu trip: May Take 15 Days To Reach Miners Trapped In Mine Blast.

Search teams hacked with hand tools Tuesday into the debris clogging entrances to a coal mine where a searing methane gas explosion has trapped 145 to 168 Mexican miners.

The words read like so many of the mining tragedies that have made national headlines recently. The only difference is this headline was the lead story atop the April 2, 1969, edition of The Natchez Democrat.

The newspaper was among a handful of brittle, yellow pulp found last week folded up and tucked into a folder.

The small pile contained this 1969 edition, a portion of the Sept. 3, 1964, edition of The Democrat and a portion of The Concordia Sentinel, dated March 12, 1969.

The folded pieces of history were about the most interesting things found last week as yours truly cleaned out a previously vacant office at 503 N. Canal St.

The fascinating part of the &8220;find&8221; was the number of connections the 1969 newspaper had to today&8217;s world. Some of the news items seemed as if they could have been pulled from today&8217;s edition, while others highlight the amazing ways the times have changed.

Sam Hanna, editor and publisher of The Concordia Sentinel newspaper, appeared on the front page as he was expected to speak at the Natchez Rotary Club at noon April 2, 1969. Sadly, Hanna recently made headlines recently when he passed away.

Way back in the legals section, Joe Fortunato and Noland Biglane were quietly publishing notice the pair had formed &8220;Big-Joe Oil Co.&8221; Somewhere along the line the two dropped the hyphen.

Queen of the 1969 Pilgrimage, Miss Anne Worthington Surget MacNeil, was honored with a cocktail party on page 3A along with a mention of two newly christened babies, Kenneth Lewis Beesley Jr. and Emily Mitchell Smith.

Unfortunately, the news of that day wasn&8217;t all happy.

In 1969, the nation was in a state of turmoil as the Vietnam War raged on the other side of the planet.

Race relations were sketchy at best in the South. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. had been assassinated the previous year and the Natchez Chapter of the NAACP was preparing a memorial program and march for King two days later.

A subtle sign of how things were different back then could be seen &8212; or not seen &8212; through the photographs published in the newspaper. Out of 28 pages only one of the photographs inside contained a person with black skin. Inside the sports section, Vada Pinson, then with the St. Louis Cardinals, appeared as he slid safely across home plate.

Further evidence of divisions &8212; both racial and sexist &8212; stood out in the classifieds section.

The phrases &8220;Male Help&8221; and &8220;Female Help&8221; lured in job seekers, but tried to keep the sexes in their stereotypical places. True to form, the &8220;Male&8221; jobs were sales oriented or technical in nature. The &8220;Female&8221; jobs sought house cleaners, dishwasher and secretaries.

Beneath the heading for &8220;Houses for sale&8221; stood a chilling, &8220;For colored&8221; label before a listing for a house and seven acres of land on Airport Road.

Utterly amazing. Thank God I was born before all of that nonsense was so commonplace.

Many of the items listed don&8217;t seem all that out of place until you see the price tag. A dollar sure doesn&8217;t buy what it once did.

A three-bedroom, two-bath house could be grabbed for only $6,400 and Bluff City Motors was preparing to unveil the &8220;long heralded 1970 Maverick.&8221; The new Ford was stickered at $1,995.

As much as a tank filled with 29-cent gasoline might seem tempting, I&8217;m glad we&8217;re not living in the world of 1969 anymore. Today, I&8217;d like to think the newspaper reflects the community a bit better.

The faces have a little more diversity and the newspaper pages aren&8217;t quite as yellow.

Kevin Cooper

is associate publisher of The Democrat. He can be reached at 601-445-3539 or by e-mail at

kevin.cooper@natchezdemocrat.com

.