The future was looking increasingly frightening to 54-year-old Anita as she got to the end of her six-year prison sentence. 

All along, she had assumed that she’d be able to live with her mother while she got back on her feet, but a couple months before Anita’s sentence ended, her mother changed her mind. Anita had nowhere to go.

The large, cavernous room at the heart of Jackson County’s Community Services Center doesn’t see much action these days. It’s no longer open to the public. A trash can sits solemnly collecting water dripping from a leak in the ceiling. 

But the room’s parquet floor still hints and harkens to better days gone by.

William McDowell remembers when segregation was a reality in Canton.

“When I was a kid we weren’t allowed to sit anywhere but the balcony at the Colonial Theatre in downtown,” he said. “You couldn’t eat in certain restaurants and there were black and white drinking fountains — segregation was really enforced.”