It all started with a picture from a grade school book approximately 60 years ago. A 10-year-old boy from a Jasper County elementary school pulled a book about the American Civil War from the school’s library shelf. He randomly opened it to a page with a picture. The illustration in front of him showed an ominous scene — A Union soldier with bayonet fixed to a rifle was moving captured Confederate soldiers to a prison camp.
The boy’s interest was piqued, so he turned to the front page and started reading. The book about the most tumultuous years of our nation’s history was a little beyond his grasp, but something was stirred deep within his soul. Something natural but hidden had come to the surface, and from then on, an instinctual love for history would follow into the boy’s adolescence and adult years. It would eventually lead to the teaching career of perhaps the most beloved and admired teachers in the Pine Belt. Wyatt Moulds was captured by the past, and he would later devote the rest of his life taking prisoners for the subject he loved.
I remember when I was taken captive by the man. The year was 1988 — my first semester at Jones County Junior College. I always had an awareness of history, mainly limited to what I had learned in school. But I never wanted to go beyond that to any degree. But little did I know that my mind was about to change along with my life trajectory. I was about to become a prisoner of the past.
Unlike the men in the picture from that book, Moulds didn’t need rifles and bayonets to take prisoners. With a combination of dry humor and wit, with scholarship and wisdom, the man had the arsenal he needed to grab my attention and proceeded to march me straight into the wonders of the past. As he lectured, his voice boomed like a cannon and carried with it a force and authority I had never experienced. He commanded the classroom like a general on a battlefield. I was drawn into a story that actually happened.
In Moulds’ class, history was not just dates and dead faces plastered between the pages of a book. The past had come to life! The man was a storyteller in the vein of William Faulkner. It seemed like he had traveled back in time, witnessed historical events and was telling me about them firsthand. This was the real deal, and it was the first time I felt like a college student. Later, I would become a teacher and strive for the same goal — “taking prisoners for the past”.
In a recent interview from his man cave on Jessamine Drive in Ellisville, I asked Moulds what he found to be the most effective teaching strategy. With a lit cigar between his fingers and swirls of smoke wafting around his head, he replied without hesitation: “I believe that the spoken and written word is the best teaching tool there is. If it worked for Socrates and Jesus Christ, I figured it would work for me.”
Sounds totally outdated in a time when teachers use the bells and whistles of Powerpoints, flashy videos and A.I. But to Moulds, these tools can turn into crutches.
“I never had to hide behind technology to teach a class,” he said. “When Jesus gave the Sermon on the Mount, He didn’t put it on a Powerpoint.”
Point taken, as the words Jesus spoke in the 1st century are still recited and written about in the 21st. Some of the words spoken by Moulds are still remembered today — not just by me but numerous other students he taught during his 46 years in the classroom.
Josh Heird, now athletics director at the University of Louisville, attended Jones College in 1998 and remembers Moulds as a “good storyteller who made history come to life more than any history professor I ever had.” Heird remembered that Moulds taught on a more “granular level of history,” not just satisfied with telling about the event alone but going deeper into the lives of the participants. “He had an unbelievable knowledge of Southern and Civil War history.”
Heird went on to earn a B.S. degree in history and credits Moulds with giving him an enthusiasm for the subject. Another thing Heird appreciated about Moulds was his sense of humor. Raised in Fort Collins, Colo., Heird came to Jones College at the urging of his father, who was a dean and professor at Colorado State and recruited students from JCJC. During class, Moulds would give Heird a ribbing about being a “Yankee.” One day when Heird asked his instructor what he considered to be a Yankee, Moulds replied, “Anyone born north of Meridian is a Yankee.”
Moulds used dry humor to keep his students engaged. That was especially true during the roll call. Lexi Pitts, a 2019 Jones graduate, remembers the roll call all too well.
“I accidentally ran into his truck when parking one morning, and he started calling me ‘little miss can’t drive’ for roll every day,” she said. “I absolutely loved him.”
Brayden Doss, another former student, said, “He was a character and always had me cracking up.”
But Moulds was careful with the humor.
“If you can make them laugh every 20 minutes, you can keep their attention but then get right back on course,” he said.
Moulds was careful not to sacrifice the scholarship for the wit.
The road to scholarship is usually paved with great teachers, and Moulds’ time in public high school at Heidelberg was no exception. Two teachers in particular stand out.
“Al Smith taught me World History and I really respected him,” he said.
Smith was a first- year teacher at the high school and is currently a board member for the Wayne County School District. He taught Moulds in the 10th grade and was impressed with his knowledge.
“I quickly learned that Wyatt Moulds was much smarter than I and definitely more read in history,” Smith said.
Tommy Davis, a coach and Mississippi Studies teacher, was another instructor who made an impact upon the young Moulds.
Moulds is proud to point out that he is a product of the public-school system.
“I graduated in ’72, two years after segregation,” he said.
While he went to public school, most of his friends attended Heidelberg Academy. His dad, an administrator at Heidelberg High, saw things different.
“Dad went to public school, and he said if it was good enough for him, it was good enough for me,” Moulds said.
If the book from elementary school and the great teachers in high school were the spark, then Moulds’ time at JCJC was the fuel to grow his love of history into a blazing fire.
“The teacher that really turned me on to history was Don Cameron,” he recalled. “He was a great teacher.”
Cameron taught American history at Jones until 1993. But the teacher who had the most influence upon Moulds, and later his teaching style, was USM professor Dr. William Scarborough.
“He taught two of the best classes I ever had in my life — Old South and the American Civil War,” Moulds said.
Scarborough’s teaching style rubbed off on him.
“It was his personality, the way he talked, and he was hilarious,” Moulds said.
There were times when his mentor’s far-right views clashed with his.
“But he was very adamant about free speech,” Moulds said. “Even if you disagreed with his take on things, you could still express yourself without ramifications.”
In a world gone woke, Scarborough would be a breath of fresh air blowing down the halls of academia today, Moulds agreed. When asked what he thinks about the recent destruction of historical monuments and other efforts to cancel history, Moulds thought carefully, not wanting the conversation to turn political.
“I can see both sides of the issues, but you have to judge people from the context of their time,” he said. “It’s easy to inject our contemporary values and try to make them apply to the past. It's OK to honor your ancestors and the deprivations they went through but don’t forget their sins.”
Glancing at a picture of Lincoln on his man-cave wall, Moulds said with conviction, “Too many people have a negative outlook on our country right now, but this is still the greatest country in the history of the planet.”
Moulds’ application of history comes from the ancient Greek historian Thucydides, who believed that history serves the purpose of instructing us into the future. Breaking into his old lecture mode, my former professor quickly applied this idea to the current situations in Ukraine and Israel.
“We know what Russia will do if they are not held in check — they will overrun Europe,” he said. With two world wars coming from the same continent, history indeed has something to teach. He says the same thing about Israel’s war with Hamas. “I support them wholeheartedly.”
After graduating from USM with a master’s degree in history, Moulds set his sights on becoming a teacher at Jones. He was hired in 1983 under President Terrel Tisdale and had great instructors who served as mentors. He credits history teachers George Pippins and Cameron for “taking me under their wings.”
Moulds retired in 2009 but continued as an adjutant professor for 10 years.
“I really appreciate Dr. Jesse Smith for giving me that time,” he said.
But time changed quickly in 2020 when the COVID pandemic hit and altered the face of education. Moulds’ Socratic teaching methods just didn’t fit well in a virtual world.
“They said if you come back, you have to put all of your classes online. I couldn’t do that,” he said. “I signed up to teach people.”
Interaction with students was paramount to Moulds.
Jones College will always hold a special place for him, but not just because he was a student and instructor there.
“I met my wife on a Jones College bus when I attended Jones,” he said.
Faye and Wyatt Moulds have been married for nearly 50 years. When asked what’s the secret to their long marriage, Moulds replied with a mischievous grin: “I stay out here (in the man cave) and she stays in the house.”
Then leaving the dry humor and becoming more reflective, he added that respect and love for one another is most important in a marriage.
“She was a lot more mature than I was and I credit the success of the marriage to her and the fact she’s right most of the time,” he said.
Mrs. Moulds has her own story at Jones, having taught English there for 25 years.
“She’s a bright lady and hell of a lot smarter than me,” her husband said, sounding pretty smart himself.
It was also through Jones that an opportunity presented itself that would be described as the capstone of Moulds’ career.
“I was called out of class one day to the dean’s office,” he said.
When he walked into the office, seated at a conference table was the movie director Gary Ross dressed in “casual clothes and tennis shoes but wearing a Rolex.” Ross directed such hit movies as “Pleasantville,” “Seabiscuit” and “The Hunger Games.” Ross asked Moulds what he thought about Newt Knight — the subject of a movie he was making entitled “Free State of Jones.”
Moulds replied, “He didn’t have a dog in the hunt. He didn’t want to take part in a war for the property rights of slave owners.”
After the meeting, Moulds was hired by Universal Pictures. His job was to research the life of the yeoman farmer living in Jones County prior to and during the Civil War. Moulds explained that, during that time, people in Jones County didn’t own slaves and were subsistence farmers.
“They grew corn, sweet potatoes and hogs,” said Moulds, who wrote a 20-page research paper that became a guide for the movie script. “There were many things I had Ross put into the movie, like names of towns in the area.”
He is especially proud of one scene that his research contributed a line to in the movie spoken by Knight, who was played by Oscar-winning actor Matthew McConaughey. In the scene, Confederate soldiers have taken corn from local farmers. Knight and his men stop the wagons and Knight tells the soldiers, “If we don’t have corn, we ain’t got nothing to feed the hogs. If we can’t feed the hogs, we ain’t got nothing to put in the smokehouse, which means we starve in winter.”
Puffing on his cigar then grinning, my favorite instructor said, “That was basically a Wyatt Moulds line.”
Moulds’ research was the conduit to bring Knight into the present through McConaughey. He spent several weeks with the actor, showing him the places where Knight worked, lived and fought in Jones County and where he was buried. Although it was a great opportunity, Moulds said it was also hard work.
“It was a 10-year process, from its inception in 2006 to the release of the movie in 2016,” he said.
“Free State of Jones” wasn’t a box-office hit, but it was a lifetime experience that Moulds was proud to be a major part of.
In his retirement since 2020, Moulds enjoys his days spending time with his children and grandchildren, piddling in his garden, deer hunting — and, yes, he’s still into scholarship. He was reading the memoirs of the Civil War Captain Ellis Spear of the famous 20th Maine Regiment that fought at Gettysburg on July 2,, 1863. That day, the 20th Maine made a valiant charge down Little Round Top, possibly saving the Union. Many Confederate prisoners were taken that fateful day, reminiscent of the picture in the grade school book young Wyatt opened decades ago that put him on the path to taking captives for history.
He leaves a legacy of students who have a love and appreciation for the past and an understanding of how important it is to pass on those stories that should bind Americans together. Within his own family, that legacy is alive in his two children Erin and Zach, both of whom have careers in education — Zack as dean of students at Gulf Coast Community College and Erin as librarian at William Carey.
Wyatt Moulds was also a major factor in my decision to be a teacher and inspired in me a deep passion for history. To this day, my goal is to pass on that love to my students and create memories in the classroom that will last a lifetime. Moulds certainly fulfilled that goal for numerous students during his 46 years in the classroom, and for that, I sincerely thank him.
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