In Franklin County, Mississippi, an unexpected wave of enthusiasm for chess has swept across the community, transforming the lives of its residents, especially the youth. This change started when Dr. Jeff Bulington, encouraged by an anonymous benefactor, moved to the rural town to teach chess. Despite initial skepticism, the program quickly gained popularity, drawing hundreds of children to learn the game, some of them going on to achieve impressive achievements in national competitions. Bulington's initiative has taught children critical thinking, patience, and strategy, skills that have also improved their general academic performance.

The community's response to chess underscores the transformative power of education and how unlikely initiatives can break longstanding misconceptions. In particular, the success story of Franklin's youth in state championships defies the stereotype that rural areas lack educational potential. Chess has provided children a glimpse of their potential, inspiring dreams of college and careers beyond the small town limits. Through these achievements, Franklin has become an example of how introduction to intellectually stimulating activities can boost self-esteem and future aspirations.

Main takeaways from the video:

Please remember to turn on the CC button to view the subtitles.

Key Vocabularies and Common Phrases:

1. transform [trænsˈfɔrm] - (verb) - To change in form, appearance, or structure; to change in condition, nature, or character. - Synonyms: (change, convert, alter)

With a belief that the game could transform a community, he was initially met with bewilderment.

2. bewilderment [bɪˈwɪldərmənt] - (noun) - A feeling of being perplexed and confused. - Synonyms: (confusion, puzzlement, perplexity)

With a belief that the game could transform a community, he was initially met with bewilderment.

3. benefactor [ˈbenɪˌfæktər] - (noun) - A person who gives friendly aid, helps another person or organization. - Synonyms: (patron, supporter, donor)

Jeff Bulington was lured to Franklin County by a wealthy benefactor who wishes to remain anonymous.

4. demonstration [ˌdɛmənˈstreɪʃən] - (noun) - An act of showing someone how something is used or done. - Synonyms: (presentation, exhibition, display)

He convinced Bulington to give a few demonstration lessons in Franklin County.

5. narrative [ˈnærətɪv] - (noun) - A spoken or written account of connected events; a story. - Synonyms: (account, tale, story)

He may not be a grandmaster, but he's a master of using chess to tell a narrative, especially with beginners.

6. motivated [ˈmoʊtəˌveɪtɪd] - (adjective) - Provided with a motive to do something; having a strong reason to act or accomplish something. - Synonyms: (inspired, driven, enthusiastic)

motivated by the challenge, Bulington signed a 10 year contract with a benefactor and left the city for the country.

7. aptitude [ˈæptɪˌtjud] - (noun) - A natural ability to do something. - Synonyms: (talent, capacity, skill)

Each day after school, kids who have the desire and aptitude receive more instruction from Bulington.

8. immersed [ɪˈmɜrst] - (verb) - Deeply involved; absorbed or engaged completely. - Synonyms: (engulfed, submersed, absorbed)

They've become so immersed in the game with its infinite number of possible moves.

9. prognosis [prɒgˈnoʊsɪs] - (noun) - The likely course of a disease or ailment. - Synonyms: (forecast, prediction, outlook)

Sister Bernadette Maurio found herself with a dire prognosis before her visit to Lourdes.

10. peer-reviewed [pɪr-rɪˈvjud] - (adjective) - Evaluated by other experts in the same field to ensure quality and validity. - Synonyms: (refereed, vetted, assessed)

This is done on a purely medical basis, something that could be peer-reviewed by other physicians.

World's Most Interesting Places - Vol. 9 - 60 Minutes Full Episodes

Chess has been around for 1500 years, but until a couple of summers ago, the ancient game was still mostly a mystery to the folks of rural Franklin County, Mississippi. Few had ever played chess before. Many confused it with checkers. A chessboard was as out of place in the county as a skyscraper. But that all changed when a tall stranger arrived from Memphis to bring chess to the country.

With a belief that the game could transform a community, he was initially met with bewilderment. Who was this 6 foot 6 outsider? And why would anyone come to Franklin county to teach chess? Less than two years later, a chess boom is underway in the unlikeliest of places.

Tucked deep in the southwest corner of Mississippi lies remote Franklin county, where the trains don't stop anymore. Half the county is covered by a national forest, the other half, it seems, by churches. This is the buckle of the Bible Belt. 7,000 people live here, and no one's in a hurry. There are only two stoplights in the entire county and one elementary school.

Imagine everyone's surprise when Dr. Jeff Bulington showed up at school to teach the kids of Franklin County a new subject. Chess. So everybody say, checkmate. Checkmate. Before Dr. B came to town, had you played chess before? I didn't have a clue how to move the pieces or nothing. Only time I saw was on tv. Donovan Moore, Braden Farrell, Parker Wilkinson, and Benson Chucksnedre didn't know what to make of Dr. B, as he's known when he first appeared in 2015.

What did you think of Dr. B when you first met him? The 12 foot man. The 12 foot man. Whenever he came into the room saying he was planning on teaching us chess, I was like, what? Why would somebody come down here in the middle of nowhere? You're a logical guy, and it doesn't seem to make a lot of sense if there are people there. It's not nowhere. This is somewhere. It's just a somewhere that doesn't get a lot of attention.

Jeff Bulington was lured to Franklin county by a wealthy benefactor who wishes to remain anonymous. The benefactor had seen how Bulington had molded chess champions in Memphis in one of the most distressed zip codes in America, and wondered if chess could take hold in the country. Where can you put the king? He convinced Bulington to give a few demonstration lessons in Franklin County.

Afterwards, I was asked, hey, what do you think? Do you think these kids have it? You know, could you have a chess program here? Yeah, of course. They're as smart as any other kids. I've ever met. motivated by the challenge, Bulington signed a 10 year contract with a benefactor and left the city for the country.

What is he doing? He's X raying the king. Bulington has taught chess for the better part of 25 years. What's so wonderful about the bishop? And why might we think of it as an archer? Like, for instance, he may not be a grandmaster, but he's a master of using chess to tell a narrative, especially with beginners.

This is a story about a little girl and a stranger and the little girl's daddy. Elizabeth and the Stranger is just my adaptation of Little Red Riding Hood to the chessboard. Elizabeth needs to get down here to E1, where school is where she'll be safe. It involves just simply teaching how a pawn moves and a king moves. Oh, no. Is she gonna make it? I told you this is a bad idea.

I remember my partner in this project saying to me, we'd have maybe 12 kids playing chess. And he said he didn't know what to expect. And how many kids do you have playing chess right now? Well, a couple hundred. Hey, how are you? Students flock to Bulington in part because at heart, he's one of them.

He grew up in rural Indiana and identifies with kids who have to feed the chickens, count tarantulas, as pets and have different tastes in food. What do you like to eat? Fried rattlesnake. Fried rattlesnake? You go to my house. If we ever find a rattlesnake in a course of like a week or so, you're getting some fried rattlesnake.

Bulington's opened up a new world to his kids. This is a famous game by Morphy against Count Isaward and Duke of Brunswick, who's played in Paris. This is Paris. We teach history, we teach geography, we teach science, we teach math, we teach it all using the chess board. Bobby Poole is a part time preacher and a full time assistant chess coach for Bulington.

Poole says there were doubts that Bulington could succeed in Mississippi. All the statistics, everything you look at, you know, Mississippi is the poorest, it's the dumbest, it's the fattest. We know that the rest of the nation has that conception of us. People said that country kids couldn't learn chess and he showed them different. We proved them wrong.

Proof came last spring in Starkville, where Bulington's team of mostly elementary school kids from Franklin county faced off against much older high school players at the Mississippi State championships. Rebecca Griffin was in the fifth grade. What was their reaction when they Saw you a little fifth grader sitting across the table from them. One of them started bragging to their friends about how he got easy pickings.

Is that a little scary playing somebody who looked that much older than you? I didn't really think about it until somebody told me you played a guy with a beard. You guys roll in and they say, who are these kids? Right? They were basically, like, trying to say we were a joke because we were kids, but after the game, we usually beat them. And they were like, very shocked.

Don't you guys feel bad you beat all those older kids? No, I never did. Not at all. I don't want that to make me seem like a cruel person, but I really am just okay with crushing people's spirits. In the end, Franklin county dominated the state championships. What happened is a bunch of hillbillies beat the snot out of a bunch of really highly educated, sophisticated people.

So that's what happened. Mitch Hamm was among the many parents in Starkville. He thinks the victory served as a milestone for Franklin County's kids. That was very sobering for them to suddenly realize, wow, we are good. So them having the realization of their own potential was a beautiful moment.

How did the teachers, the other teachers react? Over the course of my career in teaching chess, people say things like, I did not know that he could do something like that. Or even something as simple and as crass as, I did not know he was smart or she was smart or something like that. What does that tell you? Tells me some people got it wrong.

That some kids have been underestimated or written off for reasons that are false. Chess has helped Bulington's players see there's more to themselves than they've seen before. Chess is like something that, like, I'm, like, really good at for once. Has it changed you at all? It has. My grades have went up.

Your grades have gone up? Oh, my grades used to be like low, medium, low Bs. Now the A's and high Bs. I feel like chess could take us anywhere. But it's not about where it takes us. It's about how far it takes us.

Last year, only seven of the 93 graduates from Franklin County High School went on to a four year college. But every chess player we spoke to plans to attend college someday. It's really shocked me how far he's came. Jennifer Rutland is Braden's mom. She runs the first and Main Cafe, one of the few places in the county that serves a hot meal. She believes her son won't be flipping burgers for a living.

Is it fun to see your kids dream a little bigger than the county line? Yes. So big that it's almost like Braden, come on, get real. Yeah, you know, it just gets so big. You always want to see your kids go further. And I think chess can be a vehicle to take them there.

You know, this gives them a window at a young age that, hey, there's a whole world out there. I don't need to set my goals at making $8 an hour. I need to set my goals at whatever I want them to be. Chess has filled a social void and given Main Street a pulse. In October, a new chess center opened in the middle of Meadville, the county seat.

Do you feel like chess has made the community more hopeful? Certainly parts of it, yeah. Right? I mean, this flower hasn't bloomed yet. It's just starting to, Right? There's a lot yet to come.

The chess center has become like a beacon in the county. Each day after school, kids who have the desire and aptitude receive more instruction from Bulington. So what does black do? They've become so immersed in the game with its infinite number of possible moves, that when these students finish playing chess, they go home and play more chess.

Can the best chess player in the world come from Franklin County? Maybe. Absolutely. It's super possible. Before they could take on the world, they would have to face the nation. We'll take care of them.

The week before Christmas, 33 of Franklin County's chess wonders and their parents gathered in the school parking lot. Y'all were coming back, right? To begin a 10 hour journey to Nashville for their biggest test yet. The national championships. As Day Queen G7.

This is choppy out here. Yeah, it is. How you feeling? I feel okay. It's more important. How do you feel? Yeah, I'm feeling good. Like I said, I like to think I've got my sea legs on.

When your last name is Salmon, negotiating rough waters is sort of in your DNA. Bridie's great grandfather worked on the Grimsby docks. Her dad owns this 100 year old smoked fish shop in town. Bridie was bartending when she decided to apply to an apprentice program to be a turbine technician. She was one of seven people selected from a pool of 500. Shall we have a look around here then guys?

The apprentice program combines classroom instruction, A big drill bit on the bottom and it's. And it's spinning with hands on work at Seat. But we soon learned that mother nature is a temperamental teacher. The weather here is ever changing. Yeah, yeah.

We're holding on for our dear life. Yeah, yeah. I mean, I mean it's the North Sea. It's. It's not something we can control. So every day is different and it can change like that.

So it's just part and Parcel of the job. Anything to get these things turning. This is the environment for wind turbines. It's got to be windy. As we approached the turbines, we suddenly felt small. You don't get a sense of how large things are until you're right up under this.

Yeah, well, that's it. I mean, so at the very top, the nacelle all the way to the top of the blades is half the size of the Eiffel Tower, which is pretty massive. And. And because you've got nothing normal to compare it to, like a building. Yeah.

You just see these in the distance and then you're here and it's. Yeah, they're pretty bloody huge. Translation? They're nearly 600ft high with spinning fiberglass blades, roughly the length of the world's largest passenger jet. Each blade weighs almost 30 tons.

The turbines are partially assembled on shore, then shipped out to sea, where each blade is attached with surgical precision to the top of the turbine. Every angle has to be perfect to generate maximum power. Once installed, keeping them spinning is critical. Offshore wind engineers say one revolution can power one home in the UK for 24 hours. And that's where Bridie comes in.

It's raining. Yep. It's windy. Yep. Can't wait. Another day at the office.

Alright. In choppy water, Captain Peter Broughton has to find the sweet spot, maintaining constant contact between the bow and base traffic. Cursing the wireless. Some days the winds are so high and seas so rough, the job can't be done on this day. Success.

See you later. Bridie harnesses herself to a cable. Happy?

EDUCATION, INSPIRATION, MOTIVATION, CHESS, COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT, RURAL CHANGE, 60 MINUTES