Time hasn’t faded the words of advice that sent Jackie Dart to her first tables at the old Magnolia Motor Hotel restaurant all those years ago.

“‘I don’t care what they say,’” Dart said Frank Maxwell told her as he hired her to work the dining floor at a time when black employment in white-owned eateries was confined to the kitchens. “He said, ‘Unless they say your name, don’t you stop!’”

She hasn’t — even as she raised six children and worked in two high-stress jobs, serving food to hungry people as a waitress and handling money for busy people as a bank teller.

Essentially retired from full-time work, Dart, 70, still keeps tea glasses full for civic club regulars, and legions of longtime customers request her to work their table at Jacques’ Cafe. Her phone number won’t be thrown away anytime soon, restaurateurs indicated.

“After 46 years,” Dart said, “it’s time.”

When Dart was hired in 1963 to work at the Magnolia, a popular Washington Street restaurant, it would be another year before the ink dried on the Civil Rights Act. “They had black cooks and bus people, but not waitresses,” she said.

She remembers the whispers, some stares, but also the respect she earned — from peers and patrons —after Maxwell hired her.

“A woman from St. Louis came in one day and asked, ‘Did they make you hire her?’,” Dart remembers. “He said, ‘No. I wish I had 12 more employees like her’. When they passed the law, he just told me, ‘Ah, they passed it and that’s all ya’ need to know.”

Dart credited a particularly appreciative customer, former Vicksburg Mayor E.W. Haining, by that time president of First National Bank, for helping her take her customer-service skills beyond food service. “He told me I had too much prestige to be working in a restaurant and saw I had more to offer the public.”

While working at Maxwell’s and becoming an original at Jacques’ in the mid-1980s, she wedged in a 23-year career in banks.

Haining “helped me get a certificate in finance from Hinds,” Dart said. “It worked out, because I’d leave the bank stressed out and come to the restaurant to work it off. And I bought a house — on a waitress salary!”

In the process, she said, she became the first black head bank teller in Vicksburg.

She can recite the names of locals she’s watched grow up while dining out or doing their banking business.

“She probably waited on me for my first date,” said local insurance agent Ronnie Andrews. “I’ve known her for years and many people know her.

“The thing about Jackie is, she always remembers you by name and what you like to eat and drink,” Andrews added. “ She made you feel like you’re the only person in the restaurant.”

Slowing Dart down will be difficult for Jacques Parmegiani — not to mention holding back popular demand for perhaps the longest-tenured active wait staff member in Vicksburg.

“She’s always moving, doing something over here, doing something over there,” he said. “I call her in because people request her — and only her.”

When Jacques’ son, Jay, opened Roca Restaurant & Bar earlier this year, he knew where to turn for occasional help.

“I learned a heckuva lot from her just from watching,” he said. “I took a lot of cues early on, learned how to interact with customers. Graciousness is priceless in this business. She has that quality about her.”

The world — and people in it — has changed, Dart said.

“People now are more demanding than they used to be, meaner,” she said, adding the people for whom she’s worked deserve most of the credit.

“Frank Maxwell taught me ethics, respect, prestige. Haining had big shoes nobody could fill — a very, caring and concerned man,” Dart said.

Jacques Parmegiani, she said, hired her and others to do their jobs without a lot of oversight. “He’s not one to stand over your shoulder.”

Whether she completely closes the curtain this year or not, Dart figures to keep smiling. “I haven’t regretted a moment of it,” she said.

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Contact Danny Barrett Jr. at dbarrett@vicksburgpost.com