I dated a guy briefly who grew up across the street from Shawshank's farm. Charleston is a tiny little Hamlet in the Mississippi delta whose closest landmarks are the infamous Parchman Farm (read: prison) and the Tallahatchie River (of the famed bridge and the infamous lynching of 14 year old Emmett Till).
Shawshank has done so much for that community. He bought the public schools air conditioning:
http://hub.aa.com/en/aw/mississippi-king-morgan-freeman
The schools didn't have fucking air conditioning. And this wasn't during his Sesame Street days, this was the late 80s, maybe 90s.
Shawshank approached the public high school in Charleston in 1997 and offered to pay for prom if the school agreed to integrate it. That's right, folks, they had two proms--white prom and black prom. In the fucking 1990s. And guess what? The school said "thanks, Shawshank, we're good!" They eventually came to their senses. By eventually, I mean 2008.
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prom_Night_in_Mississippi
This is all I know of Shawshank's service to the town of Charleston, but I have to share the small bit of service he did for me. Boyfriend and I ran into him at his restaurant in Clarksdale and when he came over to our table, he did a double take when he greeted me, kind of stumbled on his words. Later when my soon to be ex was in the shitter, Shawshank returned and asked me if I had met the boyf's sister because I looked exactly like her. Creepy, right? But the deal breaker came on the long car ride back to Charleston when pseudo-incest soon to be ex lost his mind when I kept referring to Morgan Freeman as "Shawshank." "His name isn't "Shawshank. Tim Robbins' name isn't "Shawshank" either. No one calls Bruce Willis "Die Hard." You have an advanced degree from a liberal arts school, please tell me you understand that "The Silence of the Lambs" is a movie title and not a reasonable way to refer to Jodie Foster or Anthony Hopkins. Certainly not both of them." I pointed out that he knew exactly who I was talking about in context and when I met Shawshank in the flesh, I called him Mr. Freeman as any polite southern woman would.
Anyway, he stewed and I laughed my ass off at him getting all pouty about my oddball ways. We met his fam for dinner that night and his sister was in town. It was like I was sitting across the table from a big haired, rush chair, cheer captain, super popular version of myself. She thought Shawshank was hilarious. I left dinner wanting to date her. That never happened.
TL;DR: Morgan Freeman does kickass stuff in Charleston, Mississippi. A chance encounter with him helped me decide to dump my boyfriend. And he will always be Shawshank to me. Well, he and Tim Robbins.