Mississippi Humanities Council Newsletter - November 2020
Executive Director's Message
Embracing the Complexity of our History

When I have been asked about the influential moments that led me to my career today, I often think back to 11th grade US History. Our textbook included a special section in each chapter entitled “Where Historians Disagree.” Prior to this, history for me was a collection of facts, names, and dates. But those special sections helped teach me that history is not just an account of what happened in the past, but also an ongoing debate about the meaning and significance of these facts. Over the years, I have learned that history and the humanities are as much about the questions as the answers.

This intellectual breakthrough has been on my mind lately as we have seen increasing public debate about the politicization of US History. Sparked anew by the New York Times’ publication of the 1619 Project last year, which sought to center enslavement and racial oppression in the American story. Critics, including the Chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities, have argued that we should teach a version of history that highlights America’s greatness, while attacking the arguments of Nikole Hannah-Jones and her team of writers. The President has even created a 1776 Commission to push back against this not so new revisionist history.

We would do much better to embrace the complexity rather than look for a simplistic “good vs. evil” understanding of our past.

But these critics misunderstand that important fact I learned in 11th grade: history as a discipline is defined by its disagreements and debates. It’s these debates that make history vibrant and engaging. Last week during a keynote address at our National Humanities Conference, held virtually this year, Lonnie Bunch, the head of the Smithsonian Institution, talked about how the humanities help us understand the world and our history in a more complex way. He argued that our history is marked more by ambiguity than simple ideas of good and evil. After all, what do we make of Thomas Jefferson, the man who helped enshrine the ideals of freedom and equality in our country’s founding, but who himself owned slaves. We would do much better to embrace the complexity rather than look for a simplistic “good vs. evil” understanding of our past.

This question over whether we should consider 1619 or 1776 as the true founding of America is essentially a debate over whether enslavement and white supremacy were central to the American story or rather an exception that was eventually rectified. While historians will continue to debate this essential question, it’s worth looking at it from the perspective of Mississippi. One need only visit our state’s new history museums to understand how racism and the idea of white supremacy profoundly shaped Mississippi. To deny that fact is to simply ignore the experiences of African Americans in Mississippi, who made up the majority of the state’s population from 1840 until 1940.

What these critics misunderstand is that reckoning with our state’s undeniable history of racial oppression is not unpatriotic. Quite the opposite. For example, consider Medgar Evers, who grew up in Decatur, Mississippi, amid the burdens of segregation, racial violence, and white supremacy. He enlisted in the U.S. Army at age 17 during World War II, serving in the European theater after D-Day. Upon his return to Mississippi after the war, Evers fought for the civil rights of Black Mississippians, giving his life to the cause when he was murdered by an assassin’s bullet in 1963. I can conceive of no higher patriotism than sacrificing one’s life to make America live up to its founding ideals.

As these debates play out around our state and our country, the humanities remind us we should work toward a deeper, more nuanced understanding of our history and that ignoring the difficult parts of our past does not serve patriotism. America and Mississippi’s story is one of great achievement, struggle, resistance, and ultimately a resilience of which we can all be proud.
MHC Launches Cross-State Series With Massachusetts to Explore Shared Stories

The Mississippi Humanities Council is partnering with Mass Humanities on a series of free, virtual programs to help Mississippians and Massachusettsans explore and discuss topics of history, culture and identity together. “MS + MA: Crossing Borders/Connecting Stories,” a six-part series of programs, will begin December 3rd. The series will examine intersecting points in Mississippi and Massachusetts’ histories, explore their rich literary histories, and engage participants in cross-state dialogue.

The December 3 event will take place via Zoom from 6:00 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. CST and will explore images of both states as reflected in literature. Guest scholars will include W. Ralph Eubanks, visiting professor at the Center for the Study of Southern Culture at the University of Mississippi, and author of the forthcoming book, A Place Like Mississippi: A Journey Through a Real and Imagined Literary Landscape; and Michael Gorra, professor of English Language & Literature at Smith College and author of The Saddest Words: William Faulkner’s Civil War.

Eubanks and Gorra will draw on both states’ literary heritage to offer reflections on how writers have informed and complicated views of Mississippi and Massachusetts. Participants will also engage in conversations with residents from both states in small breakout groups, sharing and examining their own impressions of the two states and discussing what they learned from the program’s guest speakers.

Following the December 3 program, five additional programs will take place throughout Winter and Spring 2021.

Participation in the program series is free, but space is limited. Registration and more information on the December 3 program can be found here. For questions, contact Carol Andersen.
MHC Partners with MPB to Examine Mississippi’s Complicated Electoral History

The Mississippi Humanities Council is among 43 humanities councils across the country and U.S. Territories recently awarded an Andrew W. Mellon Foundation “Why It Matters: Civic and Electoral Participation” grant to study the history, importance, and impact of the American electoral process. The MHC is partnering with Mississippi Public Broadcasting to produce radio and television programming exploring voting and citizen participation in the electoral life of our state and nation.

The ”Why It Matters” grant will be used to create programs for multiple MPB platforms, including its daily radio newscast, Mississippi Edition, its television public affairs program, @issue, which provides a comprehensive look at stories affecting Mississippians, as well as special digital and web content and podcasts.

Programs will explore barriers to voting and voter ID laws in Mississippi; the origin of the Electoral College and how it gives disproportionate power to rural states; and the disfranchisement of incarcerated Mississippians and Mississippians with felony records and how these laws are rooted in the Jim Crow era. MPB journalists will talk with historians about the history of voting and voter suppression in Mississippi, the impact of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and its partial invalidation by the Supreme Court in 2013. Programs will also examine the role of voting and elections in Native American communities, the role of social media and digital information/misinformation on elections, the history of political polarization in the state, and how race has been central to this polarization since the era of Reconstruction.

“This grant from the Mellon Foundation will enable us to continue a path of being an information provider—where truth, objectivity and accuracy are paramount—to citizens who desperately need a strong voice to speak for them,” says MHC’s Rockoff. “We are delighted to partner with Mississippi Public Broadcasting to do this work.”
Crossroads Debuts in Mount Olive, Prepares for Future Mississippi Stops

On October 30, the Smithsonian traveling exhibit Crossroads: Change in Rural America opened in Mount Olive, where it will remain until December 12. Congressman Michael Guest, as well as local civic leaders, community members, and press were on hand for the exhibit’s grand opening and ribbon-cutting in Mount Olive (pictured left.)
 
Since the exhibit’s opening in Mount Olive, the Jane Blain Brewer Memorial Library has organized a series of free public programs in conjunction with Crossroads. Previous programs include a presentation on traditional fiddle music of the rural South, the impact of the railroad on South Mississippi, and the impact of electrification on the region. Upcoming programs include a presentation on early Mount Olive settlers (Nov. 21), a presentation by Crossroads state scholar Dr. John Green on rural population trends (Dec. 5), and a presentation on Mount Olive’s history and development by Crossroads local project director Sandra Boyd (Dec. 12). A full list of Crossroads programs in Mount Olive can be found on the MHC calendar.

Through artifacts, images, text, and interactive elements, Crossroads explores rural identity, the importance of land, how rural communities manage change, and much more. After the exhibit departs Mount Olive in December, it will travel to Waveland, where the Ground Zero Hurricane Museum will host it through January 2021. Crossroads will also travel to Columbia, Scooba, and Greenwood before leaving Mississippi in June 2021. Crossroads’ Mississippi tour is supported by a generous grant from Entergy Mississippi. More information about the exhibit and its Mississippi tour can be found on the  MHC website. 
Rockoff Elected to Federation Board

During the annual meeting of the Federation of State Humanities Councils on November 5th, MHC Executive Director Stuart Rockoff was elected to the board. The Federation of State Humanities Councils is the national member association of the 55 state and jurisdictional humanities councils. Its purpose is to provide leadership, advocacy, and information to help members advance programs that engage millions of citizens across diverse populations in community and civic life.

“It is a great honor to serve as a board member of the federation,” said Rockoff. “I have benefitted so much professionally and personally from the wisdom and encouragement of my colleagues at other councils. I look forward to working with the board and the federation staff to ensure that the federation continues to bolster this vital network while advocating for the impact of our collective work.”

Rockoff follows in the footsteps of previous Mississippi-based federation board members, including Dr. Estus Smith, who helped establish the federation in 1977, Dr. Leslie McLemore, Dr. Peggy Prenshaw, and Dr. Willis Lott, who served as chair of the Federation board in 2008-2009.
Speakers Bureau Interview: Daphne Chamberlain

As part of the MHC’s recent Anti-Racism Reading Shelf Grant project for public libraries in Mississippi, a new roster of presentations was added to the Speakers Bureau. One of the newly added scholars is Dr. Daphne Chamberlain. Dr. Chamberlain attended historic Tougaloo College where she completed her undergraduate studies in history in 2001, and she subsequently received her master’s and Ph.D. in history from the University of Mississippi. Before returning to Tougaloo as a faculty member, Dr. Chamberlain taught history and African American Studies at the University of Mississippi and was also the founding director of the COFO Civil Rights Education Center at Jackson State University. Dr. Chamberlain’s talk through the MHC is titled, “The Emmett Till Generation: Youth Activism, Radical Protest, and Social Change in Jim Crow Mississippi.” More information about this presentation, and other anti-racism lectures, can be found on the MHC website.

MHC: Your Speakers Bureau presentation focuses on youth activism in the Civil Rights era, specifically 1946-1965. Can you provide a brief or summarized account of what an audience will learn from your talk? 
DC: This presentation will shed light on the various issues that served as an impetus for youth activism and the varied campaigns they participated in around the state of Mississippi - even prior to there being a full-scale civil rights movement in the state.  This presentation will particularly highlight a youth-led 1946 bus boycott in Jackson as a precursor movement, giving attention to youth leadership in the absence of a significant organizing tradition and also how black children further organized and participated in the first major civil rights demonstrations of the 1960s across the state of Mississippi and in Jackson in particular.

MHC: What drew you to researching the role of young people in the grassroots Civil Rights movement?
DC: ​I was inspired to explore children's participation in the Civil Rights Movement after reading John Dittmer's Local People: The Struggle for Civil Rights in Mississippi while a student at Tougaloo College. The civil rights narrative is full of moments in which young people were at the forefront of movement activity, and many watershed moments of the Civil Rights Movement were centered around young people (e.g., the 1954 Brown decision, the 1955 murder of Emmett Till, the 1963 Children's Crusade in Birmingham, AL). Dittmer gave attention to high school walkouts in places like McComb (1961) and Jackson (1963), and I questioned why more scholarship had not been produced on youth activism during the civil rights era which prompted my research on the topic. 

MHC: Do you draw any parallels--or see any patterns-- between the 20th century initiatives and the current era of the Civil Rights campaign?
DC: ​Young people of the 1950s and 1960s had a keen sense of awareness about the world in which they lived, and this is no different from young people of today who are socially conscious and civically engaged. Many issues of that time have persisted, and young people from then until now have creatively engaged in strategizing, organizing, and mobilizing to bring about substantive, systemic change.

MHC: Based on the reading list provided to libraries for the Anti-Racism Reading Shelf grants, are there any titles you would call "must-reads?" Which one(s) jump out to you and are memorable?
DC: ​Maya Angelou's I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, James Baldwin's The Fire Next Time, James Loewen's Lies My Teacher Told Me
Interested in exploring COVID-19’s lasting impact on our society? Host one of the MHC’s three Humbox community discussion programs to learn how history, bioethics, and public health shape our understanding of COVID-19. More information on hosting a free Humbox can be found on the MHC website.

The Mississippi Alliance Membership Campaign

The Mississippi Alliance of Nonprofits and Philanthropy (The Alliance) serves, builds the capacity of, and fosters collaboration within and between Mississippi’s nonprofit and philanthropic communities. By providing high-quality training, technical assistance, and resources to our members, the Alliance helps to improve the health and well-being of individuals, children, and families and supporting the advancement of positive social and economic conditions within communities across Mississippi.

Members include nonprofits, public and private grantmaking organizations, and individuals who make donations to or invest in the nonprofit sector or otherwise support our mission. In addition to discounts on training opportunities and regular updates on the latest news, members have access to a range of benefits that help them successfully achieve their goals and fulfill their missions.

Learn more about additional benefits and how to join in membership here.
Coming Up: Humanities Programs Sponsored by MHC

Centennial Farms at Mount Olive
Saturday, November 21 @ 10:00 a.m.
Jane Blain Brewer Memorial Library, Mount Olive
On November 21, the Jane Blain Brewer Memorial Library in Mt. Olive will host the Covington County Genealogical and Historical Society to present a program on Centennial Farms in the Mt. Olive area. The free program will take place in conjunction with the Smithsonian traveling exhibit Crossroads: Change in Rural America, on display in Mt. Olive through December 12.

Community Library Mississippi Goes Virtual: Holiday Book Festival
Saturday, November 28 @ 10:00 a.m.
Virtual Event
Community Library Mississippi hosts a virtual book festival including performances, marketplace, and a youth poetry competition. More information on the event and how to attend can be found on the event webpage.


"Hometown Makeover" Screening
Saturday, November 28 @ 10:00 a.m.
Jane Blain Brewer Memorial Library, Mount Olive
On November 28, the Jane Blain Brewer Memorial Library in Mt. Olive will present a free screening of the “Mt. Olive Hometown Makeover” video submitted to the HGTV “Hometown Makeover” contest conducted by Laurel, Mississippi, HGTV hosts Erin and Ben Napier.

Speakers Bureau: Exploring Rural Mississippi Through Population Studies
Saturday, December 5 @ 10:00 a.m.
Jane Blain Brewer Memorial Library, Mount Olive
Achieving a better understanding of rural communities requires defining our concepts and identifying indicators of rurality in terms of continuity and change. Following an exploration of the terms “rural” and “non-metropolitan,” Dr. John Green shares a series of graphical images and narratives about Mississippi’s rural people and places using population-level information, emphasizing what these “snapshots” of rural life tell us about Mississippi and how we might use them to form a “collage” that captures both the similarity and diversity of rural life in our state.

Speakers Bureau: Fault Lines: Living in Two Cultures
Monday, December 7 @ 12:00 p.m.
Virtual Event
Seetha Srinivasan, director emeritus of the University Press of Mississippi, discusses becoming a part of the American mainstream while retaining one’s ethnic (in this case Indian) identity and asks the following questions: Can it be done? To what extent? What are the challenges, frustrations, rewards? E-mail Peter Dean at the Ridgeland Public Library for information on how to attend.