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I like to say “ideas are easy.” When meeting with prospective grantees and program partners, coming up with great ideas isn’t that hard. It’s finding the time, expertise, and money to carry them out that is the biggest challenge.
Over the past few years, the Mississippi Humanities Council has been able to implement some big, new ideas to better serve our state. Five years ago, we launched “Ideas on Tap,” which uses the tools of the humanities to foster civil discussions about important issues of today. We’ve tackled difficult topics in a thoughtful and productive way, including our state flag, balancing individual freedom and community responsibility during a pandemic, and now, the debate over critical race theory. Two years ago, we established a partnership with Hinds Community College to provide for-credit courses to incarcerated students. With support from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, this program will soon grow to five community colleges and five Mississippi prisons. Both Ideas on Tap and our prison education initiative are now part of our regular programming and our annual budget, but they came from innovative, new ideas.
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We are asking our friends to help us reach our goal of raising $50,000 to launch this new Humanities Innovation Fund in honor of our 50th anniversary. | |
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Such new ideas often spring from our desire to meet contemporary challenges. Last year, in the aftermath of the killing of George Floyd, we responded by creating a special grant program to help public libraries in Mississippi purchase books about the history and continuing impact of racism. To fund this new grant program, we relied on a direct-mail appeal and were able to provide 1,900 books to over 150 libraries in Mississippi.
Such responsive innovation has been the hallmark of the Council since we were founded in 1972. Next year, we will celebrate our 50th anniversary by establishing a Humanities Innovation Fund to empower us to pursue and carry out new ideas and react to ever-shifting needs and opportunities. We are asking our friends to help us reach our goal of raising $50,000 to launch this new Humanities Innovation Fund in honor of our 50th anniversary.
This past summer, the National Endowment for the Humanities offered each state humanities council special funding to carry out programs related to its “More Perfect Union” initiative which celebrates the upcoming 250th anniversary of the founding of the United States. We will use these special funds to launch “The Mississippi Founders Project” to educate the public about Mississippians who worked to make the ideals of America’s founding a reality in our state. We will reach Mississippians with these vital stories through a traveling exhibit, podcasts, and interstitial broadcasts on Mississippi Public Television.
For our 50th anniversary, we are supporting a series of programs on the theme “Reflecting Mississippi,” focusing on the diverse stories of our state and exploring how our state’s narratives have, or have not, reflected who we are. We are very excited to have the acclaimed Mississippi writer Jesmyn Ward speak on this theme May 5, 2022 in Jackson as part of our celebration.
These are the types of programs our Humanities Innovation Fund will enable us to pursue. If you have seen the benefit of the MHC in your community over the last five decades, if you have participated in or attended an MHC-supported program in the past, please help us continue this impact. Our Humanities Innovation Fund will ensure we have the resources to develop and deliver exciting new programs in the future. While ideas may be easy, your support will enable us to bring these ideas to life.
Click here to donate to support the Humanities Innovation Fund in honor of our 50th anniversary. Thank you!
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MHC Announces its 2022 Public Humanities Awards
The Mississippi Humanities Council is delighted to announce recipients for its 2022 Public Humanities Awards, which recognize outstanding work by Mississippians in bringing the insights of the humanities to public audiences. These recipients will be honored at a public ceremony and reception Friday evening, March 25, 2022, at the Old Capitol Museum in Jackson.
Dr. William Reynolds Ferris (pictured above), former chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities, will receive the Cora Norman Award in recognition of his distinguished career as a scholar and national leader in the humanities. A native of Vicksburg, Ferris is a writer, folklorist, and documentarian who has written or edited 10 books about Mississippi culture and history. He was a founding director of the Center for the Study of Southern Culture at the University of Mississippi. In 2018 he produced the Grammy Award-winning box set Voices of Mississippi containing his field recordings and documentary films. Ferris is currently the Joel R. Williamson Eminent Professor of History Emeritus at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He served as chairman of the NEH from 1997 to 2001. Jon Parrish Peede, one of Ferris’ former students who served as NEH chairman from 2017 to 2020, will present the Cora Norman award to Ferris.
“In 2022 we will mark the 50th anniversary of the MHC with our year-long theme 'Reflecting Mississippi,' and we can think of no public scholar who has done more than Bill Ferris to reflect the richness and complexity of our state’s culture, from its music, folklife, and history to its art and literature,” said Stuart Rockoff, executive director of the Mississippi Humanities Council. “It will be especially appropriate to honor his lifetime of leadership in the public humanities during our 50th anniversary year. We are very excited to have both Mississippians who have served as chairmen of the National Endowment for the Humanities participating in the ceremony.”
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In addition to honoring Ferris, the MHC will also recognize:
Reflecting Mississippi Award: W. Ralph Eubanks (pictured right) for his work as a memoirist and literary scholar that has helped revise our state’s narratives to reflect Mississippi more honestly and accurately.
Humanities Scholar Award: Dr. Daphne Chamberlain, associate professor of history at Tougaloo College, for her commitment to bridging academic humanities and the public through her expertise as a civil rights historian.
Humanities Partner Award: New Hope Baptist Church in Jackson for its outstanding Black History Month programs which have received MHC grant support for several years.
Humanities Educator: Mississippi Delta Community College Prison Education Program for its work providing for-credit courses to incarcerated students at the Mississippi State Penitentiary at Parchman amidst the COVID pandemic.
Preserver of Mississippi Culture: Fannie Lou Hamer’s America Project, which produced a documentary film that will be broadcast nationwide over public television, bringing the voice and story of an extraordinary Mississippian to a national audience.
The MHC will also recognize 30 recipients of the 2022 Humanities Teacher Awards, which pay tribute to outstanding faculty in traditional humanities fields at each of our state’s institutions of higher learning.
The Council invites everyone to join them at their 2022 Public Humanities Awards ceremony and reception March 25, 2022, at 5:30 p.m. at the Old Capitol Museum in Jackson.
Tickets for the Mississippi Humanities Council Public Humanities Awards ceremony and reception are $50 each and may be purchased online here or by sending a check to the Mississippi Humanities Council, 3825 Ridgewood Road, Room 317, Jackson, MS 39211.
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'Ideas on Tap' Returns to Discuss Critical Race Theory
On December 9, the MHC will host its first in-person Ideas on Tap event since 2019. We are excited to be back in-person to have productive conversations on various topics that pertain to Mississippi.
There has been much controversy surrounding “critical race theory” throughout the nation, but what does CRT mean in Mississippi? How should we teach our state's history of racism, and how is this history still relevant today? This panel discussion seeks to address that issue from a broader perspective.
The panel will feature Vidhi Bamzai (civil rights attorney), Deidre Alexander (educator & doctoral student in education), and Chauncey Spears (education curriculum expert.) Kayleigh Skinner, managing editor of Mississippi Today, will moderate.
Please join us at the Ecoshed in Jackson December 9 at 5:30 p.m. for an interactive and civil conversation about this important issue. The MHC strongly suggests following CDC guidelines at this event, including wearing a mask if you have not been fully vaccinated.
For more information on Ideas on Tap, contact John Spann or visit the MHC website.
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MHC Unveils New Streamlined Grant Application Process
In 2022, the Mississippi Humanities Council will celebrate 50 years of serving the people of our state with a year-long series of programs and projects organized around a “Reflecting Mississippi” theme. These projects will focus on the diverse stories of our state, exploring where we have been and who we are in 2022.
In addition to Council-conducted programs and projects, the MHC invites grant proposals that explore and reflect on our state’s unique history and culture. Proposals may include but aren’t limited to: local history; Mississippi literature; stories of underrepresented communities; parts of our history and culture that have often not been reflected in mainstream narratives; and how major national and global events have shaped Mississippi. Projects may also examine how our narratives have, or have not, reflected Mississippi.
Coinciding with the rollout of its “Reflecting Mississippi” grant initiative, the Council has streamlined its application form and shortened the turnaround time for successful applicants to access their grant funds. The new, streamlined application form is available on the Grants page of the MHC website. The processing time between the application date and the availability of grant funds for minigrants has been reduced to four weeks and for regular grants to eight weeks.
Additionally, the Council has increased the upper limit for regular grants from $7,500.00 to $10,000.00 for the May 1, 2022, deadline for projects related to the “Reflecting Mississippi” theme.
For more information, please visit the Grants page on the MHC website.
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MHC Partners with Press Association to Launch 'Community Forum'
The Mississippi Humanities Council and the Mississippi Press Association Education Foundation will partner on a series of civic engagement programs in four communities across the state beginning in February.
Dubbed the "Community Forum" project, the series will bring together members of the local media and civic leaders to engage with citizens on crucial issues such as education, the economy, healthcare, and more.
The first two sessions are scheduled for February 16, 2022 in Biloxi-Gulfport and February 17, 2022 in McComb. Locations for the evening events will be announced later.
“After long delays brought on by COVID, we are very excited to help organize these community forums with our friends at the Mississippi Press Association," said MHC Executive Director Dr. Stuart Rockoff. "Together, we understand that a strong, engaged local press is vital to our communities and our democracy.”
The forums will involve local journalists from the Sun Herald in Biloxi and the Enterprise-Journal in McComb as they solicit public input on pressing community issues and seek to generate "solutions-based" journalism as a result.
The sessions will be moderated by Tom Silvestri, retired longtime publisher of the Richmond Times Dispatch in Virginia, who led dozens of similar "Public Square" programs for that newspaper during his tenure. Silvestri is now executive director of the Relevance Project, a collaborative effort of state, regional, and national press associations aimed at improving engagement between news consumers and local media.
"This is a first-of-its-kind program that will roll out across the nation in the coming months," said Mississippi Press Association Executive Director Layne Bruce. "We are very pleased to be partnering with the Council to foster these first civic engagement programs here in Mississippi."
These programs are part of the “Democracy and the Informed Citizen” initiative administered by the Federation of State Humanities Councils, with funding from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
Founded in 1983, the MPA Education Foundation is a charitable organization providing scholarship and internship opportunities to students of journalism and communications at in-state colleges and universities. It also hosts and underwrites programs that focus on the importance of community journalism.
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'Mississippi Founders' Project to Highlight Those Who Built a More Perfect Union
With special funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities’ “More Perfect Union” initiative, the MHC will launch “Mississippi Founders,” a multimedia project highlighting 12 Mississippians who fought to make their home state live up to the ideals of America’s founding.
Since Mississippi was not part of the U.S. until 1795 or a state until 1817, our state’s narrative has not been directly connected to the story of 1776 and the country’s founding. And yet, if one conceives of the founding as an active, ongoing process in which America struggled to fulfill the ideals of the Declaration and Constitution, Mississippi is at the heart of the story.
These 12 Mississippians, who represent many more, were essentially founders of Mississippi’s democracy. While at the time they were often accused of being anti-American, these founders were intensely patriotic and helped create an America that was far closer to the principles of our country than the world of segregation and white supremacy in which they lived.
The Mississippi Founders project will highlight these men and women through short interstitial segments to be broadcast on Mississippi Public Television, a series of podcasts featuring scholars and descendants talking about these figures, and a pop-up traveling exhibit designed for public libraries and schools in rural areas.
“Their effort and sacrifice helped ensure that Mississippi’s significant Black population was included in 'we the people,' said MHC Executive Director Stuart Rockoff. “Our goal is to lift these people up, not as simply heroes to the Black community or of the civil rights movement, but as heroes for all Mississippians, indeed, as Mississippi’s Founders.”
“Much attention has been rightfully paid to the civil rights activists who led the movement in Mississippi. Our goal with ‘Mississippi Founders’ is to dig a bit deeper to highlight those men and women who served as a critical foundation for the work of the movement,” said John Spann, MHC’s program and outreach officer.
Advising the project is a scholars committee comprised of five historians of the Mississippi Civil Rights movement, including Dr. Daphne Chamberlain (Tougaloo College); Dr. Robert Luckett (Jackson State University); Dr. Tiyi Morris (Ohio State University); Dr. Rebecca Tuuri (University of Southern Mississippi); and Dr. Anthony Neal (Mississippi State University). The committee has met and selected the 12 Mississippi founders who will be featured. They will also advise and edit the text of the exhibit and interstitial segments and be interviewed for the podcasts.
For more information about the “Mississippi Founders” project, or if you are interested in bringing the free traveling exhibit to your community, contact John Spann at (601) 432-6752.
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A Look Back at 2021 Prison Education
In keeping with its motto, “The humanities are for everyone,” The MHC brought for-credit college courses to approximately 100 incarcerated Mississippians in 2021.
The program, funded by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, partners community colleges with prisons. Using live-streaming where students can interact in real time with instructors, Mississippi Delta Community College will complete six courses at Mississippi State Penitentiary, Parchman, this year. In the Spring 2021 semester, these students had the opportunity to take English courses, preparing them for other humanities courses during the fall semester. Under the program, several students will have as many as nine credit hours going into 2022.
Northeast Mississippi Community College offered six hours in the spring, but was unable to return to Alcorn County Regional Correctional Facility this semester due to a spike in COVID cases, and were unfortunately unable to access live-stream classes.
COVID restrictions interrupted in-person classes for Hinds Community College at Central Mississippi Correctional Facility last spring. To continue the program, they implemented live-streaming and are scheduled to complete two courses this semester.
The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation grant to the Council provides funding for humanities courses through 2022. For more information, contact MHC program coordinator Carla Falkner.
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New ‘Topophilia Book Club’ to Explore Mississippi Delta through Literature
The COVID-19 pandemic has taken a toll on many Mississippi cultural organizations, but the Museum of the Mississippi Delta is fighting back with the introduction of several new features and programs to bring patrons back through its doors, including a new community book club exploring Delta history and culture through literature. The new “Topophilia Book Club” will launch Dec. 8 with a community discussion about Providence by Will Campbell, which chronicles 170 years of history of a square mile of plantation land in Holmes County, Mississippi.
“The COVID-19 pandemic affected the Museum in a very personal way,” said Executive Director Katie Mills. “In November (2020), the Museum lost its long-time business manager to the pandemic.” Additionally, the Museum saw a dramatic reduction in income from admissions, donations, rentals, and memberships and had to close to the public on two separate occasions, she added.
But with grant support from the Mississippi Humanities Council, the Museum is developing new ways of engaging with its community now that foot traffic is again possible at its facility. The Topophilia Book Club takes its name from a term coined by geographer Yi-Fu Tuan of the University of Wisconsin to describe the “affective bond with one’s environment—a person’s mental, emotional, and cognitive ties to a place.”
“Because of Mississippi’s rich literary heritage, it made sense to continue exploring this region through the written word,” Mills said.
The new book club is open to all and will explore six titles selected by local author and historian Mary Carol Miller. Following Providence this month, the six-book discussion series will dive into When Evil Lived in Laurel by Curtis Wilkie, Goat Castle by Karen L. Cox, Delta Epiphany by Ellen Meacham, plus two more titles to be selected.
“Exploring Delta heritage through the works of Mississippi authors provides an intimate lens to view the strata of earth, people and events that make the Delta so unique,” said Mills.
Those wishing to participate in the Topophilia Book Club discussions should acquire their own copies of each title. The Museum of the Mississippi Delta will have a limited number available for purchase and encourages participants to also visit local, independent booksellers for upcoming titles. The Providence discussion will take place in the Museum’s Community Room from 11:45 a.m to 1 p.m. December 8 and December 9 from 6:00 -7:30 p.m.
For more information, visit the Museum of the Mississippi Delta website.
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MHC Holiday Break
The Mississippi Humanities Council will be closed starting at12:00 p.m. Wednesday, December 22, through January 2, 2022. We will return January 3, 2022 at 8:30 a.m. We wish you and your family warm seasons greetings and a Happy New Year!
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