Support the Humanities Innovation Fund | |
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My first instinct is always to say “yes.” When we learned the chaplain at the Mississippi State Penitentiary at Parchman wanted to bring our book club program to the men in the prison’s highest security unit, we quickly agreed. He wanted the men to read the award-winning book A Knock at Midnight, a lawyer’s memoir about her work for criminal justice reform.
While most of the program was done over Zoom, led by a Jackson State University English professor, the final session was in person. The author Brittany K. Barnett flew to Mississippi to speak with the men, who spend most of their day in solitary confinement. It was one of the most memorable programs we have offered during my time at the Mississippi Humanities Council.
Our Prison Book Club program began earlier this year with Dr. Ebony Lumumba, chair of the Department of English, Foreign Languages and Speech Communication at Jackson State University and an MHC board member, leading men at Parchman through the works of acclaimed Mississippi writer Jesmyn Ward. During the sessions for the National Book Award-winning novel Sing, Unburied, Sing, Ward herself participated in the class via Zoom.
One participant wrote afterward that reading the novel “has helped me deal with my losses in the past. I never would have thought I’d feel so moved by talking about a book.” Another student told us that participating in these educational programs “makes us feel human again.”
Since its start in the spring, our prison book discussion program has only grown, expanding to different Parchman units and to South Mississippi Correctional Facility in Leakesville, our first time offering any educational programs at that facility. We are currently in discussions to expand it to additional facilities. The original group at Parchman has now worked through three of Jesmyn Ward’s works and is getting ready to read her first novel Where the Line Bleeds.
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The incredible response to our Prison Book Club from the students, teachers, and prison education staff has been overwhelming and highlights the power of great literature and the humanities to change lives. | |
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When we prepared our budget for 2022 last summer, we didn’t even conceive of a program like the Prison Book Club. It arose from a request from the education staff at Parchman. We loved the idea and quickly ran with it, enlisting outstanding scholars like Dr. Lumumba and teaching powerful works by one of Mississippi’s greatest writers.
But we didn’t have a budget for the program. These types of opportunities arise often, and we don’t always have reserve funds to cover the costs. This is why we have created our Humanities Innovation Fund, the Council’s first-ever endowment that will support new program initiatives every year.
In honor of the Mississippi Humanities Council’s 50th anniversary, the Community Foundation for Mississippi has given us a $50,000 challenge grant to help launch the fund. Thanks to their generous support, they will match every donation 1 to 1. We need your help to meet this challenge.
Your donation will help ensure we have the funds to create new, innovative programs like the Prison Book Club. Thank you for your support of the humanities and the Mississippi Humanities Council.
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Prison Book Clubs Continue and Broaden
Thanks to a partnership between the MHC and the Mississippi Library Commission (MLC), Prison Book Clubs are expanding. Through the MHC program, members read award-winning literature and memoirs and then discuss the works with a humanities scholar.
MLC provided copies of Brittany K. Barnett’s memoir A Knock at Midnight: A Story of Hope, Justice, and Freedom for the inaugural club at South Mississippi Correctional Institution at Leakesville. Sponsored by MHC, Dr. Joseph Peterson, Assistant Professor of History at The University of Southern Mississippi, led the four-week discussion which included a virtual interview with the author. Barnett thanked the members for choosing to read her book and explained they helped her maintain hope in her efforts for justice reform.
In October, MLC is providing both the books and a scholar for a new club for men ages 19-21 at Mississippi State Penitentiary at Parchman. MLC Consultant Shellie Ziegler will help the members delve into John Lewis’ graphic trilogy, March, co-authored with Andrew Aydin and illustrated by Nate Powell.
MHC is continuing to sponsor the original book club at Mississippi State Penitentiary at Parchman under the leadership of Dr. Ebony Lumumba, Department Chair of English at Jackson State University. The group has recently finished its third work by Mississippi author Jesmyn Ward, including her two novels: Sing, Unburied, Sing and Salvage the Bones, which both won National Book Awards. Between those two works of fiction, the members read Ward’s memoir, The Men We Reaped.
Also during October, MHC will offer a book club at Walnut Grove Correctional Facility for men scheduled to reenter society in 2023. Dr. William Sansing, retired Associate Dean of Instruction at East Mississippi Community College, will guide discussions on A Knock at Midnight. The book club will be some of the first educational programming offered at Walnut Grove since it reopened in October 2021.
For more information about the MHC’s prison education and prison book club programs, contact project coordinator Carla Falkner.
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Thank you to all who attended the Mississippi Museums Conference, co-sponsored by the MHC and the Mississippi Department of Archives and History September 19-20! Photo from the keynote panel, "Reflecting Mississippi in Our Museums." | |
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Ideas on Tap to Discuss Digital Divide
Join us for Ideas On Tap: Addressing the Digital Divide on September 29, where we will discuss technological disparities in Mississippi. Panelists include Sally Doty (Broadband Expansion and Accessibility of Mississippi), Dr. Creston Burse (Mississippi Economic Council), and Tracy Carr (Mississippi Library Commission). They will explore the issues and challenges that have created a digital divide, and how their respective institutions are working to bridge the gaps in technology. The program will take place at the Bean Path Makerspace in Jackson on September 29 at 5:30 p.m. For more information contact our Program and Outreach Officer John Spann at 601-432-6752 and jspann@mhc.state.ms.us
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'Mississippi Founders' on Display Now
The Mississippi Founders traveling exhibit is now on display at the Medgar Evers Library in Jackson for the next six weeks. This special exhibit is funded through the National Endowment for Humanities special "More Perfect Union" initiative. The exhibit measures 65 feet long with six stand-alone panels, and two sets of three panels that are connected to one other. This allows the exhibit to be manipulated to fit spaces large and small.
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The panels feature Ida B. Wells-Barnett, John R. Lynch, Thomas W. Stringer, Aaron Henry, Fannie Lou Hamer, Clarie Collins Harvey, Amzie More, Vernon Dahmer, Medgar Evers, Annie Devine, Unita Blackwell, and Lawrence Guyot. Each panel displays a summary of their life and impact on American political freedoms, using various photographs to express their significance. There are two sets of the exhibit—the second exhibit will soon be on display at the Oren Dunn City Museum in Tupelo. To add your institution to the host site list, contact John Spann.
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Voices and Votes Prepares for Natchez
Voices and Votes: Democracy in America is on the move from Pascagoula to Natchez! The exhibit will depart the Pascagoula High School Performing Arts Center on September 27 and will open in at the Willie Mae Dunn Library at Copiah-Lincoln Community College in Natchez on October 3.
While in Pascagoula, the exhibit attracted hundreds of school students from various school groups and featured multiple civic-focused public programs. Pascagoula programs included a panel discussion from formerly segregated students on voting rights, a voting rights-themed poetry night, and an essay contest from local students.
Voices and Votes will remain in Natchez until November 11. While there, the library and partner organizations will host a series of free programs in conjunction with the exhibit. For a full list of programs, visit our website calendar.
Voices and Votes, developed by the Smithsonian Institution's Museum on Main Street division, will be in Mississippi through until January 2023. After its stay in Natchez, it will travel to the Catfish Row Museum in Vicksburg. For more information or exhibit dates, contact MHC Program Officer Molly McMillan.
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Coahoma Community College Celebrates 30 years of Tennessee Williams
The Mississippi Delta Tennessee Williams Festival was founded by Coahoma Community College in 1992 under the leadership of Dr. Vivian Presley, president of CCC from 1992 to 2013, with a $10,000 grant award from the National Endowment for the Arts. Clarksdale journalist and former MHC-board member Panny Mayfield, assisted Dr. Presley in writing the grant and has remained heavily involved ever since. Mayfield now serves as director emeritus of the festival and is pleased that Coahoma Community College is celebrating 30 years of Tennessee Williams.
The very first Mississippi Delta Tennessee Williams Festival was held in October 1993. The Mississippi Humanities Council has supported the event every year since. This year’s festival, to be held Oct. 13-15 in Clarskdale, is dedicated to the late Dr. Colby Kullman of the University of Mississippi who served over 25 years as part of the festival advisory team. Kullman was a beloved teacher at the University of Mississippi and he believed in the importance of “Teaching Tennessee.”
Other notable highlights of the 2022 MS Delta Tennessee Williams Festival will include a tour through Clarksdale's historic district and other areas; a movie screening of the acclaimed 1958 film Cat on a Hot Tin Roof on the lawn of the Cutrer Mansion; academic presentations from scholars from around the country including Dr. Kenneth Holditch; Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist, Richard Ford; Award-winning author, W. Ralph Eubanks; Moorman Distinguished Professor in the Humanities, Dr. Andrew Haley; Award-winning Highway 61 Radio Host, Writer and Researcher, Scott Barretta; Director of the Tennessee Williams Rectory Museum, Karen Kohlhaas; and Academy and Emmy Award winning producer, Milton Justice; as well as performances by both professional and community actors; a High School Student Drama Competition; and Porch Plays in the historic district.
Academy and Emmy Award winning producer, and former professor at the Stella Adler Academy and also the Stella Adler Conservatory, Milton Justice, will also direct an abridged production of A Glass Menagerie on Saturday afternoon in Clarksdale on the porch of the historic Governor's Mansion located at 41 John Street.
As a little extra reason to come in early for the festival, organizers are expanding a bit this year by showcasing some of their favorite community connections in a pre-festival event at the Cutrer Mansion on Thursday, October 13 from 11 am to 4 pm. Billed as a “Community Celebration,” the event will include talks by Dr. Levi Frazier of the Blues City Cultural Center in Memphis; Wright Thompson, author and senior writer at ESPN; and Curtis Wilkie, professor, author and long-time newspaper man who worked for the Clarksdale Press Register during the 1960s.
The Mississippi Delta Tennessee Williams Festival is free and open to the public. For more information, please contact Jen Waller at jwaller@coahomacc.edu or at 662-645-3555.
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Upcoming MHC-Sponsored Events | |
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East Mississippi:
Speakers Bureau: Developing and Oral Histoy From Concept to Creation
October 4, 12:00 p.m.
Meridian Architectural Trust
Oral Historian Mark LaFrancis covers best practices for creating, developing, and implementing an oral history project.
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The Delta:
Speakers Bureau: Learning Mississippi History Through Historical Markers
October 11, 6:30pm
Sharkey-Issaquena County Library, Rolling Fork
From traditional green historical markers to the Mississippi Blues Trail, Freedom Trail, Country Music Trail, and Mississippi Mound Trail, the state’s history is told along its roads. William "Brother" Rogers takes a fun romp through history that will interest anyone who likes fascinating trivia about the state.
2022 Mississippi Delta Tennessee Williams Festival
October 13-15
Clarksdale
Annual festival celebrating and exploring the Mississippi playwright's works and legacy.
Learn More
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Central Mississippi:
"Southern Fiction" Discussion
October 8, 4:00 p.m.
Eudora Welty House and Garden, Jackson
This event will consist of a conversation between Tema Stauffer and Lauren Rhoades about Stauffer’s project “Southern Fiction”. The discussion will touch on the connection between the photographs and the literature, as well as interrogate the South’s complex historical on social dynamics, as revealed in these images.
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Museum After Hours
October 20, 5:00 p.m.
Mississippi Museum of Art, Jackson
On Thursday, October 20, 2022, in conjunction with Museum After Hours, from 5:30 until 7 PM, Pike School of Art, in partnership with the Mississippi Museum of Art, will host a listening session of Charles Edward William’s work, FORWARD and a panel discussion about its place in the history of the Civil Rights Movement.
Learn More
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Southwest Mississippi:
Voices and Votes in Natchez
October 3 - November 11
Copiah-Lincoln Community College, Natchez
The Willie Mae Dunn Library at Co-Lin in Natchez is hosting Voices and Votes: Democracy in America, a Smithsonian traveling exhibition, from October 3 through November 11. The exhibit is open to the public.
Voices and Votes events in Natchez:
September 26, 5:30 p.m.: Democracy on Tap: Your Voice, Your Vote, and Why it Matters @ Natchez Brewing Company
October 3, 6:00 p.m.: Meet the Mayors: Democracy Natchez Style and Grand Opening
October 20, 12:00 p.m. and 6:00 p.m.: Presentation from Voices and Votes state scholar Dr. Rebecca Tuuri, “Democracy in Mississippi: Race, Violence and Power in the Struggle for the Vote”
October 27, 12:00 p.m. and 6:00 p.m.: Documentary Film Screening, "Women of the Struggle: Facing Fear in the Civil Rights Era"
November 3, 12:00 p.m. and 6:00 p.m.:.: Documentary Film Screening, "Fannie Lou Hamer's America"
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South Mississippi:
Will Eisner and the History of the Graphic Novel
September 12 – October 23
The Library of Hattiesburg, Petal, and Forrest County, Hattiesburg
The Will Eisner Giclee Art Exhibition is at the heart of this celebration and is made up of 75 prints with name plates and information panels. Eisner was one of the earliest cartoonists and popularized the term “graphic novel.” He was an early contributor to formal comics. Dr. Stacy Creel will kick off the exhibit with a program delving into the history of the genre. Every Tuesday, the library will screen a movie adapted from the world of the graphic novel. Artists Chuck Galey will teach young readers how to express themselves through the creation of their own superhero.
Learn More
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