"I’m grateful that the men are willing to share some details of these experiences with one another and with me. We have built community indeed."

Michael’s commentary brilliantly characterizes the sentiment of our sessions. As we grapple with literary style and character development, we find understanding and it is the best thing in the world. There are times during our talks that are so joyous that I believe we all forget where we are. Our laughter is full and genuine, and we are drawn to some memory of something good. There are other moments when grief and sadness are palpable—times when we’ve gotten to a topic that snatches us back to the most devastating things we’ve known. These are the moments when the ghosts in Ward’s novel and the dead men in her memoir remind us of our own hauntings and loss. I’m grateful that the men are willing to share some details of these experiences with one another and with me. We have built community indeed.

Ward joined the group virtually for one of our weekly discussions. She had only been scheduled to log on for about a half an hour, but that quickly turned into an hour-long session where she listened to the men share their responses to her characters and her depiction of the prison. My educator tendency guided me to prepare prompts to get the conversation started between Ward and the men in the club, but they did not need prompting. When Ward logged on, they were ready. They posed thoughtful questions and presented meaning that Ward admitted to not considering for certain characters and events in the text. She shared details from her past. She talked about her brother and explained how she knew so much about Parchman. The men thanked her for writing about the infamous prison. I felt honored to witness this space—our community expanded.

I struggled with how to adequately share the deep impact this club has had on me. I still don’t believe that I have done it justice here, but as I do in facilitating the sessions, I will rely on the thoughts and words of the men. Charlie, another club member who sat up front every session and came prepared with a litany of inquiries for Ward on the day of her visit, ended one of his written responses with a short note that says more than I could muster: “Dr. Ebony, we seriously thank you sincerely from the heart’s core. You made us all feel free through a book. Something I thought impossible. I can’t wait for round two—thank you.”

I can’t wait either.

Ebony O. Lumumba, Ph.D.

MHC Board Secretary

MHC Awards Over $81,000 in Grants

The Mississippi Humanities Council is pleased to announce $81,563 in grants to 14 Mississippi organizations in support of public humanities programs. The humanities programs funded in this major round include a theatrical production by Choctaw students at Mississippi State University exploring traditional Choctaw stories, music and dance; expansion of an exhibit on housing insecurity in Mississippi; an oral history project to record memories from Mississippi farm families; documentary film projects on the historic underfunding of HBCUs in Mississippi and the history and cultural impact of a groundbreaking progressive rock radio station.

Dr. Stuart Rockoff, executive director of the Mississippi Humanities Council, said, “These fourteen projects reflect the richness of our state’s diverse stories, from our state’s Choctaw heritage and our vital music history, to the struggle over segregation and civil rights and the experiences of Mississippi’s farm families. Each project exemplifies our 50th anniversary theme of “Reflecting Mississippi.”

Humanities grants are awarded to Mississippi nonprofit organizations in support of programs that foster the public’s understanding of our rich history and culture. Major grants are offered twice each year. Deadlines are May 1 and September 15. Please visit our Grants page on our website, or contact Carol Andersen, carol@mhc.state.ms.us, for additional information.

Central Mississippi Blues Society, Inc. —$4,400

Reflecting Jackson, Mississippi, in the Blues

Two public educational events exploring the history of Blues music in Jackson and the “business” of Blues music. Events will be part of the city of Jackson’s year-long bicentennial festivities.

Coahoma Community College—$7,500

2022 Mississippi Delta Tennessee Williams Festival

Annual festival examining the life and works of playwright Tennessee Williams. 2022 is the festival’s 30th anniversary and will highlight festival founders and longtime scholar contributors to the annual event. Programming will center around two of Williams’ most iconic plays, Glass Menagerie and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, with two film screenings, seven scholar presentations and several cultural workshops.

From the Heart Productions—$5,500

Fannie Lou Hamer’s America

An extension of the Fannie Lou Hamer’s America film project to upgrade their website and enhance the virtual driving tour of Hamer-related sites in Mississippi. MHC grant funds will support a filmmaker in collecting and editing new audio and video footage for the virtual tour.

Griot Arts—$5,000

Paramount Theater Oral History

Documentary film project incorporating recorded interviews with community members exploring the history of segregation in Clarksdale, centered on a once-segregated movie theater. The film will also inform plans for a historic revitalization project to restore the 104-year-old theater and nearby former JC Penney store to create a multipurpose community facility.

Itawamba Community College—$4,500

Reflecting Mississippi: Finding Yourself in Mississippi’s Reflection

Series of public events at a community college that aim to showcase marginalized voices. Events include a campus keynote lecture and writing workshop, a lecture series featuring various literature scholars, a college book club event, a campus creative writing competition and a concluding campus celebration.

Jackson State University —$5,000

Crystal Wilkinson: Homeplace Poetry and How the Soil Looks Back and Wonders

This project will bring an award-winning poet to JSU campus to lead a community forum and a master class for students.

Magnolia Independent Film Festival—$5,000

WZZQ: The Rock of Jackson

Documentary film project to explore the history and cultural impact of a groundbreaking, but short-lived, radio station that brought freeform progressive rock music to Mississippi audiences.

Mississippi Action for Community Education (MACE) —$5,678

Our Souls Look Back and Wonder: Reflecting and 45 Years of History, Advocacy, Stories and Music in the Mississippi Delta

Two-part program, including a day-long literary arts event (visual art exhibits and presentations on Blues music) for the general public and a series of Blues in the Schools educational programs at middle schools and high schools in Washington County.

Mississippi State University—$9,685

Weave—The Miracle of the Choctaw

Theatrical production by Choctaw students attending MSU, exploring traditional Choctaw stories, music and dance.

Mississippi State University—$10,000

Housing Insecurity in Mississippi

Expansion and improvement of an exhibit on housing insecurity in Mississippi which will travel first to Jackson and then to other locations.

Mississippi Votes—$2,550

The Historic Underfunding of HBCUs in Mississippi

Documentary film project examining the history and effects of chronic underfunding of the state’s historically Black colleges and universities, with several public screenings planned when the film is completed.

Robert Johnson Blues Foundation—$3,950

“I Believe I’ll Go Back Home” – The Copiah County Blues of Robert Johnson

Documentary film project structured around oral histories from Robert Johnson’s living grandchildren. An aim of the film is to draw attention to an area of the state underappreciated in the development of the Blues.

Walter Anderson Museum of Art—$7,500

Reflecting Home: Walter Anderson and Oldfields

Exhibition and series of public programs exploring architecture, environment and society and how they come together to shape Southern identity. The framework for these programs is the Oldfields home in Gautier, MS, where the artist Walter Anderson lived and worked.

MHC Grant Brings Noted Literary Scholar to Faulkner’s 'Little Postage Stamp of Native Soil'

In an interview, acclaimed writer William Faulkner once said about his work, “I discovered that my own little postage stamp of native soil was worth writing about and that I would never live long enough to exhaust it.” Much of his fictional Yoknapatawpha County was based on the counties of north Mississippi where his family had deep roots.

Acclaimed literary scholar and biographer Dr. Carl Rollyson will be speaking about Mississippi’s great writer during a series of programs in north Mississippi funded by a Mississippi Humanities Council grant. Rollyson is the author of over 40 books, including the two-volume biography The Life of William Faulkner. Rollyson’s Mississippi tour is being organized by the Pontotoc County Historical Society.

Dr. Rollyson will speak at the Pontotoc Community House on Monday, July 18, at 6 pm. He will discuss the life of William Faulkner, focusing on events that occurred in the north Mississippi area and how they affected his life and his work. Dr. Rollyson will sign copies of his books after his presentation. During Dr. Rollyson’s Pontotoc visit, Jack Elliott, author of a new biography of W. C. Falkner, William’s great grandfather, will conduct a tour of William Faulkner-related sites in and around Pontotoc, including the site where Faulkner’s brother Dean died in an airplane crash.

Rollyson will speak at the Union County Heritage Museum in New Albany on July 19 and the Ripley Public Library on July 22. In between these events, he will be attending the Forty-Eighth Annual Faulkner and Yoknapatawpha Conference at the University of Mississippi. For more details about these events, visit http://mshumanities.org/events/

Delta Tourism Industry Leaders Explore Collaborative Strategies for Attracting More Visitors

Panel Event First of Several ‘Community Forums’ Planned Across the State 

The Mississippi Humanities Council is partnering with the Mississippi Press Association to coordinate a series of civic engagements across our state, hosted by local newspapers to explore issues of regional relevance in their communities. The first event took place June 8 in Cleveland at the GRAMMY Museum Mississippi, hosted by The Bolivar Bullet with a group of Mississippi Delta tourism industry leaders discussing collaborative strategies to increase the area’s appeal as a travel destination. Publisher Scott Coopwood facilitated a panel that included Emily Havens of the GRAMMY Museum, Sean Johnson, director of tourism Cleveland-Bolivar County Chamber of Commerce, Malika Polk-Lee of the B.B. King Museum, Roger Stolle of Cathead Delta Blues & Folk Art, Shelley Ritter of the Delta Blues Museum, Wayne Dowdy and Todd Campbell of Mississippi Delta National Heritage Area and Beth Stevens of the Greenwood-Leflore County Chamber of Commerce.

Using a civic engagement model created for The Relevance Project, an initiative of Newspaper Association Managers, the panel discussed the Delta’s strengths as a tourist attraction and the benefits of tourism for the local economy. They identified several opportunities to boost local tourism, such as collaborative marketing that promotes the region while highlighting individual attractions—and how to partner with their local newspapers to help tell a fuller story of the Delta. The forum also addressed bigger goals such as the need for improved housing, labor training and education to support a robust tourism industry.

The next forum will be hosted by the Daily Journal in Tupelo June 30 at the Hilton Garden Inn, 6-7:30 p.m., addressing education and brain drain. Two more forums are in the planning phase in Jackson and south Mississippi in July and August.

“After nearly two years of dealing with a stubborn pandemic and continued political division, all of us who love newspapers would benefit from learning about ground-level trends, new opportunities, and audience advice that combine to better power a transformation of local news media,” says Tom Silvestri, executive director of The Relevance Project.

Funding for these forums comes from a grant to the Mississippi Humanities Council from the Mellon Foundation’s Democracy and the Informed Citizen initiative, a national program focusing on the role of journalism and the humanities in a democratic society and the ways citizens gather, assess, and share information to make decisions about the futures of their communities and nation.

Scott Coopwood, left, publisher of The Bolivar Bullet, facilitates a panel discussion with Mississippi Delta tourism industry leaders about the potential and several strategies for boosting regional tourism.

MHC Welcomes Summer Interns

The MHC is pleased to be working with two Mississippi students this June and July. 

Juliet Buckholdt, a rising senior at Mississippi State University, is returning as a graphic design intern for the summer of 2022. Buckholdt is an art major concentrating in graphic design at the College of Art, Architecture and Design at Mississippi State University.

Jessica Maxwell is a native Arkansan. Originally from Little Rock, she has been thrilled to call Starkville, Mississippi home over the last year as she completes her Masters in English Literature at Mississippi State.

Upcoming MHC-Sponsored Events

Central Mississippi:

A Movement in Every Direction: Legacies of the Great Migration

April 9 – September 11

Mississippi Museum of Art, Jackson

A Movement in Every Direction: Legacies of the Great Migration explores the profound impact of the Great Migration on the social and cultural life of the United States from historical and personal perspectives. Co-organized with the Baltimore Museum of Art, the exhibition features newly commissioned works by 12 acclaimed Black artists across a variety of media.

Learn More

The Negro Motorist Green Book Exhibit 

July 2 - September 25

Two Mississippi Museums, Jackson

This Smithsonian traveling exhibit highlights the history of The Green Book, an annual guide created in 1936 by Harlem postman Victor Green that helped Black Americans travel the country with dignity by listing facilities that welcomed them during the era of segregation.

Learn More

North Mississippi:

Voices and Votes Exhibit in Booneville

July 1 – August 16

Northeast Mississippi Community College

NEMCC is hosting Voices and Votes: Democracy in America, a Smithsonian traveling exhibition, in Anderson Hall from July 1 through August 16. The exhibit is open to the public.

Voices and Votes events in Booneville:

July 7, 6:00 p.m.: “All Politics is Local: A Conversation About Municipal and Resident Responsibilities” 

July 16, 6:00 p.m.: Speakers Bureau (Dr. Ted Ammon): "Should I Really Ask 'What Can I Do For My Country?'

July 26, 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”

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Speakers Bureau: A Look at Mande (West African) Culture Through Traditional Music

June 30, 10:00am

Lee County Library, Tupelo

This presentation by Jerry Jenkins will give the listener a glimpse of the Mande Culture of West Africa. This discussion explores the function of the Mande music and musical instruments, Mande class system, songs, ceremonies and stories.

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Speakers Bureau: A Look at Mande (West African) Culture Through Traditional Music

June 30, 2:00pm

Historic Fulton Grammar School, Fulton

This presentation by Jerry Jenkins will give the listener a glimpse of the Mande Culture of West Africa. This discussion explores the function of the Mande music and musical instruments, Mande class system, songs, ceremonies and stories.

Learn More

Speakers Bureau: Slavery in Colonial Natchez: Cotton, Race, and Wealth Before the Old South

June 28, 6:30pm

Mississippi Maritime Museum

This presentation from Dr. Christian Pinnen examines how slaves and colonists weathered the economic and political upheavals that rocked the Lower Mississippi Valley in the years between the American Revolution and the Civil War. 

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