Director's Message

Showing the Impact of the MHC

We always focus on the impact. A few weeks ago, I was walking the halls of Congress with our board chair Douglass Sullivan-González as part of our Federation’s annual Humanities on the Hill event. We went into each meeting armed with grant lists, maps, and program highlights from the members’ districts. Statewide, we presented an impressive picture of our reach. In 2024, the MHC funded public programs in 90 different Mississippi towns. Some, like Jackson, Hattiesburg, and Oxford, hosted many different Council programs. Others, like Aberdeen, Ashland, or Meadville, hosted just one. Since we serve one of the most rural states in the country, the MHC has always worked especially hard to reach these parts of Mississippi, where there may not be other funders or resources to support cultural life like we see in the state capital and our major college towns.

The central message of our visits during Humanities on the Hill is how the MHC serves Mississippi. Above all, we are a resource, offering small but accessible grants and Council conducted programs to a wide range of organizations and institutions around the state. Just in the past week, we have helped support a French film discussion series at Rust College in Holly Springs and a southern literary festival at Blue Mountain Christian University. Working with the local community, we planned upcoming Freedom Trail marker unveilings in Carthage and Tchula. We have worked with a cohort of former staff members of the Kirk Fordice administration to help them develop an oral history project documenting his historic election and tenure as governor. In each of these cases, MHC is a resource to support cultural programs in rural places and help communities preserve and share their important stories.



One can also see the impact of our work at our upcoming awards ceremony. During the March 28th program, we will honor Dr. Christina Thomas with our Humanities Scholar Award for her research and writing for the Mississippi Freedom Trail and her work with the MHC to bring the National History Day program to the Youthful Offenders Unit at Central Mississippi Correctional Facility. We will recognize Friendly City Books of Columbus for their creation of the MHC-funded Possumtown Book Festival and a statewide series of youth poetry workshops (also supported by the MHC). Dr. Joseph Peterson will receive the Humanities Educator Award for his outstanding work leading the MHC’s prison book club at South Mississippi Correctional Institution in Leakesville. We will highlight Dianne Freelon-Foster and her organization Activists with a Purpose for their efforts to preserve the history of the school integration violence in Grenada, which we have supported with grants and a Freedom Trail marker. Finally, we will bestow our Cora Norman Award on Malcolm White for his decades of work supporting the cultural life of our state, including his partnering with the MHC and other state cultural agencies in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina to help the Coast’s arts and humanities organizations.

During our awards ceremony, people will hear extraordinary stories of the importance of the humanities in Mississippi and will learn about the impact of a small nonprofit organization that has only six full-time employees and receives about $1,000,000 a year in federal funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities. I invite you all to join us on March 28th for an evening of great food and music and a celebration of the MHC and the humanities in Mississippi.

Dr. Stuart Rockoff

MHC Executive Director

Headlines

Share Your Community’s Spark

Applications to bring "Spark!: Places of Innovation", an exhibition from Smithsonian’s Museum on Main Street, to your community are open now until April 4th.

Spark: Places of Innovation captures the ideas that are creating lasting change across rural America. Featuring stories from over 30 communities nationwide, the exhibit looks at the unique combination of history, resources, and collaboration that have resulted in innovation and invention.

“Small town and rural places were celebrated cradles of American invention and innovation,” says Arthur Molella, curator of the Spark exhibit “In technology, the arts, and society, their self-reliant creative traditions remain as vital today as ever.”

We are looking for six dedicated host sites to be a part of the exhibition’s 2026-2027 tour. Apply to host Spark!: Places of Innovation in your town. Each host site will house the exhibit for six weeks and will be responsible for curating public programs and a local exhibit during Spark’s stay in their community. This is free to all host sites.

For any questions, contact Katie Molpus at kmolpus@mhc.state.ms.us.

MHC Launches First Spanish-Language Prison Book Club

A group of native Spanish speakers make up the Mississippi Humanities Council’s newest book club.

Joel Fyke, a Jackson attorney, leads the club at the Federal Correctional Complex at Yazoo City. The group is the first MHC prison book club for non-English speakers and the only one at a federal facility.

When the fifteen members began meeting last December, they chose Jenny Torres Sánchez’s No somos de aquí—We Are Not from Here, for their inaugural read. Inspired by current events, the novel looks at escape and survival across the U.S.-Mexico border.

Currently, they are reading La sombra del viento—The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafón. Set in Barcelona in the aftermath of the Spanish Civil War, the book has been described as “a love letter to literature, intended for readers as passionate about storytelling as its young hero.”

MHC sponsors 14 prison book clubs in 10 prisons, bringing the humanities to over 400 men and women who are incarcerated in Mississippi.

Mississippi Humanities Council Wins Award for Freedom Trail Expansion

Thank you to the Mississippi Historical Society for honoring the Mississippi Humanities Council with the Excellence in History award for expanding the Mississippi Freedom Trail that commemorates the people and places in the state that played a pivotal role in the Civil Rights Movement.

In 2022, Visit Mississippi entered into a partnership with the Mississippi Humanities Council to expand the trail, and the Council has more than doubled the number of markers in the state. To learn more about the Freedom Trail and a complete list of sites, visit Mississippi Freedom Trail - Mississippi Humanities Council

We also extend our heartfelt congratulations to several of our grantees and partners who were also recognized at the annual awards luncheon. Among them, Bridging Winona received honors for their powerful theatrical productions of Voice of Freedom, which bring to life the story of Fannie Lou Hamer.

We are proud to support organizations and initiatives that keep Mississippi’s history alive.

Eudora

Join us for a special edition of Sunday Screening of Eudora during the Stranger the Fiction Film Festival hosted by the Mississippi Film Society. Please note the showing is at 1:30 pm at the Capri Theatre, 3023 N State Street, in Jackson April 13th.

Renowned Mississippi writer Eudora Welty is explored through intimate and charming interviews, both with Eudora herself and with family and friends. Seen through the backdrop of Jackson, Eudora is a revealing portrait of adventure, daring, humor and love as we meet a writer we only thought we knew. This film is directed by Anthony Thaxton and produced by Robert St. John.

This screening will be followed by a conversation with director Anthony Thaxton.

WATCH TRAILER

This program is co-sponsored by the Mississippi Humanities Council, Mississippi Department of Archives and History, the Mississippi Film Office and the Mississippi Film Society.

MHC Elects Three New Board Members

During its meeting February 20th at Mississippi College, the Mississippi Humanities Council elected three new members to its board. These new board members bring a range of expertise and institutional affiliation to the Council. They include:

Learn more about our mission and initiatives at mshumanities.org.

Reading the Room Traveling to North Mississippi

MHC and the Mississippi Book Festival are partnering with the University of Mississippi English Department's BFA program to bring Reading the Room to Oxford next month. Join us Wednesday, April 23^rd at 6 pm at Exploradora Coffee in Oxford.

Bring any book you are currently reading, enjoy some time set aside to read on your own and talk books with your neighbors over drinks and snacks!

View All Activities...