the the newsletter of the
Center for the Study of Southern Culture • Summer 2013
the university of mississippi
New Professor Focuses on Latin Americans in the South
S
imone Delerme, the newest faculty member at the Center, describes herself as “a very eclectic person just full of surprises.” She joins the university as the McMullan Assistant Professor of Southern Studies and assistant professor of anthropology. The McMullan Professorships in Southern Studies were created more than a decade ago by James and Madeleine McMullan of Chicago. Delerme’s research interests are Latin American and Caribbean migration, critical race theory, language ideologies and identity, inequality and stratification, political and legal anthropology, North American anthropology, and Latin Americans in the American South. For the past two years she has been an instructor of expository writing in the Department of English at Rutgers University. Previously, she was an instructor in Rider University’s Political Science Department. Delerme earned her BA in political science from the University of Delaware in Newark. For her graduate work, she earned an MA in liberal studies from the University of Delaware and an MA in anthropology from Rutgers. At Delaware she wrote her thesis on “Puerto Rican Ethnic Identity” and at Rutgers penned a thesis titled “Field Statements: The Anthropology of Space and Place, Political and Legal Anthropology, Puerto Ricans Studies: Space and Place among Puerto Ricans in East Harlem.” She concluded her graduate work at Rutgers and will earn her PhD in anthropology this fall. Her dissertation is “The Latinization of Orlando: Race, Class, and the Politics of Place.” Although she had studied political science in preparation for law school, a chance encounter put her on a different path. “I had the opportunity to participate in the Ronald McNair program at the University of Delaware, and that changed my career trajectory,” Delerme says. “I had some wonderful faculty mentors in that program, but two in particular, Dr. Palacas and Dr. Villamarin, encouraged me to pursue anthropology. They helped me design an ethnographic study of a Puerto Rican com-
Simone Delerme
munity in Harlem, New York, and that really sparked my interest in the study of people, places, and cultures. Since then I’ve been researching and writing about Hispanic communities.” As part of that research, in 2012 she presented “Social Class Distinctions and the Fractured American Dream” at the Puerto Rican Studies Association annual meeting in Albany, New York, and “The Latiniziation of Orlando: Language, Whiteness, continued on page 27
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Published Quarterly by The Center for the Study of Southern Culture The University of Mississippi Telephone: 662-915-5993 Fax: 662-915-5814 E-mail: cssc@olemiss.edu www.southernstudies.olemiss.edu www.facebook.com/SouthernStudies
IN THIS ISSUE Summer 2013 1. New Professor Focuses on Latin Americans in the South 2. Director’s Column 3. Living Blues News 4. SFA Oral Historian to Study the Upsouth 5. 2013 Louisiana Book Festival 6. American South Red and Blue 8. “Viewing the South from a 21st-century Perspective: The New Encyclopedia of Southern Culture” 9. Brown Bag Lunch and Lecture Series 9. U.S. Poet Laureate Helps Celebrate The New Encyclopedia of Southern Culture at the Library of Congress 10. Contributors 10. Mark Your Calendars! 11. Beautiful Jim: An Upcoming Film from Media and Documentary Projects 11. Delta Blues Museum Receives National Medal for Museum and Library Service 12. Getting Down to Business: Southern Studies Alums Tackle the Business World 14. Mississippi Encyclopedia Manuscript Nearly Complete 15. Civil Rights Act of 1964 Research Grant and Call for Papers 16. Southern Studies Grad Hosts Celebration for Folk Art Volume 17. Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters 17. Faulkner’s World: The Photographs of Martin J. Dain—A Traveling Exhibition 18. Remembering Will Campbell, 1924–2013 19. Call for Papers: Faulkner & Yoknapatawpha 20. University of Mississippi-Oxford Icon Leaves Major Support to Strengthen Library Resources 21. Foodways Postdoctoral Fellow Joins Center Faculty 22. Accounting for Taste: A Post from Poland 23. Reading the South 29. 16th Southern Foodways Symposium Focuses on Women at Work 29. Julian and Kathryn Wiener Endowment to Assist with Internship Funding 30. The Larder to Be Published by the University of Georgia Press 30. Walter Johnson to Present 2013 GilderJordan Lecture 31. Center Announces the 2013 Eudora Welty Award Winners
Register Staff Editor: James G. Thomas Jr. Graphic Designer: Susan Bauer Lee Mailing List Manager: Mary Hartwell Howorth Lithographer: RR Donnelley Magazine Group The University complies with all applicable laws regarding affirmative action and equal opportunity in all its activities and programs and does not discriminate against anyone protected by law because of age, color, disability, national origin, race, religion, sex, or status as a veteran or disabled veteran.
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Events this summer
have made the need for good Southern Studies scholarship and teaching especially important. From the Florida trial and acquittal of George Zimmerman for killing Trayvon Martin, to the Supreme Court’s decision in the Shelby County, Alabama v. Holder case that eliminated an important section of the Voting Rights Act, to the dramas about reproductive rights in Southern legislatures, to the language and past labor practices of Paula Deen, the South, with its questions, issues, controversies, and history, has been in the news. In our classes, Southern Studies faculty will respond in a range of ways, sometimes maybe using the passions about these topics to encourage conversation, sometimes likely encouraging context and providing more information, sometimes analyzing not just the stories but how they are told. These topics in the news address what have long been central issues in Southern Studies—race, racial identification, and claims of privilege; violence, fear, and suspicion; religion; sexuality, patriarchy, and discussions of what constitutes a family; the power of law and politics to enforce barriers; manners that may be a source of kindness or may be a mask; the potential and the difficulty of challenging privileges, and the assumptions behind those privileges. I write on the birthday of Ida B. Wells-Barnett and a few days before the start of the university’s conference on William Faulkner, and these issues, with roots so deep in Southern history, seem to relate directly to subjects of their work. The themes in the news issues return to old Southern questions about continuity and change (how can these things still happen, or possibly happen again?). To the Southern historian, the notion of a still-troubled, still-burdened South is a reminder of C. Vann Woodward’s essay “The Burden of Southern History,” published more than 50 years ago. Woodward described the burdens as part of the experiences of military defeat, poverty, racial segregation, and politically motivated divisions. The burdened South was the guilty South, troubled and suffering from failed politics and the bad decisions of the region’s leaders. Woodward closed his old essay with a kind of Niebuhrian point that held out hope that a history of trouble and, possibly, guilt might make people wiser, more humble, and reflective, and maybe even more humane as people recognized shared troubles and shortcomings. In Southern Studies, it can be our job to raise questions and address topics beyond today’s news, but sometimes it can be our job to provide academics’ perspectives on those events. If I were planning to start class with these four stories (I’m not) or even to write a full essay about them, I think I might begin not with burdens and guilt but with concepts of innocence: Trayvon Martin as an innocent teenager, the defense claim that George Zimmerman was an innocent man protecting himself, the notion of a once-guilty South now innocent of voting discrimination, arguments about the innocence of the unborn, and claims that being affably bubbly make one innocent of charges of racism. The concept of competing claims of innocence is certainly not new, but it might be a useful way into the issues, and it could even be a way to examine Woodward’s old hopes that burdens can be a source of strength. This issue of the Southern Register contains plenty of news—New Encyclopedia of Southern Culture events past and future, the new classes and projects, and the coming completion of the Mississippi Encyclopedia. We say goodbye to three good friends, Jill Cooley, who leaves for a job at the Minnesota State University-Mankato, Michele Coffey, who leaves for a position at the University of Memphis, and Tonya Pittman, who leaves the Center for a new position at the university’s Grenada campus (and a place in its MBA program). Four new staff and faculty members join us this fall—senior assistant Rebecca Lauck Cleary, who has written for the Register for several years, Southern Foodways Alliance project coordinator Emilie Dayan, foodways postdoctoral teaching fellow and visiting assistant professor Zac Henson, and McMullan Assistant Professor of Southern Studies and anthropology Simone Delerme. Welcome to Barnard Observatory. Ted Ownby Summer 2013
The Southern Register
Living Blues News The legacy of family bands and multigenerational musical lineage is a strong one in the history of the blues. Some of the best blues musicians performing today come out of this tradition. Lurrie Bell; Teeny Tucker; Cedric, Duwayne, Kent, and Garry Burnside; Kinney and David (Malone) Kimbrough; Sharde Thomas; Rev. John Wilkins; Eddie Jr., Larry, and Demetria Taylor; Chris Thomas; and this issue’s cover artist Kenny Neal are all sons, daughters, and even grandsons of earlier popular bluesmen. Kenny Neal’s family legacy is rich and deep. The son of Louisiana bluesman Raful Neal, Kenny (and most of his sisters and brothers) grew up playing music, eventually backing their father and, later, a who’s who of blues musicians as the house band at the Isabella Hotel in Toronto. At age 55 Kenny Neal is carrying on the legacy of his family name with a new major release planned for this fall and two children of his own (Kenny Jr. and Syretta) who perform with him. We continue our look at the Nashville blues scene with Tim Ghianni’s feature on James “Nick” Nixon. Nixon was the leader of one of the first racially mixed bands in Nashville in the 1960s and has been a central figure in the city’s R&B scene for over 50 years. This issue also features a story on guitarist Melvin Taylor and young blues phenom Selwyn Birchwood, who recently took top honors at the IBC awards in Memphis. We also have a wonderful photo essay by folklorist George Mitchell from his remarkable 1967 trip to
the Mississippi hill country, where he first met Otha Turner, Jessie Mae Hemphill, R. L. Burnside, and Mississippi Fred McDowell, among others. Sixty years ago Bob Koester recorded and released his first album, by a vintage jazz group from St. Louis called Sammy Gardner and the Fabulous Windy City Six. Thus began the amazing legacy of Delmark (then Delmar) Records. Junior Wells’s Hoodoo Man Blues, Magic Sam’s West Side Soul, Robert Jr. Lockwood’s Steady Rollin’ Man, J. B. Hutto’s Hawk Squat, Jimmy Dawkins’s Fastfingers, Otis Rush’s Cold Day in Hell, and Big Joe Williams’s Blues on Highway 49 were all recorded by Bob Koester. And this is just one part of his musical legacy. Koester has released over 500 records, over 300 of them jazz albums, owned the Jazz Record Mart in Chicago, employed and mentored a who’s who of future blues label owners and scholars (Jim O’Neal, Bruce Iglauer, Michael Frank, Peter Aschoff). He even gave the seed money to start Living Blues magazine. At age 81 Koester is still going as strong as ever with new releases on Tail Dragger, Arthur Crudup, and Lurrie Bell out now. Hats off to you, Bob . . . and thanks! It’s time again to vote in the Living Blues Awards. We’ve got a knockout batch of nominees this year and an expanded field of choices. I’ve also added a Best Blues Book category, so turn to page 79 and check out the ballot, and then go to www.livingblues.com and vote digitally. It’s the fastest and easiest way to vote.
Due to space constraints I have decided to move our written classified ads to our website. New ads will post and the list will be updated with the release of every new issue of the magazine. And don’t forget, the Living Blues Radio Charts are now posted monthly on our website as well. We lost one of the great Chicago bluesman and a great friend of Living Blues a few weeks ago. Jimmy Dawkins died on April 10 at his home in Chicago. Dawkins was a principled man whom you could count on and trust. He was a remarkable guitarist and songwriter as well as a label owner (Leric Records). He was politically and socially conscious and served as a mentor to numerous young musicians. Dawkins even wrote for LB for a time. A full obituary can be found on page 78 of this issue. Brett J. Bonner
Special trial subscription offer for Southern Register readers – $19.95
Go to www.livingblues.com and enter Coupon Code: SR at website checkout or call 1-800-390-3527 to take advantage of this special offer! The Southern Register
Summer 2013
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SFA Oral Historian to Study the Upsouth Anson Mills, Bond Family Give Generously to Support the SFA
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Maude Schuyler Clay
A pair of generous gifts totaling $125,000 will allow the Southern Foodways Alliance (SFA) to support an additional oral historian and expand its oral history archive into the “Upsouth” region of Virginia, northern Georgia, and the Carolinas. With a planned gift of $50,000, Carmen and Matt Bond of Memphis, Tennessee, have established the Carmen Crane Bond Oral History Fund. The Bonds were inspired to become active SFA members and provide this endowment after attending several SFA-sponsored events in recent years. “My fondest memories are from early childhood, growing up in the country,” Carmen Bond recalls. “My family was still of the ‘old school’ and essentially lived off the land. They taught me not only how to garden and cook but also the processes from beginning to end— from pickin’ to puttin’ up!” Bond is delighted that more oral histories containing these “lost arts” will be archived and made available to younger generations. She said, “Sponsoring an oral historian is an ideal opportunity to make a difference in preserving the unique lessons and memories that come from experiences just like mine.” Anson Mills, a Columbia, South Carolina, company producing artisan mill goods from organic heirloom grains, has also committed to funding the SFA’s newest addition with a $75,000 gift. Glenn Roberts, the company’s founder, has supported the SFA and its work with oral histories for over a decade, providing more than $100,000 since 2001. “All of us at Anson Mills hold, above all else, the intrinsic value of personal and interpersonal experiences emanating from the three big Southern Fs: family, farming, and food.” Roberts said. “We are thrilled that the SFA has chosen to grow its oral history archive to focus on the culture and personal experiences of farming.”
Amy C. Evans, the SFA’s lead oral historian, at work at the Pig Pen in Cleveland, Mississippi. Two recent gifts will allow a second professional to pursue histories in the Upsouth.
John T. Edge, director of the SFA, expressed excitement and gratitude for both gifts. “These funds will drive the next phase of our oral history work,” he explained, adding that SFA work and influence have become quite strong in Virginia and the Carolinas. “An oral history is an archived historical document of a local community,” said Amy C. Evans, oral historian at SFA since 2005. “It holds a mirror up to the face of a place.” Evans is especially eager to gain an Upsouth-focused colleague, as much of her own work concentrates on communities in the Mississippi Delta. “The more places we can take oral histories, the more important our work becomes.” Thanks to these gifts, the new oral historian will further connect the SFA to the Upsouth region through its symposia and other events, as well as provide support at SFA’s Oral History Workshop, which takes place annually on UM’s Oxford campus. Support from the Carmen Crane
Summer 2013
Bond Oral History Fund and Anson Mills will drive home the SFA’s notion that food “brings people to the table.” As Evans said, “That’s where the discussion begins.” Individuals and organizations interested in supporting the Southern Foodways Alliance can mail a check with the alliance noted in the memo line to the University of Mississippi Foundation, P.O. Box 249, University, MS 38677; contact Nikki Neely, development officer, at 662-915-6678 or nlneely@olemiss.edu; or visit www.umfoundation.com/makeagift. More information about the SFA, including its extensive oral history archive, can be found online at southernfoodways.org. Allison Korn
The Southern Register
2013 Louisiana Book Festival:
New Encyclopedia of Southern Culture Panel Lineup Set
Sharon Monteith Emilie Dayan
Jimmy Thomas
Courtesy Shane Bernard
Shane Bernard The Southern Register
Courtesy Sharon Monteith
James Wilcox
Colleen Heidenreich
Since 2008, The New Encyclopedia of Southern Culture has been a frequent panel topic at the Louisiana Book Festival in Baton Rouge. In 2008 Charles Reagan Wilson moderated a panel that included Wayne Parent, Julia Reed, and Kenneth Holditch, who discussed the Law and Politics, Foodways, and Literature volumes. In 2009 Wilson moderated a panel that included Ted Ownby and Nick Spitzer, who explored topics in the Gender, Agriculture and Industry, and Music volumes. That year, Melissa Walker, from Converse College in Spartanburg, South Carolina, was scheduled to attend, but because of bad weather and a delayed flight, she was unable to make the trip. Last year, Wilson moderated a panel that included Jimmy Thomas, Judith Bonner, and Carolyn Morrow Long, who discoursed upon the Science and Medicine, Art and Architecture, and Folklife volumes. This year’s panel, which will take place on November 2 in the Louisiana State Capitol, will be moderated by the encyclopedia’s managing editor, Jimmy Thomas, and will include Sharon Monteith, Shane Bernard, and James Wilcox. Sharon Monteith served as the volume coeditor of the Media volume with Allison Graham (University of Memphis). Monteith is a professor of American studies and director of research for the School of Cultures, Languages, and Area Studies at the University of Nottingham. She is also the editor of The Cambridge Companion to
the Literature of the South and will lead a separate panel on that book at the festival. Shane Bernard is a historian and an author of five books, including Swamp Pop: Cajun and Creole Rhythm and Blues (1996), The Cajuns: Americanization of a People (2003), and Tabasco: An Illustrated History (2007). He contributed “Swamp Pop” and “Creoles” entries to the Music and Ethnicity volumes of the New Encyclopedia, respectively, and serves as historian and curator to the McIlhenny Company—the maker of Tabasco brand products—and Avery Island, Inc., on Avery Island, Louisiana. He will otherwise participate in the festival by discussing the recently published French translation of his book Cajuns and Their Acadian Ancestors: A Young Reader’s History (Les Cadiens et leurs ancêtres acadiens: l’histoire racontée aux jeunes). James Wilcox is the Summer 2013
MacCurdy Distinguished Professor of English and director of Creative Writing at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge. He is the author of nine novels, including Modern Baptists (1983), Plain and Normal (1998), Heavenly Days (2003), and Hunk City (2007). A biographical entry on Wilcox can be found in the Literature volume of the New Encyclopedia. Working on the New Encyclopedia series has given its editors the opportunity to think about the many intersecting facets of Southern culture. The underlying concept of the panel will be to explore the interconnections between the panelists’ fields of expertise within the broader context of Southern culture. Monteith’s work encompasses numerous subjects, from Southern film, television, and print journalism to race, civil rights, social class, and media representations of the South. Bernard’s work delves into Louisiana history, ethnicity, food, and music. And Southern literature and its craft and themes, Wilcox’s métier, span an extremely broad range of areas, not the least of which are religion, history, violence, and race. The Center for the Study of Southern Culture is grateful to the Louisiana Book Festival and its director, Jim Davis, for hosting the New Encyclopedia on multiple occasions over the last several years. Jimmy Thomas Page 5
American South Red and Blue A Gammill Gallery Exhibition and Conversation with Jane Robbins Kerr
Jane Robbins Kerr is from Jackson, Mississippi, and has spent most of her adult life in Atlanta, Georgia. She is a writer, a painter, a storyteller, and now tries to tell her story with her camera. For the past 10 years she has photographed extensively in Mississippi and the rural South, capturing what “is” before it becomes what “was.” An exhibition of her photographs, American South Red and Blue, is currently on view in the Gammill Gallery in Barnard Observatory. In her artist’s statement, Kerr says, “After traveling around the world photographing people and places, I finally came ‘home.’ For years I had avoided Mississippi, wanting more than what I saw there. When another photographer suggested going home, I did so in 2003. Never had I imagined what a treasure was awaiting me. I have loved my time with old friends, new friends, and mostly the Mississippi Delta, the nearest thing we have to a foreign country.” This idea of rediscovering “home”—
Mississippi and the rural South— prompted a conversation with Kerr about what that experience is like and how it affects her photographic methods.
This Says It All Concord, Georgia, 2005
Wanna Be Elvis’s Dog Tupelo, Mississippi, 2008
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Jimmy Thomas: I’ll start with a basic question: What inspires you as a photographer? Or, in other words, what do you look for in a subject? Jane Robbins Kerr: What inspires me? Place. I want to capture the moment in the “place.” I shoot by the seat of my pants and look for the moment. If you fiddle around with f-stops and tripods the moment will be gone. There is a need for technology, but not in what I do. For years I studied writing under author Natalie Goldberg in New Mexico. “First thoughts” was her theme for our writing. She said that theme had transferred into my photography. JT: How so? What is the story or message you attempt to communicate through your photography? JRK: In my writing I want to capture the place and time. I also try to paint with my camera—color, design, the things I have in the paintings I have done. I guess that I am preserving an ephemeral moment. In my mind, photography helps me to capture something significant.
Terry Teoc, Mississippi, 2006
Summer 2013
The Southern Register
The Alligator of Mississippi Alligator, Mississippi, 2008
JT: Do you feel like your experience of being a native Southerner influences what you photograph? How do the experiences of your youth influence what you photograph in Mississippi? JRK: I feel that being a native Southerner and a native Mississippian has truly helped me photograph the South. I still love the old buildings, the crumbly signs of yesterday, the wash pots, the outdoor living room under a tree. My grandfather had a 2,000-acre farm below Columbia, Mississippi, where I spent a lot of time growing up. I still carry yesterday inside of me when I shoot today. I love photographing people in the South. I could not have done it so readily had I not traveled the world and carried what I learned back home with me, though. I never would have done what I am doing today if I had stayed in Jackson. JT: Having done photography around the world, would you say that your apThe Southern Register
Stuck in a Truck Perry County, Alabama, 2009
proach to doing photography at home is different than when you are in other U.S. regions or abroad? JRK: Doing photography in Tibet or Siberia is the same as doing it at home. Summer 2013
Laughing and smiling when I talk with the people lets me in closer. It’s about making a connection with the people and seeing the moment.
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“Viewing the South from a 21st-century Perspective: The New Encyclopedia of Southern Culture” The Filson Institute Public Conference to Focus on Encyclopedia Series
September 19–21, 2013 • The Filson Historical Society The South remains home to one of the most fascinating and challenging of American cultures. That it is also a very diverse culture, with many overlaying facets, is made clear in the 24 volumes of The New Encyclopedia of Southern Culture. The Filson Historical Society’s fall conference, “Viewing the South from a 21st-century Perspective: The New Encyclopedia of Southern Culture,” will be based on the New Encyclopedia. Held at the Ferguson Mansion in Louisville, this conference will highlight the significant changes that the region has undergone over the years, while reminding us that the South is still a distinct cultural region. Progressing from the era of moonlight and magnolias, “Viewing the South” invites the audience to engage with the substance of Southern culture anew, provoking new thoughts on the past within the context of the 21st-century present. “The Filson Institute has a long history of hosting intriguing conferences, and its impressive, publically accessible archival holdings have provided valuable resource material for countless texts on the Upper South and Ohio Valley,” said Jimmy Thomas, managing editor of the series. “Viewing the South from a 21stcentury Perspective” will kick off with a reception and keynote speech on Thursday, September 19. The keynote speaker is Charles Regan Wilson. On Friday, September 20, the day of lectures will commence with the following topics being covered: • “Looking South: Form and Meaning in Southern Studies” by Estill Curtis Pennington, art historian Page 8
The Filson Historical Society’s Ferguson Mansion, one of the finest examples of Beaux Arts style architecture in Louisville
• “Rolled Oysters, Bison Barbecue, and Lunch Counters: Our Foodways, Our Selves” by John T. Edge, director, Southern Foodways Alliance • “The Creole South” by Celeste Ray, professor of anthropology, University of the South • “A Gift to the World in Black and White: The Music of the South” by Bill Malone, professor emeritus, Tulane University The day of lectures will end with a panel discussion featuring lecturers and series editors, including Jimmy Thomas, Ann Abadie, Ted Ownby, and Charles Reagan Wilson. On Saturday, September 21, Estill Curtis Pennington is offering a driving tour of Bourbon County to share his love and enthusiasm for this area of the commonwealth. Pennington has selected the sites, both private and public, to showcase this jewel of the Bluegrass. Lunch will be held at the Grey Goose Summer 2013
Restaurant for a moderate fee. This tour is free and open to members of The Filson Historical Society and those participating in the conference. Participants will provide their own transportation. Those who are interested in the tour must sign up in advance and will meet at the Bourbon County Courthouse at 11:00 a.m. “Viewing the South from a 21stcentury Perspective” will be held at The Filson Historical Society, 1310 S. Third Street, Louisville. On-site parking is available. Admission to the keynote speech is free for Filson members and $5 for nonmembers. The day of lectures is free for Filson members and $5 for nonmembers, with an optional $10 boxed lunch. The driving tour of Bourbon County is free. Reservations are suggested for this conference. Call The Filson at 502635-5083 or visit www.filsonhistorical. org to make your reservation.
a
Since its founding in 1884, The Filson Historical Society has preserved the region’s collective memory, not only of Kentucky but also of the Ohio Valley and the Upper South. The Filson continues to collect and tell the significant stories of the region. An independent historical society, The Filson serves the public through its extensive research collections and numerous educational opportunities. The Filson is headquartered in the Ferguson Mansion in Old Louisville and houses a library, a museum, and a special collections department. Jamie Evans The Southern Register
C e n t e r f o r t h e
The University of Mississippi
September 11 “Women, Work, and Food” Melissa Hall, Assistant Director Southern Foodways Alliance
Brown Bag Lunch and Lecture Series FALL Semester 2013
18 “Mobilizing for the Common Good: The Lived Theology of John M. Perkins” Peter Slade, Associate Professor of Religion Ashland University Ashland, Ohio 25 “Thinking about William Faulkner’s Delta” Phillip Gordon, Instructor of English and Frances Bell McCool Dissertation Fellow for Faulkner Studies University of Mississippi October 2 “Demography Is Destiny: Hispanic Migration, Racial
Study of Southern Culture
The Brown Bag Luncheon Series takes place each Wednesday at noon in the Barnard Observatory Lecture Hall during the regular academic year.
Ambiguity, and the Nuevo New South” Simone Delerme, Assistant Professor of Anthropology and McMullan Assistant Professor of Southern Studies University of Mississippi
9 “Daughters of Israel, Daughters of the South” Jennifer Stollman, Academic Director William Winter Institute for Racial Reconciliation
16 “The Death of Mississippi House Bill 488: How Labor, Race, and Political Alliances Stopped Immigration Reform” Mary Stanton Knight, Broadcast Communications Specialist University Communications Lectures for October 23–November 20 will be announced in the Fall issue of the Southern Register and on the Center website.
U.S. Poet Laureate Helps Celebrate The New Encyclopedia of Southern Culture at the Library of Congress On May 21, an event at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C., celebrated the completion of publication of the 24-volume New Encyclopedia of Southern Culture. The event included remarks from Center director Ted Ownby; Encyclopedia general editor Charles Reagan Wilson; then director of publishing for the Library of Congress, W. Ralph Eubanks; editorial director of UNC Press, Mark SimpsonVos; and chancellor of the University of Mississippi, Daniel W. Jones. The event concluded with remarks and a poetry reading by U.S. Poet Laureate Natasha Trethewey, a native of Mississippi and Pulitzer Prize–winning author. Left to right: Ted Ownby, Charles Reagan Wilson, Natasha Trethewey, Jimmy Thomas, Mark Simpson-Vos, Nancy Bercaw, and Ann Abadie at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C.
The Southern Register
Summer 2013
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Lena Anderson is a freelance writer for the University of Mississippi Foundation.
Mark Your Calendars!
Brett J. Bonner is the editor of Living Blues magazine.
August 18, 2013
Rebecca Lauck Cleary is the Center’s senior staff assistant and website administrator. She received a BA injournalism from the University in 1997 and has written for the Southern Register since 2005.
August 26, 2013
C ontributors
Potlikker Napa Napa, California
First Day of Classes University of Mississippi
Barbara Harris Combs is an assistant professor of sociology and Southern Studies at the University of Mississippi. She is author of the forthcoming book From Selma to Montgomery: The Long March to Freedom, which will be published by Routledge in December 2013.
August 28, 2013
Celebration for Publication of The New Encyclopedia of Southern Culture Square Books Oxford, Mississippi
Jamie Evans is the marketing and public relations coordinator for the Filson Historical Society. Kenneth Holditch is a literary historian and research professor emeritus of American Literature at the University of New Orleans, where he taught for 32 years. William P. Hustwit is an assistant professor of history at Birmingham-Southern College. His new book, James J. Kilpatrick: Salesman for Segregation, is available from UNC Press. Rex Jones is a producer-director for Media and Documentary Projects. Allison Korn is an attorney in the clinical programs at the University of Mississippi Law School. Ted Ownby, director of the Center, holds a joint appointment in Southern Studies and history. Jimmy Thomas is the Center’s associate director for publications. Mary M. Thompson is a board member of the Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters. She lives in Clarksdale, Mississippi.
September 12–13, 2013 Graduate Conference “Women, Work, and Food” University of Mississippi
September 18, 2013
2013 Gilder-Jordan Lecture in Southern History Walter Johnson, author of River of Dark Dreams: Slavery and Empire in the Cotton Kingdom and Soul by Soul: Life inside the Antebellum Slave Market, Lecturer University of Mississippi
Becca Walton is the Center’s associate director for projects. Jay Watson is a professor of English at the University of Mississippi and director of the Faulkner & Yoknapatawpha Conference. His publications include Forensic Fictions: The Lawyer Figure in Faulkner, Faulkner and Whiteness, and Reading for the Body: The Recalcitrant Materiality of Southern Fiction, 1893–1985. Charles Reagan Wilson is the Kelly Gene Cook Sr. Chair in History, professor of Southern Studies, and past Center director. Steve Yarbrough was the John and Renée Grisham Writer in Residence at the University of Mississippi in 1999– 2000. A regular participant at the Oxford Conference for the Book and on the Mississippi Delta Cultural Tour, he is a professor in the Department of Writing, Literature, and Publishing at Emerson College in Boston. Page 10
September 19–21, 2013
Filson Historical Society Fall Conference “Viewing the South from a 21st-century Perspective: The New Encyclopedia of Southern Culture” Louisville, Kentucky
Summer 2013
September 25, 2013
William Faulkner’s Birthday
October 4–6, 2013
SFA Symposium: Women at Work University of Mississippi and Oxford
November 2, 2013
Louisiana Book Festival Baton Rouge, Louisiana
November 21–23, 2013 Music to Your Mouth Bluffton, South Carolina
December 9–13, 2013 Final Exams University of Mississippi
The Southern Register
Beautiful Jim: An Upcoming Film from Media and Documentary Projects Rex Jones
I’ve always been a believer in serendipity, especially when it comes to filmmaking. The origin of Beautiful Jim, my latest documentary film with Media and Documentary Projects, validates that belief once again. As a young boy growing up on a farm in Hickory, Mississippi, one of my favorite pastimes was seeking out and digging through the junk piles of old abandoned home places. These rural archeological digs yielded all sorts of fascinating treasures, the most frequent of which were soda bottles from the CocaCola bottling plant in Newton, eight miles down the road. I recently rediscovered those bottles and wanted to know more about them, so I turned to Google for answers. One of the first hits returned a blog entry from a Newton native who, as a child, collected Coke bottles from the roadside ditches and sold them back to the bottling plant for a nickel apiece. As I explored this man’s website and read more of his story, I knew I had just found the subject of my next film. As he would later say, “it was kismet,” and the result is Beautiful Jim. Jimbeau Hinson is a Grammynominated singer-songwriter living in Nashville, Tennessee, who has been HIV positive for over 30 years. He was also the first openly bisexual singer-songwriter in country music and has been married to his wife, Brenda
Jimbeau Hinson Fielder, for 33 years. Jimbeau has almost died from AIDS twice, although he is now HIV-undetectable. He recently received a record deal and released a new album at age 62. Like every project, Beautiful Jim has presented me with some interesting learning opportunities. Obviously a movie about a songwriter is going to have a few songs, so I’ve spent a lot of time navigating the Byzantine complexity of music licensing. It’s not my favorite aspect of filmmaking! Field production is always a concern as a “one-man band,” so I’ve been relying heavily upon our GoPro video camera as a stationary master shot during both live musical performances and sit-down interviews. Another benefit of
the GoPro is its capability to be mounted in unusual places for unique perspectives, such as the opening lid of a chest full of HIV medicine. One of the greatest pleasures—and challenges—of documentary filmmaking is the opportunity to gain a relatively quick intimacy with people. The time I spent with Jimbeau and Brenda was among my most rewarding ever, in both the professional and personal senses. I believe we came away with a powerful film, and I know I came away with two new friends. Beautiful Jim will be released in September 2013. Rex Jones
Delta Blues Museum Receives National Medal for Museum and Library Service First Lady Michelle Obama (right) presented the National Medal for Museum and Library Service to the Delta Blues Museum in a ceremony on May 8, 2013, at the White House. Accepting the award are community member Travis Calvin (left) and Delta Blues Museum executive director and former Southern Studies graduate student Shelley Ritter (center). The National Medal is the nation’s highest honor conferred on museums and libraries for service to the community and celebrates institutions that make a difference for individuals, families, and communities.
The Southern Register
Summer 2013
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Getting Down to Business Southern Studies Alums Tackle the Business World
For Southern Studies alums who have chosen careers in the business world, multitasking seems to come naturally. Using creative communication and critical-thinking skills, some have taken the entrepreneurial route and opened their own business, while others work for large corporations. The common thread they share is an appreciation of the program, which in one way or another forged the path for their occupations. Dannal Perry earned a BA in American studies from the Newcomb College of Tulane University, then a few years later, moved to Oxford to earn an MA in Southern Studies. She returned to New Orleans and worked as a curatorial assistant at the New Orleans Museum of Art, as the curator of education at the Hermann-Grima/Gallier Historic Houses, and as the business manager at Studio Inferno. But her real dream was to own her own store, and after running a glass company for three years, she realized she was ready. So she opened Plum, an eclectic gift shop, in October 2004. “All of those jobs introduced me to different aspects of the New Orleans art scene, so I knew a lot of artists and jewelers that I wanted to sell in the store before I even opened,” Perry says. Plum has jewelry, barware, housewares, and other gifts, all with an emphasis on great design and many of them locally made. “I still volunteer at the Hermann-Grima and Gallier houses, so I use my degree in that way,” Perry says. “I love the history and literature of New Orleans, so I’m always adding to my knowledge in those areas. I love being my own boss and owning my own business, but it would be great to have access to group health insurance.” Oxford native Ferriday Mansel McClatchy has always been interested in people and their different ways of life. She earned a BA in international studies and German from the Page 12
Ferriday McClatchy
University of Mississippi, followed by an MA in Southern Studies. “I knew I wanted to get my master’s, and the Southern Studies program seemed like a good way to expand my knowledge of the South and the subcultures that exist within both the Deep South as well as the Global South,” she says. Her first job out of college was as an advertising assistant for Vanity Fair magazine. “I was expected to work a lot of events along with my advertising duties,” McClatchy says. “The events were pretty much the only part of the job I liked. Then I moved to Washington, D.C., and I worked for a bipartisan lobbying firm. The job required booking a lot of events and putting together lunches, dinners, et cetera.” Her boss encouraged her to start her own business, and after moving back to Oxford, Ferriday McClatchy Events was born. “I mainly do weddings, with the majority being destination weddings. However, I do some private parties as well,” McClatchy says. “I like both the creative and the business side of the business. My job is very social, and everyone I encounter comes from a different background. Having an in-depth knowledge of cultures has allowed me Summer 2013
John Spivey
to be more understanding and patient.” Sallie Ann Westbrook knew at a very young age that she would make a career in some facet of interiors, but she didn’t really see herself as a decorator. “I was thinking more furniture design or textiles, or maybe I’d have an art gallery,” Westbrook says. After finishing the Southern Studies BA program she started writing and then went to graduate school to study decorative arts. She then took her love of design and turned it into a job managing higher education and government projects with Knoll, a company in Chicago that has manufactured furniture for 75 years. Knoll is considered representative of American midcentury design (think Barcelona chairs and Saarinen tables). “Florence Knoll was more interested in spatial design and functionality than ‘decoration,’ and solicited furniture designs from architectural giants like Mies van der Rohe, Harry Bertoia, and Marcel Breuer,” Westbrook says. “The space I work in looks like a museum, which I love. I truly love my job every single day. The fact I get paid well is a total bonus.” She says that although her day-to-day tasks are less creative than with residential design, it has been amazing to work with a team of such smart and savvy people, and for such a highly respected company. The Southern Register
Westbrook refers to herself as “a Southern bouillabaisse” because she was born in Arkansas and lived in Lafayette, Louisiana, with bits of time in New Orleans. Her parents moved to Texas when she was 19, and she moved to Oxford a year after high school to attend the University of Mississippi. She credits the Southern Studies program with teaching her to appreciate her own culture in a complex way and from many different perspectives, as well as honing her multitasking skills. “While in the program my focus was on art history and architecture. My professors held me to high standards and supported my interests. I worked so hard, but all my time was spent doing something I loved,” Westbrook says. “Through the Southern Studies program I learned how to communicate in a creative, captivating way. I learned how to research topics I was passionate about and compile that information in a way that was of value to others. I also learned how to listen. I really love hearing people’s story. Everybody has one.” Richie Caldwell thought he had a career as a teacher mapped out, but he soon realized it wasn’t necessarily what he wanted to do. He grew up in Vicksburg and attended Millsaps College in Jackson, majoring in English. He was a feature writer at the Purple and White newspaper and was influenced by the poet Aleda Shirley, who taught creative writing and encouraged him to continue his education at University of Mississippi. “I had a graduate fellowship at the Center and won a Daniels award for an essay about Willie Morris. I used this essay and some other graduate projects to build a thesis, which I hoped would someday be a literary biography,” Caldwell says. After he earned his MA in Southern Studies in 2005, he was an instructor of English composition at the University of Alabama-Birmingham, but decided he lacked the passion necessary for teaching, so he returned to Millsaps for an MBA and worked in his family’s real estate firm. Now, as a risk analyst for the FDIC in Dallas, Caldwell examines a bank’s activities, assesses the overall risk of the activity, and writes reports for the bank’s directors and the senior executives of the FDIC, who discuss his findings and recommendations The Southern Register
Peter Askew
Richie Caldwell and his wife, Melissa
for safe banking practices. “Because of my strong background in real estate, communication, and presentation, I feel like I am an excellent fit for FDIC,” Caldwell says. “I think of myself as both a writer and an analyst. Communication is essential to my work because of what’s at stake, that is, other people’s money. I really believe that my work is essential to a healthy, vibrant, and growing economy. I also have a duty to protect the consumer from abuse.” Caldwell says all three of his degrees help him in his role at the FDIC. “I think all of my degrees inform my work on a daily basis,” he says. “Critical thinking is key, and at the Center I learned the value of place. A bank is the community it serves, and the community’s history is the history of the bank. In the South we have so many cultural economic disparities that are so deeply tied to our history, and my agency has a mandate at the national and local level. Balancing the two agendas requires that sense of place.” Summer 2013
John Spivey has been building technology-related startups since he earned his Southern Studies degree in 1994. “I’ve had some great successes and some unfortunate failures, but that’s the nature of the entrepreneurial world,” he says. “Most of my startups have been healthcare related in one way or another. Currently, I’m a partner and active manager in two startup ventures that focus on women’s health and molecular diagnostics.” While that may sound complicated, Spivey says the essence of what they do is deliver healthcare data to patients in ways they can understand and easily use. Spivey says he learned skills that help him succeed in the business world while at the University of Mississippi. “We were constantly challenged in the Southern Studies program to solidify ideas and communicate them effectively,” Spivey says. “Once you learn how to do this in cultural studies, the rest is easy. Also, Southern Studies gave me an even greater appreciation for being ‘Southern.’ I’ve actually used this effectively in business recruitment, hiring, and winning new business customers.” He moved to Seattle to implement a software solution that a company had purchased from one of his startups and to assist them with integration needs. He says Seattle has been a great experience, but he will be heading back to the Southeast at the end of the summer. “It’s great to get out of the South in order to better understand what makes us ‘Southern.’ My children that moved with us (ages 15 and 9) immediately gained a new appreciation for being from the South,” says Spivey, originally from Canton, Mississippi. “Not only did they miss the South, they realized that being Southern was something positive and special.” Spivey hopes that Southern Studies students think outside the box with their careers. “I wish I had been more open-minded during the program, as I think I would have gained even more insights and skills,” he says. “I believe the true value of the program is that it develops fantastic critical-thinking skills and excellent communication talents. They continue to serve me well today.” continued on page 14
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Rebecca Lauck Cleary
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Mississippi Encyclopedia Manuscript Nearly Complete The more than 5,800-page manuscript of the This summer, Center facMississippi Encyclopedia ulty and staff are completing the final work before sending the Mississippi Encyclopedia to the University Press of Mississippi. The project, which began several years ago, will be a large A-to-Z encyclopedia with approximately 1,500 entries. Ted Ownby and Charles Reagan Wilson are the project’s coeditors, Ann Abadie is associate editor, and Southern Studies alumnus Odie Lindsey is managing editor. More than 300 scholars wrote entries for the volume. The Center’s experience with The New Encyclopedia of Southern Culture was part of the background for the project. The project began with topic editors suggesting long lists of possible entries. Then the authors of individual entries had the job of taking the best current scholarship and turning it into encyclopedialength pieces, complete with bibliographies. The project’s staff also had the job of imagining unexplored subjects that might reveal important and new facets of Mississippi. “Our most important goals were to be thorough and accurate,” said coeditor Ownby, “and it has turned out that those things take a lot of time.” Ownby continued that the finished product will have “plenty of surprises,” covering both the topics that help define Mississippi and its history and topics that many people might not think to look up. “I know that publishing a reference book will strike some people as old-fashioned in an age when any of us can do online research. Our hope is that having so much information between two covers will encourage people to see the whole range of Mississippi people, places, and events as part of the same big, complicated, often troubling story.” About half of the entries study individuals, and as a sign of the potential for surprises, the editors like to point out that the book will likely begin with basketball star Mahmoud Abdul-Rauf and end with positive-thinking speaker Zig Ziglar. One of the last major writing and editing steps was the completion of the entries for each of Mississippi’s 82 counties. Those entries, the product of so much collaborative work among Center faculty and graduate students that their author will be listed as “Mississippi Encyclopedia Staff,” address the past and present geography, demography, and economics of each county, along with significant moments and individuals. Other final steps include updating entries as their subjects change and completing the process of preparing illustrations. According to Ownby, “there are questions people properly want to ask and we can’t answer yet—we don’t know exactly when the book will be out, or how much it will cost, or if there might be an online edition. But we can say the manuscript is just about ready, and that’s an important step.” One can view a list of editors, and a virtually complete list of entries, at the project’s website, http:// southernstudies.olemiss.edu/mississippi-encyclopedia/.
Summer 2013
The Southern Register
Ted Ownby
In late 2009, after spending years learning the inner workings of the dotcom industry, Peter Askew saw an opportunity to acquire and develop a project. “Since I prefer mountains to the beach, I’ve always held an affinity for the dude ranch vacation industry, even as an East Coaster,” he says. He realized that the domain name www.duderanch.com was available, and after an intense bidding auction, he purchased it and launched the site in March 2010. The website itself has a fairly straightforward purpose: to serve as a yellow page directory for the dude ranch vacation industry. It also helps educate those who are a bit green on the concept of a ranch vacation by exposing them to expectations, dining options, activities, and accommodations. Surprisingly, there are even dude ranches in several Southern locations. “There are some amazing dude ranches east of the Mississippi,” says Askew. “One, off the top of my head, has a strong SEC connection—Clear Creek Ranch in Burnsville, North Carolina. It’s owned and operated by Rex Frederick, an all-around great man and Auburn basketball hall of fame inductee. He operates the ranch with his amazing wife, Aileen, and their ranch operates at the base of Mount Mitchell in the western North Carolina mountains. I’ve personally visited several times and can say, without hesitation, the views there rival any ranch out west.” Askew finds that the broad nature of his Southern Studies degree helps him immensely, as it encouraged multiple ways of thinking. “Rather than simply concentrate my efforts on one core competency online, I branched out and soaked in as much as I could regarding coding, databases, design, analytics, and online advertising—very similar to my exposure to so many aspects of Southern culture, from architecture and music to civil rights, the Civil War, and William Faulkner,” Askew says.
Civil Rights Act of 1964 Research Grant and Call for Papers The Center for the Study of Southern Culture and the Southern Foodways Alliance at the University of Mississippi announce a $1,000 research grant to catalyze scholarship on the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the desegregation of Southern restaurants. When President Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 on July 2 of that year, he leveraged the power of the federal government to desegregate restaurants and other places of public accommodation. In the wake of that decision, some operators transformed their business into key clubs, private restaurants where admission was determined by skin color. Others staged public protests and fought unsuccessful legal battles through the federal courts. Others still acquiesced and acknowledged the absurdity of a system wherein black employees often cooked for white customers in white-owned restaurants where they could not, in turn, eat.
Much has changed in the 50 years that followed. Restaurants desegregated by law, if not by practice. Some African American restaurants, which had leveraged the dictates of segregation to claim a constituency, went out of business. Many restaurants, especially those geared to a middle-class
For reference, Title II of the Act, “Injunctive Relief against Discrimination in Places of Public Accommodation,” reads, in part: SEC. 201. (a) All persons shall be entitled to the full and equal enjoyment of the goods, services, facilities, and privileges, advantages, and accommodations of any place of public accommodation, as defined in this section, without discrimination or segregation on the ground of race, color, religion, or national origin. (b) Each of the following establishments which serve the public is a place of public accommodation within the meaning of this title if its operations affect commerce, or if discrimination or segregation by it is supported by State action: (1) any inn, hotel, motel, or other establishment which provides lodging to transient guests, other than an establishment located within a building which contains not more than five rooms for rent or hire and which is actually occupied by the proprietor of such establishment as his residence; (2) any restaurant, cafeteria, lunchroom, lunch counter, soda fountain, or other facility principally engaged in selling food for consumption on the premises, including, but not limited to, any such facility located on the premises of any retail establishment; or any gasoline station. The Southern Register
Summer 2013
and upper-middle-class clientele, have resegregated based on class. Among the questions we hope researchers might ask are: (1) How did the public accommodations clause affect restaurants in the South, particularly those businesses owned by African Americans? (2) How and why did key clubs perpetuate segregated dining in 1964 and onward? (3) If some restaurants segregated by race until 1964, how do restaurants segregate clientele now, and what can that tell us about civic life in the 21st century? The grant of $1,000 is payable in two parts: $500 upon assignment and $500 on the delivery by March 3, 2014, of a scholarly article based on the completed research. The article will undergo the peer-review process, and the Center for the Study of Southern Culture will have first publication rights for the article—planned for the 50th anniversary of the Civil Rights Act—after which the scholar may use it as he or she desires. To apply for the grant, please send a CV along with a cover letter of no more than 500 words that includes a preliminary research plan to Sara Camp Arnold, Southern Foodways Alliance, Barnard Observatory, P.O. Box 1848, University, MS 38677; or e-mail materials to saracamp@southernfoodways.org. Applications are due on September 3, 2013, and the successful candidate will be notified by September 16. The Center expects that the successful candidate will be an advanced graduate student or professional scholar in a field such as history, American studies, African American studies, or sociology.
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Southern Studies Grad Hosts Celebration for Folk Art Volume Gaetano Catelli
On Saturday, June 22, Cynthia Gerlach hosted the Center for a signing and reception for Folk Art, the 23rd volume of The New Encyclopedia of Southern Culture. The event was held at Bottletree Bakery, which Gerlach opened in 1995 after having earned a master’s degree in Southern Studies in 1993. She holds a bachelor’s degree in Southern Studies as well. Bottletree Bakery was ideally suited to host an event for the Folk Art volume, in part because Gerlach’s master’s thesis focused on Fayette County, Alabama, folk painter B. F. Perkins. Her thesis is titled “Pentecostalism in Paint: The Life Story of Reverend Benjamin Franklin Perkins, 1904–1993,” and her thesis committee consisted of Tom
Carol Crown (left) and Cheryl Rivers Gaetano Catelli
Gaetano Catelli
Charles Reagan Wilson
Edwin Jeffery Jr.
Rankin, Bill Ferris, and Charles Reagan Wilson. Her interest in Southern folk art has influenced the décor of the bakery, which is decorated with artworks by a number of self-taught artists, ranging from Memphis painter Lamar Sorrento to her thesis subject, Reverend Perkins. Gerlach also brought prized pieces from her home collection, which inPage 16
cludes artists James “Son” Thomas, Mose Tolliver, and the Meaders family, among others, to display for the event. Managing editor Jimmy Thomas gave opening remarks, and Folk Art volume editors Carol Crown, from the University of Memphis, and Cheryl Rivers, an independent scholar from Brooklyn, New York, attended the event Summer 2013
to talk about the book’s chronological span, the combination of traditional and contemporary artwork, and the making of the Southern self-taught art canon. Memphis carver Edwin Jeffery Jr. made a guest appearance, and in a special ceremony Charles Reagan Wilson, general editor of the series, presented Gerlach with an inscribed volume of Folk Art. The Southern Register
Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters
Faulkner’s World: The Photographs of Martin J. Dain—A Traveling Exhibition
Chris Jenkins, MUW Public Affairs
Left to right: Awards winners Joseph Crespino, Steve Rouse, Caroline Herring, Patti Carr Black, David Wharton, Richard Ford, and Catherine Pierce (Lee Renninger not pictured)
Receiving the Noel Polk Lifetime Achievement Award was Patti Carr Black, author, exhibitor, scholar, editor, promoter of the arts, and cultural consultant. Black had a celebrated 30-year career at the State Historical Museum in Jackson, Mississippi. Richard Ford accepted the Fiction Award for his novel Canada. The Nonfiction Award went to Joseph Crespino for his work Strom Thurmond’s America, and Catherine Pierce won the Poetry Award for The Girls of Peculiar. Steve Rouse received the Musical Composition (Classical) Award for his Sonata for Violin and Piano. The Musical Composition (Popular) Award was presented to Southern Studies master’s program graduate Caroline Herring for Camilla. David Wharton, director of documentary studies and assistant professor of Southern Studies, won the Photography Award for Small Town South, and Lee Renninger won the Visual Arts Award for Botanica. All award recipients received a monetary award in addition to a porcelain platter made by Ron Dale of Irondale Studio in Oxford, Mississippi. Award recipients must have significant ties to the state of Mississippi and are nominated in their categories by members of MIAL. Visit the MIAL website at www.ms-arts-letters-org for information on membership.
The photographs of Martin Dain provide a unique journey into the world of William Faulkner. Taken between 1961 and 1963, Dain’s photographs portray Faulkner at home as well as provide a comprehensive look at the people and cultural traditions that inspired him. This collection provides an extraordinary window through which to view community history and from which to reflect on culture and change in Oxford and the surrounding area. As the exhibition discusses and interprets the legacy of William Faulkner, it also provides an opportunity to prompt community dialogue. The exhibition opened at the University of Mississippi in 1997 and traveled for two years as part of the Faulkner Centennial Celebration, had an encore tour in 2007 in conjunction with the Mississippi Reads project administered through the Mississippi Library Commission, and is once again available, this time for libraries, museums, and cultural centers in Mississippi and surrounding states. Faulkner’s World: The Photographs of Martin J. Dain was curated and produced by the Center for the Study of Southern Culture. The exhibition has thirty-six 16" x 20" black-and-white photographs and four text panels, presented in 24" x 30" frames. A book of the Dain photographs, published by the Center and the University Press of Mississippi, is available with the exhibition. Oxford author Larry Brown wrote the foreword for the book. Tom Rankin, editor of the book and curator of the exhibition, wrote the introduction, which examines Dain’s life and career as a photographer. Also included is the DVD “Are You Walkin’ with Me?” Sister Thea Bowman, William Faulkner, and African American Culture, produced by Lisa N. Howorth. Faulkner’s World is scheduled for display in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, in November and December, and at the Pascagoula (Mississippi) Public Library in January and February 2014. Persons interested in scheduling the traveling exhibition of Dain photographs should contact Mary Hartwell Howorth by e-mail (mheh@olemiss.edu) or telephone (662-915-5993).
Mary M. Thompson The Southern Register
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Martin Dain
The Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters (MIAL) held its 34th Awards Banquet on the campus of Mississippi University for Women on June 8, 2013, in Columbus, Mississippi. The weekend included readings and performances by MIAL winners; the annual membership meeting; a reception hosted by James Borsig, MUW president; and the banquet. At the annual membership meeting, George Bassi was elected the new president and Donzell Lee the new vice president. Lawrence Dees of Tupelo and Nancy LaForge of Cleveland were selected as new members of the Board of Governors. Aubrey Lucas and Cora Norman were named Governor Emeritus and Governor Emerita.
Remembering Will Campbell, 1924–2013 Will Campbell, the Mississippi-born, Baptist-ordained preacher who ministered for reconciliation across race, class, gender, and sexual divisions, died on June 3 from complications from a stroke in 2011. Campbell had long ties to the University of Mississippi and more recent ones to the Center. Many of us working here have long seen him as an icon of a reimagined South, for which he witnessed with his particular brand of radical spiritual individualism that could foster respect for social justice. Campbell was born in Amite County, Mississippi, in 1924, and his memoir, Brother to a Dragonfly (1977), chronicled his hard-scrabble childhood on a small cotton farm during the Great Depression, his conversion to ideals of social egalitarianism, and his role as a civil rights activist, as well as telling the tragic story of his brother’s early death. A prolific author, he wrote 15 volumes, including four children’s books. After graduating from Yale Divinity School and pastoring a small church in Louisiana, Campbell came to the university as director of religious life in 1954, thinking a university setting would provide the context for the freedom of expression he hoped to use to foster social change. He discovered that the academic world was not immune to the pressures of what his friend James Silver called Mississippi’s “closed society.” He invited a northern Episcopal minister to campus, but Chancellor John David Williams forced him to rescind the invitation when the minister revealed he had donated funds to the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. Other conflicts came when he played ping-pong with a young black man he was counseling about registering for a correspondence course, integrating the university through the mails. Enforcers of the Southern way of life’s racial boundaries dumped black and white ping-pong balls on his front Page 18
lawn as a warning. At another time, human feces were put in a punch bowl for a reception he was hosting. Finally, the chancellor fired him, but he had lined up his next position, as a troubleshooter for the National Council of Churches in the South, from 1956 to 1963. He was at many hot spots of the civil rights movement in those years, including accompanying African American students to integrate Central High School in Little Rock, working with Freedom Riders, and participating in the campaign to integrate public facilities in Birmingham and Selma. Campbell later directed the Committee for Southern Churchmen and edited Katallegete, a quarterly journal whose name came from a biblical passage on reconciliation. The journal’s files are in the university’s Archives and Special Collections at the J. D. Williams Library. Campbell spoke against American involvement in the Vietnam War, helped draft resisters, and campaigned against capital punishment. He recounts in Brother to a Dragonfly his theological insight that “We are all bastards, but God loves us anyway.” In one of my conversations with “Brother Will,” he directed me to the Apostle Paul’s passage about the gospel leading to such a transformation in a human being that there was no genSummer 2013
tile or Jew or slave or freed. He did not recognize society’s divisions, and he worked for equal rights for women, gays and lesbians, and prisoners. He eventually even embraced his identity as a Southern poor white, seeing his people as victims of the Southern way of life as well as sometimes victimizers of African Americans. Always, religion was at the forefront of his thought. Thomas Connelly called Will an existential religious primitivist. Campbell would undoubtedly have shaken his head at that high-toned characterization, but he did speak from a compelling primal faith that emerged over the years from his humane take on religious experience that took root in the rocky soil that the South’s plain folk had inhabited for much of their history. I first met Campbell when he came to Oxford in 1998 as part of the university’s sesquicentennial celebration of its founding. I was on the committee to bring in someone related to the university’s spiritual life, and Campbell was an easy choice. He had had a fraught relationship with the university, but by the end of the 20th century, the campus faculty and staff recognized him as an authentic hero of the South’s racial crisis of the post–World War II era. I personally had admired him as a spiritual advocate of social justice, and I was particularly a fan of his memoir, which I had taught to as many classes as I could. When Southern Living magazine did a story on classic Southern books, they asked me for my choice, and I singled out his book as usually the most popular one in any course I taught. I hosted Campbell on his visit, taking him from place to place and entertaining him. I discovered this saintly man by reputation was in fact a bit of a curmudgeon. He picked at me endlessly, accusing me of getting above my working-class raising by my choice of bourbon. He recalled incidents from his time in Oxford, not just the bad memThe Southern Register
ories but also the good ones, especially the friends he had made. We took Campbell to an Introduction to Southern Studies class, a big one with 70 or so students. Many times students sign up for that class thinking they will hear about the Gone with the Wind South, only to discover a course about the multicultural diversity of the South. Will engaged the mostly freshmen students in conversation, picking at them with needling questions. I cringed when he asked, “Who is a Southerner, anyway?” I feared some student would volunteer a stereotypical Southern example, but I breathed easier when one young woman simply said, “A Southerner is someone from the South.” He was caught short and said, “I guess you’re right.” It was an answer he could affirm, beyond ideologies of Southernism he could not embrace. Campbell gave an eloquent talk on the formal occasion. The University Gospel Choir, which was overwhelmingly African American, performed before his talk, and he listened rapturously to the singers, and then offered the institutional reprimand he must have been waiting years to offer: “How could you deprive yourselves of this music for so long?” Campbell’s work for civil rights, human rights, and racial reconciliation created a far-flung network of the faithful who looked to him for spiritual honesty and engagement with society. Campbell was fearless in speaking truth to power, but he often did it as a trickster theologian, using wit to make his incisions in institutional psyches. He said he was a “spiritual chiropractor,” going to places in need of “a little adjustment.” The Center was one of those places that received his grace. Susan Glisson, graduate of the Southern Studies master’s program and director of the William Winter Institute for Racial Reconciliation, was a longtime friend of Campbell, whose mentoring of her and the work of the institute represents a legacy of Campbell to the ongoing work of racial reconciliation. Charles Reagan Wilson
The Southern Register
Call for Papers Faulkner & Yoknapatawpha
“Faulkner and History,” July 20–24, 2014 The 41st annual Faulkner & Yoknapatawpha Conference will be devoted to an interdisciplinary conversation between literary scholars and historians exploring the rich relationship between history and the life and art of William Faulkner. How do specific histories—of Mississippi, of the U.S. South, of the nation, of the Americas, of the Atlantic or Pacific regions, of modernity, of technology, of private or everyday life, of the environment, of ideas and intellectual work, of the senses or affects, of underrepresented populations or groups or societies, of colonialism and empire, of global movements, migrations, and exchanges, and so on—illuminate, challenge, complicate, or otherwise situate Faulkner’s imaginative writings and public performances? What, in turn, can Faulkner’s life and work contribute to a deeper understanding of such historical moments, problems, or domains? How should we understand and assess the historiographic imagination we so frequently encounter in Faulkner and his characters, the historical enterprise as practiced by such characters, the historical archives they consult or construct in pursuit of this enterprise, and the historical remains they encounter or leave behind? What can we learn from Faulkner’s experiences as a historical figure in his own right—his own participation in specific historical moments, crises, events—or from his impact on historians? What can Faulkner teach us about the links between memory, trauma, and the practices of material history, and what can that nexus of problems teach us about his work? How should we assess Faulkner’s legacy as an artistic chronicler of the Civil War and World War I, historical crises (themselves observing milestone anniversaries in 2014) that were imaginatively formative for him? What might contemporary theoretical reconceptualizations of temporality and the past contribute to the ongoing reconceptualization of Faulkner’s work, or vice versa? How and where do Faulkner and/or Faulkner scholarship shed light on the challenges and rewards of using archival materials to understand history or reframe key historical questions, especially as historical and literary archives are themselves undergoing significant transformation in the digital era? How and where else might historians and literary critics meet over Faulkner to interrogate the questions that guide and shape their disciplines today? We especially encourage full panel proposals for 75-minute conference sessions. Such proposals should include a one-page overview of the session topic or theme, followed by two-page abstracts for each of the panel papers to be included. We also welcome individually submitted two-page abstracts for 20-minute panel papers and individually submitted manuscripts for 40-minute plenary papers. Panel papers consist of approximately 2,500 words and will be considered by the conference program committee for possible inclusion in the conference volume published by the University Press of Mississippi. Plenary papers, which should be prepared using the 16th edition of the Chicago Manual of Style as a guide, consist of approximately 5,000–6,000 words and will appear in the published volume. Session proposals and panel paper abstracts must be submitted by January 31, 2014, preferably through e-mail attachment. For plenary papers, three print copies of the manuscript must be submitted by January 31, 2014. Authors whose plenary papers are selected for presentation at the conference will receive a conference registration waiver. All manuscripts, proposals, abstracts, and inquiries should be addressed to Jay Watson, Department of English, The University of Mississippi, P.O. Box 1848, University, MS 38677-1848. E-mail: jwatson@olemiss.edu. Decisions for all submissions will be made by March 15, 2014. Summer 2013
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University of Mississippi-Oxford Icon Leaves Major Support to Strengthen Library Resources Hart Assisted in Editing the Encyclopedia of Southern Culture Widely known for its rich literary tradition, Oxford attracts a wealth of people who love to read, study, and discuss literature. Bibliophile Sue Hart was a force of nature in this environment, spending almost 20 years as a research librarian and publications editor at the Center for the Study of Southern Culture. Hart’s passion for the written word inspired her to direct a $136,000 estate gift to the university’s J. D. Williams Library to be used to build resources for Southern Studies. “It makes sense that someone who loved books as much as Sue, and had such a natural feel for what made ‘good writing,’ should have her legacy left to improving the library,” said Center director Ted Ownby. “I don’t know a better way to feel her influence.” Hart, who died in 2012, had been influencing the University of Mississippi since 1979, when she was persuaded to move back to her home state. After earning a bachelor’s degree in social science at Siena College in Memphis in 1951 and then a master’s degree in library science from Louisiana State University in 1963, Hart worked as a research assistant at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut. William Ferris, who was working with her at Yale, had just been hired as the founding director for the Center and recruited the Canton native to become his research assistant. The goal of the Southern Studies program is to be interdisciplinary, not just focus on history, but encompass all things of the South—literature, music, food, and so on. This sparked the idea for Hart to create a reference material for the South, inspired by Howard Lamar’s The New Encyclopedia of the American West. So Ferris, along with Charles Reagan Wilson, began working on the book. Hart and Ann Abadie, then associate director of the Center, became associate editors on the project. The team of four worked tirelessly, and in 1989 the Encyclopedia of Southern Culture, all 1,634 pages and nearly nine pounds of it, was published. Page 20
Sue Hart, who passed away last year, left an estate gift to strengthen Southern Studies resources in the J. D. Williams Library.
The success of the Encyclopedia was in a large part due to Hart’s rigorous dedication. She had a no-nonsense approach when it came to her work. “Sue’s standards and expectations were very high, having come here from Yale,” said Lisa Howorth, who worked for Hart as a bibliographer at the Center. “She was easily riled by ineptitude or ignorance. You did not want to see her lurching your way with something you screwed up. She was the smartest, most bookish person I knew at Ole Miss, and I learned a lot from her.” Ferris added, “I remember with special pleasure the editorial debates we had over whether or not to capitalize the word ‘Southern.’” Hart definitely was not “all work and no play.” She was just as funny as she was smart, and “behind that stern, oldschool scholarly facade was one wicked sense of humor,” said Howorth. She was an avid fan of the blues and jazz and loved to go on road trips. She was an Ole Miss Rebels and Atlanta Braves enthusiast, as well as a devoted Democrat. After a serious skating accident as a child, Hart suffered a major impairment to her spine that was never successfully corrected. She spent the majority of her life suffering from the injury. In 1954 Dwight Eisenhower signed the Social Security Summer 2013
Amendment that two years later included benefits for people with disabilities. Hart became a supporter of Eisenhower and the amendment, dedicating much of her life to the cause of others. “Sue was completely selfless,” said goddaughter Diane Esterman. “She cared more about other people than herself. She never spent any of her money, and when she died she left it all to Ole Miss and her church. They just don’t make them like her anymore.” “She cared a great deal for this university, particularly the library,” said Julia Rholes, dean of libraries. “Ann Abadie introduced us at one of the library’s functions, and we instantly bonded over our background as librarians. She was truly a joy to know.” Individuals or organizations wishing to make a memorial gift in Sue Hart’s name may send a check with either Friends of the Library or the Sue Hart Prize/ CSSC noted in the memo line to the University of Mississippi Foundation, P.O. Box 249, University, MS, 38677. Contributions can also be made online at www.umfoundation.com/makeagift. Lena Anderson
The Southern Register
Foodways Postdoctoral Fellow Joins Center Faculty
S O U T H E R N
F O O D WAY S
Courtesy Zac Henson
The Southern Foodways Alliance and the Center for the Study of Southern Culture are pleased to welcome Zac Henson, postdoctoral fellow in foodways for the 2013–14 academic year. Henson, a native of Alabama, graduated from Auburn University in 2008. In May 2013 he received his PhD in environmental science, policy, and management from the University of California-Berkeley, where he was a National Science Foundation graduate fellow. Henson is also director of the Magic City Agriculture Project, a Birmingham, Alabamabased nonprofit whose mission is to “improve environmental, social, and economic conditions” through urban agriculture. Center director Ted Ownby said, “We’re excited to welcome Zac Henson to Southern Studies. His background in environmental studies should be exciting for our students in the Foodways and Southern Culture class, and his research on contemporary food movements should be ideal to challenge people to think about food, politics, and policy.” During his year at the University of Mississippi, Henson will teach one graduate-level class and one undergraduate class while preparing his dissertation for publication. In the fall, he will teach SST 555: Foodways and Southern Culture to Southern Studies graduate students. In the spring, he will offer an undergraduate course on food systems. Readings will include some theoretical works by Pierre Bourdieu and others, Cultivating Food Justice by Alison Alkon and Julian Agyeman, A Mess of Greens by Elizabeth Engelhardt, Building Houses out of Chicken Legs by Psyche Forson-Williams, and Cooking in Other Women’s Kitchens by Rebecca Sharpless. Southern Foodways Alliance director John T. Edge said, “Many of our students now think of food decisions as political decisions. Having read Zac Henson’s thesis, ‘Separate Tables: Segregation, Gentrification, and the Commons in
Zac Henson, postdoctoral fellow in foodways for the 2013–14 academic year
Birmingham, Alabama’s Alternative Food and Agriculture Movement,’ I believe he promises to be a good mentor to that emergent generation of Southern Studies scholars.” Funding for the postdoctoral fellowship in foodways comes in part from the Chisholm Foundation.
A L L I A N C E
M E M B E R S H I P
name company address city
state
telephone Please make checks payable to the Southern Foodways Alliance and mail them to the Center for the Study of Southern Culture University, MS 38677.
zip
fax
$50 student $75 individual $100 family $200 nonprofit institution $500 business
FOR FURTHER INFORMATION, VISIT US AT OUR WEBSITE: www.southernfoodways.org or e-mail info@southernfoodways.org
The Southern Register
Summer 2013
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Accounting for Taste: A Post from Poland
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Antonina Parris-Yarbrough
Postprandial epiphany: Though my lovely wife is in most ways my better, there is one realm in which I believe I am more tolerant. To wit: When she comes to Poland, she wants to eat pierogi. She loves them all. Ruski pierogi, pierogi stuffed with meat, but especially the ones stuffed with mushrooms. She will order them three times out of four. I understand. First of all, she likes the taste. But more importantly, they remind her of childhood, when the world seemed huge and small pleasures counted for so much. Her grandmother’s back from the internment camp where she got sent for being a capitalist. Most of the unexploded shells have been removed from the rubble where she plays. Things are looking up. So I never say, “Oh, but wouldn’t you like to try the stuffed duck? Or the Lithuanianstyle pork chops?” Now, when I go to the South, which soon I shall, there are only two things I care to eat: fried catfish and BBQ. And both choices trouble her, due to the girth of my waist and her desire that I last a good bit longer. I love the way they taste. But beyond that, when I contemplate fried catfish, I see my grandfather coming up the bank of the Sunflower River, over close to where Mr. Weber’s place was, just off 49 North, with a string of catfish. I see a young boy who’s never been north of Memphis, east of Tupelo, south of Jackson, or west of Lake Village, and he’s licking his lips. It’s the early ’60s and nothing that’s happening around him bothers him much, though when he grows up and recalls it, it will bother him every day. His idea of a big time is to buy a Dr. Pepper at Mr. Tyner’s store in Moorhead. His idea of a really big time is to go into Indianola on Saturday night and look at all the toys he can’t have at Morgan and Lindsey’s. He won’t hear of Proust for another 15 years or read him for 20. He’s never heard of Poland and doesn’t
Steve Yarbrough in the middle of Krakow’s main market square last summer, with kielbasa
eat all the pierogi you want. You can even have those horrid ones stuffed with blueberries. Because while you can take a girl away from Ostroda, and a boy away from Indianola, you can’t take either of those places out of either one of them, and why would you want to? Bring your life to your lips and savor it. It could never taste the same to anyone else.” Steve Yarbrough
a
know there’s a magical little girl over there eating her pierogi. So I say, “Let me have my catfish, my pulled pork, and hushpuppies, and you
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Steve Yarbrough was the John and Renée Grisham Writer in Residence at the University of Mississippi in 1999–2000. He is a regular participant at the Oxford Conference for the Book and on the Mississippi Delta Cultural Tour and is currently a professor in the Department of Writing, Literature, and Publishing at Emerson College in Boston. His new book, The Realm of Last Chances (Knopf), was recently published.
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Reading the South Strom Thurmond’s America. By Joseph Crespino. New York: Hill and Wang, 2012. 404 pages. $30.00 cloth, $17.00 paper, $14.99 ebook. “South Carolina is too small to be a sovereign nation and too large to be an insane asylum” goes an old saying about the Palmetto State. The late senator Strom Thurmond of South Carolina was too controversial to be president but too important to dismiss, according to Joseph Crespino, historian at Emory University. In Strom Thurmond’s America, Crespino’s new political biography, he argues that Thurmond was a bridge-builder between the old, segregationist South and the new, Sunbelt America. Through a close analysis of Ol’ Strom’s ascendant political career, Crespino seeks the origins of modern conservatism much earlier than the years between 1960 and 1980 and follows out the implications of the senator’s politics for the South and the nation. It has become customary among popular and academic writers to chart the trajectory of conservatism through celebrities on the American right. One of the first was Reagan’s America by Garry Wills. More recently, Rick Perlstein’s Before the Storm, on Barry Goldwater’s conservative 1960s, and Nixonland, on a nation mired in the fear and loathing of the Nixon years, could be put on the list. Now, Joe Crespino adds Strom Thurmond to the pantheon of conservative figures who remade America into their own image. Crespino argues that Thurmond represented a culmination of longstanding frustrations among Americans, not just Southerners, with the national Democratic Party that arose from a variety of issues. Crespino
wants to remember “ol’ States’ Rights Strom” as an innovator and as one of a handful of key Southerners who led the South into the “Sunbelt” era. “Thurmond is incorrectly held up as an example of merely the Old Right,” writes Crespino, when “in fact, he was central to the creation of the New.” Strom’s politics tapped into a continuous stream of conservative themes dating “back to the 1940s and forward to the 1980s, and Thurmond’s career,” Crespino insists, “captures them all.” Strom Thurmond’s right-leaning America blended a “vigorous defense of business interests and a reflexive opposition to organized labor; national security concerns and the belief in American exceptionalism abroad; and an antipathy to the politics and culture of liberalism, one in which the image of the aggrieved white Godfearing American, mistreated at the hands of forces both elite and minority, stood center stage.” Ol’ Strom’s problem, Crespino contends, was that he peaked too soon, but not before
showing the way for Ronald Reagan and other modern Republicans. A particularly insightful aspect of Crespino’s biography explores an overlooked feature of Strom Thurmond. Thurmond started as a progressive force in South Carolina politics. He worked to open up South Carolina to economic development, to clean up state government, and to improve education. Although Thurmond has often understandably played the villain for his racial sins, he defied the corruption of the state’s Democratic regime and made the Republican Party respectable among many white Southerners. By the 1980s, Thurmond had become “revered, a living legend at home and a senator respected by his colleagues for his pragmatism and leadership . . . thereby obscuring, though never erasing, his older racist image.” Despite earning a reputation as a racial reactionary and an enemy of civil rights, Thurmond was instrumental, Crespino argues, in forging an “emerging coalition of pro-business Republicans and States’ Rights Democrats.” Crespino deserves credit for understanding how important Strom Thurmond’s influence and South Carolina’s role have been as bellwethers of Southern Republicanism. Since Dwight Eisenhower made inroads in the South during his 1956 presidential campaign, South Carolina served as a kind of Southern equivalent to Ohio by determining the winner of every Republican primary until Newt Gingrich upset Mitt Romney in 2012. After Strom Thurmond, an entire generation of business-minded, racially moderate Southern Republicans came forward with an urban outlook and a national appeal. For Crespino, Thurmond was the “white whale for South Carolina’s New Breed Republicans.” They were the key to
Book Reviews and Notes by Faculty, Staff, Students, and Friends of the Center for the Study of Southern Culture
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Reading the South continued connect the national Republican Party with dissident white Democrats. A white whale is a dangerous animal to hunt and an odd metaphor to employ. Captain Ahab comes to a bad end in that whaling story, too. In 2002 the Republican Senate majority leader, Trent Lott, committed political suicide by paying tribute to Ol’ Strom, the ancient, segregationist Dixiecrat, at his 100th birthday party. The blunder convinced Joe Crespino to follow his monograph on conservatism in Mississippi with a biography of Senator Thurmond. The incident should have alerted Republicans to change electoral strategies rather than to appeal to Strom’s old constituency. In 2012 the Grand Old Party paid politically for genuflecting before disaffected white voters and for continuing to ignore the nonwhite, nonrural demography of the country. Readers who do not necessarily agree with Thurmond’s politics may be more disappointed to see Ol’ Strom’s views overlapping so neatly with the small, interconnected world of the mid-20th-century right. Crespino wants to disabuse the reader of any preconceptions that Thurmond was substantially different from Barry Goldwater, Richard Nixon, or William F. Buckley. Weaving these conservative luminaries and others throughout the book, Crespino uses them as foils to make the traditionally parochial Thurmond into a national figure. Goldwater and Nixon may have needed Strom Thurmond Americans on occasion, but to argue that they were all the same political animal would be a mistake. Nixon courted Strom Thurmond and his following during presidential elections, but it is difficult to imagine the cunning Tricky Dick sharing anything with anyone other than a desire to undercut opponents to win. Nixon may have offered absolution to Thurmond and his segregationist brethren for any racial wrongdoing to get Southern votes, but many Republicans were prob-
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ably uncomfortable sharing a party with the man. In his early years on Capitol Hill, Thurmond was known as “the cactus of the Senate,” and he was never popular among Northern Republicans. Perhaps a more gripping comparison would have been to write a dual biography of Thurmond and his biracial daughter, Essie Mae Washington-Williams. Only sporadically mentioned in Crespino’s account, her story along with her father’s would have added an interesting, countervailing voice to Strom Thurmond’s America. William P. Hustwit
Freedom Rights: New Perspective on the Civil Rights Movement. Edited by Danielle L. McGuire and John Dittmer. Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 2011. 392 pages. $40.00 cloth, $40.00 web pdf, $40.00 ebook. Freedom Rights: New Perspectives on the Civil Rights Movement, the newest edition to the University Press of Kentucky’s diverse and meticulously researched Civil Rights and the Struggle for Black Equality in the Twentieth Century series is a must read for those interested in understanding the expanding legacy of the civil rights movement. There has been much debate about the appropriateness of expanding the origins of the movement, and while the discussion is important, this work makes it clear that the legacy of the movement is being continually realized, contracted, and re-envisioned still today. Edited by Danielle L. McGuire and John Dittmer, the book begins with homage to Steven Lawson, followed by a chapter by Lawson titled “Long Origins of the Short Civil Rights Movement.” Eleven other es-
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says round out the collection. All are noteworthy, but space permits me to discuss only a few. Justin Lorts’s essay “Hollywood, the NAACP, and the Cultural Politics of the Early Civil Rights Movement” is an important contribution to a discussion of civil rights that usually relegates itself to the American South and privileges discussions of culture that concentrate on Jim Crow below the Mason-Dixon line. Lorts expands this spatially narrow view. His essay outlines early (late 1930s through 1940s) efforts of activist organizations (like the NAACP), the black press, and the civil rights community to combat pervasive black stereotypes in Hollywood, “recognizing that the way blacks were perceived culturally affected how they were treated politically and socially.” Like other essays in the collection, Lorts presents a more complicated view of a black movement that is often popularly presented as cohesive by outlining the pushback of some working actors in the black entertainment community to the efforts of civil rights activists. Recent debates about award-winning performances of black actors in The Help, the film, and about the book make it clear that this debate continues. The “pushback” of some black actors outlined above is complicated and per-
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Reading the South continued haps best understood through the multiple lenses of race, class, and gender. Freedom Rights excels at looking at the movement through multiple lenses. Some of the strongest essays in the collection, such as Krystal D. Frazier’s “Till They Come Back Home: Transregional Families and the Politicization of the Till Generation,” incorporate not only sex but gender and family into the analysis. These essays highlight how the civil rights movement became an umbrella term for a number of social movements taking place in the nation and involved family politics, local politics, national politics, cultural politics, and sexual politics. But race is never far removed from the analysis, either. One of the most poignant in the collection is Danielle McGuire’s essay titled “Joan Little and the Triumph of Testimony.” The trial of Joan Little, a 20-year-old black woman, jailed in Washington, North Carolina, and charged in the 1974 murder of her jailer—an offense punishable by death—is outlined. At the point of a weapon, Little’s jailer forced her to perform oral sex on him. During the act, Little was able to seize the weapon (an ice pick) and defend herself, striking him several times. At the trial, Little’s defense admitted she killed her jailer but sought to put the Southern justice system and way of life on trial, too. This justice system had legitimated white male attacks against black women on the basis of widely held sexual stereotypes about the lewdness and (lack of) respectability of black women. Little’s case and subsequent acquittal of the murder charge is a hallmark in the “painful, patient, and silent toil . . . [of black women] to gain title to the[ir] bodies.” The only pictures in the collection of essays are contained in this section, and each image seems to cry out imploring the words of Sojourner Truth spoken over 100 years earlier: “Ain’t I a Woman?” The final essays in the book seem particularly fitting. Rather than laud the accomplishments of the civil rights movement, these later works highlight Ella Baker’s well-known admonition that “freedom is a constant struggle.” In light of the Supreme Court’s recent decision declaring the coverage formula in Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 (a seminal statute former president Ronald Reagan termed the “crown jewel” of civil rights legislation), both “The Community Don’t Know What’s Good for Them: Local Politics in the Alabama Black Belt during the Post–Civil Rights Era” by George Derek Musgrove and Hasan Kwame Jeffries, which exposes recent voter fraud investigations in Alabama as a concerted response by a white majority in Black Belt communities once firmly under white control to disfranchise blacks in majority black communities, and Brian Ward’s “I Want My Country Back, I Want My Dream Back: Barak Obama and the Appeal of Postracial Fictions,” which highlights the narrative advanced by Northwest Austin Municipal
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Reading the South continued
University Press of MississiPPi
Fear and What Follows The Violent Education of a Christian Racist, a Memoir By Tim Parrish The story of a working class, Southern Baptist upbringing that transformed into a nightmare of bigotry and bullying in Baton Rouge $28
William F. Winter and the New Mississippi A Biography By Charles C. Bolton The life story of the governor known for his fight for education and racial reconciliation $35
Utility District No. 1 in its 2009 Supreme Court challenge to the constitutionality of the Voting Rights Act—doesn’t the election of Barak Obama mean race is no longer an issue in American politics?— seem an eerie premonition to the continuing civil rights battles that will need to be waged. The book raises but fails to answer the now-quintessential question regarding the civil rights movement: Was it a long civil rights movement or a short movement with long origins? The collection of essays does however answer Lawson’s call in “Freedom Then, Freedom Now: The Historiography of the Civil Rights Movement” urging scholars to “[connect] the local with the national, the political with the social.” Collectively, the essays in Freedom Rights respond to Lawson’s challenge. Barbara Harris Combs
Mississippi Hill Country Blues 1967
Colonel William C. Falkner: Death on the Courthouse Square.
By George Mitchell Over 100 black and white photos capturing the musical discovery and the geniuses of Mississippi’s Hill Country blues $40
By Allen Wildmon. Parker, Colorado: Outskirts Press, 2011. 208 pages. $29.95 cloth, $16.95 paper.
Conversations with Natasha Trethewey Edited by Joan Wylie Hall Collection of interviews with the current US Poet Laureate and Mississippi native that offer intriguing artistic and biographical insights into her work $65 Hardback; $25 Paperback
Mobilizing for the Common Good The Lived Theology of John M. Perkins Edited by Peter Slade, Charles Marsh, and Peter Goodwin Heltzel Essays on the famed activist and preacher, among the first to call for relocation, reconciliation, and redistribution in a post-civil rights America $35
Also available as Ebooks www.upress.state.ms.us 800-737-7788
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Looking back on the Civil War from the perspective of the 21st century, that time in the South seems perhaps highly romantic and dramatic, peopled with largerthan-life characters performing astounding feats of derringdo. None of those people loomed larger than William Clark Falkner, Confederate soldier, author, railroad builder, duelist who strode across the landscape of north Mississippi and its history with the panache and glamour of a demigod of ancient mythology. The shadow of that powerful figure seemed to brood over his descendants, a unique, exciting, and sometimes violent clan, who themselves often left their mark on local history and their environment. That influence was especially strong upon his great-grandson, the incomparable William Cuthbert Faulkner, who as a child often expressed his desire to be a writer “like my great-grandfather.” Although his career as a Confederate officer was a
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Reading the South continued
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relatively brief one, he resigned in the middle of the conflict to become a blockade runner (reversing the history of another larger-than-life figure of the era, the fictional Rhett Butler), Falkner nevertheless impressed such superiors as Gen. J. E. B. Stuart and Gen. P. G. T. Beauregard, who, tradition has it, dubbed the colonel “the hero with the black plume” because of a large feather worn in his hat. Growing up in north Mississippi, I was touched by that shadow of the Old Colonel, as he came to be known. I was born in Ecru, only six miles from New Albany, William Faulkner’s birthplace. Ecru was a product of the railroad Colonel Falkner and his associates built from Middleton, Tennessee, to Pontotoc, Mississippi. As he did for the other communities that sprang up as the tracks were laid, the Old Colonel chose the name for the town: “Ecru” for the color of the paint on the depot. My great-grandfather had served as an officer under Falkner in the Mississippi Partisan Rangers, and memories of that powerful figure in north Mississippi history were transmitted to me by my grandfather, who had been a small child when the first train on that narrow-gauge line passed through Ecru a few hundred yards from my ancestral home. Since childhood, when those tales of bravado thrilled my imagination and when I struggled through the tangled plot and Victorian excesses of The White Rose of Memphis, I have wanted to read a well-researched biography of this mythic Southern hero. Alas, Death on the Courthouse Square is not that book. Allen Wildmon professes in a note that precedes the text that his book “is part fiction based on the author’s imagination, and part fact based on the author’s research,” and therein lies the problem, for fact and fiction do not exist comfortably together between these covers. Often the puzzled reader is left to guess which is which. The better approach, surely, would have been to have chosen one and stuck with it. Let it be said, however, that the research is for the most part good, relying strongly on the work of Joel Williamson and Thomas S. Hines. On the plus side, this book is illustrated with numerous significant photographs, and if one does not know the basic story of Falkner’s amazing life and death, shot in the back on the courthouse square in Ripley, the story is here, although the reader must be diligent to separate fact from fiction. Colonel Falkner appears as a vibrant character on these pages, and one can easily understand how much such a life influenced his greatgrandson and his fiction. We have to wait for the fully realized biography of the hero of the black plume for which many of us have yearned. Kenneth Holditch
and the Politics of Place” at the Latin American Studies Association annual meeting in San Francisco, California. She is also a member of the American Anthropological Association and the American Planning Association. “Simone Delerme’s focus on understanding the experiences of Latinos in the U.S. South will broaden our department’s growing focus on critical race studies and the Global South,” says Kirsten Dellinger, chair of the Department of Sociology and Anthropology and associate professor of sociology. “Her interdisciplinary work is cutting-edge, and we are thrilled to welcome her as a member of the faculty.” While the Center is delighted to have Delerme on its faculty, she says she is equally impressed with all of the work being done at the Center. “The Center’s specializations in foodways, documentary studies, and the music of the South caught my attention immediately, and I quickly realized that this is a research center that embraces an interdisciplinary understanding of the South,” Delerme says. “That truly makes for an engaging environment, and it certainly attracted me to Ole Miss.” Center director Ted Ownby says he is excited for Delerme to join the Southern Studies faculty, both because of what she studies and how she goes about her work. He says she brings excitement about doing research that blends face-to-face documentary work with theoretical work about race, ethnicity, and class. “The subject of Latino immigration to the South is one of the most important issues in Southern Studies,” Ownby says, “and it opens up all sorts of questions about ethnicity, identity, labor, migration, and government policy. We could see just from her job interview how much she brings to the university. She talked about some really intriguing methods to get to know people she wants to study, she talked a bit about a controversy about a monument in a park, she went through some statistics on immigration, she drew some big conclusions, and, above all, she showed a great deal of excitement about doing humane scholarship.” Delerme will be teaching Introduction to Cultural Anthropology and the honors Introduction to Southern Studies seminar, and she says she is looking forward to her fall courses and to the annual conferences and lecture series sponsored by the Center. “She can help a lot of our students who are doing documentary studies, and her own work will be a good corrective to anyone who hasn’t thought much about Latino communities—or even Florida—when they think of studying the South,” Ownby says. She has her eye on exploring the area and is already putting together a food-related reconnaissance mission. “Before the semester even begins I’m planning to explore the Mississippi Delta Hot Tamale Trail, which I learned about from the Southern Foodways Alliance,” Delerme says. “My research focuses on the recent migrations to the South, but the Hot Tamale Trail is an opportunity to learn about the historical impacts of Latin American migration to the region.” Getting settled in, familiarizing herself with the university, and focusing on her research and teaching is her plan for the fall. “It’s going to be a busy semester, but I couldn’t be more excited,” she says. Rebecca Lauck Cleary
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The New Encyclopedia of Southern Culture
CHArLeS reAGAn WiLSon General editor
“[A] multi-year, multi-dimensional, and unprecedented series” —Library Journal
VoLUMeS in THe SerieS inCLUde: Vol. 1: Vol. 2: Vol. 3: Vol. 4:
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Foodways Environment Literature Law and Politics Agriculture and Industry Vol. 12: Music
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Violence Social Class Art and Architecture Science and Medicine Vol. 23: Folk Art Vol. 24: Race
CenTer For THe STUdy oF SoUTHern CULTUre at the University of Mississippi
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To purchase individual volumes in the series, or to order the complete set from the University of North Carolina Press at great savings, visit http://uncpress.unc.edu/browse/page/815 or call 1-800-848-6224.
16th Southern Foodways Symposium Focuses on Women at Work Sara Roahen
The 16th Southern Foodways Symposium, “Women at Work,” will be held October 4–6, 2013, on the campus of the University of Mississippi and in and around the town of Oxford. The symposium formally convenes at noon on Friday, October 4, and closes at noon on Sunday, October 6. On the evening of Thursday, October 3, there will be optional activities for early arrivals. This year we examine the role of women in Southern foodways. Much previous academic and popular attention has focused on women as stewards of home and hearth. Instead, the Southern Foodways Alliance will ask questions about how women farmers, artisans, and cooks have forged cultural identities, challenged gender conventions, built businesses, and driven economies. For 2013, we explore female spaces like kitchen libraries and public-housing kitchens. We tell stories of female entrepreneurs who earned a living selling standards like yeast rolls and mayonnaise. We pay homage to the women who have long worked both the back of the house and the front of the house. And we celebrate the lives of women of letters like Vertamae Grosvenor, author of Vibration Cooking, and Edna Lewis, author of The Taste of Country Cooking.
Alzina Toups, a Cajun cook in Galliano, Louisiana, 2012
An all-female lineup of speakers, panelists, and performers will educate and entertain us with stories of women cooks, business owners, and restaurant workers, past and present. Marcie Ferris, a professor of American studies and Southern Studies at UNC-Chapel Hill, will kick off Friday’s programming with a look at the most influen-
Julian and Kathryn Wiener Endowment to Assist with Internship Funding MA student Jodie Free will be the first student to benefit from an endowment to support Southern Studies students pursuing internships. Kathryn Wiener, a Center Advisory Committee member and resident of Jackson, established the Julian and Kathryn Wiener Endowment, which will help students who need to travel as part of their internships. The award will help support at least one student each summer. For her internship, Jodie Free worked this summer with the Hub City Writers Project, a literary nonprofit organization in Spartanburg, South Carolina. She helped run the project’s new writing camps for children and teenagers and helped with a conference called Writing in Place. A second-year student from the United Kingdom, Free came to the University of Mississippi from the University of East Anglia as part of a new partnership between Southern Studies and the British Association for American Studies. The Southern Register
Summer 2013
tial women in the history of Southern food. Rebecca Sharpless, a professor of history at Texas Christian University, will discuss pre–civil rights movement kitchen life in black and white. United States poet laureate Natasha Trethewey will read from her work, and playwright Shay Youngblood, the 2002–03 Grisham Writer in Residence at the University of Mississippi, will premiere an original theater piece based on the life of the late chef and cookbook author Edna Lewis. With women in the lead, we will savor breakfasts of fire-toasted cornmeal pound cake, lunches of country captain, and dinners of cayenne-sluiced fried chicken. First time attendees will enjoy Tabasco-spiked bloody Marys. Everyone will enjoy wine from Virginia and beer from Tennessee, both crafted by women. You’ll note that women will do the talking (and performing, and cooking) this year. Men will not step to the stoves until Sunday, when they pay homage to the women who went before them. Tickets to this event are sold out.
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The Larder: Food Studies Methods from the American South will be published by the University of Georgia Press in October. Edited by Center director Ted Ownby, SFA director John T. Edge, and Elizabeth Engelhardt of the University of Texas-Austin, The Larder is the first book in the new UGA Press-Southern Foodways Alliance series Southern Foodways Alliance Studies in Culture, People, and Place. The 16 essays in The Larder argue that the study of food does not simply help us understand more about what we eat and the foodways we embrace. The methods and strategies herein help scholars use food and foodways as lenses to examine human experience. The resulting conversations provoke a deeper understanding of our overlapping, historically situated, and evolving cultures and societies. The Larder presents some of the most influential scholars in the discipline today—from established authorities such as Psyche Williams-Forson to emerging thinkers such as Rien T. Fertel—writing on subjects as varied as hunting, farming, and marketing, as well as examining restaurants, iconic dishes, and cookbooks. Editors Edge, Ownby, and Engelhardt bring together essays that demonstrate that food studies scholarship, as practiced in the American South, sets methodological standards for the discipline. The essayists ask questions about gender, race, and ethnicity as they explore issues of identity and authenticity. And they offer new ways to think about material culture, technology, and the business of food. The Larder is not driven by nostalgia. Reading such a collection of essays may not encourage food metaphors. “It’s not a feast, not a gumbo, certainly not a home-cooked meal,” Ownby argues in his closing essay. Instead, it’s a healthy step in the right direction, taken by the leading scholars in the field. Page 30
Walter Johnson to Present 2013 Gilder-Jordan Lecture Courtesy Walter Johnson
The Larder to Be Published by the University of Georgia Press
The 2013 Gilder-Jordan Lecturer in Southern History is Walter Johnson of Harvard. The lecture will take place on Wednesday, September 18, at 7:00 p.m. in Nutt Auditorium on the University of Mississippi campus. An important element of the lecture series is the opportunity for students to meet with leading scholars. Johnson will spend time with Southern Studies and history graduate students while visiting Oxford.
Walter Johnson
Johnson’s most recent book is River of Dark Dreams: Slavery and Empire in the Cotton Kingdom, a study of slavery in the Mississippi Valley between the Louisiana Purchase and the Civil War. River of Dark Dreams brings to life the many characters of the Cotton Kingdom—land speculators, planters, gamblers, steamboat captains, and the tens of thousands of enslaved men, women, and children whose labor cleared the wilderness and planted the cotton that created a region of fevered, if short-lived, economic promise. At once a political economy study of global chains of commerce and a searing account of the lived experience of the enslaved and enslaving, River of Dark Dreams builds on Johnson’s first book, Soul by Soul: Life in the Antebellum Slave Market, an examinaSummer 2013
tion of the New Orleans slave market. Among other honors, Soul by Soul received the John Hope Franklin Prize of the American Studies Association, the Avery O. Craven Award, and the Frederick Jackson Turner award of the Organization of American Historians. Johnson is currently writing a book about the 1841 revolt aboard the slave ship Creole. Walter Johnson received his BA from Amherst College and his doctorate from Princeton University. Before arriving at Harvard, he taught history and American studies at New York University. Organized through the Center, the African American studies program, Center for Civil War Research, and the Department of History, the Gilder-Jordan Speaker Series is made possible through the generosity of the Gilder Foundation Inc. The series honors Richard Gilder of New York and his family, as well as his friends Dan and Lou Jordan of Virginia. Past Gilder-Jordan Lecturers have been Barbara J. Fields of Columbia University, David Blight of Yale University, and Grace Elizabeth Hale of the University of Virginia. For questions about the lecture, please contact Becca Walton, associate director for projects, rwalton@olemiss.edu. Becca Walton The Southern Register
Center Announces the 2013 Eudora Welty Award Winners First-place winner, Lee Schmidt
witty, this poem conjures up the ways in which seemingly small daily frustrations magnify underlying discomforts with the expectations other people have of us and we have of our selves. It begins with the striking line, ‘I’ve always been worse at opening things than I am at closing them,’ and then ends with its linguistic reversal, ‘I’ve always been better at closing things than I am at opening them.’ In between, the poet moves through juice cleanses, food processors, and the prom, but the work’s truth tinkles in a line from the poem’s deep middle: ‘Your very best bet is strengthening your own wrists’ so that, the writer suggests, you finally depend on yourself rather than anyone else.”
Come help us celebrate the completed publication of The New Encyclopedia of Southern Culture at Square Books in Oxford on Wednesday, August 28! Keep an eye on the Center’s website and Facebook page for more details. The Southern Register
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This is the first year the contest has awarded honorable mentions. This year’s honorable mention for fiction goes to Pace Ward from DeSoto Central High School in Southaven for “A Letter Concerning the Sixteenth Slash.” About the story the judges state, “Told in the first person, the author’s language drives the reader relentlessly toward the conclusion she fears, and although the piece’s momentum never wavers, a number of specific, haunting details accumulate about the speaker along the way that, ironically, bring him to life just as he dies.” This year’s honorable mention for poetry goes to Keyoshia Scott from South Delta High School in Rolling Fork for “Absence of Color,” about which the judges claim, “This poem is a kind of hard truth-telling, but the poet never wavers from calling the world as she sees it, one in which color is never actually absent, but always starkly present in black and white.” The Center congratulates all winners on their success. Jimmy Thomas
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Courtesy Lee Schmidt
Each year the Center for the Study of Southern Culture presents the Eudora Welty Awards to Mississippi high school students during the Faulkner & Yoknapatawpha Conference. Established and endowed by the late Frances Patterson of Tupelo, the awards are given for creative writing in either prose or poem form. The prize for first place is $500, and the prize for second place is $250. Honorable mentions receive $50 prizes. In addition, each winner also receives a copy of the Literature volume of The New Encyclopedia of Southern Culture. This year’s first-place winner is Lee Schmidt from St. Andrew’s Episcopal School in Ridgeland for her story “Rebecca.” Regarding the winning story, the University of Mississippi English professors who judged the entries claimed that “In spare and unforgiving language, the author of this story tells us much about a series of failed connections: the speaker’s relationship to her mother, to her friend Rebecca, to her peers, and, potentially, to her future.” The judges were equally impressed by this writer’s poem, “Lichtenberg Figures,” in which, unlike the story, words tumble after each other to powerful effect, beginning with the first stanza: “I want so badly to be struck by lightening / and be marked, / electricity racing through me to burst / capillaries carving a pattern of remembered glory / that rises, stinging, to the surface.” This year’s second-place winner is Samantha Gibson from Petal High School for her poem “Sadderday.” The judges of the awards stated, “Darkly
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