Sixth Annual Blues Symposium Held February 26–27 in Oxford, Missississippi Miranda Cully

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the newsletter of the Center for the Study of Southern Culture • Spring 2009 the university of mississippi Sixth Annual Blues Symposium Held February 26–27 in Oxford, Missississippi Miranda Cully

rowds of blues enthusiasts gathered in Oxford as the University of Mississippi and Cthe Center for the Study of Southern Culture played host to the sixth annual Blues Today Symposium February 26–27, 2009. This year’s symposium, themed “Documenting the Blues,” featured such panelists, speakers, friends, and veteran folklorists as David Evans, George Mitchell, Art Rosenbaum, and Sylvester Oliver. Highlights included an all-blues Thacker Mountain Radio show, an unveiling of our own Blues Trail marker on the lawn of Barnard Observatory, and a coinciding performance by gospel great Mavis Staples at the Gertrude Castellow Living Blues staff, past and present, at the Living Blues Trail marker un- Ford Center. veiling ceremony are (left to right) Mark Camarigg, Jim O’Neal, Amy After a prekickoff Brown Bag lecture van Singel, David Nelson, Scott Barretta, and Brett Bonner. with Mark Camarigg (Living Blues), Scott Barretta (Highway 61 radio, Mississippi David Evans, George Mitchell, Alan formed on the fiddle with accompani- Blues Trail), and Greg Johnson (Blues Lomax, Jim O’Neal, and others.” ment from Oxford guitarist and incom- Archive) on Wednesday, audiences According to many participants and ing Southern Studies master’s student on Thursday heard a lecture by Evan visitors alike, the blues edition of Thacker Jake Fussell. Local bluesmen Kenny Hatch (MA 2002) on John Work III Mountain Radio on Thursday, February Brown and Cedric Burnside with and saw the unveiling of an exhibi- 26, was exceptional. George Mitchell, Lightnin’ Malcolm performed a tribute tion of Work’s recordings. Johnson also who first recorded R. L. Burnside in to Mitchell for his recordings of the ear- unveiled the newly digitized audio and 1967, shared his love for the blues and liest notable Burnside. video from the Alan Lomax Archive, the Blues Today Symposium with his “The community support was partic- noting that “much of what we know kind words and music. Additionally ularly strong this year, especially for the about the history and development performing on Thacker Mountain Radio special blues-themed Thacker Mountain of blues music and culture was passed was Grammy-winning symposium along to us through the research of participant Art Rosenbaum, who per- continued on page 3 the D i r e c t o r ’ s C o l u m n

Perhaps we should see this edition of the Southern Register as our music issue. Published Quarterly by The articles on the new Documenting the Blues marker on the east lawn of Barnard The Center for the Study of Southern Culture Observatory, the Blues Today Symposium, the Southern Foodways Alliance’s food The University of Mississippi and music event at the Carter Family establishment near Bristol, Tennessee, and Telephone: 662-915-5993 Southern Studies students and alumni who are musicians only begin to introduce Fax: 662-915-5814 E-mail: [email protected] the musical sides of Southern Studies. www.olemiss.edu/depts/south Congratulations to Living Blues for publishing its 200th issue. Putting out a magazine gets more difficult in an online age, and putting one out from a university set- IN THIS ISSUE ting has its own challenges. Cheers to Brett Bonner, Mark Camarigg, and the staff Spring 2009 members, writers, volunteers, and subscribers over the years who have made it a 1 Sixth Annual Blues Symposium quality publication. It was good to see past editors Jim O’Neal, Amy van Singel, 2 Director’s Column David Nelson, Scott Barretta, and current editor Brett Bonner together at the un- 3 Living Blues Celebrates 200th Issue veiling of the blues marker. 4 Southern Studies Musicians Throughout its history, numerous Southern Studies faculty members, such as past 4 Sacred Harp Singing and present professors Bill Ferris, Adam Gussow, Warren Steel, Robbie Ethridge, 6 Walter Anderson & World Literature and Michael Bertrand, have either played music or taught about it, or both. Through 7 New Encyclopedia Volume: Gender his own work and his encouragement of Living Blues and the Blues Archive, Ferris 7 Mississippi Hills Heritage Area worked to establish the University of Mississippi as a place to study the blues. Gussow 8 Coahoma, Williams Festival Honored teaches and writes about blues and literature, has written a blues memoir, and con- 8 Mark Your Calendars tinues to play blues harmonica. Steel continues to teach a Music Department course, 9 Freeland’s Barn Burning Photographs African American Musical Traditions, that is popular with Southern Studies stu- 9 Gammill Gallery Exhibition Schedule dents. Ethridge plays bass in several Oxford bands, and Bertrand, who now teaches 10 2009 F&Y: “Faulkner and Mystery” history at Tennessee State University, wrote an important book on the life of Elvis 11 In Memoriam Presley. Former Living Blues editor Barretta teaches a popular class, initiated by Peter 11 Faulkner & Morrison Conference Aschoff, on the anthropology of the blues. 12 Welty Centennial Celebration Even Southern Studies faculty who cannot carry a tune (or don’t do so in public) 13 Mississippi Reads Welty have studied music. Charles Wilson has written on Elvis and religion, and I wrote an 14 Oxford Gardening Updates article about 1970s Southern rock and gender. A few people will remember English/ 15 Lucy in the Garden with Flowers Southern Studies professor Bob Brinkmeyer’s radio program in African music. 15 Wildflowers of the Coastal Plain Our newest faculty member studies music, especially hip hop, as part of her larger 15 Remembrances of Welty Parties Past study of regional identity among African Americans in the urban South. Zandria 16 MIAL to Celebrate Mississippi Artists Robinson, who is finishing her PhD at Northwestern University, will join us in the and Writers on June 13 in Laurel fall as the new McMullan Assistant Professor of Southern Studies and Assistant 17 New Encyclopedia Discount Letter Professor of Sociology. 18 USPS Richard Wright Stamp Upcoming Center programs also have musical themes. In May, David Wharton 19 Reading the South: Reviews & Notes will, for the third year, teach a Southern Studies course in conjunction with staff 27 Southern Foodways Alliance News members from the Library of Congress about how to document musical traditions. 29 Field School on Religious Music In October the Southern Foodways Symposium will feature connections between 30 2009 Delta Literary Tour Portfolio foodways and the music of the South. Our students have benefited from assistant- 32 2009 Book Conference Portfolio ships through the American Music Archive and from close relationships with Living 34 Southern Culture Catalog Items Blues, Media Productions, and the Highway 61 radio program. 35 Contributors Despite all of the teaching and scholarship by the faculty, it is often the inter- 35 Catalog Order Form 36 Address Section/Mailing List Form/ ests of Southern Studies students that push the Center into new interests in music. Friends Information and Form According to the Center’s Web site, 23 MA students have completed theses on topics in Southern music, with topics ranging from Austin to Nashville, to blues educa- REGISTER STAFF tion, to Elvis and sexuality, to Hee Haw, to Thacker Mountain Radio, to European Editor: Ann J. Abadie fascination with African American music, to Bo Carter, Doug Sahm, the Drive-By Graphic Designer: Susan Bauer Lee Truckers, and the Vaughn songbooks. Several other students have pursued intern- Mailing List Manager: Mary Hartwell Howorth ships related to music topics. Undergraduates have often turned to music for re- Editorial Assistant: Sally Cassady Lyon search topics, and current students are studying, among other things, Southern hip Lithographer: RR Donnelley Magazine Group hop, blues tourism, and Southern themes in the work of Bob Dylan. And, as I’Nasah Crockett’s article in this issue attests, numerous students and alumni are talented The University complies with all applicable laws regard- ing affirmative action and equal opportunity in all its ac- and dedicated musicians. tivities and programs and does not discriminate against Over the years, Southern Studies students have started bands and disbanded them, anyone protected by law because of age, color, disability, national origin, race, religion, sex, or status as a veteran or disabled veteran. continued on page 29 Page 2 Spring 2009 The Southern Register continued from 1 Mark Camarigg

Radio show, which had a standing- room-only crowd at the Lyric Theater,” Camarigg said. “The symposium is a great opportunity for scholars, fans, and musicians to come together and share their knowledge and passion for blues music and culture,” he added. In addition to the general celebration of the blues, this year’s event also specif- ically celebrated those who have contributed to the blues by recording, producing, and documenting. Nearly all of the former editors of Living Blues were in attendance, along with many who continue to work in the Blues Archive and on blues research elsewhere. Southern Studies graduate student Alan Pike said, “Having a blues marker placed at Barnard Observatory made this year’s symposium especially exciting among Blues Trail marker on the east lawn of Barnard Observatory blues enthusiasts here at the University. The marker and the unveiling ceremony served to honor the great folks at Living Blues magazine and the various faculty interpretive sites located throughout the special to the Center for the Study of and blues scholars that have helped to state. The unveiling of the most recent Southern Culture and the University make Ole Miss the best place to study blues marker, entitled “Documenting of Mississippi. Similar markers will the blues.” Another graduate student, the Blues,” became a celebratory event continue to be developed and identified Duvall Osteen, continued, “It was an on the symposium schedule. It is the first in phases as funding becomes available. honor to see the marker unveiled at the trail marker in Lafayette County and is Though not officially part of the Blues Center, a place so devoted to creating sponsored in part by the Oxford Tourism Today Symposium, Mavis Staples put ways for people to discover and explore Council. As student remarks might on an outstanding performance Friday Southern culture in a variety of ways.” suggest, this marker was particularly evening. The Blues Today Symposium The Mississippi Blues Trial features official finale was a Big Jack Johnson more than 125 historical markers and show at Rooster’s Blues House on the Square in Oxford, but many symposium visitors still contin- The current edition of Living Blues cele- ued on a tour of the B. B. brates the journal’s 200th issue and focus- King Museum in Indianola, es on the B. B. King Orchestra. Members Mississippi, guided by blues of the B. B. King Band, both present scholar Scott Barretta, who and past, detail their unique personal served as a consultant in the music histories backing the King of the museum’s creation. Blues. The issue also features an exten- Symposium sponsors include sive photo essay and description of the the Oxford Convention and newly opened B. B. King Museum and Visitors Bureau, the Yoknapa- Delta Interpretive Center in Indianola, tawpha Arts Council, Missis- Mississippi. The issue concludes with sippi Development Authority , our 2009 Festival Guide, a comprehen- the University of Mississippi’s sive listing of blues festivals throughout Department of Archives and the world. Readers can subscribe by Special Collections in the J. D. visiting www.livingblues.com or call- Williams Library, Austin’s Music, ing 662-915-5742 during regular busi- and the Center for the Study of ness hours, Monday through Friday, Southern Culture. 8:00 a.m.–5:00 p.m. CST, except for University holidays. Jen Lawrence

The Southern Register Spring 2009 Page 3 Southern Studies Musicians Beginning with the Spring 2009 issue, but two New Orleans–based bands, Tipitina’s for about a year, he landed his Southern Studies master’s student I’Nasah the Happy Talk Band and the Haunted current job at the Louisiana Endowment Crockett will highlight various alumni and Hearts. The first, he says, is “more of a for the Humanities. “As director of faculty who sing, play, market, or other- modern, roots rock band and the latter be- grants I am involved with projects that wise have something to do with music. ing a traditional hillbilly string band com- explore the cultural significance of music This issue’s installment features one cur- plete with upright bass and sans drums. I through interpretive ‘informances’ such rent faculty member and two alums. If play guitar, steel guitar, banjo, and piano as Louisiana Crossroads, where musi- you are a Southern Studies alum or a past in both.” Over the past five years or so, cal performances are paired with schol- faculty member (visiting or full-time) and both bands have played shows through- arly interviews to create entertainment you have musical connections, you should out the country and at the famed South that is also educational. We also offer expect to hear from us soon. by Southwest music festival in Austin, documentary film and radio grants, and I Texas. He’s also part of an organization have been able to work closely with pub- Spring has arrived, which means that called the Mystic Knights of Mau Mau, lic radio stations like WWOZ.” Lasiter, here in the South music festival season a nonprofit group in New Orleans that who while in the program sang with a is officially under way. In light of the puts on the annual Ponderosa Stomp, an psychedelic band called Heavy Jelly, melody-soaked atmosphere, we took a American roots music festival. says that “Through Southern Studies I look at Southern Studies faculty and Palmer says that his time in the learned to appreciate music as a cultural alumni who are involved both in music Southern Studies Program was foun- expression. My degree has given me the making and the music business. dational in shaping his music interests. tools to continue to explore indigenous “During the 1990s I was part of a blues “I came to Oxford from college in New Southern music both through my job duo in New York called Satan and Adam,” Jersey looking for immersion in things and in my spare time.” says Adam Gussow, associate professor of Southern. I think just being in Mississippi These are just three Southern Studies English and Southern Studies. “We began and absorbing the state’s music heritage faculty or alumni who made their livings as a street act but were lucky enough to was important. After Ole Miss, I came to at least in part through music. In future pick up a record producer and a record- Louisiana and haven’t looked back. The issues of the Southern Register, we will ing contract in 1991, and also get picked musical education here rivals Mississippi highlight world-traveling keyboardist up by major management. We ended up and the learning never ends; Southern and singer Billy Stevens, the impossi- becoming a mid-level regional/national Studies, in large part, taught me what to ble-to-categorize songwriter/mandolin- touring act—weekend warriors who look for and how to use it.” ist Dent May, guitarist Warren Black, played blues clubs in the Eastern U.S. and Another Southern Studies graduate singer-songwriter Caroline Herring, did a handful of blues and jazz festivals ev- who has made his musical fortunes in bassist Justin Showah, trumpeter and ery summer. After working for tips on the New Orleans is Walker Lasiter (MA, music teacher Jacques de Marche, sing- street, it was nice to have some industry 1996). “My first two jobs were in the er-songwriter Jimmy Phillips, singer- muscle behind us!” music industry. I answered an ad in bassist Susan Bauer Lee, blues perform- Gussow is happy to report that Satan the paper that asked, “Can you sell the er Steve Cheseborough, roots musician and Adam have recently reunited and blues?” Having interned at Living Blues Angela Watkins, and guitarist Jake are proudly self-managed. Additionally, magazine I was sure I could. It turned Fussell, an undergraduate student who since joining the program in 2002, he out to be an advertising sales position will join the MA program in the fall. has managed to link his interest in music at a blues radio station.” After working making with his academic interests, from in promotions at the famed music venue I’Nasah Crockett assembling and chairing the Blues Today Symposium (also in 2002), to teaching Sacred Harp Singing classes in blues and African American Sacred Harp singing is a nondenominational community musical event emphasiz- studies. “Both my English and Southern ing participation, not performance. Singers sit facing inward in a hollow square. Studies courses reflect my experience as Each individual is invited to take a turn “leading”—standing in the center, select- a professional blues musician and my ing a song, and beating time with the hand. The singing is not accompanied by academic interest in Southern music as harps or any other instrument. The group sings from The Sacred Harp, an oblong a whole. I’ve taught graduate and un- songbook first published in 1844 by B. F. White and E. J. King. dergraduate courses in the blues literary Preserved in the rural South, Sacred Harp singing (also called fasola singing or tradition and what I’ll call the “discourse shape-note singing) is making a major resurgence in cities and campuses through- tradition” of the blues—the languages in out North America. which scholars, folklorists, and journal- Full listing of Sacred Harp singings in Mississippi is posted at www.mcsr.olemiss. ists talk about the music.” edu/~mudws/miss.html. Alumnus Mitch A. Palmer (MA 1999) Other singings in the U.S., Canada, and the United Kingdom are listed at www. is a lawyer who juggles being a full-time mcsr.olemss.edu/~mudws/singings.html. lawyer with being a member of not one,

Page 4 Spring 2009 The Southern Register

Library Exhibition Features Walter Anderson

Artwork by renowned artist, writer, and naturalist Walter Inglis Anderson is on exhibit at the J. D. Williams Library through January 2010. The 60-piece display, Walter Anderson and World Literature, is hosted by the Department of Archives and Special Collections on the library’s third floor. Featuring line drawings, watercolors, and panels inspired by great works of literature such as Don Quixote, The Iliad, Alice in Wonderland, Beauty and the Beast, The Magic Carpet, and block prints from Anderson’s book An Alphabet—created for his own children—the exhibition stretches along three walls. “There are many artists who explored a story but few who fused with it,” said Patricia Pinson, former curator of exhi- From Paradise Lost From Don Quixote bitions at the Walter Anderson Museum Adam and Eve with Animals The Don’s Apostrophe to Dulcinea of Art in Ocean Springs. “The book to Courtesy Family of Walter Anderson Courtesy Family of Walter Anderson Anderson was a way of life, part of the quest to find realization and meaning. It Anderson gives us insight into both.” “It’s exciting for the library to show- was the distillation of the timeless ep- A voracious reader, Anderson created case this wonderful exhibit of work ics that gave him the grasp of the sig- nearly 10,000 pen-and-ink drawings to by Walter Anderson,” said Jennifer nificance of the moment. Great books illustrate page after page of the books as Ford, head of Archives and Special and great art are about insight, and he would read them. Collections. “His genius can be clearly seen, as well as his love for literature. We hope that our patrons will be able A Subject Guide for the exhibit is available at to get a glimpse into his world.” http://apollo.lib.olemiss.edu/center/subject_guide/anderson/intro. While Anderson’s “world” stretched from his home on the Mississippi Gulf Coast to faraway places such as China and South America, he found solace in being alone, often immersed in the imaginary world of books. “Daddy was essentially on a quest—he was pursuing the Holy Grail,” said Anderson’s son John Anderson, curator of the library exhibition. Sponsored in conjunction with the 16th annual Oxford Conference for the Book, which was dedicated to Walter Anderson, the exhibition was the focus of the conference’s opening session March 26. Following its close at the library, plans call for the exhibit to travel to other libraries, cultural centers, and schools for years to come. “This exhibit might be little explo- sions if allowed to be shown in schools where children can look at the work and say, ‘Wait a minute, I see something John Anderson, curator of the Walter Anderson and World Literature exhibition another way,’” John Anderson said.

Page 6 Spring 2009 The Southern Register Designation of New Encyclopedia Mississippi Hills Volume 13: Gender National Heritage Entitled Gender, the 13th volume of The Area Announced New Encyclopedia of Southern Culture, came out in April. Like its 12 predeces- Mississippi Senator Roger Wicker has sors, each published by the University officially announced the federal desig- of North Carolina Press, Gender has the nation of the Mississippi Hills National goal of updating scholarship with new Heritage Area. and improved entries from the original “Gaining national heritage area des- Encyclopedia of Southern Culture, pub- ignation for the Mississippi Hills will lished in 1989. boost our state’s economy by increasing Envisioning an encyclopedia around tourism opportunities,” Senator Wicker the concept of gender posed intriguing said in a press conference in Tupelo. challenges. “Our main goal,” according to “There are unique stories of cultural coeditor Ownby, “was to show the ways a and historical significance all across generation of good scholarship on gender northeast Mississippi. I am glad this issues has changed the way we think about cultural history is being recognized by the South.” Topics that have become Congress so that this area of Mississippi crucial in Southern Studies became the can be promoted and shared with a larg- subjects of new entries. Much of the best er audience.” new scholarship uses the lens of gender to The boundaries of the 30-county rethink older questions. As series editor Mississippi Hills National Heritage Charles Reagan Wilson states in his in- Jacket Illustration, Adam and Eve in Area are Interstate 55, Missississippi troduction, “This volume charts ways that Eden, c. 1945, courtesy of the Family Highway 14, and the Tennessee and men and women have had differing experi- of Walter Anderson Alabama state lines. The Mississippi ences of manhood and womanhood.” The Hills Heritage Area Alliance volume has new articles on topics like an- (MHHAA) is the coordinating entity timiscegenation laws, the politics of respectability, Charlotte Hawkins Brown, the for the heritage area and will be work- Scottsboro Boys, the capture of Jefferson Davis, paternalism, Bubba, Lottie Moon, ing with communities across the region the myth of matriarchy, manly independence, NASCAR, visiting, single mothers, to develop a management plan. Ida B. Wells-Barnett, the blues, and “I Am a Man!” The Mississippi Hills Area joins a While entries on emerging topics might attract the most attention, other entries network of 48 other National Heritage chart the gendered components of some of the most crucial elements of Southern Areas across the country, which are cultural life. “Southern historians have put gender on the map,” according to coedi- charged with preserving, conserving, and tor Nancy Bercaw. “Over the past 30 years, they’ve shown us how gender is cen- interpreting some of America’s greatest tral to understanding key moments in the history of the South and the nation.” treasures, including the Atchafalaya The encyclopedia covers these new ways of thinking about slavery, agriculture, the and Cane River National Heritage Civil War, emancipation, racial segregation and desegregation, citizenship, industry, Areas in Louisiana, the Mississippi religion, the civil rights movement, poverty, and education. The book has entries Gulf National Heritage Area on the discussing various definitions of family life and sexuality, and new entries on vari- Mississippi Gulf Coast, the Tennessee ous forms of politics join older but updated entries on feminism and antifeminism, Civil War National Heritage Area, and suffrage, and voting rights activists. Other entries track the roles gender issues have the Blue Ridge National Heritage Area played in the ways Southerners express themselves through autobiography, litera- in Western North Carolina. ture, humor, photography, and foodways. Entries on gender issues among American For lists of attractions, travel tips, Indians, Hispanics, Appalachian people, whites, and African Americans note the history, and cultural aspects of the intersections of race, diversity, and region. Mississippi Hills, visit www.mississip- The editors say they could have added the phrase “and gender” to almost any pihills.org. MHHAA project coor- topic in Southern Studies and made it an entry. As Bercaw and Ownby state on dinator Kent Bain can be reached at page 1, “This collection of encyclopedia entries is fairly large, but it could be far 662-844-1276 or kentbain@mshills. larger, because one can find gender components in virtually any element of human org. Contact program manager Bobby life.” The volume, with Walter Anderson’s drawing of Adam and Eve on the cover, King at 662-844-1277 or bobbyking@ is available now. mshills.org. For a complete listing of all National Heritage Areas, visit nation- alheritageareas.com.

The Southern Register Spring 2009 Page 7 Take One

Deborah Freeland, senior designer for Outreach and Continuing Studies at the University, recalls working as still photographer for the filming of Barn Burning, based on a Faulkner story. Her photographs will be exhibited during the 2009 Faulkner and Yoknapatawpha Conference.

The winter of 1979 brought the film crew of William Faulkner’s Barn Burning to Oxford. There is always excite- ment when a film crew arrives in town. Oxonians welcome the change from routine and roll out the red carpet. The cameras rolled, and De Spain (Jimmy) When I held the images up to the light, usual talk over coffee shifts to “who” saw charged forward waving a Civil War–era I smiled. “what” star eating at “which” restaurant pistol. There had been some concern One of my photographs was chosen on the Square. Details are noted such as that the fire would spook the horse, but for the publicity for the film and is repro- “She lives off carrot sticks!” and “Did Jimmy had complete control. De Spain duced on the cover of the VHS tape. A he get the accent right?” was seen only briefly, but dramatically in selection of the Barn Burning photographs Barn Burning was one of the PBS silhouette against the light of the blaze. taken that night will be exhibited during popular American Short Stories series The rafters of the barn fell in, sending the 2009 Faulkner and Yoknapatawpha adapted for television. The support and sparks into the night sky. The fire depart- Conference. The opening will be held interest of the citizens became an im- ment rushed in to put out the remaining in conjunction with “Faulkner on the portant part in the making of the mov- embers. Then it was over. I didn’t expect Fringe”—an open-mike evening at the ie. Several locals were cast as extras on so much action to happen so fast. Southside Gallery. I hope Oxonians and the set or hired to work on the crew, I had exposed the entire roll of film conference attendees can recapture that perhaps most notably Jimmy Faulkner, wondering if I had captured anything at exciting, fleeting moment in the photos who was cast in a key role as Major De all. The next day I developed the pho- 30 years later. Spain. There was certainly no problem tographs in a makeshift student dark with the accent. room—a windowless bathroom with a Deborah Freeland At the time, I was a graduate stu- towel under the door to block the light. dent working in Archives and Special Collections at the University. I was fortunate to be with the crew for the burning barn scene. The perfect old barn had already been located in the nearby community of Paris. Careful planning was required. There could be no retakes. Though it was a night scene and freezing cold, everyone in town turned out to watch the action. The fire department was present to prevent the blaze from getting out of hand. My job Exhibition Schedule was to stand in one place and shoot still images of the barn as it burned to the March 30–June 12, June 15–August 14, August 17–October 16, ground. In contrast to modern digital 2009 2009 2009 cameras, the camera I used had no auto Documentary Maude Schuyler Clay Vaughn Sills focus and no auto light meter. Photography Students Mississippi Delta Photographs African American Gardens By nightfall all was ready. The barn Oxford, Mississippi: and Other Recent Work was prepped and the camera crew was in A Photographic Survey, place. Jimmy Faulkner mounted his horse 2008 and rode back and forth behind the crew anxiously awaiting his cue. The fire was The Gammill Gallery, located in Barnard Observatory, is open Monday through Friday, lit, and the pyrotechnics scattered into 8:00 a.m.–5:00 p.m., except for University holidays. Telephone: 662–915–5993. the dark. As the barn began to glow, the

Page 8 Spring 2009 The Southern Register Coahoma Community College, Tennessee Williams Festival Honored with Mississippi Humanities Council Award

Coahoma Community College and the Mississippi Delta Tennessee Williams Festival received the Mississippi Humanities Council’s prestigious Partner Award at MHC’s annual banquet in February 2009. Recognized for 17 years of Tennessee Williams excellence that attracted the British Broadcasting Corporation to record a documentary of the 2008 tribute to America’s great Tribute & Tour playwright, the festival was cited for its numerous collabo- rations, partnerships, and volunteers that made it a success. Among the volunteers attending the MHC banquet attended of Victorian Homes by 400 are (front row from left) Julia Mayfield Ott; Panny September 7–13, 2009 Mayfield, festival project director; Vivian Presley, CCC president; Robert Rockett, CCC English instructor who received Columbus, Mississippi an MHC Outstanding Teacher Award; Laura Mayfield; Yvonne Birthplace of poet, author, Stanford, CCC library director; and Shelley Ritter, Delta Blues and playwright Tennessee Williams Museum director; (back row) Vera Griffin, CCC English de- The Tennessee Williams Welcome Center, 300 Main Street, is headquarters for the Tribute. Exhibits, books and souvenirs are partment chairman; David Jones and Glynda Duncan, CCC available from 8:30 am–5:00 pm daily and 12 pm–5 pm on Sunday. English instructors; Rosetta Howard, CCC academic dean; The Columbus-Lowndes Public Library Billups Garth Archives Teresa Williams; and Wanda Reed, CCC English instructor. Collection of Tennessee Williams Memorabilia is on display September and October, Mon.–Thurs. 9 am–6 pm; Fri. The 2009 festival is scheduled October 16–17. For details, 9 am–5 pm; and Sat. 10 am–4 pm (Free to the public) check the CCC Web site www.coahomacc.edu/twilliams. Monday, September 7–Thursday, September 10 Streetcar Named Desire Thursday, September 10 Reception Dr. Limbert’s House Friday, September 11 A report on ac- Breakfast with the Scholars tivities celebrating Lunch and Music at Lemquen Eudora Welty’s The Dog Enchanted by the Divine View 100th Birthday is on Saturday, September 12 pages 12–13 of this Breakfast with the Scholars issue of the Southern Scenes from The Glass Menagerie and Register. Her 75th the play The Dog Enchanted by the Divine View “An Evening with Olympia Dukakis” at the W Birthday Party Moon Lake Autograph Party with Ms. Dukakis Invitation, designed Sunday, September 13 by Lisa Howorth of Sermon at 10:30 - Theme from The Rose Tattoo Oxford, is shown Lunch and Music at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church here. For details of Scenes from The Glass Menagerie at Omnova that party, in 1984, Tour of Victorian Homes and the one the year For additional information, telephone 662.328.0222 or before, see page 15. 800.327.2686 or e-mail: [email protected] or go to www.muw.edu/tennesseewilliams/

The Southern Register Spring 2009 Page 9 FAULKNER & YOKNAPATAWPHA “Faulkner and Mystery” July 19–23, 2009

For over half a century now, the College, Donald M. Kartiganer, literary version of what Faulkner University of Mississippi, Sean Mc- called “the best of all talking” has Cann, Wesleyan University, Noel been the hunting down of the mys- Polk, Mississippi State University, tery of his fiction. The sentences and Philip Weinstein, Swarthmore have been parsed, chronologies College—there will be 12 panel- ordered, plots and character gene- ists: Kelley Hayden, University of alogies summarized and treed—yet Nevada, Lisa Hinrichsen, Univer- what might be called the control- sity of Arkansas, Margaret Rayburn ling vision, the sense of human Kramar, University of Kansas, Sar- meaning in the world that Faulkner ah Mahurin Mutter, Yale Universi- articulates, is as elusive as ever. As ty, John Padgett, Brevard College, more than one critic has put it, “we Daniel Pecchenino, University of ain’t got the dog yet.” California, Santa Barbara, Conor A recent discovery in Faulkner Picken, Louisiana State University, studies is the extent to which this Marta Puxan, Universitat Pompeu high modernist reached out to what Fabra, Barcelona, Esther Sanchez- might be considered unlikely sourc- Pardo, Universidad Complutense es for his material and his strategies de Madrid, Rachel Watson, Uni- for making use of it. One of the most versity of Chicago, Rachel Walsh, prevalent is the popular detective Stony Brook University, and Ran- fiction of his time, particularly of dall Wilson, University of Tennes- the “hard-boiled” variety, as well as see, Knoxville. the film version of the genre. Once Illustrating the 2009 Faulkner and Among the scholars and we attend to the typical convolutions Yoknapatawpha Conference poster their topics will be Michael Gorra on of detection, the theme of “mystery” in and program is a photograph of the Faulkner’s plots about plots, narratives Faulkner’s fiction begins to swell dispro- Old Shipp Place, Lafayette County, designed to explore a world of secrecy portionately. Indeed, is there a Faulkner Mississippi, ca. 1850, from the and desires; Sean McCann on the ten- novel that lacks it? Why exactly does Martin J. Dain Collection, Southern sion between Mystery (spiritual) and Media Archive, Special Collections, Addie Bundren wish to be buried in University of Mississippi Libraries. Flat mysteries (epistemological), which in Jefferson, her only stated memory of copies of this poster and conference Sanctuary, Knight’s Gambit, and Intruder which is a single sardonic sentence posters with illustrations by Glennray in the Dust becomes the tension between spoken by her father? What is Joe Tutor (1989–1993), John McCrady law and justice; a reading by Richard Christmas’s racial identity, and is that (1994, 2003, 2005), and William Godden of the mythologies of “Red the object of his quest? And, of course, Faulkner (2007) and with photographs Leaves” as they are manifested in red- why did Thomas Sutpen reject Charles by Martin Dain (1996), Jack Cofield heeled shoes, the body of Moketubbe, Bon for his son-in-law, a fatal decision (1997, 2000), Bern Keating (1998), the snake called “Grandfather,” and the still being pondered in Jefferson 50 years Odione (1990), Budd Studios (2002), story’s odd title. Phyllis Cerf (2008), and from the later? These and similar questions have Cofield Collection (2001), the Williams Other topics will be the trope of the been with us so long that we sometimes Library (2004), and the Commercial detective-as-bachelor in The Town and forget that they are a common staple of Appeal (2006) are available for $10.00 The Mansion (Daniel Pecchenino), alco- Faulkner’s work, and that none of them each plus $3.50 postage and handling. hol and prohibition in Sanctuary (Conor is ever definitively resolved. Mississippi residents add 7 percent Picken), the forensic trail in “The Bear” The 36th Faulkner and Yoknapataw- sales tax. Send all orders to the Center and Intruder in the Dust (Rachel Watson), pha Conference will explore for five days for the Study of Southern Culture and repetition and the uncanny in “mystery” in Faulkner. In addition to the with a check, made payable to The Absalom, Absalom! and Go Down, Moses scholars announced in the previous issue University of Mississippi, or with Visa (Rachel Walsh). One of the benefits of or MasterCard account number and of the Southern Register—Hosam Aboul- expiration dates. Please use the order approaching Faulkner’s work through Ela, University of Houston, Susan V. form on page 35. Credit cards orders the perspective of mystery is that it in- Donaldson, College of William and also may be made by calling 800-390- creases the range of critical speculation Mary, Richard Godden, University of 3527. Posters are available to view on to cover not only the standard texts but California, Irvine, Michael Gorra, Smith the Center’s Web site, www.olemiss. some of those less often studied. edu/depts/south/our_catalog.html.

Page 10 Spring 2009 The Southern Register Adding to the discussion of mystery of north Mississippi, the Delta, and in Faulkner and in their own work will Memphis; a picnic served at Faulkner’s be a panel of three notable practitioners home, Rowan Oak; and “Faulkner on Call for of crime fiction: Ace Atkins, Jere Hoar, the Fringe”—an “open mike” evening and Daniel Woodrell. There will also be at the Southside Gallery. a showing of The Story of Temple Drake, Discount rates for the conference are Papers a rarely seen film made two years after available for groups of five or more stu- the sensational arrival of Faulkner’s dents. Inexpensive dormitory housing Sanctuary on the literary scene. is available for all registrants. Contact Faulkner and Morrison Other program events will include Robert Fox at [email protected] for de- A Conference sessions on “Teaching Faulkner,” con- tails. There are also a limited number ducted by James Carothers, University of waivers of registration for graduate Sponsored by the of Kansas, Charles Peek, Emeritus, students. Contact Donald Kartiganer at Center for Faulkner University of Nebraska at Kearney, [email protected] for details. Terrell Tebbetts, Lyon College, and Further information on the program, Studies Theresa Towner, University of Texas registration, course credit, accommoda- Southeast Missouri at Dallas; a discussion of “Collecting tions, and travel can be found on the State University Faulkner” by Seth Berner; and an ex- conference Web site: www.outreach. hibition of Faulkner books, manu- olemiss.edu/events/faulkner. Cape Girardeau, scripts, photographs, and memorabilia Missouri at the John Davis Williams Library. Donald Kartiganer There will also be guided daylong tours October 28–30, 2010 This “Faulkner and Morrison” conference invites proposals for 20- The 15th Annual Southern Writers, Southern Writing Graduate Conference is minute papers on any topic related set for July 16–18, 2009, at the University of Mississippi. Both critical and cre- to William Faulkner and/or Toni ative pieces will be accepted, dealing with all aspects of Southern culture. Sub- Morrison. All critical approaches, missions to the conference are not limited to literary studies—we are inter- including theoretical and pedagog- ested in all interdisciplinary approaches to Southern culture. Scott Romine, ical, are welcomed. We are partic- University of North Carolina–Greensboro, will give the plenary lecture. ularly interested in intertextual ap- Students whose papers are accepted may register for the 36th annual Faulkner proaches and papers treating such and Yoknapatawpha Conference at a reduced rate of $100 registration fee. topics as race, gender, class, his- Contact [email protected] or visit www.outreach.olemiss.edu/ tory, humor, and technique. Pro- events/faulkner for more information. posals for organized panels are also encouraged. In addition to the paper sessions, the conference will include a key- note address by a noted scholar, a dramatic presentation based on the works of Faulkner and Morrison, exhibits from the University’s In Memoriam Faulkner and Morrison collec- Ellsworth Edwin “Ed” Dye tions, and a guided tour of historical downtown Cape Girardeau and Montgomery, Alabama the riverfront. September 4, 1936–March 18, 2009 Expanded versions of the papers will be considered for pos- sible publication in a collection John Hope Franklin of essays. Southeast Missouri State Durham, North Carolina University Press has expressed an January 2, 1915–March 25, 2009 interest in such a collection. E-mail a 250-word abstract by May 31, 2010, to [email protected]. Pup McCarty Inquiries should be directed to Merigold, Mississippi Robert Hamblin at rhamblin@ semo.edu or 573-651-2628, or November 8, 1926–February 8, 2009 Christopher Rieger at crieger@ semo.edu or 573-651-2620.

The Southern Register Spring 2009 Page 11 Eudora Welty Society Celebrates Author’s 100th Birthday Harriet Pollack The Eudora Welty Society marked the writer’s 100th birthday with a Centennial Conference and Celebration in Jackson, Mississippi, April 16–19, a meeting organized and directed by Harriet Pollack, Bucknell University. More than 70 Welty scholars from around the world gathered to hear and deliver papers and discuss Welty’s fiction. Peggy Prenshaw, Humanities Scholar in Residence at Millsaps College, opened the plenary with “The Writing Life.” Session topics included “From the Archives,” “Welty and Aesthetics,” “Welty and Race,” and “On The Optimist’s Daughter.” Many young scholars, new to the field, attended, and others traveled from as far as France, Israel, and Austria. The EWS celebration collaborated From left: Ruth Weston, University of Tulsa, François Pitavy and with the Southern Literary Festival, Daniéle Pitavy-Souques, Université de Bourgogne, France hosted by Millsaps College and directed by Austin From left: Mary Chapin Carpenter, Kate Campbell, Claire mer Mississippi Governor Wilson, professor of English. Holley, Welty biographer Suzanne Marrs, Caroline Herring William Winter, and Welty The SLF brought writ- biographer Suzanne Marrs. ers Richard Ford, Alfred In preconference events, Uhry, Elizabeth Spencer, the Eudora Welty House and Ann Patchett to speak welcomed visitors to her and read. It also offered a home and garden. Forrest “Remembering Eudora” panel Galey, director of the Welty that included Mary Alice Collection of the Mississippi White (Welty’s niece, now Department of Archives

director of the Eudora Welty Greg Campbell and History, offered sessions House), Patti Carr Black introducing scholars to (Welty’s Escapades, University the new archives. Evening Press of Mississippi), for- events included a Mississippi Museum of Art reception to highlight an exhibition recreating (left) Peggy Welty’s 1936 Lugene Gallery photog- Prenshaw, raphy show. The New Stage Theater Millsaps College, followed a performance of Welty’s The and Michael Ponder Heart with a “talk back” featur- Kreyling, ing the production cast. In a concert Vanderbilt University, at planned by Karen Redhead of the Welty the Mississippi House and Jeanne Luckett of the Welty Museum of Art’s Foundation, folksingers Mary Chapin Eudora Welty in Carpenter, Kate Campbell, Caroline New York photo- Herring, and Claire Holley performed graph exhibition songs inspired by Welty’s fiction at the Belhaven Center for the Performing Arts. A Mississippi Symphony Orchestra tribute program “Bravo V: Adoring Eudora” included Welty fa- Dawn Trouard, University of Central Florida Dawn Trouard,

Page 12 Spring 2009 The Southern Register Elizabeth Spencer Mississippi Reads Welty

Mississippi Reads is a statewide initiative to encourage schools, book clubs, and libraries as well as all readers to read and discuss a single work by a Mississippi author. Previous choices were William Faulkner’s Go Down, Moses in 2007 and Richard Wright’s Uncle Tom’s Children in 2008. The 2009 Mississippi Reads selection is The Collected Stories of Eudora Welty. The project is one of many activities celebrating the author’s 100th birthday. Géraldine Chourd, Université Paris 9 The Mississippi Library Commission vorites, the Schubert “Unfinished” has helped publicize the project by dis- Symphony and Beethoven’s “Emperor” tributing 800 posters and 30,000 book- Piano Concerto—but also two recent marks illustrated with a Welty portrait compositions inspired by her work: and the jackets of five editions of her MSO Music Director Crafton Beck’s Collected Stories published between The Whistle and Mississippi composer 1980 and 1998. Tracy Carr Seabold, Eudora Welty. Kay Bell. 1950s. The James Sclater’s Concerto for Orchestra, Reference Services Director and Collected Stories of Eudora Welty cov- subtitled “Images from Welty,” original- Center for the Book Coordinator for ers, from top: original edition, ly written for the writer’s 80th birthday. the Mississippi Library Commission, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1980; The three movements of the Concerto coordinated distribution of posters paperback edition, A Harvest Book for Orchestra are titled with phrases and bookmarks and is the contact for • Harcourt, Inc., 1982; paperback from her work. A gala luncheon at libraries participating in the project. edition, A Harvest Book • Harcourt, the Fairview Inn and a tour of Welty’s Librarians may reach her at tcarr@mlc. Inc., 1982; British edition, Penguin Books, 1983; The Library of America Jackson led by Suzanne Marrs ended ms.us or 601-432-4450. edition, 1998. the conference. Nearly 250 libraries and bookstores Daniéle Pitavy-Souques, Université throughout the state are making copies Copies of the Mississippi Reads poster de Bourgogne, who with her husband, of the book available to patrons, and are available to individuals for $10.00 Faulkner scholar François Pitavy, trav- many are sponsoring discussion groups, each plus $2.50 postage and handling. eled from France to attend, called the readings, talks, and other programs Mississippi residents add 7 percent sales conference “truly challenging and about Welty’s Collected Stories. Welty tax. Send all orders to the Center for brain-invigorating” and an “incredibly biographer Suzanne Marrs prepared the Study of Southern Culture with a joyous whirlwind of celebration.” Susan an overview of the author’s life and a check, made payable to the University of Mississippi, or with Visa or MasterCard Donaldson, College of William and readers guide for the Mississippi Reads account number and expiration dates. Mary, termed it “a testimony to Welty’s Web site. Details about Centennial Credit card orders also may be made by work and the way it has inspired all of activities are located at on the Eudora calling 800-390-3527. us.” Pollack—who joked that, when Welty Foundation Web site (www.eu- working on the conference, she was dorawelty.org/index.html). “first trying to get its parts to move together, and then trying not to get Mississippi Reads Contacts caught in its moving parts”—was grate- WEB SITE Mississippi ful that the powerful collaboration had www.mississippireads.org unfolded gracefully. “Events like these E-MAIL foster the sense of community that sus- [email protected] Reads tains our work together and apart.”

The Mississippi Reads project is partially funded under the federal Library Services and Technology Act administered through the Mississippi Library Commission for the Institution of Museum and Library Services. g

The Southern Register Spring 2009 Page 13 Local Oxford Gardening Updates: Spring 2009 Students Break Ground on 2009 Teaching Garden Christy Grice The Teaching Garden at the Oxford Boys and Girls Club is already gearing up for the 2009 growing season. Even though it has been a cool, wet spring, students began tending to the garden plots in late March, pulling winter weeds and pre- paring the soil in order to begin spring planting. The students were excited to find many beneficial worms and crickets that are already making their presence known in the garden beds. Another topic of great interest has been the wild garlic currently thriving throughout the garden and vying to take over the beds. The students all wanted to save each individual stalk and bulb, no matter how small, to take home to their parents. We’re beginning to see a theme where the students all want to impress their From left clockwise: Jylan Neilson, Cale Nicholson, Madison Heron, Timia Nunaley, parents with the work they’ve done by Ashton Stewart, and Timberland Nunaley smell some wild garlic found while weeding sharing the fruits of their labor with their the garden bed. families. This is an important aspect of the Teaching Garden because the vegetables the students bring home will education curriculum, leading nutrition garden space to be located behind the Old improve the eating habits of everyone workshops, and helping to improve the Armory Building on University Avenue. in their household. In terms of actual garden infrastructure. Anyone interested The garden will operate much like similar planting, early crops including red and in suggesting new programming ideas or projects in other cities across the country green lettuce, Brussels sprouts, collards, assisting with current outdoor classroom in that families and individuals will be and rainbow chard were put in around activities can contact me at cmnicho1@ able to pay a small fee to “rent” a specific Easter, and broccoli, cabbage, cauliflow- olemiss.edu. We are also currently in the garden row for a full year. These projects er, potatoes, and onions are all ready to middle of a very loose, open-ended fund- are particularly attractive to people and be planted in the coming weeks. raising campaign. Any and all assistance students who would like to grow their own One of the goals of the 2009 season is always greatly appreciated. vegetables but don’t have gardening space is to promote more community involve- at their apartments, dorms, or houses. ment in the Teaching Garden, and the Oxford Community Garden Community gardens are great opportuni- coming summer holds many opportuni- Association Established ties for community members to interact ties for direct participation. The garden with each other through a shared love of will be growing from mid-March until Beginning soon, Oxford residents will locally grown food and hard, but fulfill- late October and daily summer program- have a unique gardening opportunity. This ing work. Organizers plan to prepare the ming runs from late May through late spring a group of like-minded individu- garden infrastructure this summer so that July at the LOU Clubhouse, located on als established the Oxford Community beds will be ready for planting in spring Washington Avenue across the street Garden Association, and in a few short 2010. To learn more about the Oxford from Oxford Middle School. Several weeks the organization received approv- Community Garden, write to oxfordcga@ groups and individuals have already ex- al from the city to create Oxford’s first gmail.com or call Association president pressed interest in a wide range of vol- community garden plot. The initiative Susie Adams at 662-234-2744 ext. 267. unteer opportunities including assisting will work closely with the Oxford Parks with garden tasks and environmental Commission to establish a 65-by-155 foot Cale Nicholson

Page 14 Spring 2009 The Southern Register Wildflowers of the Coastal Plain: A Field Guide. By Ray Neyland. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2009. 352 pages, 535 color photographs, 65 line drawings, 1 map. $34.95 cloth.

As a kindergartener, I developed a real skill at gently tugging the sta- men from a honeysuckle flower and letting the pinhead droplet of nectar fall on my tongue. Nowadays my fingers are too big to do it. Or I tug too hard, breaking Lucy in the Garden with Flowers the flower in half. In Southern Studies class of 2026 student, Lucy Rose Lyon (six truth, I haven’t exactly months), and her mom, Center staffer Sally Cassady Lyon, enjoy tried to “eat” a honey- Easter morning in their garden in Oxford. Credit for the photograph suckle flower in many goes to Lucy’s daddy, Dalton Lyon, a doctoral candidate in history. years, but I have had a chance to sample a cold scoop of hon- Remembrances of Welty Birthdays Past eysuckle sorbet from Crook’s Corner in Carrboro, North Carolina. Thanks News about celebrating Eudora Welty’s 100th birthday this to Ray Neyland’s field guide toWildflowers of the Coastal year is a reminder of two past celebrations. Her birthday Plain, I now know that the Japanese honeysuckle from party in 1983 was held at Santa Rosa Beach on the Florida the playground fence is native to Asia and has a fancy Gulf Coast with a crowd of friends, including Charlotte Latin name: Lonicera japonica. Capers, who thought of a slogan that Patti Carr Black When I got older, and needed money for important painted on a banner to swing over the party table. It read, things like Skittles and Dr Pepper, I organized a plant sale “To Eudora, the grandest gull on the Gulf.” in our front yard on Second Street in Gulfport. I rifled The next year the celebration for the “grandest gull” took through my mother’s supply of Tupperware, punched holes place in Jackson, where the Southern Literary Festival was in the bottoms of a few canisters with a nail, and potted held in her honor and the Center for the Study of Southern half a dozen or so purple hairy spiderwort (an herb!) and Culture hosted a party arranged by Center Advisory lazy daisy (grazed by deer and cattle!), and sold them to Committee chair Pat Stevens and member Nancy Gilbert. the neighbors. How many white shirts did I ruin with all About 150 guests gathered at the home of Mrs. Warren that juicy spiderwort? I just couldn’t resist picking a fistful D. Reimers for a buffet supper and a chance to toast Miss for the jar on the kitchen table. They seemed to pop up, Welty on her 75th birthday. Among the guests were authors overnight, and just as amazingly, multiply by the dozen Reynolds Price, James Whitehead, Margaret Walker, Beverly before lunchtime. Lowry, and Elizabeth Spencer. Now I’m all grown up, and just last weekend I sat with Reporting on the party in Time magazine, Gregory Jaynes my six-month-old daughter, Lucy, in a clump of white described Mississippi’s gracious first lady of letters as wearing clover (Trifolium repens) in the front yard and searched a “corsage as big as a catcher’s mitt” and said that the party’s for the lucky four-leaf varieties. Though we didn’t find hosts “put the author in a prominent chair and people came any, we did tie long chains from the flowers. Lucy grabbed and knelt to share a word.” handfuls of clover and tried to eat them while I thought The guests joined Jane Reid-Petty in a toast and sang about how it would only be a few years until I could show “Happy Birthday” as Patti Carr Black came out holding a her how to get the nectar from honeysuckle. cake with three candles. “The amount and caliber of Eudora Maybe it sounds silly, but Mr. Neyland’s book, while Welty’s work are unparalleled,” said William Ferris, then di- an excellent guide full of vivid color photographs and de- rector of the Center. “She has been consistently producing scriptions and glossaries, took me back. Now I know a work for over 40 years. She has produced a major body of bit more about those old flowers from my childhood, but fiction and critical essays and is the nation’s leading lady of more important, I will be able to show them, and many letters. Her impressive work as a writer and a critic,” Ferris more, to Lucy with hope that she loves them as much as concluded, “is complemented by a personal warmth and I do. openness to readers and admirers, which is truly rare.” Bravo! Sally Cassady Lyon

The Southern Register Spring 2009 Page 15 Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters Announces Winners The Mississippi Institute of Arts Achievement Award winner, au- and Letters (MIAL) has announced thor Ellen Douglas. award winners for works shown or Jane Rule Burdine won in the published in 2008 in the categories photography category for her work of fiction, nonfiction, visual arts, published in Delta Deep Down, ed- poetry, photography, music com- ited by Wendy McDaris and with position (classical/concert), and an introduction by novelist Steve music composition (contempo- Yarbrough. Burdine was born in rary/popular). Judges from outside Greenwood and lives now in Taylor. the state chose the winning artists, “Between Stillness” by composer who must have significant ties to Steve Rouse was the winning work Mississippi and must have been in the classical/concert music com- nominated by an MIAL member. position category. Rouse was born The presentations will be made in Moss Point, has a degree in music at the annual awards ceremony composition from the University of and banquet on June 13, 2009, at Southern Mississippi, and currently the Lauren Rogers Art Museum in lives in Louisville, Kentucky. Laurel. This year marks the 30th In contemporary/popular music anniversary of MIAL. composition, the group 3 Doors Howard Bahr of Jackson won Down won for their CD 3 Doors in the fiction category with his Down. Founder Matt Roberts novel Pelican Road. Published by was born in Pascagoula. Other MacAdams/Cage, the novel is set members are Brad Arnold, Matt during the heyday of railroading Roberts, Todd Harrell, and Chris in this country and focuses on the men Jackson and now lives in Vicksburg. The Henderson. who ran the trains. Bahr was born in traveling exhibition of Porter’s work, Recipients in each category will be Meridian. Backyards & Beyond: Mississippians awarded a cash prize of $1,000 and a The nonfiction award goes to Douglas and Their Stories—The First Year af- Mississippi-made gift. Past winners A. Blackmon for Slavery by Another ter Katrina, has a companion book for include Walker Percy, Ellen Douglas, Name: The Re-enslavement of Black which poet Natasha Tretheway wrote Willie Morris, Tom Rankin, Natasha Americans from the Civil War to World the introduction. Trethewey, Richard Ford, Samuel Jones, War II, published by Doubleday and Greenville native Brooks Haxton and Clifton Taulbert. winner of the 2009 Pulitzer Prize for won in the poetry category with They Two previously announced Lifetime Nonfiction. Blackmon grew up in Leland Lift Their Wings to Cry published by Achievement Awards will be present- and is currently head of the Atlanta of- Alfred A. Knopf. Haxton teaches in the ed at the June ceremony to Marshall fice of theWall Street Journal. English and writing programs at Syracuse Bouldin III, cited by the New York In the visual arts category, the award University and Warren Wilson College. Times as “the South’s foremost por- goes to H. C. Porter, who was born in He is son of last year’s MIAL Lifetime trait painter,” and to writer Elizabeth

William Dunlap (b. 1944) Rembrandt and Titus: Father and Son, 2002 Mixed media A Lauren Rogers Museum of Art purchase, 2004

Page 16 Spring 2009 The Southern Register Lauren Rogers Museum of Art, front

Spencer, author of nine novels, three short story collections, and her memoir of growing up in Carrollton, Landscapes Dear Friend of the Center, of the Heart. By now I know you have heard about the landmark New Encyclopedia of Southern Ann Abadie of Oxford serves as pres- Culture, published by the University of North Carolina Press and sponsored by ident of MIAL. Jan Taylor of Jackson the Center for the Study of Southern Culture. The original Encyclopedia, pub- is treasurer, Margaret Anne Robbins of lished in 1989, was the first book to deal exclusively with an American regional Pontotoc is secretary, and Noel Polk of culture. Now, 20 years later, in the wake of profound changes in the South, the Starkville is past president. Center and the Press have come together to publish a thoroughly revised and Among the founders of MIAL were updated edition that reflects these changes and includes the newest scholarship William Winter, Cora Norman, Aubrey about the region. Lucas, Noel Polk, and Keith Dockery The New Encyclopedia of Southern Culture is being published in a series of 24 McLean. individual volumes, based on the thematic sections of the original. Charles Anyone may join MIAL. For more Reagan Wilson is the general editor of the series. To date, 13 volumes have information about joining and about been published, and volume 14 is scheduled for Fall 2009. attending the awards ceremony and Right now, you can order volumes 1–13 at the special discount price of $365. banquet, visit the Web site www. These are jacketed hardcover editions, whose combined retail value is over ms-arts-letters-org. $500. If you have been wanting to add these valuable books to your collection, the happy news is that they are available at a tremendous savings. Dorothy Shawhan If you already have a few of the volumes, as a friend of the Center you can re- ceive the same 30 percent discount off any of the published volumes you would Lauren Rogers like to purchase individually. With the discount, the price of each hardcover is $28—a saving of $12 on each book. Museum Exhibition Once you take advantage of this offer, the Press will send you an e-mail as for MIAL’s 30th soon as each new volume is published. You will be able to get the same discount price on volumes 14–24, expected to be published over the next three years, so Anniversary you will find it easy to complete your set of the series. As part of the 30th anniversary cel- For more information on the series, simply go to www.uncpress.unc. ebration of the Mississippi Institute of edu/browse/page/583. Arts and Letters, the Lauren Rogers You can purchase the full 13-volume set, or add individual volumes to your Museum of Art is organizing an ex- shopping cart. When you are ready to check out, type in promotion code hibition featuring MIAL Award win- 01NESCLB in the box at the upper right hand corner of the checkout screen to ners in Visual Art and Photography see your discounted totals. over the past 30 years. Drawn from To repeat the details of this offer, you get all 13 published volumes—from both public and private collections, volume 1, Religion, to volume 13, Gender, a $500+ value—for only $365. Or this exhibition will be on view June you can order individual volumes at a $28, $12 off the retail price. 13–August 2, 2009, at LRMA and will Thanks for considering this offer, and thanks for your support of the Center display the works of Mississippi’s major for the Study of Southern Culture. Feel free to contact us with any questions artists, including Marshall Bouldin III, or comments. William Dunlap, Sam Gilliam, Birney Imes, Mildred Wolfe, Maude Schuyler Sincerely, Clay, Eudora Welty, Wyatt Waters, and Charles Carraway. The list of past Ted Ownby award recipients is a strong reflection Center for the Study of Southern Culture of the talents of Mississippians and The University of Mississippi the artistic heritage of our state.

The Southern Register Spring 2009 Page 17 USPS Honors Richard Wright with Literary Arts Stamp

Richard Wright (1908–1960) is the third Mississippian and the 25th American author honored with a stamp in the United States Postal Service’s Literary Arts series. The dedication of a first-class 61-cent stamp took place on April 9, 2009, in the lobby of the Chicago Main Post Office, just across the street from the building where the author once worked as a letter sorter. Unveiling of a first-class 22-cent stamp honoring William Faulkner, another author who was a postal worker, took place in Oxford during the 1987 Faulkner and Yoknapatawpha Conference. The first-class 32-cent stamp commemorat- ing Tennessee Williams was unveiled in 1994 in Clarksdale, the author’s childhood home and the setting for many of his plays. Grandson of former slaves and the son of an illiterate sharecropper, Wright South Side of Chicago, a scene that ger, frustration, and indignation stem- was born on a plantation near Natchez recalls the setting of Native Son. When ming from his early life experiences be- and lived in Jackson, Memphis, and asked about the background for the ing poor and black in America; writings other places before moving to Chicago stamp and the place for its unveiling, that appealed to—and appalled—both in 1927. There he worked for the post officials at the U.S. Postal Service said whites and blacks; writings that even- office from 1928 to 1930, was later hired they chose the South Side of Chicago tually helped to direct a change in how by the Works Progress Administration’s because Wright lived and worked there America addressed and discussed race Federal Writers’ Project, and organized during a crucial, formative decade. Julia relations.” the South Side Writers’ Group, whose Keller, writing in the Chicago Tribune, Richard Wright’s daughter Julia was meetings helped to inspire a flowering explained it this way: “Mississippi made not able to attend the unveiling, but of African American literature. Wright him, but Chicago made him a writer. sent remarks that began with a con- moved to New York City in 1937 and It was Chicago—with its bright churn temporary reference: “When a young to Paris in 1947. He published 20 books of possibilities and its darker reali- Barack Obama came to Chicago in his of poetry, fiction, and nonfiction dur- ties—that transformed Richard Wright 20s to work as a community organizer, ing his lifetime and posthumously, but from a shy Southern kid into a popular he made imaginary chains between his is best known for his 1938 story col- and internationally acclaimed author. life and the faces he saw, borrowing lection Uncle Tom’s Children, his 1940 Chicago broke his heart, but it gave other people’s memories. ‘In this way’ novel Native Son, and his 1945 autobi- him his mission: to illuminate the de- he wrote in Dreams from My Father, ‘I ography Black Boy, books that vividly humanizing effects of racial prejudice in tried to take possession of the city, make portray the racism in American society. 20th-century America.” it my own. . . . The mailman I saw was The first book by an African American “This nation experienced a historical Richard Wright, delivering mail before to be a best seller and the first to be se- event in our most recent presidential his first book sold.’” lected by the Book-of-the-Month Club, election,” U.S. Postal Service Chicago “In 2009, with the election of the Native Son made a great impact. As lit- District/Postmaster Gloria Tyson ex- first African American president,” literary critic Irving Howe wrote, “The plained. “It was an event Richard erary scholar Maryemma Graham adds, day Native Son appeared, American Wright helped to bring about with his “Wright would surely be proud to be an culture was changed forever.” often controversial writings; writings of American. He continues to inspire be- The stamp artwork by Kadir Nelson a world view on humanity and politics cause of his belief in writing for the pur- features a portrait of Richard Wright that were far too forward-thinking for pose of fostering human understanding in front of snowy tenements on the his own generation; writings full of an- and effecting social change.”

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Toni Morrison. What Moves at ancestors to comment on the “racial the Margin: Selected Nonfiction. vertigo,” the justified skepticism and Edited by Carolyn C. Denard. optimism, of the black community Jackson: University Press of at the advent of the nation’s third Mississippi, 2008. 215 pages. century. To the ancestor, I would suggest, $30.00 cloth. we might add the stranger as another Carolyn Denard gets her title for this defining figure in Morrison’s writing, splendid collection of 29 essays, re- as discussed in “The Fisherwoman,” views, and addresses from a luminous her weirdly affecting introduction parable at the heart of Morrison’s to a collection of photographs by Nobel Prize lecture of 1993. The Robert Bergman. There she re- children of a village approach a wise counts the lasting impression left by woman with a question that may be a a woman she met only once, a visitor riddle, a trap, or an urgent plea: tell who comes to fish from a neighbor’s us whether the bird we hold in our seawall and never returns—a fig- hands is living or dead. The woman, ure whose very existence Morrison old and blind, is skeptical of the chil- comes to question. Reflecting on her dren’s motives and replies cautiously, response to this encounter—wistful, testily. Whereupon the children, sur- new motif, “the presence of an an- betrayed—Morrison comes “[t]o un- prisingly, upbraid her for the poverty cestor,” to the inventory of concep- derstand that I was longing for and of her response, insisting on the wis- tual tools for mapping the “distinc- missing some aspect of myself, and dom that is their due: “‘tell us what tive elements of African-American that there are no strangers. There are the world has been to you in the dark writing.” “[T]hese ancestors are not only versions of ourselves, many of places and in the light. . . . Tell us just parents, they are sort of timeless which we have not embraced, most what it is to be a woman so that we people whose relationships to the of which we wish to protect ourselves may know what it is to be a man. characters are benevolent, instruc- from,” for “it is the randomness of the What moves at the margin. What it tive, and protective.” The absence of encounter with our already known— is to have no home in this place. To such figures is “frightening,” “threat- although unacknowledged—selves be set adrift from the one you knew. ening,” “caus[ing] huge destruction that summon a ripple of alarm.” In What it is to live at the edge of towns and disarray in the work itself.” With the stranger as well as the ancestor, that cannot bear your company.’” For these words Morrison not only limns then, Morrison finds “access to me,” Denard, the wise woman is Morrison the significance of such characters an “entrance into my own interior herself, and the occasional writings from her own work as Pilate in Song life.” gathered here are what move at the of Solomon or Baby Suggs in Beloved; “The Site of Memory” explores margins of her celebrated fiction, she also reminds a national culture the role of the literary image as the what “informs, orders, and gives in- quick to fetishize youth, freedom, principal means of access to “the un- tellectual energy to her life commit- and newness that “[w]hen you kill written interior life of the people” ments and to her role as a writer.” the ancestor you kill yourself,” that in Morrison’s creative process: “the These essays, however, are far from “nice things don’t always happen to image comes first and tells me what marginal. They are central, vital, and the totally self-reliant if there is no the ‘memory’ is about,” as beauti- the publication of this book gives conscious historical connection.” A fully illustrated by an episode in the them a new visibility and coherence beautiful autobiographical tribute to composition of Beloved. Morrison’s as major elements of the Morrison two such ancestors, Morrison’s ma- brilliant reflections inPlaying in the oeuvre. They are brimming with in- ternal grandparents, can be found in Dark on the “Africanist presence” sights into African American history, the essay that opens What Moves at that underlies and organizes “classic” literature, and culture, the work of fel- the Margin, “A Slow Walk of Trees (as (that is, white) American literature low writers and artists, national poli- Grandmother Would Say), Hopeless find a complement here in “On the tics, and the vocation and business of (as Grandfather Would Say),” first Backs of Blacks,” which notes a simi- writing. “Rootedness: The Ancestor published in the bicentennial year of lar phenomenon, a marginal-yet-in- as Foundation” adds an important 1976. There Morrison channels her exorable “presence,” in the histories

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of American immigrant groups. The Capitol Hill feeding frenzy that was “If anything I do, in the way of “most enduring and efficient rite of the Summer of Monica Lewinsky: writing novels (or whatever I write) passage into American culture” for “This is Slaughter-gate. A sustained, isn’t about the village or the com- such groups, she writes, is “negative bloody, arrogant coup d’état. The munity or about you, then it is not appraisals of the native-born black Presidency is being stolen from us. about anything. I am not interested population. . . . It doesn’t matter And the people know it.” There is in indulging myself in some private, anymore what shade the newcomer’s the witty and provocative 1971 report closed exercise of my imagination skin is. A hostile posture toward from the trenches of second-wave that fulfills only the obligation of my resident blacks must be struck at the feminism, “What the Black Woman personal dreams—which is to say yes, Americanizing door before it will Thinks about Women’s Lib,” a wry the work must be political.” open”—a claim supported by sub- but unfazed account of the ironies at- “When you first start writing—and sequent works of historical scholar- tending the peculiar position of black I think it’s true for a lot of beginning ship such as Noel Ignatiev’s How women at the intersection (or was it writers—you’re scared to death that the Irish Became White and Karen in the crosshairs?) of the civil rights if you don’t get that sentence right Brodkin’s How Jews Became White and women’s movements: “In a way that minute it’s never going to show Folks. “Rediscovering Black History” black women have known something up again. And it isn’t. But it doesn’t recounts the making of The Black of the freedom white women are now matter—another one will, and it’ll Book, perhaps the most significant beginning to crave. But oddly, free- probably be better. And I don’t mind accomplishment of Morrison’s edi- dom is only sweet when it is won. writing badly for a couple of days torial career at Random House—a When it is forced, it is called respon- because I know I can fix it—and fix work that supplied germinal images, sibility. The black woman’s needs it again and again and again, and it episodes, and epiphanies for Beloved, shrank to the level of her responsibil- will be better. I don’t have the hys- Jazz, and Paradise. An anthology, ity; her man’s expanded in proportion teria that used to accompany some of picture-book, scrapbook, and histori- to the obstacles that prevented him those dazzling passages that I thought cal artifact in its own right—all in from assuming his. White women, on the world was just dying for me to one—The Black Book was an attempt the other hand, have had too little remember.” to document “life as lived—not as responsibility, white men too much. “The resources available to us imagined—by the people: the anony- It’s a wonder the sexes of either race for benign access to each other, for mous men and women who speak in even speak to each other.” vaulting the mere blue air that sepa- conventional histories only through And of course, there is the Nobel rates us, are few but powerful: lan- their leaders,” an effort “to hold on to Prize address, whose stubborn, hard- guage, image, and experience, which the useful past without blocking off won faith in the efficacy of language may involve both, one, or neither of the possibilities of the future. To cre- is grounded in a communal context the first two. Language (saying, lis- ate something that might last, that that may give it even greater reso- tening, reading) can encourage, even would bear witness to the quality and nance than Faulkner’s famous words mandate, surrender, the breach of variety of black life before it became on the “puny inexhaustible voice” distances among us, whether they are the topic of every Ph.D. disserta- of the midcentury liberal individual continental or on the same pillow. . tion.” Like the book itself, the essay talking back against the “ding-dong . . Provoking language or eclipsing succeeds memorably. of doom.” it, an image can determine not only I could go on. There are the incisive Denard deserves credit for orga- what we know and feel, but also what and sometimes deeply moving appre- nizing these writings in a straight- we believe is worth knowing and ciations of other writers: Gayl Jones, forward three-part scheme—with feeling.” Toni Cade Bambara, Henry Dumas, sections on “Family and History,” “We die. That may be the meaning James Baldwin, Albert Murray, and “Writers and Writing,” and “Politics of life. But we do language. That may especially the Guinean novelist and Society”—and for her lucid in- be the measure of our lives.” Camara Laye, whose 1954 novel The troduction to the volume. But the Magnificent. Radiance of the King is the subject of a real star is Morrison, who seems in- brilliant critical essay demonstrating capable of an uninteresting thought Jay Watson Morrison’s bona fides as a commenta- or a pedestrian sentence. The haz- tor on postcolonial literature. There ard that a book like this confronts is the New Yorker essay that hails Bill its reviewer with is the temptation Clinton as “our first black President” simply to let those sentences speak while proceeding to a lacerating de- for themselves. Like these words on construction of the media circus and writing and language: g

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the Memphis Commercial, which described the controversial Wells as a Ida: A Sword among Lions: “saddle-colored Sapphira,” a “notori- Ida B. Wells and the Campaign ous courtesan,” and “the wench.” In contrast, the Christian Recorder com- against Lynching. pared her to Joan of Arc. By Paula J. Giddings. New Like Wells’s journalism, Ida: A York: Amistad/ HarperCollins, Sword among Lions is thoroughly doc- 2008. 800 pages. $35.00 cloth, umented—dense with names, dates, $19.99 paper. and statistics. In relating the deaths of Wells’s parents in the 1878 yellow In 1990, when first-class postage cost fever epidemic, Giddings recreates a quarter, I knew one fact about the the situation in Holly Springs, an figure on the new Black Heritage elevated area known for its “healthy stamp: Ida B. Wells was involved in climate” and the reputed “healing the antilynching movement at the properties” of its springs. After in- end of the 19th century. The stamp fected refugees arrived from other inspired a visit to the campus library, towns, the mayor was the “first lo- where I was startled to learn that cal casualty,” and more than half of Wells was born a slave in 1862 in the 3,500 residents fled. Giddings Holly Springs, 25 miles north of the categorizes the deaths of adults and University of Mississippi. Ida B. Wells children by race and sex. Although should be a household name, at least school near Holly Springs to sup- African Americans were as likely as in every Mississippi house. Yet, few port her orphaned siblings; but, after whites to catch the disease, their sur- of my students can identify her, even she moved to Memphis for a better vival rate was much higher because now; and the audience was small at teaching position, she “found herself of their “greater immunity to tropic- Square Books last year when Smith in journalism” and became involved born diseases.” Giddings combed College professor Paula J. Giddings, in “every progressive movement of Holly Springs death notices before on a national book tour, gave a grip- her time.” concluding that the Wellses were ping account of her subject. In fact, the biography’s scope is apparently “the only black family to At 800 pages, Giddings’s life of much more comprehensive than the suffer multiple mortalities.” this great Mississippian provides a subtitle Ida B. Wells and the Campaign The narrative of Wells’s life un- hefty remedy to the prevailing lack against Lynching suggests. For decades, folds with great dramatic appeal, and of knowledge. Recently released Wells wrote news columns and pub- Giddings ends most chapters on an in paperback, Ida: A Sword among lished pamphlets against this horrible anticipatory note that propels the Lions won the American Library form of racial injustice, exposing the reader onward. This technique is Association’s Black Caucus Award barbaric treatment of victims from ideal for portraying Wells, a theater and was a 2008 National Book Critics several Southern states. The 1892 lover who “appalled” a suitor “when Circle finalist. The title echoes the lynchings of three Memphis men, she told him that she was studying Psalmist’s image of the tongue as including her good friend Thomas for a reading of Lady Macbeth—the a “sharp sword,” an apt metaphor Moss, were sickeningly close to murderous Scot who begged the gods for Wells’s skill on the speaker’s home. But Wells’s lifelong concerns to ‘unsex’ her sufficiently to do what platform and in her exchanges also included women’s suffrage, early she had to do.” Gender and sexuality with Frederick Douglass, Booker T. childhood education, unions, prison- are crucial considerations through- Washington, Jane Addams, W. E. ers’ rights, political corruption, and out Ida. Giddings describes Wells, a B. DuBois, Susan B. Anthony, and other hotly debated issues. She was major supporter of women’s organiza- other famous colleagues. At Square an investigative reporter before that tions, as a Victorian who courageous- Books, the biographer also pointed phrase became commonplace, and ly rejected any narrow “Victorian out the pen-as-sword symbolism in Giddings traces her career in absorb- way of thinking.” Wells’s straightfor- the tiny Victorian engraving of a ing detail, citing scores of archival ward remarks on interracial sexual woman’s hand directing a feather collections, from Holly Springs’ relationships offended blacks as well quill beneath the word Ida on the Rust College Library to the Library as whites; moreover, she was “one of dust jacket. Giddings explained that of Congress. Repeatedly, she quotes the few women reformers who ac- the teenaged Wells taught in a rural from period newspapers, including tually used the word rape, and had

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learned to do so without apology.” Jones sets out to explore the “larger Allegations of rape were often the African-American freedom struggle excuse for torturing, maiming, hang- that shaped the streets and house- ing, and burning African Americans, holds of Savannah and the rice and sometimes in public spectacles that cotton fields of lowcountry Georgia,” drew women and even children. skillfully situating this struggle with- Giddings says that Wells was “care- in the context of the complex social ful not to claim that no black man structure of Savannah. Jones’s expan- was guilty of rape”; she nevertheless sive and inclusive work provides a believed “that the South was using comprehensive analysis of Savannah the charge against black men to hide that is not limited to African its own deficiencies, particularly from American residents, free or enslaved. the eyes of the suspicious and inves- Her focus on the struggle for equality tor-laden North.” allows for a revealing analysis of the Her newspaper office destroyed power dynamics of a rapidly changing and her life threatened, Wells be- city. Her close reading of letters, dia- came a permanent exile to the North ries, and newspapers from the period in the violent aftermath of the is exhaustive, and the conclusions Memphis lynchings. In Chicago, she drawn from the materials are in- married Ferdinand Barnett, a law- sightful. Jones presents incisive com- yer, activist, and newspaper founder mentary on a wide range of subjects, who—like Wells—“was capable of including a fascinating discussion of militant indignation and believed the politics of performance and dis- in self defense by any means neces- Saving Savannah: The City and play of the frequent parades of the sary.” Motherhood (two sons and two the Civil War. city, analysis of the conflict between daughters) barely slowed the pace of white elites and laborers encamped Wells-Barnett’s work, and much of By Jacqueline Jones. New at Fort Pulaski in the opening days Giddings’s Ida explores campaigns York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2008. of the war, and ideas about the social from the second half of her life. “I 528 pages. $30.00 cloth. status of white overseers on remote honestly believe that I am the only rice plantations. woman in the United States who Jacqueline Jones’s 2008 Saving Jones examines a world that ever traveled throughout the country Savannah: The City and the Civil War “defie[s] urban-rural, black-white, with a nursing baby to make political is a seamless account of life in late enslaved-free distinction” and by do- speeches,” she wrote in her autobi- 19th-century Georgia, incorporat- ing so provides an incisive analysis ography, Crusade for Justice. In 1930 ing well-known events, snapshots of urban slavery in which movement she was the first African American of culture, analysis of politics and through space is constantly negoti- woman to run for a seat in Illinois’s economics, and richly evocative ated. For this reason, Jones’s atten- Third Senatorial District; Wells- descriptions of the landscape of the tion to the landscape is particularly Barnett lost but planned to “profit city and surrounding Lowcountry. compelling. The city of Savannah by lessons of the campaign,” her di- Saving Savannah is a confrontation of is most often thought of as a place ary reports. When she died of uremic a past most often remembered with of awe-inspiring beauty, but Saving poisoning the next year, the Chicago an acute sense of injury by the city’s Savannah redirects our gaze, creat- Defender emphasized her forceful residents, who share a collective ing images of a city that foreground place in “Chicago public life” for memory defined by the mythology of illness, slavery, and multiple wars in almost four decades. The minister the Lost Cause and stories of suffering what has throughout its history been who addressed an overflow crowd at during Sherman’s occupation. These a highly contested space. Within her funeral praised “her untiring but attitudes obscure the violent reality Jones’s frame, she brings into focus almost hopeless war against civic op- of slavery and its legacy of inequality. ordered squares surrounded by dust- pression”; and a soloist sang, “I’ve Jones presents a complicated view of filled streets, fetid swamps, and bus- Done My Work.” the city, drawing the reader through tling docks lining the riverfront. Her bustling streets where a desire for or- rendering of the landscape is visceral, Joan Wylie Hall der clashes with an uncontrollable and appropriate as the setting for an environment, ambitious citizens, and unstable and rapidly changing society. the trauma of war. Jones’s attention to elements such as

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the prevalence of wooden homes and a profitable underground economy Savannah follows the black struggle the humid and bacteria-laden marsh- that had the tacit or explicit sanction for self-determination as the lands of es provides fascinating points of de- of white city leaders. This economy in the barrier islands are at first claimed parture for larger discussions. What combination with loosely segregated by recently freed slaves as part of role do enslaved firefighters play in a housing, Jones contends, attested to Sherman’s Special Field Order No. city dominated by wooden structures elites largely unsuccessful efforts to 15. Black families staked claims and constantly threatened by fire? maintain a caste system. on land and began to reunite fami- How can elite young Confederate The book is divided into three lies long separated, actively engag- soldiers function while stationed on sections—antebellum, in bello, and ing in politics and building schools, sea islands, long conceived as unin- postbellum. Saving Savannah be- churches, and strengthening mutual habitable by whites during the sum- gins on the docks of the Savannah aid societies. When these lands again mer months? River in 1851, as the enslaved mason come under the control of planters, A central question for Jones is what Thomas Simms stows away on a ship freedmen and women were faced threatens the city—from what does bound for New York. Jones frames with the prospect of tenancy, tight- it need to be saved? For the African her work through the personalities ening segregation, and the continual American community, the demise of of Savannahians such as Simms, who threat of violence. slavery signaled the redemption of move through a richly described city This book by Jones, winner of the the city, the saving of their right to where one is made to feel the heavi- Bancroft Prize for American History self-assertion and protection of their ness of oppressive humidity and the for Labor of Love, Labor of Sorrow, families. For white leaders of the city, rhythm of streets entwined around appeals both to a general audience however, emancipation troubled the Oglethorpe’s famed squares. By tell- and a more scholarly one. Her cast of already shaky hierarchy dividing ing the story of Simms, who is ulti- characters, such as Simms, the nurse white and black, free and enslaved, mately seized in Boston and returned and schoolteacher Susie Baker King, and rich and poor. To save Savannah to Savannah under the Fugitive and lawyer Charles C. Jones Jr. privi- from the scourge of “freedom and Slave Act, Jones is able to connect leges individual experience in a way equality” white elites acted “cre- Savannah to events of national that illuminates the lives of many atively and violently” to maintain importance. and their place within the complex white supremacy. As saviors, elites Jones also follows the life of social structure of the city. Though were forced to appeal to whites of the Charles C. Jones Jr., an attorney and her work is highly localized, Jones laboring class in a way that further son of a minister and slaveowner. employs contemporary Savannah disrupted the social hierarchy. This Charles Jones served as mayor in the newspapers and personal correspon- “larger project of white supremacy” prewar years and as an officer in the dence to great effect as a screen had important implications for poli- Confederate army. In the Jones family, through which to understand na- tics in the city, evident in Jones’s one sees the evolution from paternal- tional and international events such analysis of the evolution of the local istic slaveholding to the tensions un- as the insurrection at Harper’s Ferry, and national Democratic parties. derlying tenancy and sharecropping the election of Abraham Lincoln, The complex economy of in the 1870s. Readers first encounter and the anniversary of Liberian in- Savannah, formed at the juncture of Susie Baker King as she walks to a dependence. Jones is successful in slavery and free enterprise, was one clandestine school for black children providing a clear and approachable of the greatest challenges to ordered run by free woman Mary Woodhouse view into the complex political and hierarchy. Jones provides a valuable in downtown Savannah, and fol- social atmosphere of Savannah while examination of urban slavery in a low her progression as a 14-year-old also placing scholars in conversation city where some slaves were able to teacher in the independent black with each other. The work of Maurie hire themselves and participate in an settlement on St. Simon’s Island McInnis on the politics of taste and economy in which the “commercial in 1862. King worked as a teacher, urban slavery, Peter Kolchin’s analy- spirit” blurred racial distinctions and laundress, and domestic servant and sis of specific labor systems intrinsic those between the free and enslaved. later moved to Boston. By following to rice culture, Michael Gomez on Jones presents a particularly fascinat- persons such as Simms, Jones, and the resilience of Islam in some coast- ing analysis of the role of enslaved King, Jones creates a narrative thread al slave communities, and Richard fire companies, which were essential that brings to life the history of the Slotkin’s work on the regeneration of to protect the wooden city from the Georgia Lowcountry and illuminates violence resonate through the work constant threat of fire. In addition to the challenges faced by each before, without being off-putting to a more legitimate trade as skilled laborers, during, and after the war. casual reader. slaves and free blacks participated in The postwar section of Saving Jones, at the conclusion of Saving

The Southern Register Spring 2009 Page 23 Reading the South continued

Savannah, turns to the present-day Confederate veterans offers a sense of landscape of the city, searching for this aesthetic: “Most of the men were the imprint of slavery and emanci- animated, wore their old uniforms pation on streets more often wan- or some version of those gray mark- dered in search of beautiful homes ings, but he wondered about the ones and eccentric residents made known who’d stayed at home, who wanted through John Berendt’s Midnight nothing of the remembering, who’d in the Garden of Good and Evil. The gotten in the mail a two-cent post- tourism industry has in many ways card announcing the veterans’ excur- created a city that is all surface, and sion and thrown it in the stove and Jones notes that the city’s poverty then maybe looked out the window, and persistent crime are confronted gladdened by the fact that people by preservationists and business lead- weren’t shooting each other down ers as a problem of “aesthetics.” Such in the street.” Gautreaux frequently an attitude indicates a resistance to proves himself a master of what his- the exploration of deeper causes of torians call “interpreting silences.” historic inequality. The city is the New Orleans and the jazz-infused victim of an exclusive and selec- Mississippi riverboat culture of the tive history that willfully obscures 1920s provide the backdrop for The the lives of many persons who have Missing, and the deft touch with walked on the famed squares. Saving tic malcontents abduct the precocious which Gautreaux renders his histori- Savannah is an antidote to these se- daughter of two excursion boat musical portrait reveals a world of steam lective views and should serve as a cians in a New Orleans department locomotion, muddy river water, and guide for educational institutions in store. Because the child has been lost passengers eager for a few hours’ es- the city as they seek to understand under his watch, its central character, cape on the dance floor. Yet the boat the lives of all Savannahians. World War I veteran and store floor- and its crew supply only half of the walker Sam Simoneaux, makes it his narrative’s tension. Every drop of the Becca Walton-Evans personal quest to recover the little girl. gangplank sets in motion a confron- He takes a job aboard the Ambassador, tation between the rustic and ur- the aging showboat aboard which the bane, rich and poor, good and evil. missing child’s parents perform, and Unlike the protagonist’s piano play- The Missing. it is here where much of the novel’s ing, Gautreaux’s prose never strikes By Tim Gautreaux. New York: storyline unfolds. As the vessel plies a false note, carefully avoiding the the water between New Orleans and clichéd references that readers of Alfred A. Knopf, 2009. 378 Cairo, Simoneaux not only pieces to- Louisiana and jazz culture must so pages. $24.95 cloth. gether clues that lead him to the miss- often endure. To wit, his portrayal ing girl, but also to the men responsi- of the showboat era’s twilight is so In The Missing, author Tim Gautreaux ble for the wholesale murder that had convincing because he never over- returns to the fictional landscape of left him orphaned as an infant. sells his enormous knowledge of the early 20th-century Louisiana that It does not take long to discover, subject matter. Instead, Gautreaux he so successfully portrayed in his however, that the girl’s disappear- seamlessly transports the reader into critically acclaimed 2003 novel, The ance and the Simoneaux family a different time, to a world with Clearing. As he did in that earlier killings are primarily a vehicle for deadly disease epidemics, without air work, Gautreaux delivers a compel- discovering what is “missing” in the conditioning, and where simple folk ling piece of literature dealing with lives of the novel’s central charac- collide with the inevitable advance people struggling against the land, ters. Underneath its suspenseful nar- of modernity. each other, and the irreversible ad- rative, The Missing probes the moral Works that engage themes of famil- vance of time. and philosophical underpinnings of ial duty and love, guilt, human frailty, The Missing’s jacket blurb suggests human loss, mutability, and emo- cowardice, and vengeance are seldom that the book is a kind of detective tional separation. Questions of the as witty, literate, and, above all, enter- story set aboard a Mississippi riv- unknown and unknowable perme- taining as Gautreaux’s new novel. The erboat. To a superficial degree, this ate the novel’s smallest details. The Missing manages to ask vital questions promotional copy is true. The plot author’s description of Simoneaux’s of Southern culture, particularly with begins unfolding when a band of rus- thoughts on a daytime cruise full of regard to class tension, but consistent-

Page 24 Spring 2009 The Southern Register Reading the South continued University Press of MississiPPi ly does so in a way that neither patronizes nor panders. Celebrating 100 Years of Eudora Welty Perhaps, then, Gautreaux’s greatest triumph has been to deliver profound moral commentary without beating any- Eudora Welty as one over the head in the process. Readers will likely find Photographer themselves on the last page recalling the author’s imagery PhotograPhs by Eudora WElty of a bygone era and culture and contemplating his novel’s EditEd by PEarl amElia mchanEy deeper message. With contributions by sandra s. PhilliPs and dEborah Willis A centennial consideration of the great Justin Nystrom author’s vision as expressed in her renowned photography $35 hardback A New Day in the Delta: Inventing School Desegregation As You Go. Occasions Selected WritingS By David W. Beckwith. Tuscaloosa: University of by Eudora WElty Alabama Press, 2009. 384 pages. Cloth $29.95. EditEd by PEarl amElia mchanEy The trouble with David Beckwith’s fascinating memoir A treasury of hard-to-find stories, essays, tributes, and humor from a southern about his year (1969–1970) spent teaching in Leland, literary master Mississippi, as one of the first white teachers in a black $35 hardback high school is the ending—regrettably after an apparently successful transition to teaching, Beckwith left it behind and support for public schools in the Delta eroded precipi- Highway 51 tously as the region embarked upon school desegregation. MiSSiSSippi Hill country While scholarly readers may view Beckwith’s work with PhotograPhs by gloria norris uncertainty because it comes from his diary turned manu- introduction by rick bass Fascinating images that illuminate the script nearly 40 years later, he offers, at the very least, an storied but overlooked route from Memphis, instructive tale of one white man’s awakening to the lib- Tennessee, to Jackson, Mississippi eral conscience via teaching across a racial divide in an $40 hardback ostensibly transformative time. Arguably, Beckwith offers more—including a window into the contemporary as a prologue to challenges facing educators today. Making a Way From the perspective of an educational historian, out of No Way Beckwith’s account provides an invaluable daily re- AfricAn AMericAn WoMen And tHe cord of school happenings in a black high school as Second greAt MigrAtion Mississippi school districts embarked upon desegregation by lisa krissoff boEhm first by mixing teachers, a final act of desperation to stall Shared memories from the hard-working progress in a longstanding history of massive resistance southern women who relocated to to racial equality in education. Beckwith, who earned northern cities and birthed the black bachelor’s degree in business administration and had middle class neither teacher certification nor experience, became an $50 hardback unwitting participant in this diversion. When desperate Global Faulkner for postgraduation employment and motivated to save EditEd by annEttE trEfzEr money for graduate study, he signed on to teach English and ann J. abadiE or history in a Leland public high school. Unbeknownst A probing of the many ways in to him, he was soon assigned to teach history at Lincoln which Faulkner interacted with Attendance Center (the historically black high school). the world’s economies The essence of Beckwith’s story involves the day-to- $55 hardback day of his experience and newfound collegiality with African American teachers and students in close prox- imity. As the distant and strange become familiar to each, both black and white, barriers melt away. A bit- Professors: To request examination or desk copies of our titles, please visit tersweet story emerges, one sated with the semishock- http://www.upress.state.ms.us/about/ordering/educator ing tribulations of classroom management, student discipline, and school politics inherent to novice teaching in www.upress.state.ms.us 800-737-7788

The Southern Register Spring 2009 Page 25 Southern RegisterSpring09.indd 1 5/4/09 3:35 PM Reading the South continued Southern Foodways Register a high poverty area. Aside from oral ress, paternalistic leadership models histories, Beckwith’s enhanced jour- diminished the participation and nalistic account fills an important voice of many school teachers and gap in the materials made available especially black teachers and black to educational researchers who often schools in policy implementation find so little about what was actually on the local level. Most certainly, happening in schools from school Beckwith’s account demonstrates board records and official documents. that he and his colleagues did have Some aspects, such as corporal pun- questions and strategies to offer up, ishment or that we called schools but in the heat of the day-to-day “attendance centers” may shock con- they lacked any sort of mechanism temporary sensibilities but, suffice it for broad-based planning, consulta- say, Beckwith’s is a good but sobering tion, or insider role in school or dis- read. trict governance at the time. Thus, A New Day in the Delta appears Beckwith’s story shows how teachers upon the heels of a growing body of in public schools became left behind, literature about the negative effects as work spaces inadequate for attract- of school desegregation policy and ing and retaining young teachers its implementation. One genre of who might otherwise want to have a this literature explores teachers’ ex- say in how to establish and maintain periences of transition after Brown good schools took shape. v. Board of Education and during de- Charles Boger and Gary Orfield, for Given the recurrent nature of in- segregation. Advanced by Vanessa example. This work shows how segre- equality and segregation despite our Siddle Walker and Adam Fairclough, gated housing patterns, standardized nation’s presumptive “best” efforts, among others, this work seeks to testing, and a “color-blind” judiciary scholars are asking whether or not measure the real “costs” of Brown to along with other forces has accelerat- the South should “turn back” from the black community. Thinking in ed resegregation of American schools desegregation. Even if he does not terms of the community leadership in many places across the country, a offer a regional remedy, Beckwith’s A that black teachers and school prin- pattern signaling the abysmal failure New Day in the Delta does give pause cipals brought to their communities of federal efforts to promote equal- to consider his capability for turning through black schools, some of this ity. Given the gravity of the host of back time to provide us with such an work, but not all, expresses a tone consequences that arise from public expressive take on local history. To of lament for the past. Albeit with policy, including those that are in- the extent that his “new” day strikes a slightly different twist as Beckwith tended, unintended, and dysfunc- a familiar semblance with the often is white, his book shares a bit of this tional, Beckwith’s subtitle, Inventing overwhelming challenges faced by tone when through his overpowering School Desegregation As You Go, high- novice teachers related to classroom examples from his interactions with lights the vacuum of planning and management, student discipline, and black students he questions the abil- leadership that often marks federal facilitation of meaningful student ity of white teachers and desegrega- educational initiatives that play out learning experiences, we can learn tion to meet the cultural needs of quite dubiously on local levels—in important lessons about the nature black students. this case, school desegregation. of schools and teachers’ work. He Tapping into another genre, That school desegregation in the sounded to me like a pretty good Beckwith’s account demonstrates Delta occurred ostensibly “on the fly” teacher . . . if only we could have the fallibility of educational policy from Beckwith’s perspective comes kept him around. and policy-making, in the spirit of as little surprise. In addition to an scholarly studies advanced by John entrenched resistance to racial prog- Amy Wells

October 29–November 1, 2009 March 4–6, 2010 Mark Your Southern Foodways Alliance Symposium Oxford Conference for the Book www.southernfoodways.com www.oxfordconferenceforthebook.com

Calendars February 28–March 4, 2010 July 18–22, 2010 Mississippi Delta Literary Tour Faulkner and Yoknapatawpha Conference d www.oxfordconferenceforthebook.com www.outreach.olemiss.edu/events/faulkner/

Page 26 Spring 2009 The Southern Register Southern Foodways Register Southern Foodways Register The Newsletter of the Southern Foodways Alliance “I smell your bread burnin/ turn your damper down. If you ain’t got a damper/ turn your bread around.” Upcoming SFA Events —“Mule Skinner Blues” by Jimmie Rodgers The SFA calendar is full and running over with food-focused events. This summer, we’ll travel the South (and be- Mississippi Shows Well at the yond) as we document, study, and celebrate local flavor. Won’t you join us? 2009 James Beard Awards Begin your summer with the SFA and the State of Mississippi on June Winners were announced on Monday, May 4, for the 2009 James Beard Foundation 12 at the Astor Center New York for Awards, the nation’s most prestigious recognition program honoring professionals a discussion and celebration of the in the food and beverage industries. During a ceremony hosted by Cat Cora, Emeril life and work of Craig Claiborne, the Lagasse, and Stanley Tucci at Lincoln Center’s Avery Fisher Hall, John Currence of Sunflower, Mississippi, native who, Oxford, Mississippi, owner of City Grocery, Bouré, Big Bad Breakfast, and Snackbar, over the course of a 25-plus-year ca- was named Best Chef: South. Martha Hall Foose of Pluto and Greenwood, Mississippi, reer at the New York Times, catalyzed took home the award for the Best Cookbook about American Cooking for her book and catalogued an American culinary Screen Doors and Sweet Tea: Recipes and Tales from a Southern Cook. renaissance. John T. Edge, director of the Southern Foodways Alliance, contributing editor for Gourmet, and monthly columnist for the New York Times, was inducted into the Wake up Saturday morning, June 13, James Beard Foundation’s Who’s Who of Food and Beverage in America. Though in New York and follow your nose members represent a diverse cross section of the food and beverage industry—from to Madison Square Park for the Big chefs to journalists to farmers to business executives to scholars—each has been Apple Barbecue Block Party. Look identified by his or her peers as having displayed remarkable talent and achieve- for the debut of SFA filmmaker ment. Every member of the Who’s Who has contributed in some substantial way to Joe York’s North Carolina BBQ America’s constantly evolving culinary scene. film. Listen as SFA members Lolis Eric Elie, Calvin Trillin, and Fred Melissa Booth Hall Thompson hold forth on all things barbecue. And, of course, eat a little Yvonne Boyd (or a lot) of the BBQ offered by one of the 14 pit masters who will line the streets around the park. Travel to the Appalachian South June 26–28 for The Mountain Empire: Fast Cars in Bristol and Cornbread at the Carter Fold, the annual SFA summer Field Trip. Explore the foodways and musicways of northeastern Tennessee and southwestern Virginia as we travel to the birthplace of country music. Say goodbye to summer in Athens, Georgia, for Potlikker: Athens, August 22, 2009. The Potlikker Film Festival is an opportunity to showcase SFA documentaries, alongside local John T. Edge food films. Expect an evening with live music and short films, refreshing libations, and SFA snacks (includ- SFA Contributor ing a potlikker shot with cornbread, Melissa Booth Hall is the celebration arm of the SFA. A job she loves! handed as you walk in the door).

Food and Music at the Carter Family Fold Text and Photo by Amy C. Evans

In 1927, A. P. Carter, his wife, Sara, and Sara’s cousin Maybelle, who happened to be married to A. P.’s brother, made the 30-mile trek from their home in Hiltons, Virginia, to Bristol, Tennessee, to record a few songs. The resulting Bristol Sessions not only marked the commercial debut of the Carter Family, they catapulted country music into the American canon. Almost 50 years after those first recordings, Janette Carter, daughter of A. P. and Sara, established the Carter Family Fold. It was A. P.’s dying wish that the Carter Family’s legacy be carried on, so Janette opened the small concert hall to celebrate her family and its contribution to country music, as well as the rich mu- A sign for soup beans and cornbread is displayed at the concession window of the Carter Family Fold. sical traditions of Appalachia. Janette played host to music fans every Saturday night for more than 30 years, open- to the Fold. When her mother passed Fold, cooking the food that will be served ing shows with her brother Joe and son away in 2006, Rita took the helm and that night. The traditional Appalachian Dale and singing the songs like “Keep never looked back. Still, not much has staples of soup beans and cornbread are on the Sunny Side” and “Wildwood changed. Rita sits in with the band each still at the top of the menu, but so is egg Flower” that her parents made famous. Saturday night to welcome the crowd and salad that’s made from Janette’s recipe Meanwhile, Janette’s homemade soup pay tribute to her family through song. and a menagerie of cakes that are baked beans and cornbread were flying out the But before the music even starts, Rita, by women in the community. A night at concession stand window. That’s be- other members of her family, and a smat- the Carter Family Fold is like a reunion— cause the Carter Family Fold is not just tering of friends work in the kitchen at the a reunion of music, family, and food. about music. It’s about family. And when you’re entertaining family, you want to SFA oral historian Amy C. Evans conducted interviews at the Carter Family Fold, keep them fed. which will be featured online and as part of the SFA’s 9th annual field trip, The Today, Janette’s daughter Rita Forrester Mountain Empire: Fast Cars in Bristol & Cornbread at the Carter Fold. Visit welcomes friends, family, and music fans www.southernfoodways.com for more.

Southern Foodways Alliance

name

company

address

city state zip

telephone fax

e-mail MEMBERSHIP J $50 student J $75 individual J $100 family Please make checks payable to the Southern Foodways Alliance J $200 nonprofit institution J $500 corporation and mail them to the Center for the Study of Southern Culture University, MS 38677.

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION, VISIT US AT OUR WEB SITE: www.southernfoodways.org or call Julie Pickett at 662.915.5993 or via e-mail at [email protected] continued from 2 Director’s Column Field School for Cultural Documentation served in the house bands for Oxford institutions ranging from the Gin to Thacker Mountain Radio, performed at May 2009 Intersession (May 11–May 22) birthday events for luminaries from Charles Wilson to A field school for cultural documentation will be held at the Eudora Welty, written hundreds of songs, recorded albums University of Mississippi, from May 11 through May 22. It and CDs, created videos, lived on the road, stayed up too will provide up to 15 Ole Miss students with training in pro- late, and made their parents worry about them. They fessional techniques used to document aspects of living tradi- have been lead singers and backup singers and deejays, tional culture, as well as to organize and preserve the docu- sung in and recorded gospel choirs, and played everything mentary materials they create. The specific focus of the field from the guitar, mandolin, and banjo to trumpet, violin, school’s research will be various forms of religious music found keyboards, and magic ukulele. They have written the in north Mississippi. leading guide for blues tourists, edited the Music volume The field school is cosponsored by the University’s Center of The New Encyclopedia of Southern Culture, documented for the Study of Southern Culture, the American Music the life of folklorist John Work, made films about mu- Archive at the Ford Center, and the Library of Congress’s sicians, run blues museums, booked acts for blues clubs, American Folklife Center in Washington, D.C. It is based on edited and copyedited Living Blues, written for music a model developed by the Folklife Center, which has previ- publications from Oxford to Atlanta to New Orleans, ously sponsored numerous field schools in partnership with worked at radio stations and jazz festivals, documented colleges and universities around the country. This will be the shape-note singing schools, and taught and interpreted third field school at Ole Miss. The first took place in 2007. music in the schools. They have played music, much of it During the first week of training, participants will learn about with Southern roots, all over the world. Maybe someday a variety of subjects through lectures, discussions, demonstra- they’ll all come back to Oxford and put on a show. tions, and hands-on workshops. The subjects will include re- One can speculate about what brings so many people search ethics, project planning, interviewing techniques, writ- with music interests to Southern Studies. Perhaps it is the ing field notes and tape logs, operating recording equipment, music of the South and especially Mississippi, and we can and organizing sound recordings and other documentary materi- hope the Blues Archive and Living Blues, and the encour- als created in the field. During the second half of the course, the agement from faculty members and the examples of other participants will be organized into teams and then proceed with students, are in part responsible. Beyond that, studying supervised field research using the techniques learned during music from a cultural perspective raises questions of the the first half. The student researchers will interview residents relationships between authenticity and innovation, mu- of north Mississippi who can provide insight into the region’s sicians and their audience, poetry and melody, sacred and religious music as it exists now and as it existed in the past. secular, performance and setting, youth and age, and men It is likely that they will try to seek out such people as choir and women, and all of those dichotomies offer promis- directors, choir members, organists and other instrumentalists, ing beginnings for study. Music can both challenge social composers, radio deejays and album producers who specialize in boundaries and establish new ones, so it is ideal for con- religious music, as well as members of the clergy. sidering issues of cultural politics. And my guess is that a At the conclusion of the field school, the recorded inter- lot of people study music for the same reason that they views, field notes, and other documentary material created play it—because they love it so much that they couldn’t by the participants will become part of the American Music stop even if they wanted. Archive, housed at the University Library’s Department of I am happy to report that despite the current economic Archives and Special Collections, where they will comple- problems, Southern Studies graduates are being accepted ment other collections concerning Mississippi’s traditional into impressive graduate programs in history, English, and musical heritage. American Studies and are heading into divinity schools, The principal faculty members during the field school will film schools, architecture schools, and law schools. They be Guha Shankar, Michael Taft, and David A. Taylor of the are entering teaching programs, writing books (and, of American Folklife Center, along with David Wharton of the course, songs) and finding positions doing something Center for the Study of Southern Culture. close to what they want. Created in 1976 by the U.S. Congress to “preserve and present American folklife,” the American Folklife Center Ted Ownby conducts programs of research, documentation, archival pres- ervation, reference service, live performance, lectures, exhibitions, publications, and training. The Center’s archive, which was established at the Library of Congress in 1928, is now one of the largest collections of ethnographic material from the United States and around the world.

g For more information about the field school for cultural documentation, contact David Wharton at dwharton@olemiss.edu.

The Southern Register Spring 2009 Page 29 Mississippi Delta Literary Tour Portfolio

Scott Barretta led the group on a short walking tour of downtown Greenwood, stopping at a marker dedicated to the WGRM Radio studio, erected by the Mississippi Blues Commission. WGRM was one of the first radio stations in the South that aired live performances of African American gospel. Inverness native B. B. King was among those who first performed live gospel music on the station. Jimmy Thomas Jimmy Thomas

Jimmy Thomas The exterior of Club Ebony juke joint, now owned by The tour group lines up for a lunch of fried chicken, collard B. B. King, in Indianola. The club has been in business since greens, cornbread, and iced tea inside Club Ebony. 1945 and has hosted performances by artists such as Count Basie, Ray Charles, and James Brown. Jimmy Thomas

From left: Ann Abadie introduces a panel on the life and legacy of Hodding Carter Jr. onstage at the E. E. Bass Cultural Arts Center in Greenville. Curtis Wilkie moderated Jimmy Thomas Mary Dayle McCormick, of McCormick Book Inn, who gave a the panel, and Margaret Joseph, the granddaughter of Carter, literary tour of the Greenville, is shown standing by the historic read a prepared speech by her father, Hodding Carter III. marker outside the William Alexander Percy Memorial Library, Mississippi journalists Julia Reed and Jere Nash were also just a few blocks from the Mississippi River. panelists.

Page 30 Spring 2009 The Southern Register Jimmy Thomas 2009 Mississippi Delta Literary Tour The Mississippi Delta Literary Tour, held March 22–26, 2009, was based at the Alluvian Hotel in downtown Greenwood and traveled across the Delta countryside exploring the region’s rich literary, culinary, and musical heritage. In Indianola, on Monday, the group visited the new B. B. King Museum; ate soul food and heard down-home Delta music in Club Ebony; and went to the local library for Marion Barnwell’s talk about the town’s famous son, New York Times food editor Craig Claiborne, and to hear Steve Yarbrough read one of his stories. The day ended with a visit to Carrollton, where dinner was served at Carroll County Market

on the town square. Panny Mayfield En route to Clarksdale, on Tuesday, the group stopped at Robert Johnson’s gravesite, Writer Steve Yarbrough reads from a saw the site in Money where selection of his work in his hometown Emmett Till allegedly made library, the Henry M. Seymour Library, his tragic whistle, and vis- in Indianola. ited with local quilters and gospel singers at the Tutwiler

Jimmy Thomas Community Education Center. Literary scholar W. Kenneth Holditch spoke about Clarksdale’s influence on Tennessee Williams’s work, and actors Johnny Oxford actors Alice Walker and Johnny McPhail McPhail and Alice Walker portray legendary characters Maggie the Cat and Big presented scenes from Cat Daddy from the Tennessee Williams play Cat on a Hot on a Hot Tin Roof at Panny Tin Roof. Mayfield’s home, where the group enjoyed a delicious dinner prepared by Robert Rhymes and his students from Coahoma Community College. Afterwards, the tour stopped by Po’ Monkey’s juke joint outside Merigold. In Greenville, on Wednesday, Holditch talked about Greenville writers, panelists discussed the life and legacy of Hodding Carter Jr., Charlotte Hays and Steve Yarbrough read selections from their work at the Greenville Arts Center’s Bass Auditorium, and the group visited McCormick Book Inn before going to Doe’s Eat Place for a closing dinner. Panny Mayfield Members of St. George’s Episcopal Church (from left) Grace Clark, Stella Salmon, Marguerite Bouldin, and Louise McGee discuss the church The women of the Tutwiler Community history and the personality of the Reverend Education Center in Tallahatchie County sang traditional spiritual and gospel songs Walter Dakin, grandfather of Tennessee Williams. and displayed their quilts when the tour group visited Tutwiler, Mississippi. g

The Southern Register Spring 2009 Page 31 The 16th Oxford Conference for the Book

The 16th Oxford Conference for the American Poetry Celebration with (from left) James Kimbrell, Book on March 26–28 celebrated the Camille T. Dundy, and Ann Fisher-Wirth life and legacy of Mississippi Gulf Coast artist, author, and naturalist Walter Inglis Anderson (1903–1965). The conference began with the exhibition Walter Anderson and World Literature and focused on the extraordinary role of books in his life and work. The program included reminiscences by the artist’s son John Anderson and daughters Mary Anderson Pickard and Leif Anderson; Doug McLain addresses by art historian Patricia Pinson and biographer Christopher Maurer; of Eudora Welty’s birth, and Pearl Patti Carr Black and comments by author Patti Carr McHaney reported on programs, pub- Black, artist William Dunlap, editor lications, exhibitions, and other activi- JoAnne Prichard Morris, and publisher ties celebrating the Welty centennial. Seetha Srinivasan. The Department of Journalist Curtis Wilkie moderated a Theatre Arts offered three performanc- panel in which he and his colleagues es of The Passions of Walter Anderson, Julia Reed, David Maraniss, and drawing on the artist’s letters, travel Thomas Oliphant talked about cover- logs, and stories to celebrate his art and ing presidential and other political rac- the profound inspiration his work pro- es. Educator Elaine H. Scott discussed vides artists. readers as an endangered species with Literary scholar Peggy Whitman reading institute director Claiborne Prenshaw presented an address com- Barksdale, librarian Pamela Pridgen, memorating the 100th anniversary and authors Jay Asher and Trenton Doug McLain “Writing after Katrina” panelists (from left) Jerry Ward, Joyce Zonana, Emily Clark, and Ted Ownby Seetha Srinivasan

Leif Anderson Doug McLain

Page 32 Spring 2009 The Southern Register Lee Stuart. Center director Ted Ownby Jr., longtime editor of the Washington session on book and author promotion, brought together scholars Emily Clark, Post, and Terry McDonell, editor of the and a fiction and poetry jam were also Joyce Zonana, and Jerry W. Ward Jr. Sports Illustrated Group. To celebrate part of the festivities. A marathon book to reflect on the effects of Hurricane American Poetry Month, poets James signing took place during the closing Katrina on their research and writing. Kimbrell, this year’s Grisham Writer party, when Square Books celebrated J. Peder Zane, book review editor in Residence, and Camille T. Dungy its 30th year of bookselling in Oxford and books columnist for the News and read some of their poems. Authors and saluted the 30th year of publish- Observer in Raleigh, North Carolina, Major Jackson, Deborah Johnson, Jack ing for Granta, the groundbreaking and a member of the Board of the Pendarvis, John Pritchard, and Steve literary journal begun in Cambridge, National Book Critics Circle, addressed Yarbrough presented readings and talk- England, in September 1979—the same “Reviewing Books in Cyberspace” with ed about their work. month Square Books opened. “It’s won- bookseller Lyn Roberts and critic John The conference edition of Thacker derful to be only 30!” proclaimed book- Freeman. Freeman, recently named Mountain Radio, a writing workshop, a seller and mayor Richard Howorth. American editor of the British literary Doug McLain journal Granta, was also on Richard Howorth’s panel with Leonard Downie

David Maraniss Major Jackson

Doug McLain Len Downie, newspaperman for 44 years Mary Anderson Pickard and author of four nonfiction books, signs The Rules of the Game, his first novel, at Off Square Books.

“Celebrating Granta & Square Books: 30 Years of American Literature” at Off Square Books are (from left) Lyn Roberts, John Freeman, and Richard Peggy Whitman Prenshaw Howorth. The Southern Register Spring 2009 Page 33 The NEW Encyclopedia of Southern Culture Sponsored by THE CENTER FOR THE STUDY OF SOUTHERN CULTURE at the University of Mississippi Published by THE UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINA PRESS Chapel Hill CHARLES REAGAN WILSON General Editor The Center for the Study of Southern Culture is currently in the process of producing The New Encyclopedia of Southern Culture, consisting of new material based on recent scholarship and updated material ﬁ rst published in the Encyclopedia of Southern Culture. The New Encyclopedia is being released as a series of clothbound and paperback volumes, making each individual section of the original edition a handy, one-volume guide for those who are interested in a particular subject, as well as making the volumes more accessible for classroom study. The entire collection will contain 24 volumes in all. CURRENTLY AVAILABLE

Volume 1, Religion. Volume 8, Environment. Samuel S. Hill, editor. Martin Melosi, editor. HB101.....$39.95 Friends....$35.96 HB108.....$39.95 Friends....$35.96 PG102.....$19.95 Friends....$17.96 PB108....$19.95 Friends....$17.96

Volume 2, Geography. Volume 9, Literature. Richard Pillsbury, editor. M. Thomas Inge, editor. HB102.....$39.95 Friends....$35.96 HB109.....$39.95 Friends....$35.96 PB102...... $19.95 Friends....$17.96 PB109....$19.95 Friends....$17.96

Volume 3, History. Volume 10, Law and Politics. Charles Reagan Wilson, editor. James W. Ely Jr. and Bradley G. Bond, editors. HB103.....$39.95 Friends....$35.96 HB110.....$39.95 Friends....$35.96 PB103....$19.95 Friends....$17.96 PB110...... $19.95 Friends....$17.96

Volume 4, Myth, Manners, and Memory. Volume 11, Agriculture and Industry. Charles Reagan Wilson, editor. Melissa Walker and James Cobb, editors. HB104.....$39.95 Friends....$35.96 HB111.....$39.95 Friends....$35.96 PB104....$19.95 Friends....$17.96 PB111...... $19.95 Friends....$17.96

Volume 5, Language. Volume 12, Music. Michael Montgomery and Ellen Johnson, editors. Bill C. Malone, editor. HB105.....$39.95 Friends....$35.96 HB112.....$39.95 Friends....$35.96 PB105....$19.95 Friends....$17.96 PB112...... $19.95 Friends....$17.96

Volume 6, Ethnicity. Volume 13, Gender. Celeste Ray, editor. Nancy Bercaw and Ted Ownby, editors. HB106.....$39.95 Friends....$35.96 HB113.....$39.95 Friends....$35.96 PB106....$19.95 Friends....$17.96 PB113...... $19.95 Friends....$17.96 To order copies from the Center, visit our Web site (www.olemiss.edu/depts/ Volume 7, Foodways. south), call 1-662-915-5993, or complete the order form on page 35 of this John T. Edge, editor. issue of the Southern Register. HB107.....$39.95 Friends....$35.96 To order the complete set from the University of North Carolina Press at great PB107....$19.95 Friends....$17.96 savings, see page 17 of this issue of the Southern Register and then visit www.uncpress.unc.edu/browse/page/583 or call 800-848-6224. Southern Culture Catalog CONTRIBUTORS The University of Mississippi International Orders Barnard Observatory • University, MS 38677 Other video formats I’Nasah Crockett is a student in the Phone 800-390-3527 • Fax 662-915-5814 may be available. Southern Studies graduate program. Please call for Originally from Atlanta, Georgia, she information. received her BA from Sarah Lawrence Sold To: College.

Joan Wylie Hall teaches in the Name English Department at the University of Mississippi. She is the author of a book Address on Shirley Jackson and articles on numerous Southern writers. City State Zip

Donald M. Kartiganer holds the William Howry Chair in Faulkner Country Studies at the University of Mississippi and is director of the Faulkner and Daytime Phone Yoknapatawpha Conference. J Payment enclosed (check, money order, international money order in U.S. currency Jen Lawrence, a Louisville, Kentucky, or international check drawn on a US bank; made payable to The Southern Culture Catalog) native, recently completed her BA in both Southern Studies and Political J Charge my: J Visa J MasterCard Account # Science. She will begin teaching high school English in the Mississippi Delta Exp. Date Signature this August. How To Order Delivery Sally Cassady Lyon works at the By mail: Southern Culture Catalog Orders for delivery in the continental United Center, as the director’s assistant. She is a Barnard Observatory • The University of States are shipped by US Postal Service unless Gulfport native and Sewanee graduate. Mississippi • University, MS 38677 other means of delivery are requested. Orders Cale Nicholson is a Southern Studies for delivery outside the continental United By e-mail: Credit Card orders only: master’s program 2009 graduate. He States are shipped by Parcel Post. [email protected] has coordinated the Teaching Garden Shipping and Handling Costs at the Boys & Girls Club in Oxford, By telephone: Credit Card orders only: United States: $3.50 for first video or other item, Mississippi, for two years. 800-390-3527 (Monday-Friday, $1.00 each additional item sent to the same 8:15 a.m.-4:45 p.m. CST) in the US. Justin Nystrom is visiting assistant address. Foreign: $5.00 for each item. professor of American History and Outside the US call 662-915-5993 Southern Studies. He created and main- Posters. United States: $3.50 for any number of tains the Freetown Project: A Digital By fax: Credit Card orders only: posters sent to the same address. Foreign: Exploration of Black Communities in 662-915-5814 (Daily, 24 hours a day) $10.00 for any number of posters sent to the the 19th-Century South. same address.

Ted Ownby, director of the Center, holds a joint appointment in Southern Return Policy All sales are final. No refunds will be made. If an order Studies and History. contains faulty or damaged goods, replacements will be made when such items Dorothy Shawhan writes and teaches are returned with problem(s) noted. fiction and creative nonfiction workshops at Delta State University. Item # Title/Description Qty. Price Total Jay Watson is professor of English at the University of Mississippi. He spe- cializes in Southern literature, the literature of the Vietnam War, and “New Materialist” theory and criticism.

Becca Walton-Evans received her MA in Southern Studies in 2008, when she won the Lucille and Motee Daniels Award.

Amy E. Wells-Dolan is an associate professor of higher education at the Order Total University of Mississippi. Her research This form may interests include the history of higher ed- Mississippi residents add 7% sales tax ucation in the South and philanthropy. be photocopied. Faxed orders Shipping and Handling accepted. TOTAL

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