SPRING/SUMMER 2018 Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters Honors Center with Two Awards The Center for the Study of volume of The New Encyclopedia of Southern Culture will be well repre- Southern Culture. In The Potlikker sented at this year’s Mississippi Papers, he traces how the food of Institute of Arts and Letters (MIAL) working-class southerners became a awards banquet in Jackson. pivotal part of American cuisine. The For the second time in four years, book has been roundly praised by the Mississippi Institute of Arts major news outlets, from the New York and Letters will honor the Center Times to making NPR’s list of 2017’s for its work in publishing. At this Great Reads. The Atlanta Journal- year’s awards banquet, to be held Constitution asks, “Is The Potlikker at the Two Mississippi Museums on Papers a history of the South by Saturday, June 2, MIAL will present way of food stories, or a story about Ted Ownby, Charles Reagan Wilson, southern food by way of our history? Ann J. Abadie, Odie Lindsey, and By the time you come to the end of James G. Thomas, Jr. with a Special this rigorous volume, you’ll know that Achievement Award for their work the two are indivisible.” on the Mississippi Encyclopedia, The Mississippi Institute of Arts published in May 2017 by the and Letters recently announced all University Press of Mississippi. of its award winners for works first MIAL presented the Center with published, performed, or shown in a Special Achievement Award for the year 2017. The award recipients, their work on The New Encyclopedia chosen by out-of-state jurors promi- of Southern Culture (University of nent in their respective fields, will North Carolina Press) in 2014. The be honored at the MIAL annual Mississippi Encyclopedia has also awards banquet. In addition to the won an Award of Merit from the awards banquet, Fischer Galleries Mississippi Historical Society and the in Jackson will feature the work of Heritage Award from the Mississippi winners Jack Spencer and Charlie Heritage Trust this year. Buckley on Friday evening from Also receiving an award at this 5:00 to 7:30. MIAL will also offer year’s banquet is John T. Edge, a tour of Pearl River Glass Studio director of the Center’s Southern on Saturday morning from 10:00 to Foodways Alliance. Edge is the 11:00 and readings and book sign- winner of the Nonfiction Award for ings by award winners at Lemuria his recent book, The Potlikker Papers: A Bookstore Dot Com Building at Food History of the Modern South. Edge 1:30 on Saturday afternoon. has written or edited more than a dozen books, including the Foodways continued on page 18 DIRECTOR’S COLUMN Stopping in a parking lot on a rainy morning. With parking spaces for the minister apologies to Robert Frost, I am stopped in a parking lot and people with physical on a rainy morning. It is too dangerous to drive, so I’m challenges, and a marquee waiting next to a church in northern Mississippi. I don’t mentioning multiple weekly know anyone in this church or community, but I feel sure services. This seems to be a they wouldn’t mind me stopping here. solid, successful institution that might confound any quick As I wait, I’m looking out the window, pondering how expectations about church life in the rural South. Across the things I can see from this rainy parking lot might the road, a different sign advertises a nondenominational relate to various approaches in Southern Studies. The church group I have not heard of, and I wonder if it community where I’m parked is named for a secessionist competes with this one. politician who had an important role in Reconstruction. From my window or just a few miles from here, one The church belongs to the most popular denomina- can see connections to the wider range of more recent tion for newly freed people after emancipation. From questions in Southern Studies. History and memory? my window, there is nothing but fields and trees in two A few hundred yards behind the church, several dozen directions. And I’m noticing that one car after another is small monuments honor the dead. And a Southern having trouble navigating a big puddle near the rail- Studies colleague studies slavery and current under- road tracks, a scene reminiscent of a moment in William standings of it in a community just a county or two Faulkner’s The Reivers. For the Southern Studies scholar, south of here. Literature? Another Southern Studies the potential problem is that the combination of the Civil colleague studies the fiction of an author from that War, emancipation, Reconstruction, race and religion, same community, and The Mississippi Encyclopedia tells rural life, and a scene from Faulkner start to seem like a me that at least two important poets live or grew up stereotype of Southern Studies, as though those are the close to this spot. Music? We could ask how people in only topics that define the South and how to study it. this community relate to the hill country blues with But the view out the window immediately complicates heroes not far from here. Protest? We’re pretty close assumptions that Southern Studies only cares about a to the home of antilynching activist Ida B. Wells. few predictable topics rooted in the past. Modern tech- Foodways? Aside from a cornfield or two, I see no nologies appear in every direction. I sit next to several examples of foodways, but there’s a community a few train cars at a railroad crossing, there are powerlines, a miles north where people have put out intriguing signs new bridge, and a small sign advertises cheap access to that read “Family Table.” Sports? Behind the church the Internet. One can see the hand of multiple govern- is a solitary basketball goal, a sign of the city game ments in transportation, safety (seven signs at two inter- in the rural South, and the National Bird Dog Hall of sections urge caution), electric power, and I think I see a Fame is located not far from here in Tennessee. The post office in the distance. If an older Southern Studies environment? Unlike Frost, I wouldn’t assume I know tended to concentrate on African American churches for whose woods these are. Education? The highway just a few topics—perhaps traditions of speech, music, and moves through an important area for innovations in theology—this church seems likely to complicate any easy religion and education, with colleges associated with expectations. It is brick, with a large and well-marked multiple religious groups. Architecture? I’d like to parking lot, and it has multiple church buses, special explore the houses I can’t really see from here, and a Southern Studies scholar of economics and family life wants to know more about an advertisement for “repo THE SOUTHERN REGISTER mobile homes.” In contemporary Southern Studies, we A Publication of the Center for the Study of Southern Culture • The University of Mississippi listen and look for languages other than English, and signs along this highway advertise a number of iglesias STT S ATERLY OXFORD, MISSISSIPPI, U.S.A T Published by (“churches”). And if one could get out of the car and The Center for the Study of Southern Culture The University of Mississippi start talking to people, things would get even more Telephone: 662-915-5993 • Fax: 662-915-5814 complicated. E-mail: [email protected] • southernstudies.olemiss.edu There are times we may want to hurry up (in Frost’s Spring/Summer 2018 language, “to give the harness bells a shake”) and ask too-quick questions. Who do these people vote for and REGISTER STAFF why? How has rural life changed, or how is religion changing? What’s the central theme or the most pressing Editor: James G. Thomas, Jr. problem, and how might they relate to ideas about the Editorial assistants: Rebecca Lauck Cleary and Margaret Gaffney Graphic Designer: Susan Bauer Lee South? But a responsible form of Southern Studies does Page 2 Spring/Summer 2018 The Southern Register 2018 Living Blues Festival Guide ® Living Blues News © Issue #253 Vol. 49, #2 Spring and summer have finally over as bandleader when Calvin WARNER WILLIAMS hit down here in Mississippi. My Owens left in 1984 and remaining & JAY SUMMEROUR orchard is in full blossom, and the in that position until King’s death daffodils are blasting yellow joy by in 2015. Bolden, who joined King the thousands, signaling the end to after leaving the Duke Ellington yet another winter—at least here in Orchestra, carries on King’s JAMES Mississippi. legacy with his own band and And with the end of winter comes as a member of the B. B. King Boogaloo the beginning of the blues festival Blues Band. BOLDEN season. This issue, #254, contains Success doesn’t always come EUGENE our 2018 Living Blues Festival Guide, to even the most talented musi- the original festival guide for the cians. Sometimes things just Hideaway $6.95 US $6.95 CAN blues industry. The first to publish don’t work out as planned. www.livingblues.com BRIDGES every year, it gives you the chance to Take the case of Louisiana-born Belton Sutherland sit back and plan for the season. LB bluesman Eugene “Hideaway” Breaking Out with Roosevelt Collier will be at several festivals this year, Bridges. Bridges has all the so stop by and say hello. talent—a good songwriter, vocalist, This issue’s cover artists are and guitar player—but he never record.