Southern Culture – Page 2

Category: Southern Culture (Page 2 of 16)

Author Q & A with Margerita Jurkovic

On August 25, 2019

Interview by Jana Hoops. Special to the Clarion-Ledger Sunday print edition (August 25)

Slovenian attorney Margerita Jurkovic said she had “no idea what to expect” when she arrived in Jackson in 2017 as a law exchange student–but it wasn’t long before she found herself captivated by a passion for a brand new experience: American (and specifically Southern) football.

She soon realized that the stories she lived out as she discovered the thrill of the game, literally on the sidelines, were the stuff that would make a good read, and Margerita’s Gridiron Adventure: A Slovenian Lawyer’s Crash Course in American Football Culture was the inevitable outcome.

Mike Frascogna, a Jackson attorney and former law professor of Jurkovic’s, took the football novice under his sports-driven wing and introduced her to the game at youth, high school and college matches throughout the Southeast during the 2018 season. Her perspective, as an outsider who was new to the game–and the culture–of Southern football is honest, humorous, and often thought-provoking.

Jurkovic received her second Master of Law at Mississippi College in 2018, graduating magna cum laude. She also holds a doctoral degree in criminal law and human rights. In Slovenia, she serves as CEO of a non-profit organization that works with victims of domestic abuse and human trafficking.

While in Mississippi, Jurkovic specialized in negotiations and entertainment law at Frascogna Entertainment Law, a Division of Frascogna Courtney, PLLC, in Jackson.

What brought you to Mississippi from your home country of Slovenia?

Margerita Jurkovic

First, it started as an educational experience in law for me. Finishing my PhD, I thought it would be useful to get some experience in a country with a common law system, so I found Mississippi through one of my law school contacts at home. I was planning on staying only a couple of months, but before I realized I had been in Jackson for almost two years.

How did your passion for Mississippi football develop so quickly, and what role did Jackson attorney Mike Frascogna play in that process?

It happened so spontaneously, my passion for football. While in Jackson I was constantly surrounded by people who are interested in this sport. Seeing the enthusiasm of players and coaches, and then experiencing what the win of their chosen teams means to the fans (played a big part) . . . and Mike Frascogna–he knows a lot of people around here. I learned a lot from him, not only football, but about the law, and also life.

It seems you had a unique vantage point at the high school and college football games you attended during your time in Mississippi: you were actually on the sidelines during the games! How was Mike able to make that possible, and do you think that made the games even more exciting, especially since you usually got to meet the coaches or high-level school officials?

Absolutely–I got to experience things most fans cannot, and this is why the book has so many unique stories–like hearing the pre-game talks in the locker rooms. I became spoiled in a way–now, I only want to watch football from the sidelines! The involvement of the Frascogna law firm in Mississippi athletics made things easier for us. One of my characters in the book said, “Mike can make anything possible!” I guess she was not far from the truth.

What were some important lessons you learned from this experience?

There are many lessons one can learn while living abroad, especially how to keep yourself happy and involved in local activities, even while being so different, and often missing home. There are many differences between European and American life, but we all share the same human needs. Seeing the 7- and 8-year-olds playing the rough sport of football helped me understand some basic American values: protecting teammates, loving competition, and not being afraid of physical contact.

What convinced you to write a book about this adventure?

I did not need any convincing after coming in contact with the passion of the coaches and players for the game, and observing the enjoyment of the fans, cheerleaders, bands and the dance groups. It is truly a unique cultural event, involving the entire community. The emotions of this sport got me from the first day.

I never expected that I would be writing a book about football, surrounded by sweet tea and strong men, seriously fighting out there, for the love of the game.

Roger Stolle’s ‘Mississippi Juke Joint Confidential’ goes straight to the source of blues music

By Guest Author

On August 2, 2019

In Blues, Southern Culture

By DeMatt Harkins. Special to the Clarion-Ledger Sunday print edition (July 28)

Over the past century, blues music has evolved while nonetheless retaining its core elements and purpose. In Mississippi Juke Joint Confidential, Roger Stolle, accompanied by photographer Lou Bopp, demonstrates this is equally the case with its archetypal venue.

Early in the millennium, Stolle moved from St. Louis to Clarksdale to open Cat Head music shop. Since then, he has gone on to start the annual Juke Joint Festival, produce several artists’ records and tours, become a contributing editor for Delta Magazine, deejay locally and on satellite radio, helm a trio of blues documentaries (We Juke Up In Here, M is for Mississippi, and Hard Times) and host the web series Moonshine and Mojo Hands.

In his follow-up to Hidden History of Mississippi Blues, Stolle begins by clarifying that self-declaration does not a juke joint maketh. Spots such as the Blue Front Cafe in Bentonia, Roosters in Sardis, Junior Kimbrough’s in Marshall county, The Subway Lounge in Jackson, The Do Drop Inn and Sarah’s Kitchen in Clarksdale, and Po Monkey’s out from Marigold all earned the distinction. These clubs are less refined, more raw. Many may not be up to code, let alone legal businesses.

Juke joints initially popped up as the lone secular, social outlet during Mississippi’s sharecropping era. They hosted such legends as Charley Patton, Robert Johnson, and Son House. Today’s equally sensational Mississippi juke joint musicians live practically off the cultural grid. But that doesn’t mean they don’t pack ‘em in.

While patrons most certainly feel the music in a Mississippi juke joint, they may not necessarily be able to see the band. As Stolle points out, contemporary juke joints tend to be paeans to resourcefulness. With that comes architectural and design anomalies. The band may be around a corner from half the crowd, or even placed in front of a bathroom. Not to mention, the look of the place may be spare or a collage of bygone marketing campaigns, amateur signage, and Christmas lights. Despite unconventional layouts and incongruous styles, juke joints function as the means to a musically euphoric end.

At the heart of Mississippi Juke Joint Confidential is a pair of chapters sourced from many of Stolle’s interviews with owners and musicians. The raconteurs include T-Model Ford, Terry “Harmonica” Bean, Sam Carr, RL Boyce, Lightning Malcolm, Mary Ann Action Jackson, Robert Belfour, Sarah Moore, James Super Chikan Johnson, LC Ulmer, and the legendary Honeyboy Edwards, among others. Collectively they paint a vivid picture of this underground musical scene—often with head-shaking hilarity.

Most people have seen guitars played on stage. Few have seen them used to defend a mid-performance knife attack. Also presented here is sage advice against chugging a pint of gin, right before playing the first song. Which juke joint is referred to as The Bucket of Blood? And perhaps everyone needs to visit the juke joint whose house chicken dances and drinks beer.

In addition to the high jinx, also evident are hard workers simply trying to provide a service to the community. Proprietors such as Red Paden and Sarah Moore echo they are not in it for the money. They recognize everybody needs a place to let it all hang out.

Several of Stolle’s subjects reminisce about juke joints’ days of yore. John Horton explains his preference for the old solo acoustic acts because it’s a greater feat to hold an audience’s attention, all night, by yourself. Along those lines, Jimmy Duck Holmes points out why blues was hollered—musicians were contending with a full room of revelers without the benefit of a sound system. And one can only imagine how raucous the Harlem Club in Inverness became when young David Lee Durham was relegated to peeking in the window to catch a set by Howlin Wolf or Muddy Waters.

Stolle additionally expounds on the cultural significance of moonshine, the profound history of Clarksdale’s Riverside Hotel and Bay St. Louis’ 100 Men DBA Hall, Bilbo Walker’s long journey from musician to juke joint operator, and the ins-and-outs of traveling internationally on blues tours.

Although juke joint music is known around the globe, Stolle and Bopp offer not only a peek into, but also an itinerary for what cannot be replicated outside of Mississippi.

DeMatt Harkins of Jackson enjoys flipping pancakes and records with his wife and daughter.

Roger Stolle will appear at the Mississippi Book Festival August 17 as a participant in the “Mississippi Blues” panel at 4:00 p.m. at the Galloway Foundery.

Finally art, life of Mississippi’s Dusti Bongé celebrated in lushly illustrated biography

By Guest Author

On July 24, 2019

In Art/Photography, Southern Culture

By William Dunlap. Special to the Clarion-Ledger Sunday print edition (July 21)

I can objectively say that this is one of the most sumptuous and satisfying books that has ever been my pleasure to hold and read. It is as profound as it is long overdue.

In the interest of full disclosure, let me state that I know Rick Gruber, and I know him to be a scholar of the first order who has at his command more information about art of a southern nature than anyone alive. It is also worth noting that his prose is infinitely readable, unlike so many of those who write about art in a scholarly fashion.

I also know Paul Bongé, grandson of Dusti and son of Lyle, who like his father is a terrific photographer, sailor, builder, waterman and keeper of the family faith and tradition on the Mississippi Gulf Coast.

Lyle Bongé, Dusti’s son, was a fine friend who I came to know through the poet/publisher Jonathan Williams. The two were both alumni of Black Mountain College and lifelong collaborators. The Sleep of Reason, Lyle’s book published by Jonathan Williams’ Jargon Society Press, contains photographs of New Orleans Mardi Gras from the 1950s and says more than we really want to know about our people, time, and place.

I met Dusti Bongé toward the end of her life, and recall a memorable studio visit. She was working with pure pigment and fiberglass to create her Windows that were a part of her last exhibition at the Betty Parsons gallery. They contained rich colors that were, at the time, hard to love but it was easy to see her mastery of the medium and why the New York School, a.k.a. Betty Parsons et al., were devoted to her.

Dusti Bongé Art and Life is published by the Dusti Bongé Art Foundation. The book was designed by Philip Collier of New Orleans and distributed by the University Press of Mississippi. This lavishly illustrated tome of some 350 pages with 500 illustrations was four plus years in the making and accompanies the Ogden Museum of Southern Art exhibition, “Piercing the Inner Wall: The Art of Dusti Bongé’” curated by Bradley Sumrall. This exhibition will come to the Mississippi Museum of Art in the fall of 2020.

Many of the very telling photographs included in this book are by Jack Robinson, the internationally known and enigmatic photographer from the Mississippi Delta who is worthy of further study and serious scrutiny.

All of this begs the rhetorical question: Why has it taken so long?

It is inexplicable that this most accomplished and recognized woman who was with us from 1903 until 1993, mainly in Mississippi but sometimes in New Orleans and New York, and yet has all but fallen through the proverbial cracks.
For a place like Mississippi that is so obsessed with its native sons (could this be a reason?) to overlook this remarkable artist for so long is a question that wants to be addressed.

While New York and New Orleans are discussed in depth, it’s Biloxi and the Mississippi Gulf Coast that come in for the most revealing and substantive writing and research. In addition to chronicling a life, art, and sense of place, this book is also a profound social history of the Mississippi Gulf Coast and exploration of the extraordinary pull of this place for artists like George Ohr and the Walter Anderson family.

That the Gulf Coast has more in common with New Orleans than it does with say Tupelo hardly comes as a surprise, but it helps explain the complexities of a place like Mississippi.

William Faulkner once said that in order “to understand the world you need to understand a place like Mississippi.”

Rick Gruber’s book, Dusti Bongé: Art and Life answers many of these questions and helps us understand much, much more.

William Dunlap is a painter, writer and native son of Webster County. His first collection of stories , Short Mean Fiction is soon to be followed by Lying and Making a Living. He will talk about that and his book from University Press Of Mississippi, Pappy Kitchens and the Saga of Red Eye the Rooster at the Mississippi Book Festival, August 17.

Richard Gruber will appear at the Mississippi Book Festival August 17 as a participant (along with William Dunlap) in the “Southern Art” panel at 1:30 p.m. in State Capitol Room 204.

‘Life Between the Levees’ unleashes powerful legacy of American river commerce

By Guest Author

On June 3, 2019

In Southern Culture, Southern History

By Lovejoy Boteler. Special to the Clarion-Ledger Sunday print edition (June 2)

One summer in my twenties I worked as a deckhand on the Greenville, a towboat that plied the upper Mississippi River from Alton, Illinois to Davenport, Iowa. In that short span of time I came to understand the tremendous power of the river and the importance of its commerce. Melody Golding’s superb book, Life Between the Levees: America’s Riverboat Pilots, with its countless tales of adventure and antics on “brown water” transported me straight back to that time.

Golding is uniquely qualified to have compiled Life Between the Levees. She states in the first line of the introduction, “I come from a river family.” With that simple but powerful statement, she hints at the soul of the river as it can only be revealed by the folks who have an intimate connection with that life. Her deep love for the river comes through, and must have fueled her passion to create this comprehensive work. She has given us a book with beautiful documentary photographs, both personal and archival, and authentic stories told by colorful characters, many of whom she has known.

For ten years, with single-minded purpose, Golding of Vicksburg traveled thousands of miles on the Mississippi and its inland waterways to record over one hundred voices and stories of brown water mariners: steely-eyed captains, pilots, deckhands, cooks, and chaplains, some of whom have now passed from the scene. Her interviews reveal events that occurred over a seventy-year span of time. Older captains who were trained by the legendary pilots of the great paddle wheelers of the nineteenth century provide poignant, provocative and sometimes hilarious insights. Life Between the Levees: America’s Riverboat Pilots captures a slice of history that is destined to become an important and lasting part of American folklore.

Sometime the call of the river came at an early age. Joy Mary Manthey, from Louisiana, remembers steering a towboat as a young girl. “I had to stand on the milk crate to see over the wheel, and I steered the boat. I loved it. I mean…I was only ten years old.” After some interesting life adventures, Joy Mary became a nun, and then a towboat chaplain.

Perry Wolfe remembered his first experience on the river as a young boy. His dad called him “his first mate.” He slept on sandbars. Perry soon realized that his life would forever be on the river. He would eventually become a deckhand with Brent Towing, out of Greenville and talked about how life on the river was in the old days. “Actually up there at Lock 26, it was more wild than Natchez Under the Hill … being a captain back then was a lot harder because you had to referee all the fights.”

Captain William Torner, on old-timer, recalled the steamboats of yesteryear. “I am one of the few river men still living who has worked on a steamboat built in the 1800s”. In 1940 Captain Torner worked on the Reliance out of Pittsburgh.

The Mississippi River and its tributaries have influenced the shape of the collective psyche of America through Mark Twain’s tales of Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer, and now with Melody Golding’s seminal book, the voices of modern-day captains and crews.

The river is a place where a person can find peace. Patrick Soileau, thirty years on the waterways summed it up. “…it’s your time for solitude…I could probably solve the world’s problems up here.”
In Life Between the Levees: America’s Riverboat Pilots, through captivating interviews, Melody Golding chronicles stories of hope and pathos, friendship and sometimes disaster, away from the bustling world of landlubbers. Life Between the Levees is a book to be savored and enjoyed for years to come.

Lovejoy Boteler is author of Crooked Snake: The Life and Crimes of Albert Lepard published by University Press of Mississippi. He lives in Jackson.

Melody Golding will appear at the Mississippi Book Festival August 17 as a participant in the “Mississippi: The Delta” panel at 9:30 a.m. at the State Capitol Room 201 A.

Author Q & A with Michael Ford

By Guest Author

On June 2, 2019

In Photography, Southern Culture, Southern History

Interview by Jana Hoops. Special to the Clarion-Ledger Sunday print edition (June 2)

Pennsylvania native Michael Ford will tell you that his “snap decision” nearly 50 years ago–to ditch a dream job offer in Massachusetts, uproot his family, and move to Oxford, Miss. to pursue a hunch–turned out to be the best decision he ever made, as he launched his dreams that would ignite a successful and fulfilling career.

Now a filmmaker in Washington, D.C., Ford’s photo essays in his new book North Mississippi Homeplace: Photographs and Folklife (University of Georgia Press) reveal his passionate reverence for the area he has come to call his “homeplace.”

The unique volume contains only two chapters: one about moving to rural Mississippi and living in Oxford from 1972 to 1975; and the other explaining what brought him back multiple times four decades later. It includes scores of color photos taken during both periods. Ford notes that all these images–taken decades apart–invariably settled into three main themes: the land, the light and the people.

The materials he recorded for the documentary film he produced during his Mississippi stay are now archived in the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress as The Michael Ford Mississippi Collection.

During your first trip to visit in-laws in Oxford in December 1971, you made a quick decision to leave a secure teaching position at Boston’s Emerson College and move to Oxford with the idea of making a documentary film. Explain how this came about.

Michael Ford

I was working on my thesis film for my master’s program in film at Boston University. We had to design a master’s project and I had considered something about rural America, maybe in Vermont or New Hampshire.

When I began exploring the land (around the outskirts of Oxford) during that Christmas break, I had no reference for what I saw–the remoteness, the country shacks, the hogs’ legs hoisted in tree branches for gutting. I had studied (photography history) and I knew things like this shouldn’t exist in America anymore. I had done hard news for two years, and I knew there was a story here.

So, four months later, here I was, a Yankee, driving into Mississippi in an old VW bus with a peace sign on it and New York plates. I was just beginning to figure out that everyone might not like us so much. I began settling in with a deep immersion into the Mississippi hill country. I started reading Faulkner. I spent maybe six months driving and talking to people, getting a cold drink, and sometimes taking their pictures.

My number one anchor to the community was (Oxford blacksmith) Mr. (Morgan Randolph) Hall, who hired me as his apprentice. Number two was Hal Waldrip, who owned and ran an archaic general store in Chulahoma, Miss. He saw himself as one of the “keepers of the lore.” He told me, “I could fix this store up. I could add air conditioning and heat and clean it up. But it would lose some of the atmosphere.”

There were others–Doc Jones, who sold molasses at Waldrip’s store; AG Newson, who actually made the molasses with the help of his mules, Frank and Jake.
These were the people I found. They found me. They were important because they were all preserving this last flash of old times.

Tell me what you discovered about Mississippi–and yourself–as you began to capture the images in your book.

I had no idea this kind of life still existed in the U.S. anymore. I was making an independent documentary. You couldn’t make any preconceived ideas about where it was going. It designed itself. You can shape and interpret it, but you can’t invent it.

I realized that in a concrete sense when it came time to write it. It was the essence of the documentary–the experiences of the intuitive or spiritual side of life–that I wanted to share.

So, one of the things I had to learn as a documentarian was to shut up, that is, shut up the (analytical) left side of the brain, so the (creative) right side can do what it needs to do. I learned over the years that the best situation I could ask for was to shoot something and say, “I got it!” You just know. Words define a thing, but a photograph speaks for itself.

You write that your return visits to Mississippi in 2013-2015 were initially driven by nostalgia and curiosity. How did these trips of new discovery turn out?

What really sparked it were several things that came together at once. My grown daughter, who was a baby when we moved to Oxford, was insisting I do something with my film and audiotapes from Mississippi before I “croaked,” in her words; and technology had advanced to a point that I could do much of the work myself. That stuff had sat for 40 years in cans and boxes in my closets–not forgotten, but definitely ignored.

While reviewing old audio tapes, I listened to a recording of Mr. Hall talking to me. Out of nostalgia I Googled his name and (wound up getting) in touch with Andy Waller, an apprentice of Mr. Hall’s after I left Oxford. Andy had bought Mr. Hall out when he retired.

(That conversation) convinced me there was no doubt it was time to return . . . That was in April 2013. I’ve been back another half dozen times since then.

What I discovered was that it was different. The country people were gone, especially the older people. The sense of community had diminished. Today, even as far out as you can go in the country, you have can have a TV satellite and the internet. Having a place where people get together is difficult. There is not a downtown in most of these communities anymore.

The old way of life was mostly gone forever.

What did you ultimately learn from this whole unique experience, and how has it affected your life and career?

Two answers: one would be “everything.” It has affected everything. I lived where I’ve lived and done what I’ve done all because of it. I started my own film production company, Yellow Cat Productions, which I’ve had for 45 years. Maybe it taught me that I learned to take risks.

On our 1972 trip headed (from Massachusetts) to move to Mississippi, we stopped in New York and visited with (a friend). At that time, it felt in some ways like we were going to a land of darkness, chasing something I barely knew existed and wasn’t sure what to expect.

I told (my friend) that I wasn’t really sure why I should do this, and she said, “Why not?”

Everything changed at that instant. It was like I got it. I learned that when you look back, you see that it’s the single microseconds, not the big bangs, that change the course of a life.

I see the world in patterns, visually, and this is the way Mississippi works in my mind. Mississippi has a special place in this world.

Wisdom of southern womanhood in Helen Ellis’s ‘Southern Lady Code’ sparkles with humor, savvy, sound advice

By Guest Author

On April 30, 2019

In Essays, Humor, Southern Culture

By Emily Gatlin. Special to the Clarion-Ledger Sunday print edition (April 28)

The ways of Southern women are shining front and center recently, thanks to the recent success of Garden & Gun guides and most notably, Reese Witherspoon’s Whiskey in a Teacup, which takes everything our mamas taught us as we rolled our eyes at her, and packages it with glossy photos of unattainable wallpaper goals in a sleek pink coffee table book. Basically.

But as a whole, Southern women aren’t biscuits and sweet tea, and we’re certainly not M’Lynn Eatenton or Mrs. Gump, although we do tip our big floppy hats to Californian Sally Field for her performances and pseudo-passable accent attempts.

No, our blood even has its own special genetic code, forged by generations of literal sweating. The oppressive humidity we, as Southern women, curse every year like we aren’t expecting it, is its own Fountain of Youth. Our dewy glow springs eternal. We are witches who do not age. And when we do, Botox and fillers seem to magically do what they are supposed to.

We’re much more complex—always nice (even when we must call on our better angels to be so), and tiptoe a tightrope between being passive aggressive and genuine. For example: A woman at the grocery store is wearing bright pink lipstick, a strapless romper and flip flops with a French pedicure. Instead of saying, “She’s tacky,” we’d say my personal go-to, “Look what she likes!” Feel free to borrow that one.

This is what bestselling author and Alabama native Helen Ellis calls “Southern Lady Code,” which is also the name of her new book. It’s a technique by which, if you don’t have something nice to say, you say something not so nice in a nice way. It’s all about phrasing with us. Think of “investment pieces” you have in your wardrobe. That’s Southern Lady Code for “The Oscar De La Renta cocktail dress hanging in the back of your closet that costs more than a Henredon bed, but you’ll wear it for decades!” Which is half true—you’ll realize you’ve been clinging to a size 4 dress that you haven’t been able to wear since 1986 and give it to your daughter when you’re downsizing at 70. (Thanks, Mom!)

“Wheelhouse” is Southern Lady Code for “comfort zone.” If a friend, and even a close one who should know better, were to ask, “Would you like to go mud riding with us at Sardis Lake?” you would say, “No, thank you. That is not really in my wheelhouse. Would you like for me to pack you a picnic basket with cold salads and fruit?”

Fresh off the heels of American Housewife, Ellis’s brilliant collection of short stories, she takes a turn here at an essay collection, explaining Southern Lady Code to the masses, as she gives glimpses of her life as a Southerner who has called New York City home for the majority of her adult life. Bless her heart, she married into it.

Her deadpan humor is razor sharp and laugh out loud funny, a rare pearl in the canon of “Southern”-themed books and essays that too often read like tea that’s been steeped too long. She’s the guest at the dinner party you really don’t want to attend, but go anyway in hopes that you’ll be seated near her. (A Southern word of advice from Ellis about dinner parties: Be the first guest to arrive and the first to leave. Sound.)

Ellis’s essay collection covers everything from manners to monograms, a man who fakes his death at her eighth grade birthday party, and when she turned herself into a dominatrix version of Donna Reed to save her marriage.

Southern Lady Code is one you’re going to buy for yourself and share the joy with every woman you know.

Emily Gatlin is the Digital Editor of the Wonderlust travel website and the author of The Unknown Hendrix and 101 Greatest American Rock Songs and the Stories Behind Them. She lives in Oxford, Miss.

Author Q & A with James T. Campbell and Elaine Owens

By Guest Author

On April 28, 2019

In Civil Rights, Photography, Southern Culture, Southern History

Interview by Jana Hoops. Special to the Clarion-Ledger Sunday print edition (April 28)

It was the teamwork of Stanford professor James T. Campbell and Elaine Owens, the former head curator of photographs at the Mississippi Department of Archives and History, that resulted in the publication of a significant photography collection that was almost swept aside by history.

Mississippi Witness: The Photographs of Florence Mars (University Press of Mississippi) showcases images taken in and around Neshoba County in the 1950s and ’60s by civil rights activist Florence Mars of Philadelphia, Miss., during a turbulent time in the state’s history. The volume is filled with stunning black and white photos and a comprehensive and informative introduction by Campbell.

Former governor William Winter, a friend of Mars, has said her pictures “spoke volumes,” and calls this book “an important volume in this period of our nation’s history.”

How did the idea of producing this book come about, and how did the two of you get together?

James Campbell and Elaine Owens, courtesy of the Greenwood Commonwealth

Campbell: I first learned about the photographs from Florence Mars herself. I was doing research related to the 1964 Mississippi Summer Project and naturally found my way to Neshoba County and, soon enough, to Miss Mars. I had an opportunity to interview her several times before her passing in 2006, and in one of those conversations she told me about her photos, which she had deposited at the Mississippi Department of Archives and History in Jackson.

Owens: Prior to my retirement, I worked as head curator of photographs at the Mississippi Department of Archives and History. That’s where I met Dr. Campbell. We agreed that Mars’s photographs should be shared with the public and a book was the best way to do that.

Tell me about Florence Mars, and the historical significance of the story behind her photographs.

Owens: The majority of the photographs were taken between 1954 and 1964. According to Mars herself, they were prompted by the landmark Supreme Court’s decision in Brown v. Board of Education (in 1954), which signaled the end of legal segregation in the South. Her intent was to document a Jim Crow world that she knew was disappearing. She had no idea that she and her community would later be caught up in one of the most notorious events of the whole Civil Rights era.

Campbell: One thing I found interesting was that Mars made virtually no effort to publish or exhibit her photos. To the best of our knowledge, she never sold one for money. But she spent hours traveling around the countryside taking photographs, and hours more printing the images in the homemade darkroom she built in an upstairs hall of her house. They were her private devotion, her way of making sense of the world around her.

Explain why your book is titled Mississippi Witness.

Owens: Mississippi Witness is meant to echo the title of Ms. Mars’s own book, Witness in Philadelphia, which was published by LSU Press in 1977.

Campbell: The title of Mars’s book is kind of a pun. On one hand, the book is her first-person account of the events of 1964, of the murders and their aftermath in her hometown. But she was also a witness in another sense, when she agreed to testify in a federal trial that exposed local law enforcement’s brutal treatment of black citizens. She paid a real price for that decision.

Owens: Our book, Mississippi Witness, shows Ms. Mars acting as a witness in yet another sense, as a photographer.

The pictures literally “speak for themselves,” as they are presented, just one per page, on 101 of the 134 pages in the book, with no text at all. The “List of Photographs” in the back reveals that many of the subjects are unidentified; and some photos have no date listed–not even the year. Why did you decide to present the photos in this dramatic way?

Owens: We were simply trying to honor the photographer’s intent, to let the images, as you say, speak for themselves.

Campbell: We included such identifying information as we had in an appendix at the back of the book, but we decided not to have any accompanying text with the pictures themselves, nothing to pull your eye away from the image. I think it was the right decision.

As for not knowing who some of the people in the images are or when particular photos were taken: I suppose that’s true, but by the standards of a lot of documentary photography collections–the Depression-era images of the Farm Security Administration photographers, for example–what’s striking about Mars’s photos is how much we do know. She noted where many of the photos were taken and she recorded the names of at least some of the people in them. She knew a lot of these people personally–Neshoba County is not a very big place–and she routinely shared prints of the images with her subjects, which is something too few photographers think to do.

Jim, please tell me what your primary role was in the production of this book, and why this project was important to you. The history you present in the introduction is very through!

Campbell: Thank you. Mars herself used to say that in order to understand someone you needed to “know the background.” So hopefully the introduction helps people to understand a bit about who she was and how the photographs came to be. But the real value of the book is to be found in the photos themselves. They are just haunting–beautiful and heart-rending all at the same time. They capture truths about our history–not just the history of Mississippi, but American history as a whole–that we need to face squarely.

Elaine, please tell me what your primary role was in the production of this book, and why this project was important to you. You must have searched out a great many details in collecting and curating these photos!

Owens: As curator of photographs at MDAH, I’ve looked at a lot of photographs of Mississippi, but few if any collections have the depth and scope of the images in the Mars collection. We spent many hours debating which images to include in the book. We wanted images that evoked particularities of time and place, but we also wanted to show Mars’s strengths as a documentary photographer, not only her unfailing eye but also her technical skill. I just felt that these images needed to be shared. I also wanted to honor the courage of one woman who stood up to powerful forces of evil at great personal risk.

Signed copies of Mississippi Witness are still available at Lemuria’s online store.

Author Q & A with Helen Ellis

By Guest Author

On April 21, 2019

In Humor, Southern Culture

Interview by Jana Hoops. Special to the Clarion-Ledger Sunday print edition (April 21)

Alabama native and author Helen Ellis has lived in New York City for more than a quarter century, but says she still wears her accent “on her sleeve,” which explains why her newest book is titled Southern Lady Code.

The premise of the 23 true essays which capture as many hilarious and often poignant episodes she’s gotten herself into, is one simple rule: “If you don’t have something nice to say, you say something not so nice in a nice way.”

Ellis also authored Eating the Cheshire Cat and American Housewife. In addition to–and often instead of–calling herself a writer, she also proudly claims the title of “housewife.”

A serious poker plays who learned the game from her father as a child, Ellis competes on the national tournament circuit. She and her husband happily reside in Manhattan.

You grew up in Tuscaloosa and, at age 22, you left for New York City in hopes of becoming a writer. Tell me about the career twists that landed you in the role of housewife–which eventually, with the help of Twitter, led to your success as a writer.

Helen Ellis

It was 1992, and I–dressed in my Talbot’s turtleneck, ankle-length wool plaid skirt, and penny loafers–walked from publishing house to publishing house, dropping my resume at reception desks like calling cards. I had the hopes of being an editorial assistant, but no publishing house called me. I walked into Talbots and got a job on the spot.

Two years later, I got a job at a financial magazine with the hopes of being an editorial assistant. They hired me to drum up subscriptions. I met a young reporter, who drummed up my heart.

A year later, I got into the NYU creative writing program, temped as a secretary, and through that temp agency, landed a long-term job in the chairman’s office of Chanel. I worked four days a week and wrote three.

Scribner published my first book, Eating the Cheshire Cat, in 2000.

I married that young reporter, who became an editor, in 2001.

And then I wrote another book, and nobody published it. And then I wrote another book, and nobody published it. And then I quit my secretarial job to write full time, supported by my husband, wrote another book, and nobody published it. And then I quit writing, and nobody cared.

I settled into a happy life as a housewife. And when people asked me what I did, I didn’t say writer, I said, “Housewife.” The next question was always: “What do you do all day?” I started an anonymous twitter account called @WhatIDoAllDay.

I tweeted about housework and hosting parties and book clubs and the beauty of banality. And then I wrote a story about how a housewife cleans up murders. And then I wrote a story about a book club recruiting a new member with a sinister motive. And then I wrote about what a woman left to her own devices could ultimately do all day. I wrote what I knew. And, 16 years after my first novel, Doubleday published my short story collection, American Housewife. And three years after that, they’ve published Southern Lady Code. This time, the stories are all true.

Explain the phrase “Southern Lady Code,” and how it became the title of your newest book.

Southern Lady Code is: if you don’t have something nice to say, say something not so nice, in a nice way. Twenty-five years in Manhattan, I kept finding myself translating what I’d say to people. “She’s a character” means drunk. Or “He’s an archivist” means hoarder. Or “Bless her heart” means “What an idiot.”

I’ve been tweeting these translations for more than five years. I turned some of those tweets into a short story in “American Housewife.” My … true stories … are now this book. Each essay has a line of code. So, for example, in “Making a Marriage Magically Tidy” I write about how my husband fell in love with a “creative” woman. “Creative” is Southern Lady Code for slob.

The essays which make up Southern Lady Code are not only hilarious, but packed with meaning that makes us pause. Tell me how humor has been important in your life, and how it has become your signature writing style.

I come from a funny family. Some of the best times I’ve had have been at funerals, where relatives and friends try and outdo each other with the most outrageous memories of the deceased. With humor, you can ease pain. And with humor, you can be honest. It’s easier to get your point across when you make the person you’re pointing at laugh. Especially when you’re pointing at yourself.

Poker has been a passion of yours since childhood. Tell us about its role in your life.

There have been times when I wasn’t writing, but I’ve always played poker. Poker is a chance for me to really be myself. I can be nice, but I don’t have to play nice. I can be at the table, but I don’t have to entertain. I can confront bullies and make them back down. I can be brave. And when I lose, and I most certainly do lose, I know there’s always another game. And as with after my losses in writing, when I am lucky enough to win and get published, the success is all the sweeter.

I’ve interviewed many writers who, like you, have moved away from the South, yet no matter how much time passes, they still consider themselves to be Southerners. How would you explain that sentiment?

My roots run deep. And I wear my accent on my sleeve.

Helen Ellis will be at Lemuria on Wednesday, April 24, at 5:00 p.m. to sign and discuss Southern Lady Code.

Author Q & A with Ken Wells

By Guest Author

On March 10, 2019

In Biography/Memoir, Southern Cooking, Southern Culture

Interview by Jana Hoops. Special to the Clarion-Ledger Sunday print edition (March 10).

Louisiana native and journalist Ken Wells fondly recalls what he and his five brothers called “the gumbo life” in rural Bayou Black–a lifestyle lived close to the land and that meant he would not see the inside of a supermarket until he was nearly a teenager.

That phrase–Gumbo Life: Tales from the Roux Bayou–is the title of his culinary memoir which not only details the history of gumbo, but recounts recent stories of its role in today’s culture and kitchens.

Wells left Bayou Black decades ago to travel around the world as a writer for the Wall Street Journal, and he has penned five novels of the Cajun bayous. Today, he lives in Chicago.

In Gumbo Life, you describe gumbo as “more than a delicious dish: it’s an attitude, a way of seeing the world.” What exactly is gumbo, and can you tell us briefly about its diverse history?

In Louisiana, gumbo’s predominant interpretation is a café-au-lait colored soup cooked with a roux–flour browned in butter, oil, or lard–and served over white rice. Typically, ingredients include chicken, sausage, shellfish, okra, and a combination of vegetables known as the Trinity: celery, bell pepper, and onion.

Food historians think gumbo is at least 250 years old, probably older. The first written mention dates to New Orleans in 1764, and shows a dish called “gumbo fillet” or what we now know as file’ gumbo, being cooked by West African slaves. The Africans arrived with word-of-mouth recipes for spicy okra-and-rice stews that are the likely template for the first gumbos. In fact, the Bantu dialect word for okra is “gombeau”–probably how gumbo got its name.

An 1804 account by a French journalist has gumbo being served at a party in the Cajun bayous of southeast Louisiana. That reference fueled the myth of gumbo as a Cajun invention. But the Canjuns have played a critical role in gumbo’s evolution, specifically the roux. The most compelling theory is that the Cajuns, using animal fats that were ubiquitous in colonial cooking–bear lard, in particular–deployed the roux with such skill and gusto that today it is rare to find gumbos cooked without a roux.

You state that when you and your five brothers were “living the gumbo life” in Louisiana in the late 1950s, gumbo was pretty much “a Cajun and Creole secret, a peasant dish.” Tell us about gumbo’s rise in popularity around the world.

When I left the bayous for graduate school in Missouri in 1975, nobody there had a clue what gumbo was. Two things–the breakout of Cajun/Zydeco music to a national and world stage and the post-’70s boom in Louisiana tourism–began to change that. The music fueled an interest in the culture that produced it and, hence, the food that nourished it. Gumbo is…the only truly indigenous regional cuisine in all of America; not just a dish but a style and a way of cooking.

Ken Wells

Gumbo has traveled in part because of what I call the Cajun Obligation. My momma not only taught me to cook gumbo, but taught me that if you cook gumbo, you are required to share the love.

As a journalist, I’ve traveled over much of the world. I’ve cooked gumbo for friends in London; Sydney, Australia; and Cape Town, South Africa. The reviews are always the same: “How can anything be this good? Can you show me how to cook it?” I came to realize I was only the vessel stirring the roux. It’s what I call the Gumbo Effect: the dish itself. Gumbo, if you just stick to the plan with love and attention, transforms itself into food magic.

Gumbo Life is a deeply personal family story about growing up in a rural Louisiana setting where food and family were paramount. Living in points around the world since then (and Chicago now), and looking back, is it almost hard to believe how different life was for you then, compared to now?

I feel blessed. When we moved to our little farm on the banks of Bayou Black in 1957, I felt the place was happily stranded in the previous century. My dad worked for a large sugarcane-farming operation that still kept a mule lot–not entirely trusting all the plowing to tractors. My brothers and I learned to swim in the bayou. We got our water from a cypress cistern. The sugar company owned thousands of acres of marshland, fields, and woodlands that we were free to roam, hunt, trap, and fish. My brothers and I were in the 4-H Club and raised chickens and pigs that we entered in the annual 4-H Club fair–and harvested for the pot.

Food was central. My mom cooked Cajun–not just gumbo but dishes such as sauce piquant and court-bouillon with ingredients like snapping turtle and redfish that we harvested ourselves. We ate well! We grew a huge garden. I don’t think I set foot in a supermarket until I was 12 or 13 years old. That’s because there weren’t any near-by.

You book is also a history of one of Louisiana’s greatest cultural and culinary offerings to the world, along with glimpses of current gumbo tales that emphasize its adaptability–not to mention that you’ve included a glossary of regional and culinary terms, a map of the Gumbo Belt and 10 recipes! What did it mean to you personally to write this “culinary memoir”?

I obviously love my gumbo and I felt a deep exploration of its roots and iterations was a good way to tell the wider story of our singular, food-centric culture. I say “our” even though I have not lived in the Gumbo Belt since 1975, my journalism career having compelled me to living in big cities far away. I think that living away has helped me see my roots in a way that I might not have seen them had I stayed.

I have two grown daughters who, now in their 30s, love Dad’s gumbo as much as I loved my mother’s. But their childhoods could not have been more different than mine. We moved among cosmopolitan cities, lived abroad, traveled widely. They will never lead the gumbo life as I lived it and so in a way my book was written for them–to remind them of their connections to a place where our roots run so deep.

Ken Wells will be at Lemuria on Wednesday, March 13, at 5:00 to sign copies of and discuss Gumbo Life. Lemuria has chosen Gumbo Life as its March 2019 selection for its First Editions Club for Nonfiction.

Author Q & A with Hank Burdine

By Guest Author

On January 20, 2019

In Southern Culture

Interview by Jana Hoops. Special to the Clarion-Ledger Sunday print edition (January 20)

A Greenville native who strayed from his beloved Mississippi Delta to do a “walkabout” with his family in Colorado and Florida for a while, Hank Burdine has said since his return that he “really doesn’t care” if he “ever leaves the state lines of Mississippi again.”

The gentleman farmer, road builder, and author, who has gained a reputation as “the historian of the Delta,” has bestowed upon his fellow Deltans–and the rest of the world–a gift of memories and stories that may otherwise have been lost, with his newest book, Dust in the Road: Recollections of a Delta Boy (Coopwood Publishing Group).

The compilation of 60 essays about the people, places, foods, and culture of this enigmatic Mississippi region was gleaned from columns Burdine has contributed to issues of Delta Magazine since its beginning in 2003.

He has authored Mississippi Delta, The Flood of 2011 and was a contributor to The Delta: Landscapes, Legends, and Legacies of Mississippi’s Most Storied Region. He also co-authored, with Melody Golding, Panther Tract: Wild Boar Hunting in the Mississippi Delta.

Hank Burdine

Today Burdine lives on his farm in Chatham (near Greenville), where he hunts, writes, keeps an eye out for good stories, and, as author Richard Grant (Dispatches from Pluto) put it in his epilogue to Dust in the Road, is said to be “good at solving problems” for friends and neighbors.

And, as wild as some of his tales may seem, he emphasizes their authenticity.
“Many times,” Burdine said, “I have heard others say, ‘How do y’all make those stories up?’ Well, we don’t make them up, these things actually happened and are real!”

Below he discusses his book and his love for his home–the Mississippi Delta.

Tell me about your new book Dust in the Road: Recollections of a Delta Boy, and the stories you reveal in it.

I first started writing for Delta Magazine after I read the very first copy with Lee and Pup McCarty on the cover. While living in Florida, I contacted Delta Magazine and submitted a Final Word column titled ‘Mississippi will always be home.” Senior editor Melissa Townsend asked me to write an article and … it was published. The next month she contacted me and said, “Okay, what do you have for us this issue?” And, it has been like that ever since for over 68 articles.

Realizing that there was a book there of these articles, I decided to sort them out. The book just kind of fell into place. It has been such a great honor and pleasure to think of these stories, research and interview and “Dig up bones.” These stories are out there, and they just need to be pulled out and compiled and written down for posterity; if not, they will be lost forever.

The essays in your book recount much of the Delta’s past. Tell me about your research for information about those historical tales.

My research begins when an idea of a story or person comes to mind through conversation or just happenstance. Then I start calling friends and (checking out) newspapers, libraries and the internet, putting together a stack of papers from which to read and highlight until I sit down and start writing. It takes me most of a day to write an article and then another day to critique and edit what was written.

I have had some good editors at Delta Magazine to bounce off ideas. Of course, it’s a group effort, but I have been given the freedom to choose what I want to write about. It’s fun but it is damned hard work also.

The book is filled with stories of some of the region’s well-known artists, writers, musicians, and “indomitable characters.” Can you name a few among these whom you have personally known and who you believe have been particularly influential to the Delta’s culture?

The Elder Statesman of the Blues, Sam Chatmon, who “Gave Dignity to the Blues” was a dear friend of mine as was Son Thomas, Muriel Wilkins, the indomitable Duff Durrough, Eden Brent, and Jimmy Phillips. These bluesmen and blues women had a tremendous impact on the musical history and mystique of the Delta.

Literary greats Hodding Carter, Bern Keating, Julia Reed, Beverly Lowry, and Richard Grant were and are great and loving friends. Characters like Larry Pryor, Silky Sullivan, Joe Call, Hot Moore, John Ruskey and Bubba Tollison were all good friends and had an impact on my life and the stories I tell. Dinty Moore, the Doe Signa family, Anthony Herrera, Bill Beckwith and Leon Koury all were or are deep and dear friends.

What an honor it is to write for posterity the stories and lives of friends. And to be able to chronicle my son Matt’s personal odyssey on a solo canoe trip from the headwaters of the Mississippi to the Gulf of Mexico–wow!

Dust in the Road includes nine essays about the Delta’s unique cuisine in its section called “A Bite to Eat and Drink in the Delta.” Why was it important to include Delta food in this collection?

The deep influence of Delta inhabitants such as the Italians, Chinese, Lebanese and restaurants like Lillo’s, Lusco’s and Doe’s, How Joy, The Shady Nook, Abe’s, Josephine’s, and the Rest Haven are indelible in the Delta’s history. And now, newer places such as Dino’s, Vito’s, The Blue Biscuit, and The Onward Store have joined the charge. Stewart Robinson has started a pop-up fine dining experience in unusual places, bringing in award winning chefs from across the country. And Delta Supper Club is the place to be on given dates!

Ecotourism is now alive and well and pushing places like Clarksdale, Cleveland, Indianola and now Greenville to new and expanding plateaus. The Shackup Inn in Clarksdale and Tallahatchie Flats in Greenwood bulge at the seams with international travelers wanting to come to the Delta and experience the Blues.
With venues like the B. B. King Museum, The Grammy, Dockery Farms, Sky Lake, Blues museums and the Hot Tamale Festival, people are coming from far away to experience the Delta and to see first hand what the mystique is all about. The Delta is hot!

Tell me about how you became a storyteller.

If the Delta is anything, it is a place of stories. Those stories you heard as a child, to be embellished as you grow up and learn more about the people within them. And it is stories about the things you do that make an impact on families and friends.

If you don’t retell them, they are lost, and I have been honored to be able to write some of these stories down for future generations to enjoy and use as a reference later on. There was a lot of blood and sweat and tears and joy, triumphs and tragedies that brought this God-forsaken swamp into what it is today, and that does not need to be forgotten.

Signed copies of Dust in the Road are available at Lemuria’s online store.

Category: Southern Culture (Page 2 of 16)

Author Q & A with Margerita Jurkovic

Roger Stolle’s ‘Mississippi Juke Joint Confidential’ goes straight to the source of blues music

Finally art, life of Mississippi’s Dusti Bongé celebrated in lushly illustrated biography

‘Life Between the Levees’ unleashes powerful legacy of American river commerce

Author Q & A with Michael Ford

Wisdom of southern womanhood in Helen Ellis’s ‘Southern Lady Code’ sparkles with humor, savvy, sound advice

Author Q & A with James T. Campbell and Elaine Owens

Author Q & A with Helen Ellis

Author Q & A with Ken Wells

Author Q & A with Hank Burdine

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