Mississippi books – Page 2

Tag: Mississippi books (Page 2 of 6)

Author Q & A with Will Jacks

On October 6, 2019

Interview by Jana Hoops. Special to the Clarion-Ledger Sunday print edition (October 6)

Mississippi Delta photographer and documentarian Will Jacks celebrates the life and times of the late Willie Seaberry, owner of Po’ Monkey’s blues house in Merigold for more than 50 years, in Po’ Monkey’s: Portrait of a Juke Joint (University Press of Mississippi).

Jacks extols the history of the night club that closed with Seaberry’s death in 2016, while pondering the future of the deteriorating hand-built tenant house that was once a blues hot spot.

With more than 70 black-and-white photos and an introduction by award-winning writer Boyce Upholt, Jacks highlights the cultural significance and the need to honor it with a historical record.

Among his many talents and skills, Jacks is also a curator and storyteller, and he teaches photography and documentary classes at Delta State University.

What was it about Po’ Monkey’s juke joint in Merigold that made it such a must-see stop for Blues-loving tourists and locals?

Willie Seaberry

It was Willie Seaberry. The locals definitely came over the years because of him and the welcoming environment he created. And then the locals became the glue that made Po’ Monkey’s different from almost every other space frequented by blues tourists. The mix of tourists and locals created an amazing atmosphere of sharing, and when that atmosphere was combined with the visual drama of the structure and its location in the middle of a farm, well, there was a perfect recipe for an incredibly unique experience–and a good time.

You say in the book that Willie Seaberry knew you (a regular at this establishment for a decade), but you don’t think he knew your name. Tell me about your relationship with him.

Will Jacks

Willie was never great with names, but he had an ability to hide that and make everyone feel as if he were their best friend. I saw him do this over and over and over again. Someone would enter the club–usually a tourist that made yearly trips to the Delta–and give him a warm greeting as if they were family. Willie would reciprocate, and the guest would feel as if it was just a matter of time before Willie came to visit at their home. It wasn’t that Willie was disingenuous–he loved sharing a good time with his guests–it’s just that so many people came in and out of his life that it must have been impossible for him to keep track of all those names and faces.

I was no different. Even though I visited most Thursday nights, I didn’t see Willie as regularly outside of that environment as his closest friends and family. So, I doubt he ever knew my name. I don’t recall a single time that he called me by it, but I could tell from our interactions over the years that he knew who I was. He just didn’t know my name.

He would often ask me to bring him posters I’d made. He liked the portraits I’d used for them. So, I would, and he would give them away and sometimes sell them. He gave me photo books that others had given him over the years. He didn’t much care for them but knew I would. So, he shared them with me. He liked to tease me the way a favorite uncle does. He sometimes would vent to me. He would buy me beer and let me into the club for free. I drove his truck a few times to run errands for him (and for me). I spoke at his funeral.

But we were never best friends. To insinuate that on my part would be disingenuous. I was still one of the many photographers and filmmakers that asked for his time. That was always the crux of our relationship. It just happened that I was the one documentarian that was out there the most, and the one who lived just a few miles away. Because of this, we would see each other outside the confines of his weekly party, and that helped our relationship go further than subject/photographer but not as far as close friend and family.

In what state of repair is Po’ Monkey’s at this time, and what, if any, plans are taking shape for its future?

The structure is still standing, but it’s seeing some decline due to lack of use. The exterior signs have been removed as they were sold at auction last year along with many of his belongings and interior decor.

As for future plans, that’s not my decision to make. There are others in charge of those decisions, and solutions are complicated for a myriad of reasons. I am in touch with many of those stakeholders, but it’s not my place to share whatever plans are being considered, and even then, I don’t know what all is being specifically discussed.

I can say, though, with confidence that all involved are concerned primarily with appropriately honoring what Willie Seaberry built. That seems simple enough on the surface, but when you dig into the specifics it’s much more challenging. Cultural preservation is a tricky thing. I feel certain that something will happen to honor Willie. As to what that is, we’ll all just have to be patient and trusting to until that answer emerges. And perhaps even more so, we will all need to be ready to pitch in to help when and if that time presents itself, as the best preservation is one that is led by community.

Tell me about the images in your “Portrait of a Juke Joint,” and the way you decided to present them in this book–black and white, with no identifications of people or their behaviors in the shots. Over what period were they taken, and how long did it take to produce this book?

I chose black and white specifically because I wanted the people to be the focus–I didn’t want the viewer becoming overly seduced by the colorful space. The structure was compelling, yes, but it was the people, and specifically the locals, that made it magical.

There are to titles because I didn’t want anything to lead the viewer as they look through the photos. I want the viewer to have room to imagine what has occurred before and after the image they are pondering. Sometimes with captions, the words create too much context. I felt there was enough context already in the photos, and anything more would risk the work becoming didactic, which I hope to avoid.

Ultimately, what do you hope to accomplish through this book?

I hope to show that Po’ Monkey’s was a complex place that was more than just a tourist spot. It was crafted from a complex history and became significant both despite that history and because of it.

We will never see another Po’ Monkey’s again, but we will see spaces all around us that become culturally significant without intending to be. Knowing that this is the case, how can we as communities do better jobs of recognizing and supporting those people, moments, and places?

I hope this book will help us as a state, and in particular those in positions of power, consider what we’ve done well but also, and perhaps more important, what we haven’t done well as we have consciously crafted an economy built around a very complex and often painful history.

I hope this book will help give a deeper understanding to just how difficult historic preservation can be.

And finally, I hope this book will help us ask the right questions so we can get to the right answers as to how we can share with future generations the lessons taught by Willie Seaberry.

Will Jacks will be at Lemuria on Tuesday, October 22, at 5:00 to sign and discuss Po’ Monkey’s: Portrait of a Juke Joint.

Author Q & A with Neil White (Stories from 125 of Ole Miss Football)

By Guest Author

On September 29, 2019

In Southern Culture, Sports

Interview by Jana Hoops. Special to the Clarion-Ledger Sunday print edition (September 29)

If you thought you knew everything about Ole Miss football–you probably didn’t.

If you want to know everything about Ole Miss football, though, there’s a new resource that pretty much covers it all.

From the colorful to the unbelievable, the anguish to the exhilaration, Neil White’s new release Stories From 125 Years of Ole Miss Football (Nautilus) is filled with stories you’ve probably never heard and photos you’ve probably never seen.

“To build this book,” White states in the opening pages, “our team of writers and editors interviewed more than 60 players, coaches, journalists, widows, children, and fans. “Each interview started with the same request: ‘Tell us a story that most people don’t know.’”

The result is the ultimate football lovers’ dream: not just “new” stories, but an Appendix that includes charts and graphics highlighting many “Top 10” lists, best and worst games, coaches and seasons, team lineups and more.

Contributors to the book included Rick Cleveland, Billy Watkins, Robert Khayat, Jeff Roberson, and more.

An Oxford native and current resident, White has been a newspaper editor, magazine publisher, advertising executive and federal prisoner, and may best be known for his debut book, In the Sanctuary of Outcasts. Today he operates The Nautilus Publishing Co., writes plays and essays, and teaches memoir writing.

For context, please briefly share your own Ole Miss experience. It’s obvious in your book that you are a big Rebels fan!

Neil White

I’m a third generation Ole Miss guy. I attended my first football game at age 1. I was 8 years old when Archie-mania swept the South. I attended summer football camps and got to know Warner Alford and Junie Hovious and Eddie Crawford, as well as former players. We’re not a hunting or fishing family, so Ole Miss football games were what we did together. My father took me to games; I took my son to games. We still have tickets together.

As Stories from 125 Years of Ole Miss Football marks a milestone year of Rebel football, it is unique in that the entire book is filled with stories that required one main criteria: “Tell us a story that most people don’t know.” The result is a volume filled with secrets and little-known facts that, for most readers, will be brand new information! Tell me briefly about how you assembled the team of storytellers and editors that put this book together, and how they made it work.

As we interviewed the obvious contributors – Robert Khayat, Archie Manning, Jake Gibbs, Jesse Mitchell, Deuce McAllister and Perian Conerly–they would say, “You need to talk to . . . Dan Jordan, or Skipper Jernigan, or Billy Ray Adams.” So, the early interviewees knew who had the great untold stories. Picking the editors was much easier. Rick Cleveland, Billy Watkins, Chuck Rounsaville, Jeff Roberson, Don Whitten, and Langston Rogers could each write stories to fill five volumes.
The book took about a year to complete.

In the book, you explain the breadth of research it took to find and verify these stories. Tell me about that process.

I spent about seven months researching in the archives at Ole Miss, reading all the books that had ever been written about Ole Miss football, and researching hundreds of old newspaper reports. Then, we spent about five months interviewing individuals. Memory is subjective, at best. Sometimes we had conflicting stories. As we dug deeper, we almost always found some way to corroborate the story–or disprove it.

For example, most people assume – because it has been mis-reported for 67 years – that Bud Slay caught the lone touchdown pass in the 1952 Maryland upset. That game put Ole Miss on the national football map; Maryland had a 21-game win streak and the number one defense in the nation. Ray “Buck” Howell actually caught the pass from All-American Jimmy Lear, but the day after the game an AP report listed the name as “Bud Howell”–a combination of the two receivers. As it turns out, Ray “Buck” Howell is alive and well and living in Jackson. He’s such a humble, nice man. He says, “Now, I don’t want this to be about me”–then he pauses and smiles–“but I did catch the pass.” So, after 67 years, we get to set the record straight and give Howell the credit he deserves.

How did you choose the players and coaches whose stories you included in this book?

We included the stories from the players and coaches and their families who were the most forthcoming, and those whose stories were the most interesting, colorful, and impactful.

The early history of Ole Miss football is fascinating when compared to today’s game . . . as in, team members in the 1890s would grow their hair longer for protection, since players did not wear helmets! Who would you say should read this historical document for true fans?

Anyone who enjoys football or history or good stories. I especially like the stories that illustrate how crisis and fate lead to something, ultimately, wonderful for Ole Miss. For example, in 1943, Ole Miss didn’t have a football team. Coach Harry Mehre was charged with preparing students for war. He hired a young coach from Moss Point to train the cadets in hand-to-hand combat. That man’s name was Edward Khayat. He moved his family, including his five-year-old son Robert, to Oxford. They lived in faculty house #1. It was the first time the Khayats, who had been a Millsaps family, were affiliated with Ole Miss. That odd year, without a football team, changed the course of history for the university.

Is it your hope that, at some point years from now, someone else will pick up the tradition and continue the story?

Absolutely. If someone can use this book as a foundation for a 150-year project, wonderful. I read every book previously published on Ole Miss football. They were invaluable. I hope this one will be a part of that growing history.

Signed copies of Stories from 125 Years of Ole Miss Football are available at Lemuria and at our online store.

Susan T. Falck’s ‘Remembering Dixie’ raises questions about historical memory

By Guest Author

On September 23, 2019

In Civil Rights, Civil War, Southern Culture, Southern History

By Jay Wiener. Special to the Clarion-Ledger Sunday print edition (September 1)

Reverberations remain from decades during which Southerners acted as if the Civil War was not concluded with the Confederacy losing. The narrative evolved through variations on a theme, but constant was diversion from discussion of a multiracial society.

Remembering Dixie: The Battle to Control Historical Memory in Natchez, Mississippi 1865-1941 offers opportunity to rethink the narrative. Author Susan T. Falck writes, “In crafting their historical consciousness whites emphasized the gentility of southern civilization, the valor of Confederate soldiers, and the courage of female and elderly male civilians who heroically protected the home front. The memory… was selective, with little room for black experiences told from a black perspective.”

Experiences during enslavement of people of color of mixed blood and in the free black community, and hierarchies arising through differences, were overlooked by “… white Civil War memoirists who subscribed to the notion that the South was tragically victimized during the war and Reconstruction.” Fixation upon the Lost Cause crippled the South—and the country—because it begat orthodoxy as rigid as Stalinism, stopping expansive inquiries:

What other possibilities exist?
What options offer optimal outcome?
Why ignore them?

One-dimensional defense of the slavocracy—as a paradise lost—prohibited white Southerners from full appreciation of how emancipation felt for former slaves, the experience during Redemption, at which time freedoms were revoked, and the dehumanization which ensued. Remembering Dixie yields insights.

Chapter Four addresses lacunae through discussion of photography in Natchez. That examination alone justifies buying the book, in the manner that one purchases magazines without reading everything. Art History classes are likely to utilize it. Anyone interested in photography ought to consider it, given profound perspective into the “thousand words” that a picture is supposedly worth.

The author writes, “[Henry] Norman’s photographs empowered his black subjects to directly challenge the rampage of racist cartoons, jokes, articles, and pictures circulating in the pages of newspapers and consumer periodicals nationwide. As symbols of personal and collective empowerment, Norman’s portraits contested characterizations of blacks as innately inferior, simplistic, and unworthy of respect or civil rights.”

Chapter Five is no less essential. “The creators of the Pilgrimage repackaged the dramatization of a mix of decades-old southern racialized ideology and white historical memory initiated in the early postbellum period as a product for Depression-era consumption.” Slavocracy was sold as an idyll, superior to the dislocations of the Great Depression and industrialization. “Out of the more practical features of the North we may have obtained our economic status, but it is to the South that we turn for the music and romance of our yesteryears.”

Otherwise put, “… the Pilgrimage invited 1930s audiences to step inside the world of Scarlett O’Hara and Rhett Butler and experience vicariously a carefully reconstructed mythical past.”

The advertising slogan “Come to Natchez Where the Old South Still Lives” coined by “George Healy, Jr., formerly of Natchez and an Editor of the New Orleans Times-Picayune…” encapsulates the anodyne delusion.

Interestingly the women spearheading the Pilgrimage exemplified anything other than Healy’s antediluvian approach: Although they inhabited traditional femininity, they were thoroughly modern, shrewd and calculating businesswomen.

Sound business judgment ultimately created “a profound civic commitment shared by many in the community—whites and blacks—to promote and tell a more inclusive and accurate historical narrative.”

As Natchez has done so, utilizing the Historic Natchez Foundation, the Natchez Courthouse Records Project, and the National Park Service, it has instructed communities, elsewhere, struggling through challenges: “… [T]hanks to the coupling of strong and wise external and homegrown influences the healing of Natchez’s past is well underway, resulting in a flurry of innovative heritage tourism developments that while not always embracing a critically accurate narrative are more racially inclusive and historically accurate than ever before.”

Jay Wiener is a Jackson attorney.

Susan T. Falck will be at Lemuria on Wednesday, September 25, at 5:00 p.m. to sign and discuss Remembering Dixie.

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.

Ace Atkins’ latest Quinn Colson novel, ‘The Shameless,’ uncovers mystery decades old

By Guest Author

On July 23, 2019

In Mystery, Southern Fiction

By J.C. Patterson. Special to the Clarion-Ledger Sunday print edition (July 14)

It’s hard to believe that Ace Atkins’ acclaimed Ranger series has logged book number nine with The Shameless. Summer has officially arrived for a trip to north Mississippi and the heroics of Quinn Colson and his sometime accomplice Lillie Virgil. It’s like watching a John Ford movie with a twist of Faulkner.
Atkins’ fictional Tibbehah County, Mississippi is a magnet for greed, corruption, racism, and dirty deals radiating from the coast to the capitol to the North Mississippi hills.

Retired Army Ranger and reluctant sheriff Quinn Colson is up to his neck in drug and human trafficking, stolen goods and prostitution, run by a criminal Syndicate on the Gulf Coast. At the forefront is truck stop madam Fannie Hathcock, a notorious redhead with very little scruples. Politically speaking, Senator Jimmy Vardaman has his eyes on the governor’s mansion. The Syndicate has Vardaman and his creepy Watchmen bodyguards in their pocket. If Vardaman wins the governor’s race, the Syndicate will rule the state. Add in self-righteous county supervisor Old Man Skinner and his attempt to resurrect a sixty foot cross and you have a typical day in Tibbehah County.

Two young women have recently come to town looking for answers to a twenty year old mystery. In 1997, missing teen Brandon Taylor was found in the Big Woods after a long and arduous search. His death by shotgun was ruled a suicide, but Tashi Coleman and her friend Jessica think otherwise. Summoned to Mississippi by Brandon’s family, the New York duo run a podcast called Thin Air. Throughout the novel, Tashi conducts interviews with local townfolk defaming those involved and implicating those who may not have been, including Sheriff Quinn.

Tashi and Jessica uncover past history on Quinn that has only been hinted in previous novels; his rebellious youth and arrests that former sheriff and Quinn’s uncle Hamp swept under the carpet. Could these discoveries keep Quinn from getting re-elected?

On the Colson family front, Quinn’s sister Caddie is seeing a rich Jackson socialite who’s contributing to her ministry, The River. But are his intentions less than honorable? Quinn’s best friend Boom, seriously injured in last year’s The Sinners, has fallen back on the bottle while trying to heal. And now it’s uncovered that Quinn’s new wife Maggie has ties to the possibly murdered Brandon from twenty years back.

A daring jailhouse break-in silences a prisoner who has ties to the Syndicate. U.S. Marshall Lillie Virgil returns to her old stomping grounds to help Quinn track down the killers. And not a moment too soon. There’s a contract out on Quinn. Vardaman and the Syndicate want the true grit sheriff out of the picture for good.
Atkins takes the reader from political speeches at the Neshoba County Fair to seedy Memphis bars and even a hearty breakfast at The Fillin’ Station in the tiny town of Jericho. The Shameless is rife with corrupt politicians, God-fearing sinners, pole dancers, Native American hitmen, Elvis-lovin’ mamas, snoopy podcasters and a twenty year old mystery that just won’t die.

The last thirty pages of The Shameless will leave you breathless when Quinn answers a call from hell. Not since his service in Afghanistan has The Ranger been up against such bloody odds. Pull out your political fans and buckle up. It’s a fight to the finish between good and Old South evil. The longest of the Quinn Colson series, The Shameless is 446 pages of raunchy redneck misbehavin’. And one of Ace Atkins’ best works by far.

JC Patterson is the author of the “Big Easy Dreamin’” series.

Author Q & A with Mary Miller

By Guest Author

On May 12, 2019

In Southern Fiction

Interview by Jana Hoops. Special to the Clarion-Ledger Sunday print edition (May 12)

Oxford’s Mary Miller highlights a Mississippi coastal town with a thoughtful tale of a middle-aged man facing an uncertain and lonely future–until he adopts a dog on a whim and one thing leads to another.

Her new novel, Biloxi, focuses with compassion, humor and hope on Louis McDonald, Jr., a man who has made his share of mistakes and truly needs a fresh start. The plot is part unconventional, part relatable–and all-around encouraging.
Miller also authored two short story collections, Big World and Always Happy Hour, and her debut novel, The Last Days of California. She is a graduate of the Michener Center for Writers at the University of Texas and a former John and Renée Grisham Writer-in-Residence at Ole Miss.

In brief, Biloxi is the story of a 63-year-old man, Louis McDonald, Jr., facing his share of insecurities and mistakes (most of which are of his own doing), and who finds a new lease on life when he adopts a dog. As an accomplished young woman, did you find it hard to put yourself in his place, in this story told in first person?

Mary Miller

Thank you for the compliment! Though Louis is different from me in many ways–marital status, politics, gender, age–I understand him pretty well. He’s lonely. Life hasn’t turned out as he planned. He wants to connect with people, but he’s afraid of being hurt or rejected. All of these are human experiences, and there aren’t many among us who haven’t encountered each of them at some point in our lives. In other words, Louis is “everyman,” though he’s certainly more curmudgeonly than most.

The best word to describe Louis’s life–as a man who lives alone and is recently divorced with no real friends and a daughter and granddaughter he avoids–is “boring.” How does adopting a dog begin to change that in no time flat?

You’re right. Reading about a person alone in a house with his own thoughts is boring. When writing, the best thing you can do is give your narrator someone with whom to interact. This is writing 101.

Layla, the dog, gets Louis out into the world. He has to buy her a bed and food and toys; he wants to socialize her, so he takes her to the dog park. Early on, he thinks, “I also felt a strange need to entertain her, be interesting. Lucky for her I was an interesting man.” He comes to life with Layla around, finds himself making up songs and belting them out. He tries to teach her to catch and fetch and navigate the doggy door, and though he has little success, she’s given him renewed purpose. Layla is a reason for him to get out of bed in the morning.

Louis is not only insecure, but brutally frank as he not only ruminates about his fate to himself, but, quite often, when he ventures even the most mundane comments to people he doesn’t even know. This often results in great moments of humor for the reader (even when he’s talking to the dog). Does some of this come from your own straightforward thoughts in conversations with yourself and others in everyday life

Sure, though I’m nicer and more genial than Louis. He makes people uncomfortable a lot of the time. I hope I don’t make people uncomfortable! I do have a tendency to put my foot in my mouth, though, to say the wrong thing at the wrong time. I also talk to my dog a lot, ask her questions and bounce ideas off of her. She seems to appreciate being included.

Louis has a penchant for drinking (as is mentioned every day that passes in the Biloxi story), he doesn’t sleep well, worries about his future a great deal, and has a pattern of getting himself into awkward situations, to say the least. He comes to realize that even his father didn’t seem to care much for him. Why is it so easy to find this character as likable as we do?

I’m glad you found him likeable. Louis, with all of his flaws and self-sabotaging behavior, is pretty funny. Or it’s fun for the reader to watch him get himself into absurd situations. I don’t know if he would find himself humorous, though I think he might get a chuckle out of some of his actions in retrospect, like when he’s shoving religious pamphlets down his pants or lamenting the loss of his stolen blender.

There’s a ridiculous quality to the story, like the fact that his father’s lawyer “died after a swallowed toothpick punctured his bowels.” Even when Louis is taking himself seriously–when he’s dejected or drunk or worried–the prose and storyline work to balance it out. Or that was my goal; the reader will have to decide if I achieved it.

After everything he’s gone through in the course of just a few days, it seems that Louis’s redemption does come in the end. What’s the takeaway here?

Thank you! I don’t think in terms of the takeaway. I just tried to write a book that was true to this character and his life.

Most novels follow a pretty basic formula: put your character up a tree; throw rocks at him; bring him down. Louis is up the tree when I find him, and he’s been pelted with rocks for quite a while. And I keep chucking them. Ultimately, I’m not sure how much Louis’s life has changed by the end–it’s not like there’s any sort of formal redemption. He’s repairing his relationship with his daughter and her family, however, which is a start, and he’s got Layla by his side. Like Louis, I have my dog by my side, too.

Mary Miller will be at Lemuria on Tuesday, May 21, at 5:00 p.m. to sign and discuss Biloxi. Lemuria has selected Biloxi as its May 2019 selection for its First Editions Club for Fiction.

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 Lovejoy Boteler

By Guest Author

On March 31, 2019

In Southern History, True Crime

Interview by Jana Hoops. Special to the Clarion-Ledger Sunday print edition (March 31)

Fifty years have gone by since Lovejoy Boteler, then 18, was abducted from his family’s farm near Grenada by two escaped convicts serving time at Parchman Penitentiary for murder.

In his first book, Crooked Snake: The Life and Crimes of Albert Lepard (University Press of Mississippi), Boteler chronicles his decision two decades ago to get on the road and dig into the background of his kidnapper, in a quest to find some answers about what happened on that fateful June day.

His journey resulted in more than 70 personal interviews with family members, law officers and ex-convicts who ran with Lepard, along with unearthing numerous historical records that helped piece together the story of the short and violent life of this poverty-stricken, illiterate killer.

During his 14 years of incarceration for the murder of his 74-year-old great aunt in 1959, Lepard would escape six times. Born in 1934 in rural Attala County, his life would end with a bullet in his chest 40 years later, during a smalltime robbery.

Boteler went on to finish college, have a family, and enjoy some colorful career turns (including stints as a deck hand on the Mississippi River and a rodeo hand in Colorado), along with clerking for the Mississippi Legislature and teaching construction technology and instrumental music in public schools. Today he enjoys building custom furniture.

You were kidnapped in 1968 at age 18 by Albert Lepard, an escaped convict from Parchman Penitentiary, who was serving time for murder charges. After contemplating the shock of this life-changing event for more than three decades, you finally decided to go in search of information about your kidnapper. Why at this time did you feel like you were ready to tackle this project?

Lovejoy Boteler

Actually, my wife said I should–must–write the story of my kidnapping, if for no other reason than to pass it down to our children. She has heard me tell the story to other folks at least a hundred times! So, the ‘spark was struck’ and I began remembering the events of that strange day, first through the old scrapbook my mother made of the newspaper articles, photos and the mysterious silver dollars left by the convicts in the glove box of the truck. Then through some basic archival research, one thing turned up another, and another, and ultimately, I discovered the life and crimes of the notorious prison escape artist, Lepard.

In your search for information about Lepard’s background, you found that he had grown up poor and illiterate, with an alcoholic father, and a mother he loved dearly but who died when he was only 13. Did any of this affect your feelings about him, and if so, how?

Discovering that Lepard had committed a brutal torch-murder of his elderly aunt certainly did nothing to endear him to me. In fact, it gave me an overwhelming sense of disgust, revulsion. However, as I gained a gradual understanding of his childhood circumstances–grinding poverty, physical cruelty, and crushing hopelessness–I began to feel sort of ambivalent about him, and that made me think in depth about the complexity of human nature, and specifically that of forgiveness.

Lepard broke out of Parchman Penitentiary six times during his incarceration there from 1959 to 1974. He had been charged with the spectacularly brutal murder of Mary Young. Can you tell us briefly how that came about?

Lepard and his cousin committed the ghastly murder of their great-aunt in an instance of berserk greed and near insanity. Both were captured, tried, and sentenced to life in prison at Parchman Penitentiary, and while his cousin Joe did “good time” and was paroled after 10 years, Lepard just couldn’t make himself do the time. He bolted every chance he got, and abducted me on his fifth, next-to-last, escape from Parchman.

Crooked Snake: The Life and Crimes of Albert Lepard reveals that although Lepard had a violent nature, he lived by his own code of morality that ensured he would keep his word to someone, no matter what. What examples proved this side of his nature and what do you make of that?

The Lepard relatives that I interviewed always said that he was a ‘good boy’ when he was young and stayed close to home and hearth. Obviously, his life took a downward turn as an adult, but he displayed a loyalty to those he admired, or those who showed a certain respect for him. In a robbery, he would sometimes give an unlucky victim a few dollars back, if he felt they were the ‘under-dog.’ If he stole food or clothes from other poor folks, he might leave money for them to find later. He felt honor-bound to return from one of his escapes with weapons he had promised for certain Parchman inmates. I’ve wondered if he ever heard of Robin Hood, but thought probably not, given his illiteracy.

In what ways have you carried the fear of this assault with you through the years, and did researching and writing this book help you deal with those feelings?

Truthfully, I have not carried “fear” with me since the summer of 1968. Yes, the events of my kidnapping left indelible memories of that day, and I was shaken up for a while, but remember, I was an 18-year-old boy and the possibilities of life in the future soon brought back the youthful feeling of being invincible.

Talking to the 70 extraordinary people who make up the larger portion of the book–lawmen, ex-convicts, family members, and other victims just like me–helped me bring my own story full circle and allowed me a sense of closure on an eccentric slice of history.

Signed copies of Crooked Snakes: The Life and Crimes of Albert Lepard are still available at Lemuria’s online store.

Haunting Mississippi images in Florence Mars’ ‘Mississippi Witness’

By Guest Author

On February 25, 2019

In African-American, Civil Rights, Photography, Southern History

By Jim Ewing. Special to the Clarion-Ledger Sunday print edition (February 24)

Many recall Florence Mars from her groundbreaking book Witness in Philadelphia, her personal account of the upheaval that surrounded her native Philadelphia, Mississippi, in the wake of the murder of three civil rights workers in 1964.

But perhaps little known until now with the publication of Mississippi Witness: The Photographs of Florence Mars, it’s revealed that Mars was a talented photographer, as well.

James T. Campbell, a Stanford University professor, writes in an excellent introduction to the photos that Mars only started photographing her surroundings after the landmark U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Brown v. Board of Education outlawing separate but equal schools. Mars writes that she recognized that the world in which she was living was soon to be a thing of the past and wanted to capture it on film.

The photos, curated by Elaine Owens, recently retired from the Mississippi Department of Archives and History, were mostly taken from 1954 to 1964.

Mars was not a professional photographer, though she exhibits mastery of the form in her work. Rather, she was born into relative wealth in Neshoba County, her family owning thousands of acres of land, a livestock auction, and a mercantile business in the county seat.

Like Eudora Welty, a writer who also picked up a camera and chronicled the people, places and things around her during the Depression two decades before, she applied her own knowledge and interests to her work. And, like Welty, the photos were published in definitive form only years after they were taken.

As Campbell writes, the “similarities in their circumstances and sensibilities are obvious. Single white women, they lived at once inside and outside the confines of the conservative, racist, patriarchal society. Solitary by nature, both understood the yearning for connection. Acutely observant, both saw the wonder in ordinary life, the aching beauty that survived the ugliness.”

Many of the photos are simply haunting. While most are portraits without name, background or explanation, they are environmental in that the elements of the photos tell a great deal—perhaps more than simple words can tell.

For example, one shows a young black girl facing the camera in a cotton field where the stalks tower over her. At her feet, dragged behind, is a cavernous cotton sack filled to near bursting by the bolls she has picked, perhaps weighing as much as herself. The expression on her face is at once sad and defiant, resigned, proud and beaten. It is the face of a child living the life of a hardworking adult, too young to be careworn, too old to be that of a child.

In another, a young black woman is washing clothes in a galvanized tub, her hands gnarled by the work, her face a portrait in stoicism, scrubbing out dirt.

Others include:

White jurors taking a break in the Emmett Till trial, which Mars attended. Their casual, exasperated looks don’t exactly telegraph a fair hearing.
A white performer in grinning black face entertaining lounging white farmers in overalls at the stockyard at Philadelphia.
A young black woman washing naked white children on a porch at the Neshoba County Fair, 1955. In the notes section at the end of the book, the authors relate that Mars had penciled a caption on the back of the print: “Certain things are taken to be self-evident.”

Mars, Campbell writes, stopped taking photos after the civil rights workers were killed, as “the tense atmosphere made photography difficult.” In its stead, Mars confided “writing took over from the photography in the middle of my life.”

Her Witness in Philadelphia was published in 1977. She died in 2006.

Mars’ photographs are as she intended, an enduring testament to a time in Mississippi long gone. Printed on heavy stock in a large format, they are a rare treasure.

Jim Ewing, a former writer and editor at the Clarion Ledger, is the author of seven books including his latest, Redefining Manhood: A Guide for Men and Those Who Love Them.

James T. Campbell and Elaine Owens will be at Lemuria on Wednesday, February 27, at 5:00 p.m. to sign copies of and discuss Mississippi Witness.

Tag: Mississippi books (Page 2 of 6)

Author Q & A with Will Jacks

Author Q & A with Neil White (Stories from 125 of Ole Miss Football)

Susan T. Falck’s ‘Remembering Dixie’ raises questions about historical memory

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

Ace Atkins’ latest Quinn Colson novel, ‘The Shameless,’ uncovers mystery decades old

Author Q & A with Mary Miller

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

Author Q & A with Lovejoy Boteler

Haunting Mississippi images in Florence Mars’ ‘Mississippi Witness’

Authors

Categories

Tags