University Press of Mississippi – Page 2

Tag: University Press of Mississippi (Page 2 of 5)

By Charlie Spillers. Special to the Clarion-Ledger Sunday print edition (August 4)

Early in Foreign Missions of an American Prosecutor, author John Hailman refers to himself as an “old traveler looking back on his life.” He then takes readers along on a fascinating and incredible journey.

Hailman’s fifth book gives us a world filled with adventures, romances, and intrigue he experienced during a lifetime of international travels, beginning as a university student living in France. Traveling the world later as a representative for the U.S. Justice Department, Hailman encountered criminals and conspiracies, including a plot in Ossetia, Georgia, to hijack his helicopter and kidnap him. He brings these adventures to life in this engaging and exciting book.

In 1991, the Justice Department established its own Foreign Service, a unit named Office of Overseas Prosecutorial Development and Training, known by its acronym, OPDAT, and Mississippi’s John Hailman became its top diplomat.

It’s easy to understand why he was selected for a leading international role. The U.S. Ambassador in Tunisa said it best in a letter commending Hailman: “With his excellent language skills, vast experience, and personal charm and candor, Mr. Hailman has been warmly and respectfully welcomed into Tunisian circles.” With those attributes he was well-received throughout his foreign missions. Hailman was also a skilled lawyer with a brilliant legal mind and a diplomat’s fine tact, which made him effective in promoting the rule of law. These were important missions that could influence a nation’s legal system.

Worldly and sophisticated, fluent in French, and a nationally recognized wine expert, Hailman is also a skilled writer. This passage from a mission to Switzerland is a prime example of the author’s incomparable experiences and vivid descriptions:

My own two weeks in Switzerland were probably most memorable for the several days I spent in their deliberately simple, primitive mountain dwellings in the Alps in January with Inspector Billant and his detectives, where the only heat was from wood-burning fireplaces and where we drank fine, clear, icy water from snow-melt. Those were . . . rustic retreats where we had simple but magnificent meals from local sheep, goats, and cattle: dried beef with white gravy, pots of delicious cheese fondue, and raclette with bright nights deep in the snow of the Alps.

Raclette is a national Swiss dish consisting of cheese melted over a fire and then scraped onto bread or boiled potatoes. Reading the passage, one can almost feel the chilled air, see the beautiful mountains, and taste the hearty dishes.

This book is actually a memoir in two parts, with the second describing his international missions. The first part details Hailman’s adventures and romances as a young man studying in Paris, living with a French model, visiting London with a beautiful Parsee, his colorful exploits in Algeria, tending bar on the island of Mallorca and the Greek islands, and working for Air France to entertain clients in exotic locales. It’s a life most could only dream about.

Hailman’s fluency in French was an essential element of his early and later success. As a young man he lived in Paris for two years studying at the Sorbonne. His studies may have suffered, however, because during that time he became a gigolo to wealthy Parisian women. That may have been early training in diplomacy and delicate international relations. Fortunately, he continued to pursue international relations on a different level for the Justice Department.

And happily for readers he recounts an amazing life in this well-written and captivating memoir.

Charlie Spillers is the bestselling author of Confessions of An Undercover Agent: Adventures, Close Calls and the Toll of a Double Life. and Whirlwind: A Frank Marsh Novel. His next book, Flashpoint: A Frank Marsh Novel, will be released soon. He’ll moderate the panel “Crime and the Law” at the Mississippi Book Festival.

John Hailman will appear at the Mississippi Book Festival August 17 as a participant in the “Crime and the Law” panel at 4:00 p.m. at the State Capitol Room 201 H.

Grant bio ‘Hold On with a Bulldog Grip’ makes ideal entry into storied life

By Guest Author

On July 18, 2019

In Civil War

By Timothy T. Isbell. Special to the Clarion-Ledger Sunday print edition (June 30)

The book Hold on with a Bulldog Grip: A Short Study of Ulysses S. Grant informs the reader about one of the more intriguing and larger-than-life characters of the American Civil War.

Co-authored by John F. Marszalek, David S. Nolen, Louie P. Gallo, and Frank Williams, the book is a short biography of Grant and his legacy. In a well written and concise narrative, the authors take turns telling about Grant’s early life, his college days at West Point, and his eventual military and political career.

In his memoirs, Grant expressed his desire not to be a soldier: “A military life had no charms for me, and I had not the faintest idea of staying in the army even if I should be graduated, which I did not expect.” Grant’s fellow cadets such as William Tecumseh Sherman, James Longstreet, George H. Thomas, Don Carlos Buell, and Richard Ewell played a significant role in Grant’s experience in the Mexican War and Civil War.

In the book, the Civil War years reflect on Grant’s victories at Fort Donelson, Fort Henry, Shiloh, Vicksburg, Chattanooga and his ultimate victory at Appomattox. Readers learn of Grant’s philosophy of always moving forward. Grant said, “One of my superstitions had always been when I started to go anywhere, or to do anything, not to turn back, or stop until the thing intended was accomplished.”

Such a philosophy helped Grant win Civil War battles like Shiloh, Vicksburg, and Chattanooga. Each engagement offered serious obstacles that may have forced other generals to withdraw, but Grant stayed the course.

After the first day at Shiloh, Grant’s Union army was pinned against the Tennessee River. Sherman said, “Well, Grant, we’ve had the devil’s own day, haven’t we?” Grant demonstrated his always go-forward mentality, stating “Yes, lick ’em tomorrow though.” This was exactly what Grant did as his army drove the Confederates from the field.

The Civil War period touches on relationships with Abraham Lincoln and the likes of Sherman, David Dixon Porter, and Henry Halleck.

Grant was ahead of his time where the issue of slavery and civil rights were concerned. Grant was staunch in his belief that the Civil War was because of slavery. In his memoirs, Grant said, “The cause of the great War of the Rebellion against the United States will have to be attributed to slavery.”

Grant supported the use of black soldiers in the Union Army. One of the earliest examples of former slaves fighting can be found during the Vicksburg Campaign. Grant used the 11th Louisiana Cavalry to defeat Confederates at Milliken’s Bend, Louisiana.

Grant’s magnanimous gesture to Robert E. Lee at Appomattox helped a war-torn nation to try peace after four bloody years of fighting. Such an effort along with his military record helped put Grant in the White House.

As president, Grant supported passage of the 15th Amendment which granted African American men the right to vote. Although ratified during Grant’s presidency, it took almost a century to totally enact. Southern states used poll taxes, literacy tests, and means of intimidation to keep black people from voting.

Of special note is the afterword by Mark Keenum. The relationship between Grant and Stephen D. Lee is explored. The relationship of these soldiers who fought for blue and gray, who became friends after the Civil War and their eventual relationship with Mississippi State is a nice closing for the book.

For anyone interested in Ulysses S. Grant, the man who struggled to succeed at anything prior to the Civil War, the hero who helped save the Union, president over a war-torn land and determined fighter who beat death long enough to write his memoirs, this is a book to read and enjoy.

A freelance journalist and author of four books from University Press of Mississippi, Timothy T. Isbell was a member of the 2006 Pulitzer Prize-winning Sun Herald newspaper in Biloxi. He received a National Endowment of the Arts/Knight Foundation grant for his study of Mississippi’s Vietnamese community on the Gulf Coast and he’s an inductee in the University of Southern Mississippi Mass Communications Hall of Fame.

John F. Marszalek will appear at the Mississippi Book Festival August 17 as a participant in the Civil War panel at 12:00 p.m. in the C-SPAN/Old Supreme Court Room.

‘Conversations with Gary Snyder’ reveals prophetic Zen mind rooted in North American earth

By Guest Author

On July 9, 2019

In Poetry, Zen

By Frank LaRue Owen. Special to the Clarion-Ledger Sunday print edition (July 7)

Some writers move, inspire, or entertain their readers. Other writers create movements of conscience and spark poetic consciousness in whole generations of people that follow them. Gary Snyder is of the latter feather.

In Conversations with Gary Snyder, we are offered a rare glimpse into the inner life of the Pulitzer Prize-winning poet through twenty-one interviews from different phases of his esteemed career. Like an archaeological dig that gently brushes away the dust of years to reveal the storied bones of life and culture, the masterful curation of these insightful conversations from different chapters of Snyder’s life reveals a gleaming thread of topics that aren’t just relevant to American literature, but—even five decades later in some cases—are themes that remain deeply pertinent to the times we’re living through.

Readers will find that many of the collected interviews grapple with subjects that require us to look in the mirror at who we are as a society. In this way, the book is not merely about a poet or his poems, but is, all-at-once, a cultural history, an ecological indictment, and a disturbingly visionary statement in the psychological, sociological, and futuristic sense.

Those already familiar with Gary Snyder are in for a real treat. Devotees of his poetry are no strangers to the subtle “fragrances” that hover like incense in the background of his writings. Gathered at the periphery of a Snyder poem or essay, or scampering right through the middle of one, we encounter Pacific Northwest Coast native lore, a flash of Buddhism, stirrings of deep ecological empathy, or an outright protest about the Western world’s assault on the natural world. All of these subjects, and more, rush forward on full display as major features in the interviews editor David Stephen Calonne has compiled.

From his enshrined place within early American Beat poetry (the character Japhy Ryder in Jack Kerouac’s The Dharma Bums was modeled after Snyder) to his eloquent articulation of his writing process as stemming from an obviously Zen-trained body-mind integration, what may have once been an understated personality silhouette for some readers of Snyder emerges full-force as a three-dimensional profile of an American national treasure.

In each of the interviews—ranging from sources as diverse as Newsweek, Shambhala Sun magazine, an interview at Naropa University’s Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics, and a truly fascinating dialogue from the late ’60s between philosopher Alan Watts, poet Allen Ginsberg, psychedelic proponent Timothy Leary, and Snyder—we come face to face with the mind-essence of an authentic American Zen man, who is also known to some by his dharma name Chofu (“Listen to the Wind”).

The end result can only be a singular conclusion. Snyder is of a rare breed; a veteran “psychonaut” (explorer of consciousness and the spirit of place). In this way, a refreshing portrait is offered of a searingly awake person, born in the U.S. but truly liberated from the constraints, blind spots, spiritual impediments, and cultural biases of mindless consumerism and the modern Judeo-Christian worldview.

Even more important, by the time readers of this work reach the final pages, they will receive the distilled benefits of Snyder’s lifelong journey in the form of an invitation; to be more at home in one’s own skin, to hold an allegiance to the deeper story flowing beneath our troubled national psyche, to be conscious that we all belong to a sacred reality we need desperately to remember—a planetary citizenship that thinks of humanity and nature as one extended family.

Frank LaRue Owen is a Mississippi native, an alumnus of Naropa University, and the author of three books of poetry, The School of Soft-Attention,The Temple of Warm Harmony, and the forthcoming 2020 release Stirrup of the Sun & Moon. He will be a panelist in the upcoming Mississippi Book Festival, August 17, 2019, at the Mississippi State Capitol.

From Massachusetts to Mississippi in Tammy Turner’s ‘Dick Waterman: A Life in Blues’

By Guest Author

On June 17, 2019

In Biography/Memoir, Blues, Music

By DeMatt Harkins. Special to the Clarion-Ledger Sunday print edition (May 19)

In simply stating, “anyplace they give you food through iron bars is going to be good food,” Dick Waterman encapsulates himself. Tammy L. Turner’s Dick Waterman, A Life in Blues demonstrates his belief in getting the most of life. Nothing ventured, nothing gained.

A member of the Blues Hall of Fame, Waterman managed, booked, and/or photographed essentially the entire Delta Blues revival as well as the electric blues apex of the 60s. Who else could write B.B. King’s biography, introduce unreleased Robert Johnson tracks to Eric Clapton, or receive an apology from Bill Graham? Guided by his level head and committed heart, Dick made many allies and musical history.

As a young stutterer in Massachusetts, Waterman found full expression in the written word. His Boston University journalism degree initially landed him sports and financial assignments near Greenwich Village and Cambridge. Dick bore witness to each areas’ historic folk explosion.

The heady minimalism tangentially included Delta Blues. A dialed-in segment became keenly interested in the solo acoustic blues artists of the 20s and 30s. When it came to light that certain members of the anointed may still be living, the quest was on.

Waterman supplemented his early career by freelancing music features and part-timing with the agency handling the rediscovered Rev. Gary Davis and Jesse Fuller. Based on hearsay, he backed into his life’s work.

During a Boston stint in ‘64, someone heard Bukka White say that Ma Rainey saw Son House at a Memphis movie theater recently. Contemporary of Charley Patton and Robert Johnson, Son House stood prominent among the original guard. The notion he was alive created urgency.

Eschewing foresight, Waterman, a computer programmer, a future guitarist of Canned Heat, and the eventual owner of Yazoo Records and Blue Goose Records, all jumped in a Beetle headed for Memphis.

A week roving Memphis and Tunica County produced a phone number. House’s stepdaughter in Detroit explained he’s been living in Rochester, NY for years. They got back in the car.

Upon arrival, they had no problem meeting and field-recording House. But while others in the party felt satisfied, Dick wondered what would become of him. Where’s the recognition? He used those tapes to secure a booking at that year’s Newport Folk Festival.

Equipped with this vested mindset, Waterman’s reputation among promoters and artists organically accumulated a staggering list of legendary clients and partners. They included Mississippi John Hurt, Sleepy John Estes, Mississippi Fred McDowell, Skip James, Robert Pete Williams, Little Walter, Junior Wells, Buddy Guy, Arthur Big Boy Crudup, J.B. Hutto, and Lightnin’ Hopkins.

Although some artists leaned brazen, many proved incredibly vulnerable. Dick deftly advocated for appropriate appearance fees, realistic travel schedules, and overdue royalties for decades.

When these artists traveled to Boston, they stayed at Waterman’s apartment. On one occasion, a friend arrived to visit Son House. He brought a Radcliffe student named Bonnie Raitt. When Buddy Guy and Junior Wells played support on The Rolling Stones’ 1970 European tour, Dick asked Bonnie to join him. She would never register for another semester. Their romantic relationship would evolve to a strictly professional one, and Waterman booked Raitt’s gigs through the mid-80s.

Over the years, talent rosters dwindled, and the music landscape changed. In 1984, Bill Ferris, then Director of the Center for the Study of Southern Culture at Ole Miss, invited his old friend Dick to present his photos at a brown bag lecture. They first met when Bill was in grad school at Penn.

Within two years, Waterman moved to Oxford for a fresh start and a return to his roots. He dabbled in promotion, scored a weekly column with the Oxford Eagle, pulled out his cameras for the first time in 20 years, and began marketing his classic shots. Today, Dick still calls The Velvet Ditch his home.

By interweaving primary source and narrative, Turner recounts Waterman’s incredible achievements and hilarious horror stories and, in every case, exhibiting how his conscientiousness benefited the perpetuation and documentation of American music.

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

Tammy Tuner will be at Lemuria on Saturday, June 22, at 2:00 p.m. to sign copies of Dick Waterman: A Life in Blues.

Author Q & A with Tammy L. Turner

By Guest Author

On June 16, 2019

In Biography/Memoir, Blues, Music

Interview by Jana Hoops. Special to the Clarion-Ledger Sunday print edition (June 16)

It was about a decade after music professor Tammy L. Turner met blues promoter/producer Dick Waterman in a class at Ole Miss that she came to realize “he had an important story that needed to be told,” and she has captured his extraordinary career in the memoir, Dick Waterman: A Life in the Blues (University Press of Mississippi).

Born in 1935 into an affluent Jewish family in Massachusetts, Waterman began his career in the 1950s as a journalist, honing his skills as a writer and photographer. It was his interest in the folk music of Greenwich Village and Cambridge in the 1960s that would lead him to a position as a music promoter in Boston, which eventually brought him to his “calling in life” with his pursuit of Mississippi Delta Blues artist Son House.

Waterman’s significant influence on decades of American music became evident in the careers of many big names in the music industry, in a variety of genres. Today he lives in Oxford, retired but “still busy.”

Turner resides in Kentucky, where she teaches a variety of university courses in music history. She is especially interested in 20th century music, including blues, jazz, rock, and classical music.

You hold a doctoral degree in music history from the University of Mississippi. Tell me about how you became interested in music–specifically blues music, and Dick Waterman in particular.

I had little exposure to blues music until I took Dr. Warren Steel’s African American musical traditions class at Ole Miss. It was in this class that I also met Dick. He was a guest at one of our class meetings and brought with him a number of his iconic black and white photographs from the 1960s, including a number of the early blues artists with whom he had worked.

Your research for this book is evident in the details, conversations, and interviews you reveal. How long have you known Waterman, and when did you realize his story should be published as a book?

Tammy Turner

Although I met Dick over two decades ago when he was a guest in our class, I did not have an opportunity to converse with him that day. I had classes of my own to teach and left immediately after the class ended. I graduated with my degree a couple of years later and moved away from Oxford.

As I continued my university teaching career, I eventually taught courses in both jazz and rock ‘n’ roll history. Blues music is a component in both courses, so I began to study blues more intently. I remembered Dick and his photos and, over the years, regretted missing such an excellent opportunity to talk with him about his work. In 2011, I traveled to Mississippi to do some blues research and was able to reconnect with him and we spent a delightful afternoon discussing his career.

Through a series of events, I helped arrange a photo exhibition and lecture for him in western Kentucky, where I reside. I enjoyed working with him and felt he had an important story that needed to be told. I approached him with the idea, and, after some consideration, he was amenable to the idea and granted me full access to the details of his life and his archives.

Waterman’s career in blues really began with his journey with Nick Perls and Phil Spiro into the Mississippi Delta in 1964 at the height of the Civil Rights movement to find bluesman Son House, who had faded into obscurity two decades prior. What did this lead to?

They found House, but not in Mississippi. Through contacts they made in Mississippi, they learned he was living in Rochester and drove there to meet him. In meeting House, Dick found a mission. It was in finding Son House that he found his calling and began his career in blues booking and management.

What would you say Waterman accomplished in the blues world (and other music genres)?

Dick played such a critical role in 20th century blues history. He was one of the three men who rediscovered Son House. Due to his tireless efforts, House came out of retirement for approximately 10 years and recorded an album with Columbia Records.

In June 1965, Dick founded Avalon Productions, which was the only agency at the time devoted solely to representing African American blues artists. He helped book some of the most important blues festivals of the 1960s and ‘70s, including the 1969 and 1970 Ann Arbor Blues Festivals, and he helped establish others.

He worked with several older bluesmen to reignite their careers, including Mississippi Fred McDowell, Skip James, Robert Pete Williams as well as others. He discovered a young singer/guitarist named Bonnie Raitt and assisted her career. He also convinced Buddy Guy to leave his day job as a mechanic in Chicago to pursue music as a full-time career. Musicians trusted him to handle their careers because he earned a reputation for honesty and integrity.

Waterman has left his mark on America’s musical history as a promoter and manager for artists who included many big blues names–and some of the biggest rock and other performers in the world, including James Taylor, Bruce Springsteen, and many others. What would you say drove him, and continues to drive him, to become such an important influencer in American music?

Dick inherited a tremendous work ethic from his father, who was a medical doctor. He also has a staunch sense of fairness and both a willingness and determination to advocate for others, especially those who are not in a position to advocate for themselves. It was never his goal to become famous, but to protect the older blues artists from exploitation, to demand competitive compensation for their work, and fight for royalties that some of them were being denied.

Today, Waterman lives in Oxford, where he moved in the mid-‘80s. What is he doing today?

Dick is retired, but still active. After a few decades away from photography, he returned to photographing musicians in the 1990s. In 2003 he published a book of his most iconic works titled Between Midnight and Day: The Last Unpublished Blues Archives and in 2006 wrote the text for The B.B. King Treasures book. He sells his photos, both new and old, at his website dickwaterman.com. He still receives requests for photo exhibitions/lectures and as a guest speaker discussing his work in the blues at various events and classes.

Tammy Tuner will be at Lemuria on Saturday, June 22, at 2:00 p.m. to sign copies of Dick Waterman: A Life in Blues.

‘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 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 Shelby Harriel

By Guest Author

On April 14, 2019

In Civil War, Southern History, War, Women's Studies

Interview by Jana Hoops. Special to the Clarion-Ledger Sunday print edition (April 14)

Shelby Harriel fell in love with history at a young age when she was shocked to find out that her own state had left its country in order to start a new one.

That curiosity eventually led to published research in newspapers, magazine, website, and blogs about the role of women in the Civil War.

Her new book, Behind the Rifle: Women Soldiers in Civil War Mississippi (University Press of Mississippi) encompasses much of that information, with an emphasis on women’s motivation to secretly join the military and fight, the hard work they put in alongside the men in their units, and the roads they paved for a future for women in the military.

By day, Harriel may be found at Pearl River Community College in Poplarville–teaching . . . math!

Please tell me about your long interest in history–and specifically, the Civil War and women who fought in the Civil War. Do you have an approximate number or percentage on the fighting force that were women?

Shelby Harriel

I became interested in the Civil War in elementary school when we were first introduced to the subject in our Mississippi History class. I was absolutely fascinated to learn that my state had left the United States and formed a whole new country. I had to find out more. Eventually, my studies led me to participate in reenacting, but I just couldn’t find my niche. As an athlete my entire life … sitting on the sidelines in a hoop skirt never appealed to me. I was more interested in learning about the experiences of the common soldier.

One day, (someone) remarked that there were women who served as soldiers. Suddenly, I found a whole new exciting realm to direct my interest and research. That was in the late 1990s when researchers began to take a fresh new look at women soldiers, and books were published. So, I had all this new exciting material to consume. The more I read, the more questions I had. This naturally led to me examining primary sources myself. Soon, I had accumulated a great deal of new research that I felt needed a broader audience.

We will never know how many women served as soldiers during the Civil War because they were hidden behind male disguises. Estimates range from the hundreds to the thousands. When you consider that millions of men fought, this number is insignificant. There weren’t that many of them.

What motivated women–some as young as 16–to risk the dangers and hardships of war by secretly enlisting in the military and fighting in the Civil War, disguised as men–and how did they get through the physical exams that allowed them to pass as men?

In some cases, it was the same motivational factors that led men to enlist that also prompted women to join the ranks: patriotism, adventure, and economic opportunities. There weren’t many well-paying, respectable jobs available for women then. But when they disguised themselves as men, they could double or triple their income in a variety of jobs previously closed to them. This afforded them a more independent lifestyle they would not have been able to enjoy in traditional feminine roles. Women also enlisted to avoid separation from male loved ones who went off to war. Other women joined to escape these male family members. Vengeance for a fallen loved one led some women to enlist–or attempt to.

Military regulations called for a soldier to strip for a medical exam upon entering the service. However, pressure to fill depleting ranks or incompetency resulted in cursory examinations where, in some cases, all surgeons did was to ensure that a recruit had a working trigger finger and two good teeth to tear the paper cartridge that held the ammunition. There are quite a few accounts of soldiers testifying that all they had to do was to show their hands and teeth. Some women even had men take the exam for them. So it was actually not terribly difficult for a woman to get past the examination. There are accounts, however, of thorough examining surgeons discovering women trying to sneak into the ranks.

You point out several times in your book Behind the Rifle that pursuing research into the stories and even the names of women who fought in the Civil War is difficult. Could you explain why this was, and do you plan to continue your efforts to identify these women and tell their stories?

At the time, women could not serve in the military, so if a woman wanted to join the army, she had to disguise herself as a man. She cut her hair, put on male clothing, and assumed a male alias. It was actually not that difficult because they did not have forms of identification, but it was a risky venture. Back then, it was not only illegal but also socially unacceptable for a woman to even wear pants. If caught, she served jail time and/or paid a fine. Clothing defined the genders, and anybody caught crossing those lines brought shame upon themselves and their families.

If these women were caught, they often told newspaper reporters wrong information about themselves–including their own feminine name–so this information would not get back home to their families. Sometimes, writers would afford women privacy by not reporting their name, or by assigning them another alias. There is also evidence that the military may have expunged the records of women soldiers. There are instances where male soldiers were court martialed when women soldiers were discovered in their units. Therefore, it is not surprising that many people didn’t want these stories told–making it excruciatingly difficult for those who do want to tell them.

Yes, I plan to continue researching women soldiers because I think there is more to learn. All it takes is the discovery of one soldier’s letter or diary entry, or one newspaper article to provide a missing piece of the puzzle-such as a correct name–that will either bring that woman’s story to fruition or debunk it.

I plan to include new research in a second book on women soldiers. It will have a broader focus that will encompass all women soldiers of the Civil War, not just those with Mississippi connections.

All in all, what would you say these women, who fought on both sides, contributed to the war effort–and why do we need to know about them?

As mentioned earlier, they were statistically irrelevant. Their presence on the battlefield didn’t change the course of an engagement or the war. They weren’t there promoting social change. They weren’t feminists fighting for women’s rights. These women were simply uncommon soldiers experiencing the common trials of war alongside men. They performed the same duties as men, endured the same hardships. They suffered debilitating wounds. They sacrificed their lives for causes that men shared. And we should honor them all the same. These women soldiers helped pave the way for women to serve in our current military.

Shelby Harriel will be at Lemuria on Saturday, May 4, at 2:00 p.m. to sign and discuss Behind the Rifle: Women Soldiers in Civil War Mississippi.

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.

James Meredith’s ‘Three Years in Mississippi’ receives a much needed reprint

By Guest Author

On March 20, 2019

In Civil Rights, Southern History

By Gregg Mayer. Special to the Clarion Ledger Sunday print edition (March 17)

Few individuals in Mississippi’s modern history are as emboldened, important and inscrutable as James Meredith.

Famous for integrating the University of Mississippi in 1962, Meredith has been a challenging and criticizing voice in the Civil Rights Movement in Mississippi ever since. In some ways, Meredith started it all in his home state, and he documented that struggle in his first book Three Years in Mississippi (UPM, $30), a 336-page memoir that this year received a much-needed reprint by the University Press of Mississippi.

Originally published in 1966, Three Years in Mississippi takes readers back into Meredith’s own raw words shortly after he had returned to his home state in 1960 having spent ten years away.

“To understand the events that occurred during my three years in Mississippi, one must always remember that I returned to my home state to fight a war,” he writes. Throughout his first-person account, Meredith refers to himself as if a soldier in battle.

Meredith chronicles the events in diary-like fashion, using bold headings–such as Provoking the Attention of the Police, The All-Night Session, The Question of My Security–about what he saw, who was with him, and the attitudes and culture he was trying to change.

The centerpiece is Meredith’s denial of admission and eventual lawsuit against Ole Miss, a suit that was nearly ten years after the U.S. Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education, which had ended public school segregation.
In leading up to the legal challenge, Meredith includes the complete texts of letters he wrote to Civil Rights leaders of the time, including to Thurgood Marshall, who would later sit on the U.S. Supreme Court:

“I have always been a ‘conscientious objector’ to my ‘oppressed status’ as long as I can remember,” Meredith wrote Marshall. “I am familiar with the probable difficulties involved in such a move as I am undertaking and I am fully prepared to pursue it all the way to a degree from the University of Mississippi.”

With the support of the NAACP, Meredith filed suit in federal court after his admission was denied. Long excerpts of court testimony are included in the book. The trial judge incredulously found that “[t]he evidence overwhelmingly showed that the Plaintiff was not denied admissions because of his race,” adding that race was not even considered by the University. Such hollow pronouncements were eventually reversed by the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, and Meredith was admitted to school.

On September 29, 1962, Meredith traveled to Oxford, but he writes he turned around amid reports of rioting. It wasn’t until two days later, with the smell of tear gas still in the air, that Meredith was on campus and learned the full extent of the rioting, including that two men were killed and several injured.

“Some newspapermen later asked me if I thought attending the university was worth all this death and destruction,” Meredith writes. “The question really annoyed me. Of course, I was sorry! I hadn’t wanted this to happen. I believe it could have been prevented by responsible political leadership in Mississippi.”

Enduring harassment as a daily routine, Meredith earned his political science degree from Ole Miss on August 18, 1963. Since that transformative time, Meredith has made his way down many unexpected paths, and over the years, “squandered his reputation through odd political choices, business failings, and quirky behavior,” writes University of Memphis Professor Aram Goudsouzian in a brilliantly illuminating introduction to the book that puts this touchstone event in Civil Rights history into contextual focus.

But despite whatever Meredith chose to do after his time in Oxford, the import of Three Years in Mississippi is how it powerfully records the fervent narrative of a young man who lived within a system that considered him inferior, and he pushed back against it.

Gregg Mayer is a lawyer and writer who serves as Chief Operating Officer at Mississippi Public Broadcasting. He graduated from the University of Mississippi School of Law, where he was Editor-in-Chief of the Mississippi Law Journal.

James Meredith will be at Lemuria on Saturday, April 13, in conversation with Cara Meredith and Jamar Tisby, at 2:00 p.m.

Tag: University Press of Mississippi (Page 2 of 5)

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