University Press of Mississippi – Page 3

Tag: University Press of Mississippi (Page 3 of 5)

By Charlie Spillers. Special to the Clarion-Ledger Sunday print edition (March 10)

“I don’t know how many people were kidnapped in Mississippi in 1968, but I was one of them,” writes author Lovejoy Boteler in the first sentence of the Crooked Snake: The Life and Crimes of Albert Lepard. Kidnapped at 18 by murderous escaped convicts, Boteler pens a fascinating account of the life and crimes of one of his kidnappers, Albert Lepard. In this remarkable book the author puts readers in the minds of convicts, lawmen, and dozens of victims. He takes us along on desperate escapes, intense manhunts, and lives scarred by crimes Lepard committed.

Sentenced to life in Parchman for the murder of an elderly woman, Albert Lepard escaped from prison six times in 14 years. During one of those escapes, Lepard kidnapped Lovejoy Boteler, stuck a gun in his ribs, and forced him to drive Lepard and another escaped convict from Grenada to Memphis. During the trip, young Botelor’s quick thinking averted an armed robbery and possibly another murder.

In Crooked Snake, Boteler pieces together the story of this cold-blooded murderer’s life using historical records and personal interviews with ex-convicts who ran with Lepard, family members who sheltered the fugitive during his escapes, the lawmen who hunted him, and the people he victimized.

When he conducted interviews for the book Boteler established rapport with fellow victims and elicited their chilling stories. They are bound by common horror and experiences with the same cold-blooded killer. John Nellum was ten years old when Lepard and two other escaped convicts broke into his home, tied up John, his 12-year old brother and their father, and held them for several hours. Lying face down with his hands bound, John was sure he was going to die. His heart felt like it would leap out of his chest as Lepard pressed the barrel of a rifle against the father’s head.

“I got ninety-nine years and one dark Sunday and it won’t make a damn bit of difference to me if I blow your head off right now,” Lepard declared as he placed his finger on the trigger.

Decades later, John still struggles with the memory of being tied up when he was ten. “What a crapshoot,” the author thought after interviewing John. “His psyche had been indelibly seared at the tender age of ten. At least I had been eighteen when I met Lepard.” Like 10-year old John Nellum, the then 18-year old Boteler faced pure evil and thought he was going to die during his intense encounter with Lepard.

Seventy-four year old Mary Young was not so fortunate. Lepard and Joe Edwards went to her home where they tied and blindfolded her. They pistol-whipped her and demanded she tell them where money was hidden in the house. When she refused to talk, Lepard went into a blind fury. He grabbed a claw hammer, swung it wildly and hit her in the head. They threw her on a bed, still tied and blindfolded. She was gagged but they could hear her moans. After finding money, they poured kerosene on Mary and the bed, and lit it. Lepard and Edwards walked out and coldly counted their loot while the house was consumed by flames and Mary Young burned to death.

The author was seared by his own experiences while crammed together with Lepard and another convict in the cab of a pickup truck during that long trip to Memphis. He was sure he was going to die. Lepard not only spared his life, but performed a small act of kindness when they let him go. Boteler always wondered why Lepard let him live. Through his research, the author finally uncovered the likely reason and reveals it on the last page of the book.

Joe Edwards was convicted with Lepard of the murder of Mary Young. Writing of Edwards, who became a preacher, Boteler says, “In old age, he is a man who struggles with a past he cannot change–one that holds him fast and won’t let go.” The same is true for the author who has spent a lifetime living with a terrifying experience and wondering why a murderer spared him. Readers can be thankful it inspired him to write this compelling book.

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, an international thriller. Flashpoint, the sequel to Whirlwind will be released later this year.

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.

‘Just Trying to Have School’ records how students, teachers, administrators experienced desegregation

By Guest Author

On February 18, 2019

In Civil Rights, Southern History

By Steve Yates. Special to the Clarion-Ledger Sunday print edition (February 17)

“You realize you are digging up some old bones,” Leon Johnson, one of the first black students to integrate DeKalb High School in Kemper County, told author James H. Adams.

Both James and his coauthor Natalie G. Adams could identify with this sentiment firsthand. They, too, had experienced desegregation 45 years before Johnson closed a phone call with those fitting words. James and Natalie kept digging, and the result is the sweeping history Just Trying to Have School: The Struggle for Desegregation in Mississippi.

After the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education ruling, no state fought longer or harder to preserve segregated schools than Mississippi.

“We’ll go on as always.” “It won’t affect us.” “Let them enforce it.” The authors glean these quotes that rolled in defiance from the tongues of superintendents that year in Mississippi.

This massive resistance came to a crashing halt in October 1969 when the Supreme Court ruled in Alexander v. Holmes Board of Education that “the obligation of every school district is to terminate dual school systems at once and to operate now and hereafter only unitary schools.”

Over seven years the authors interviewed more than one hundred parents, teachers, students, principals, superintendents, and school board members who did the heavy lifting in what the authors call “one of the most significant social and educational changes in the twentieth century.”

Thirty of the thirty-three Mississippi districts named in the 1969 case were ordered to open as desegregated schools after Christmas break. With little guidance from state officials and no formal training or experience in effective school desegregation processes, ordinary people were thrown into extraordinary circumstances. Before this book, their stories were largely ignored in desegregation literature.

The tasks the authors described proved arduous and complex. How were bus routes determined? Who lost their position as principal? Who was assigned—students and teachers—to what classes?

Without losing sight of the important larger forces in precipitating social change, the authors shift attention to how the daily work of “just trying to have school” helped shape the contours of desegregation in communities still living with the decisions made fifty years ago.

Natalie G. Adams is director of New College and professor of social and cultural studies in education at the University of Alabama. She is co-author of Cheerleader! An American Icon and co-editor of Geographies of Girlhood: Identities In-Between. James H. Adams is professor of instructional systems and workforce development at Mississippi State University. He has published articles in the Journal of Career and Technical Education, the International Journal of Instructional Media, the Journal of Interactive Learning Research, and the Journal of Critical Education Policy Studies.

The thorough authors provide chapters that cover almost every aspect of public-school life. There are chapters on black parents, superintendents, principals and local enforcement, teachers, sports, and extracurricular life such as dances, or the lack thereof. The authors include two telling chapters on resistance and protest and on what they call resistance through exodus in the flight of white families to private academies.

And there is an invaluable and necessary chapter on lessons learned. Was it a success? The authors hear from multiple authorities that that measure is relative to the metrics applied and the context of the narrative demanded. But this book, reliant above all on oral history, that great, leavening counternarrative, yields unforgettable quotes.

The authors cite Joy Tyner, principal at Clinton’s Northside elementary: “I love the fact that I can walk down the hall and look into any class and it looks like Mississippi.”

Steve Yates lives in Flowood and is the author of the novels The Legend of the Albino Farm, Morkan’s Quarry, and The Teeth of the Souls.

Natalie Adams will appear at the Mississippi Book Festival August 17 as a participant in the “A Spotlight on Mississippi Civil Rights” panel at 12:00 p.m. at the State Capitol Room 201 A.

Jim Harrison’s ‘Conversations’ create poetry

By Guest Author

On January 16, 2019

In Fiction, Reading

By Ellis Purdie. Special to the Clarion-Ledger Sunday print edition (January 13)

Some years ago, John Evans of Lemuria Books offered me a job, and I joined his crew as a bookseller. John proved invaluable in his knowledge of books and great writers, and he impressed upon me many authors that needed to be read, or “drank,” as he often said. One day soon after I began, John and I were working together and talking shop. At one point he turned to me, eyes full of light in his captain’s chair, and asked, “Have you read Jim Harrison?”

I admitted that I had not, and John said, “Start with ‘Legends.’” I took Legends of the Fall home with me that evening and started in on the first of the three novellas. Reading Harrison was like falling into a dream both soothing and riveting. Sentences moved with the strength and beauty of a river, and I began to notice, possibly for the first time, writing craft.

The title novella used little in the way of dialogue, and yet I heard the characters speaking to one another, saw them—as John said I would—stand up and begin moving in my world. I finished the novellas and moved on to Harrison’s essays in Just After Dark, absorbing his culinary knowledge, experiences in nature, and his disdain for greed and its toll on the wild. Harrison embodied the writer both deeply talented and deeply interesting.

I understood why John loved this author, why Harrison’s photos were pinned and taped to the store’s walls, why Harrison’s section was always well-stocked, and why he had been invited to the store numerous times. “I’m going to try to get him back. We’ll see,” John said.

Sadly, Harrison was unable to return to Lemuria during my time as a fan, and he passed away in March 2016. John once told me conversation with Harrison was always rewarding as the man had a very large brain, and it took a lot of joyful effort to keep up with such erudition over dinner. Though it is no longer possible to speak with Harrison face-to-face, his interviews collected in Conversations with Jim Harrison, the revised and updated edition, are a gift.

This volume contains some of the most artful and gratifying conversation you are likely to read. For those familiar with Harrison’s work, his answers to questions are what you would expect: humorous, dense, remarkably literary, and nonetheless relatable.

Readers yet to pick up Harrison would do well to purchase this anthology along with one of his novella or poetry collections, allowing themselves immersion in Harrison the man as they read his art.

A screenwriter, poet, and novelist, Harrison shifts comfortably from discussing director Ingmar Bergman to elaborating on the necessity of poet Federico García Lorca and novelist Gabriel García Márquez.

Certainly a consummate man of letters, Harrison was also an accomplished cook, and he talks with as much enthusiasm about quail stew as he does his love of William Blake. Read with caution on an empty stomach.

Included with his literary and culinary obsessions is Harrison’s own recounting of his life. His self-analysis is the stuff of fine autobiography. A hunter of birds and a fly-fisherman, Harrison possesses wisdom that comes only from unfettered living.

How he came to be a writer is essentially summed up in his own words: “That’s my only defense against this world: to build a sentence out of it.” However, he did more than build sentences. He constructed a deft literature of the Midwest as vital to American letters as Faulkner’s Yoknapatawpha County.

His interviews are to be drank.

Ellis Purdie is a graduate of The Center for Writers at The University of Southern Mississippi. He lives with his family in Marshall, Texas.

Timothy Isbell’s work shows the history and soul of ‘The Mississippi Gulf Coast’

By Guest Author

On November 20, 2018

In Nature, Photography, Southern Culture

By Scott Naugle. Special to the Clarion-Ledger Sunday print edition (September 16)

Writer and photographer Timothy Isbell accomplished a nearly impossible feat. In The Mississippi Gulf Coast, he showcases images of overwhelming beauty on the Mississippi Gulf Coast within the context and landscape of a region still recovering from Hurricane Katrina and the BP oil spill.

In fact, Isbell’s monumental work is a response to Katrina and the resiliency of our coastal institutions and residents. As a Pulitzer-Prize winning photographer, he chronicled the destruction of the hurricane for The Sun Herald, the Gulfport/Biloxi-based daily newspaper. Isbell explains in his introduction to the The Mississippi Gulf Coast that the work has “special meaning, as it was a therapeutic endeavor after the destruction from Hurricane Katrina.”

With The Mississippi Gulf Coast, Isbell adds to an impressive body of photographic work. His Sentinels of Stone project produced three books memorializing the monuments and scenery of Gettysburg, Vicksburg, and Shiloh and Corinth. His work also includes a photographic study of the Vietnamese people on the Mississippi coast.

The book begins with an inclusive history of the Gulf Coast noting significant events and people. Starting with the Biloxi and Pascagoula Native American tribes, Isbell recalls Bienville and D’Iberville, British rule, the War of 1812, The Native Guard, and the establishment of statehood.

Colorful and influential personalities are remembered and noted for their contributions to the economic and cultural expansion of the coast. Edward Barq is recalled for opening the Biloxi Artesian Bottling Works in 1897. By 1900, Barq was producing what we now know as Barq’s Root Beer.

More recently, he notes the establishment of legalized gaming in 1990. Isbell comments, “Casino gaming is now one of the economic engines that provides a steady nest egg for the state treasury.”

Beginning from the western part of the coast and moving east, each town from Bay St. Louis through Pascagoula is celebrated with pages of breath-taking and mesmerizing color images. The full-page photographs, the artistry of the images and the obvious talent of the photographer are what make this both an exceptional and enduring memorial to the Mississippi Gulf Coast and its residents.

In the photographic section devoted to Pass Christian, Isbell captures a bald eagle launching into flight from a bare limb. The wings are just spreading, and the beak, a bold yellow, is beautifully contrasted against the light blue sky. In studying the photograph, one feels strong, proud, and invincible.

The built environment is also highlighted in stunning profile. Gulfport’s Fishbone Alley, newly created in 2016, is photographed during a quiet evening moment. Framed in artwork created by local artists, splashed and brush-stroked on the decades-old brick walls of the buildings framing the alley, the eye is drawn the length of the space into the far-off darkness. It is night, and light bulbs strung across the walkway form a streaking comet against the black sky. Benches beckon and suggest respite for conversation. The inlaid storm drain, straight and long, suggests a track into infinity. The moment as captured by Isbell, though devoid of people, is alive, breathing, indicating activity and vibrancy.

Referring to The Mississippi Gulf Coast, Isbell commented to me several weeks ago that he “put heart and soul into the book.” It shows, through the insightful, nuanced and intensely heartfelt work of this interpreter.

Scott Naugle is a resident of Pass Christian and the co-owner of Pass Christian Books/Cat Island Coffeehouse.

Timothy Isbell will be Lemuria on Saturday, November 24, at 11:00 a.m to sign copies of The Mississippi Gulf Coast.

Author Q & A (Southern Splendor)

By Guest Author

On September 26, 2018

In Southern History

Interview by Jana Hoops. Special to the Clarion-Ledger Sunday print edition (September 23)

A shared interest in preserving a part of the South’s complex history, as expressed through its grand plantation homes of the antebellum years, has led three Southern historians to author their own definitive examination of many of these notable properties–with an eye toward explaining exactly why saving these “fragile relics of history” still matters today.

It took Marc R. Matrana, Robin S. Lattimore and Michael W. Kitchens–the authors of Southern Splendor: Saving Architectural Treasures of the Old South–nearly five years to merge and expand their collective research into this joint volume, published by University Press of Mississippi. The book explores nearly 50 restored or preserved homes built pre-Civil War.

Matrana, a physician at Ochsner Medical Center in New Orleans, is an active preservationist and historian and has authored Lost Plantation: The Rise and Fall of Seven Oaks and Lost Plantations of the South, both by UPM.

Lattimore, a resident of Rutherfordton, N.C., is a high school teacher who has written more than 25 books, including Southern Plantations: The South’s Grandest Homes. He was honored with North Carolina’s Order of the Longleaf Pine, one of the state’s most prestigious recognitions, in 2013.

An Athens, Ga., attorney and historic preservationist, Kitchens has authored Ghosts of Grandeur: Georgia’s Lost Antebellum Homes and Plantations. He was awarded the Benjamin Franklin Award for Best New Voice in Non-Fiction in 2013.

The book includes nearly 300-plus photos and dozens of firsthand narratives and interviews surrounding properties that have been restored as part of the historic preservation movement led by the South since the 19th century. Today, they say, only a small percentage of the South’s antebellum structures survive.

As co-authors of Southern Splendor, you all live in three different Southern states–how did you all get together to collaborate on this book–and have you worked together on previous books or other projects?

Robin S. Lattimore

Lattimore: We had all three written and published other books on antebellum houses in the past. We became friends first, because our paths often crossed when doing research, and then collaborators on this shared project because we respected each other’s work. Being from three different areas of the South actually served to provide greater depth of knowledge and experience to this project. The most gratifying part of making the decisions on which houses to feature in the book was being able to highlight some lesser-known properties alongside iconic treasures.

What is the goal of this book?

Lattimore: Our greatest hope for this book is to draw attention to the significant work done through the years by individuals, families, non-profit organizations, corporations, and others in restoring and preserving the South’s antebellum homes, many of which had once been in dire straits. The South’s antebellum architecture is being lost at an alarming rate due to neglect, fire, and increased residential, commercial, and industrial development. Ultimately, we hope that this book increases awareness of what we stand to lose if more historic homes are not preserved.

In Southern Splendor, you acknowledge that the South’s plantation homes represent a culture and lifestyle that was “made possible by an economic system that required the forced labor of enslaved people.” In what ways does your book examine that reality of Southern history?

Lattimore: As cultural historians, we are aware that plantation houses are at the epicenter of a complex web of human relationships that have shaped the social, economic, and political heritage of the South for generations. This project allowed us an opportunity to explore and celebrate the contributions made by African-Americans to the architectural heritage of the South, not just as laborers helping to construct grand plantation houses, but also the artistry and craftsmanship that people of color contributed to create these architectural masterpieces.

The book showcases antebellum residences in your home states of Louisiana, Georgia, and North Carolina, as well as half a dozen other states, including Mississippi. How were the homes from Mississippi chosen?

Marc R. Matrana

Matrana: We wanted this book to be a real celebration of preservation to showcase the fact that even the most destitute property can be saved from the brink of destruction if people care about it and decide to dedicate resources and efforts towards a project. We tried to find properties that had a strong preservation story behind them, like Beauvoir in Biloxi, which was almost destroyed by Hurricane Katrina. That historic home has since been meticulously restored to its former glory and the grounds, presidential library, and other facilities are better than ever. Or like Waverly (near West Point), a unique plantation home that was fully restored by the Snow family.

How did you become interested in this enormous task of preserving and restoring Southern antebellum homes?

Michael W. Kitchens

Kitchens: The path to becoming more than passively interested in preserving the South’s antebellum architectural treasures is somewhat different for everyone. However, I think I can speak for all three authors of this book by saying that our respective interests first arose when we visited some of these homes years ago. Visits turned into quests to read as much information about the homes as we could find. Reading turned into research; then research turned into a desire to share what we learned about the homes and histories with others by writing about them. All the while, each of us has become involved in activities and organizations whose purpose is to preserve the South’s historic structures. We hope that our efforts to record the histories of some of these homes may inspire others to take up the cause to preserve what we have left.

Could you briefly describe the main architectural styles of these homes? What inspired their designs?

Kitchens: The predominant architectural style in the South before 1861 was the Greek Revival style. Entire volumes are dedicated to explaining why this particular style was so loved in the South between 1820 and 1860. Many believe that Southerners saw themselves as being philosophically true to the Greek’s democratic ideas and chose the style to reflect that self-identification. However, an equally plausible explanation may be that the Greek Revival style was the prevailing style in Europe, particularly in England, in the late 18th and early 19th centuries when explorers were discovering Greek ruins across the Mediterranean. In the 1850s, the Italianate style became increasingly popular with Southerners as it allowed for asymmetrical designs which departed from the strict symmetry of Greek Revival designs.

Finally, Gothic Revival designs found their way into many corners of the South, harkening back to some of Europe’s great public and private architectural treasures from the Renaissance. The casual observer would be astonished to discover the wide variety of sizes and styles of antebellum architecture utilized in the South before 1860. It was far more diversified than just what we see in fictional film mansions such as Twelve Oaks or Tara.

A great deal of detail about these homes is included in “Southern Splendor”. How long did this project take, including the research?

Matrana: The book was a natural progression from the authors’ previous books, including my “Lost Plantations of the South”, Kitchens’ “Ghosts of Grandeur”, and many works by Robin Lattimore, including “Southern Plantations” published by Shire. We have each been separately researching Southern plantations for decades, each amassing large collections of materials, references, photos, etc. We started talking together about a collective project about five years ago and pitched the idea to Craig Gill at the University Press of Mississippi in the summer of 2014. We’ve been working on putting the book together ever since.

Tell me about the stunning photography in the book. How many photos are included?

Kitchens: The authors worked hard to select for this volume photographs which would not only illustrate the homes but evoke for the reader the raw beauty and majesty of these structures. There are over 270 color photographs and nearly 60 black and white photographs in Southern Splendor. It was our hope to illustrate how close some of these historic dwellings came to being lost forever. Many have already been lost to everything but memory. Some of the black and white photographs simply illustrate how a home looked decades ago. A few of these images date from the 1860s, and many of the black and white photographs were taken from the Historic American Buildings Survey which recorded the homes in photographs taken in the 1930s and 1940s.

But perhaps the most stunning photographs are color images showing the homes in their current state of restored splendor. Many of these photographs come from the authors’ private collections. Some photographs were donated for use in this book by the current owner of the house or museum. Still other images were provided by professional photographers retained by the authors to capture for the readers of this volume the most artful and stunning images possible. It is our hope that the readers enjoy these images and are inspired to visit and support the preservation of these and other historic structures.

The book states that many more of these historic homes are losing their battles with deterioration and decay than are possible to restore. In your estimation, what are the numbers, approximately–and why does saving these homes matter to us now?

Matrana: At the height of plantation culture, prior to the Civil War, there were almost 50,000 plantations in the South. Not all were associated with a grand mansion, but most were family estates. Today, only a few thousand plantation homes survive, and each year dozens are lost to fires, neglect, intentional demolition, etc. Hundreds of these homes are at risk today. Some sit in woods or fields rotting away, waiting for someone to rescue them from demolition by neglect.

Collectively, these structures represent our past–the good and the bad. The buildings were often constructed by slaves and provide real tangible evidence of slavery, a piece of our history which we surely must not forget. They provide a physical link to the past, which can never be restored once it is lost. As we’ve shown in Southern Splendor, restoring such homes can be an economic boom for local economies while simultaneously providing balanced education to the public about our shared history.

Marc R. Matrana and Robin S. Lattimore will be at Lemuria on Tuesday, October 2, at 5:00 to sign and discuss Southern Splendor.

New ‘Charley Patton’ book is a study of the Father of the Delta Blues

By Guest Author

On July 11, 2018

In Blues

By DeMatt Harkins. Special to the Clarion-Ledger Sunday print edition (July 8)

In September of 1984, Tina Turner’s “What’s Love Got to Do with It” topped the US singles chart, as Prince’s “Purple Rain” dominated the album chart. Meanwhile in Belgium, four recording sessions from The Great Depression were the order of the day. That month, scholars descended upon Liège University for the International Conference on Charley Patton. The occasion marked the 50th anniversary of the pivotal Mississippi Blues legend’s passing.

Charley Patton: Voice of the Mississippi Delta compiles nine presentation transcriptions from that forum. Each piece, some revised or amended, explores the man who brought us “Pony Blues,” and “High Water Everywhere,” as well as his ripple effects.

Seven years after the conference, while attending a proper headstone dedication in Holly Ridge, Mississippi, Creedence Clearwater Revival’s John Fogerty compared Patton’s body of work to the Dead Sea Scrolls. Significantly, Charley Patton is the earliest Delta Blues musician with a known history.

Born in Bolton, Mississippi, Charley Patton moved with his family to the atypically egalitarian Dockery Farms near Drew. In the Delta, he excelled as a prolific musician, master showman, and regional celebrity. Although only one photo exists of a sharply appointed Patton, he recorded 71 songs from 1929 to 1934.

These songs were heard and seen by the Mississippians who migrated north forging the first guard of Chicago Blues. Expats Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf, and Elmore James would later leave their mark on yet a younger generation, domestically and abroad. The direct line of influence from Charley Patton is evident, and the impact is profound. Hence, the legion at Liège.

Robert Sacré not only organized the Conference, but also edited Charley Patton: Voice of the Mississippi Delta. The professor at the host university opens with a primer of traditional African music’s journey to the 20th century South. Arnold Shaw follows with comparisons of Patton to fellow Blues stalwarts, Bukka White, Son House, and Robert Johnson. The common thread being self-exploration. Focusing on the individual and not the collective was brand new with post-emancipation African American music.

University of Memphis’ David Evans’ piece provides a thorough Patton biography, replete with updates culled from interviews conducted since 1984. He thoughtfully surveys Patton’s life, recordings, spirituality, relationships, and identity. Evans seeks to understand how a Blues musician simultaneously stayed a juke joint draw while remaining the go-to party act for adults and children, black or white. From there a second Liège professor, Daniel Droixhe, analyzes the mechanics of the famous cannon through Patton’s chord and lyrical structure.

Pivoting to the effect of Patton’s music, noted Louisiana music author John Broven demonstrates how Delta Blues traveled south to Baton Rouge. Similarly, through 16 songs, Mike Rowe traces the progression of Blues from an acoustic Delta style to an electric Chicago style.

Having befriended Howlin’ Wolf in the late 1960s, Chicago journalist Dick Shurman recalls the last years of a musician who genuinely studied at the feet of Charley Patton. An invaluable viewpoint follows from Luther Allison. Born in Magnolia, Arkansas, he moved to Chicago at age 14, eventually joining the Chicago Blues scene, alongside Jimmy Reed, Freddie King, and Little Walter.

Providing a current assessment of Chicago music (in 1984), Living Blues magazine co-founder and editor Jim O’Neal, who is coming to this year’s Mississippi Book Festival, addressed the conference. At that time, Koko Taylor, Little Milton, and James Cotton ruled the roost. While Mississippi still influenced Chicago, O’Neal points out that it was now a two-way street of artistic inspiration.

As Evans suggests in the book’s contemporary conclusion, a lot has evolved within blues since 1984. Yet at the same time, different iterations and artists experience revivals on a cyclical basis, revealing the style’s long history. Point being, Charley Patton maintains as much relevance today as he did thirty and eighty years ago.

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

Author Q & A with Jane Hearn (A Past That Won’t Rest)

By Guest Author

On June 25, 2018

In Civil Rights, Photography

Interview by Jana Hoops. Special to the Clarion-Ledger Sunday print edition (June 24)

Jane Hearn shares the remarkable legacy of photographer Jim Lucas, who began shooting scenes of 1960s civil rights activism while a college student at Millsaps, in A Past That Won’t Rest: Images of the Civil Rights Movement in Mississippi.

The University Press of Mississippi publication features more than 100 never-before-seen photographs taken by Lucas from 1964 to 1968 that focus on four Mississippi historic events, with a fifth chapter putting recent national episodes of activist violence into historical perspective. These chapters are bolstered with narratives contributed by Dr. Howard Ball, Peter Edelman, Aram Goudsouzian, Robert E. Luckett Jr., Ellen B. Meacham, and Stanley Nelson, with a foreword by Charles L. Overby.

Tragically, Lucas was killed in a car accident in 1980, while still in his mid-30s. His striking black-and-white images have been edited and restored by Hearn, who was married to Lucas at the time.

Could you share some of your background that is relevant to your relationship with photographer Jim Lucas, to put A Past That Won’t Rest into context?

Jane Hearn

I grew up in the Fondren neighborhood where my great-grandfather, grandfather, and father had a service station until 1960 on the corner of North State Street and Fondren Place. That’s back when Duling was our elementary school and all the kids in that neighborhood went to Bailey and Murrah. Our family all grew up in St. Luke’s United Methodist Church, so I am still quite attached to that area and love the resurgence that is happening there.

When my husband, Terry Stone, retired from state government about 10 years ago, we moved to the Lowcountry of South Carolina and have made that our new home. I had earlier retired from my interior design and furniture business, but continued my interest in arts advocacy and worked on projects at Tougaloo College where I served as a trustee. I was most proud of the Tougaloo Art Colony which I founded and ran for many years.

Jim Lucas and I me in 1973 when he returned to Jackson from his tour in the Army and I had just returned to Jackson after having worked a few years in New York City after college at Delta State. At the time, Jim was intent on pursuing a career as a film cameraman, which he had done during his deployment in Southeast Asia. AS a freelance film photographer, he shot advertising, football films, and news and documentary assignments for NBC and UPI. Eventually, he was able to break into his real love, feature films, and was becoming known for his exceptional technical skills as a camera operator and director of photography. He was on location for the 20th Century Fox film Barbarosa, starring Willie Nelson, when he was killed in an automobile accident.

You were married to Jim Lucas at the time of his death in 1980. Why did you decide to put this collection of his photographs, along with pertinent narratives, together to create A Past That Won’t Rest: Images of the Civil Rights Movement in Mississippi at this time?

This project began over five years ago with the original intent of finding a home for Jim’s extensive collection of negatives, prints, and ephemera before we moved out of state. I had kept the collection as he had stored it for over 30 years, but I felt the need to look at the images myself before I let them go. Many of the images are of high school and college life, sports, and friends, but peppered in were also newsworthy local events and images depicting historic civil rights events. Jim had always told me that there was history in his collection. I realized just how exceptional these images were and decided that it was fitting that Jim’s work should be shown to a wider audience.

I began the project with an exhibit of 35 images which previewed in June 2014 at the 50th Mississippi Freedom Summer Anniversary Conference at Tougaloo College. With support from the Mississippi Humanities Council, I was able to tour the exhibit through Mississippi for another 18 months. The book was an outgrowth of that exhibit.

Please tell me about the task that you and photojournalist Red Morgan shared in restoring these photos. Where had these photos been kept through the years, and what shape were they in? How long did this process take?

I would not have been able to do this project without Red Morgan. Red and I had only been acquaintances in high school. A mutual friend suggested I call him for help. A photojournalist and freelance photographer in Florida, Red reviewed some of Jim’s images and was excited by them. We worked together to scan, sort, edit, and produce digitalized images from over 5,000 vintage negatives. These negatives had been meticulously packaged, labeled, and documented by Jim. Our partnership in this project, along with Craig Gill and book designer Peter Halverson at the University Press of Misssissippi, has resulted in a book of 108 never-before- published photographs For all of us, this book has been a joy to produce.

Explain the process of putting this book together. How did you decide to organize it around the five narratives included? How did you choose the contributing writers? How did you narrow the selection of photographs?

As we continued to mine the collection for more photographs, we developed a website and doubled the touring exhibit. Suddenly, there were enough images for a book. The University Press of Mississippi saw the images and agreed.

The book is organized like the exhibit into four main events: the search for (civil rights workers) Michael Schwerner, Andrew Goodman, and James Chaney (who were murdered in Mississippi) during Freedom Summer, 1964; the Meredith March Against Fear in 1966; the funeral of Wharlest Jackson in Natchez in 1967; and the U.S. Hearings on Poverty in Mississippi and Robert Kennedy’s subsequent trip to the Mississippi Delta in 1967.

In researching the history of these events, I was fortunate to find writers who had authored books on each. Once these scholars saw Jim’s amazing photos, they each agreed to lend their expertise with an introductory essay. Their variety of writing styles and intricate knowledge of the subject give the chapters context and lend a verbal narrative to Jim’s visual one.

The preface was written by Charles Overby, who in the mid-1960s was reporting from The Jackson Daily News while has in high school at Provine. Like Jim, Charles’ early passion and talent set him on a course for an outstanding career in journalism.

Please tell me about the touring exhibition and the website.

The early exhibit toured Mississippi in 13 venues across the state. The expanded exhibit showed last summer at the National Civil Rights Museum in Memphis and recently at the Brown v. Board of Education Historic Site in Topeka, Kansas.

In February, it will show at the University of South Carolina at Beaufort. The book will now be a companion catalog for the exhibit which is also called “A Past That Won’t Rest.”

An interesting thing that struck me about the book was the point that Aram Goudsouzian made about Jim capturing photos of not only the leaders, the famous people, and the drama, but also the ordinary people and events–the ones who would perform everyday tasks that would ultimately contribute to changing history, as has always been the case. Why do you think this was important to Jim?

Jim had a talent for capturing the story playing in front of his camera. He had an artistic sensibility, first to recognize the “moment,” to choose his subject, then to frame it with a discernment for good composition. His images rarely needed cropping. He shot black and white with multiple cameras (lenses), used wide angle photography and lighting with technical precision. His images reveal the emotion of the moment and the dignity and humanity of his subjects.

That day (in Yazoo County) in June 1966 on the Meredith March was hot and dusty. It was tough to walk that highway, yet through Jim’s lens we see the determination and cooperation that unified marchers of all different backgrounds who came to make sure that Meredith’s march did not fail.

Could you put the historical significance of these photos into context, especially for young people?

All of these photos and the accompanying essays depict iconic stories of Mississippians and those came to Mississippi to help in the long and arduous struggle to end violence and discrimination of black citizens.

Howard Ball’s essay on the murder of Schwerner, Goodman, and Chaney tells not only this terrible tale of Klan brutality, but explains the origination of the Freedom Summer project. From 1964 through 1968, Jim’s lens allows us to see the palpable tension in the square in Philadelphia, the encouragement and pride of the marchers who rallied to assure that James Meredith’s march would meet its goal of registering people to vote, and the heartbreak and ultimate provocation of the black citizens in Natchez for the murder of a father of five whose truck was bombed for taking a job promotion that paid an additional 16 cents per hour. Peter Edelman and Ellen Meacham explain the fight over funding for the War on Poverty, a fight that continues today, and Robert Luckett draws a parallel to the grassroots organization against institutionalized violence of the 60s and that of the Black Lives Matter movement.

Jim Lucas

It’s rare that someone discovers his or her passion and future career at such a young age, but Jim was freelancing for The Jackson Daily News at age 14! Tell me about Jim–his talent, his drive, his personality.

Jim was a very humble person, almost shy, but never shy behind the camera or talking subjects photographic. The camera gave him entrance to all kinds of happenings and he had a curiosity and sensitivity for people and for animals. He was studied, measured, and loved the technical. Friends thought him the true camera nerd–in a good way! He had resolve from an early age to excel and make a mark. His work can now be included among other courageous and dedicated photojournalists of that era.

Signed copies of A Past That Won’t Rest: Images of the Civil Rights Movement in Mississippi are available from Lemuria.

Jane Hearn will appear at the Mississippi Book Festival Aug. 18 as a participant in the Mississippi Civil Rights panel panel at 12:00 p.m. at the C-SPAN room in Old Supreme Court Room at the State Capitol.

Join in on ‘The Jazz Pilgrimage of Gerald Wilson’ by Steven Loza

By Guest Author

On June 20, 2018

In Music, Southern Culture

By Jordan Nettles. Special to the Clarion-Ledger Sunday print edition (June 10)

Mississippi is often seen as the birthplace of American music. Many Mississippi musicians have achieved international fame, while others remain well-kept and beloved secrets. Regardless, each musician enriches the cultural heritage of the state while leaving a mark on genres like the blues, jazz, country, rock, and more.

The Jazz Pilgrimage of Gerald Wilson (University Press of Mississippi) by Steven Loza features a Shelby native who made immense contributions to jazz. Part biography and part musical analysis, this book explores the robust life and work of a jazz legend who has, up until now, been largely overlooked. The Jazz Pilgrimage of Gerald Wilson is an essential step in recognizing this master musician, arranger, composer, educator, and bandleader.

Gerald Wilson (1918-2014) was born in a region of the United States that is well-known for its music: the Mississippi Delta. Wilson became “very obsessed with jazz” at a young age and embarked on a self-described “jazz pilgrimage.” This artistic journey took him around the world and brought him into the same circle as influential jazz figures like Jimmie Lunceford, Duke Ellington, Ella Fitzgerald, and Dizzy Gillespie.

Sources for this book range from liner notes and essays to interviews and a spoken word CD. Loza weaves all of these into a seamless narrative, creating a vivid picture of Wilson’s life. The book includes stories from every stage of Wilson’s career, from his time playing in the Navy Band to his ten albums with Pacific Jazz Records.

The interviews between Loza and Wilson are engaging for any general reader. In the interview chapters, Wilson describes his life in his own words and Loza adds poignant context. Later in the book, Loza offers detailed analyses of some of Wilson’s compositions, which will especially appeal to jazz scholars and students.

In his life and work, Wilson searched for “new ideas” and challenged the boundaries around him. Stylistically, Wilson incorporated musical progressions that no jazz musician had used before. Wilson’s unique sound was partly inspired by his Mexican-American wife and partly inspired by the bullfighters that fascinated him. He blended traditional jazz and Latin American music styles to create a sound that inspired listeners—and musicians—regardless of their race or music genre. One of Wilson’s most well-known pieces, “Viva Tirado,” was eventually recorded by the Latin rock group El Chicano and later adapted into a rap by Kid Frost.

Wilson’s desire for progress was not restricted to his music. He pushed against racial segregation around the country, once telling his band, “Tonight, we’re going to break the color line,” before leading them into a Las Vegas casino in the 1950s. At the conclusion of the book, Jeri Wilson, one of Gerald Wilson’s daughters, describes her father’s pride in being a jazz musician and an African American. His pride and passion for both are impossible to miss in The Jazz Pilgrimage of Gerald Wilson.

Gerald Wilson believed in the power of jazz music, and music in general, to connect people. Wilson’s music certainly brought people together in many different ways. If you are not currently familiar with Gerald Wilson, get ready. This book will likely make you a fan.

Jordan Nettles is a graduate of The University of Southern Mississippi and the Columbia Publishing Course in New York.

‘Deep South Dispatch’ is a behind-the-scenes look at 1960s civil rights movement

By Guest Author

On June 6, 2018

In Civil Rights, Southern History

By Jim Ewing. Special to the Clarion-Ledger Sunday print edition (April 22)

John N. Herbers might not be a familiar name today, but during the height of the civil rights movement of the 1960s, his byline blazed in The New York Times.
Herbers died last year as his book Deep South Dispatch was being edited (and ably finished by his daughter, journalist Anne Farris Rosen). But many people—especially journalists and leaders of the movement—remember him for his lucid accounts of that turbulent period when he was on the front lines and often at great danger himself.

deep south dispatch Subtitled “Memoir of a Civil Rights Journalist,” Dispatch is a fascinating behind-the-scenes account of the arc of his reporting, from covering the Emmett Till trial, to the Birmingham church bombing, to marching with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., to the Kennedy assassination. But it’s not merely a rehashing of old events.

Rather, Dispatch offers insights from a modern perspective, as well as conclusions Herbers made based on is reporting.

As Dispatch details, Herbers was not an “outside agitator,” as Mississippi politicians were wont to describe journalists back then. He was a son of the South, reared in various small towns mostly in the Memphis area, educated at Emory in Atlanta, with strong ties to Mississippi.

He began his journalism career after World War II first in Meridian, and then at the Jackson Daily News under fire-breathing publisher Fred Sullens. From there, he became bureau chief of the United Press (later United Press International) office in Jackson before going to the Times for the bulk of his writing. He was based in Atlanta, but traveled throughout the South and frequently visited his mother who lived in Crystal Springs.

Though from the South, he was at odds with the hate-filled tenor of the times. He believed his objectivity and penchant for journalism was a part of his peripatetic small-town upbringing, where “misfits” could not “escape into anonymity as they could in a city.”

Journalists, he wrote, are by nature and profession “the outlier who is always asking why.”

His love for Mississippi shines through, though, even as he was in anguish over its behavior in matters of race. Were it not for a few courageous voices against bigotry, such as Hodding Carter Sr., publisher of the Greenville Delta Democrat-Times, he wrote, “I think I would have fled Mississippi.”

Dispatch is full of names and places Mississippians remember both for good and ill. His writing is crisp and his life was Forrest Gump-like in his uncanny ability to be at signal moments. It’s encapsulated in such tales as his writing a story under a pecan tree with a manual typewriter on the top of his car at Fannie Lou Hamer’s house before going to interview powerful U.S. Sen. John O. Eastland at his plantation a few miles away.

He notes the ground-breaking reporting of Clarion Ledger reporter Jerry Mitchell that resulted in cold-case convictions of civil rights outlaws and one (of many) photographs includes him standing next to the late journalist Bill Minor of Jackson, himself worthy of note.

Dispatch is an informative, insightful, personal and telling memoir that pricks the conscience still. As he quoted Dr. King in talking about our own personal stances and how they reverberate into our culture, the greatest impediment to true justice in the world is not those oppose it, but those who are silent when they see it breached.

That’s what journalism and journalists are about, too.

Jim Ewing’s journalistic expertise as a writer and editor spans more than four decades, including The Clarion Ledger, the Jackson Daily News, and USA TODAY. A three-time winner of the J. Oliver Emmerich Award (the Mississippi Press Association’s highest honor for commentary), he has also won numerous national Best of Gannett and regional Associated Press Media Editors honors. He is the author of seven books, including his latest, Redefining Manhood.

Tag: University Press of Mississippi (Page 3 of 5)

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Timothy Isbell’s work shows the history and soul of ‘The Mississippi Gulf Coast’

Author Q & A (Southern Splendor)

New ‘Charley Patton’ book is a study of the Father of the Delta Blues

Author Q & A with Jane Hearn (A Past That Won’t Rest)

Join in on ‘The Jazz Pilgrimage of Gerald Wilson’ by Steven Loza

‘Deep South Dispatch’ is a behind-the-scenes look at 1960s civil rights movement

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