Mississippi books – Page 3

Tag: Mississippi books (Page 3 of 6)

by Andrew Hedglin

I was fortunate enough to get my hands on an early copy of American Pop last August. The weekend before, I had just finished making a long overdue pilgrimage to Graceland. After which, as sometimes happens in Memphis, I found myself in the lobby of the Peabody Hotel, the fabled start of the Mississippi Delta. I came back to work on Monday to find an incredible book that began where I had just been, and, in some ways, where I have always been, in the tangled legacy of the South in the 20th century.

I was very excited to see a family tree in the first few pages. From Gabriel García Márquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude to Yaa Gyasi’s Homegoing, some of my very favorite novels have been multi-generational family sagas, books that allow you to hear the echoes of the past. This book did not disappoint on that front.

The fortunes of the Forster family are tied to the genius of paterfamilias Houghton Forster and his invention, Panola Cola, invented fictitiously in Batesville, Mississippi, in 1890. The Forsters’ good fortune in inventing PanCola, as it came to be known, relied on Houghton’s intelligence, luck, and the power of love for his soon-to-be wife Annabelle.

But the story of the Forsters is not an elevator that only goes up, and the story ends well past the end of their cola empire. The emotional center of the are the lives of the four Forster children, Montgomery, Lance, Ramsey, and Harold. Their choices, tragedies, and limitations define their family’s fate, although the vision and determination of one last Forster has the chance to hold the center together, if only somebody in charge had the wisdom to recognize the real thing when they saw it.

There is a mysterious coda to the cola chronicle, one where the truth to decoding the past traverses the lonely stretch of Highway 49 between Yazoo County and Millsaps College here in Jackson. A truth that, if found, could find the missing link–the secret ingredient, if you will–to finally understanding the Forster family legacy.

While there is melancholy infused in the center of this concoction, it would be misleading to let you think this reads like a sad, sorrowful tale. American Pop is very alive and frequently funny, drenched in irony told with a Southern drawl. There are sly winks and “fridge brilliance” to spare that reward close reading. There are references to pop culture (no pun intended) and Mississippi history that are guaranteed to make you smile. And t all starts with that party in the Peabody Hotel.

Ultimately, I can recommend American Pop as one of the best books you might read this year. Grab a can of Pan and get ready to settle in for some major fun.

Snowden Wright will be Lemuria on Tuesday, February 5, at 5:00 to sign and read from American Pop. Lemuria has chosen American Pop as one of its February 2019 selections for its First Editions Club for Fiction.

Author Q & A with Snowden Wright

By Guest Author

On February 3, 2019

In Fiction, Southern Fiction

Interview by Jana Hoops. Special to the Clarion-Ledger (February 3). Click here to read this interview on the Clarion-Ledger’s website

Meridian native Snowden Wright’s second novel, American Pop, is a refreshing saga (and it really is a saga) of a Mississippi family’s rise to fame and wealth as their soft drink empire builds and fizzles.

Based in the Panola County city of Batesville, the drink is aptly named Panola Cola (PanCola for short). The book follows not only the often-outrageous behavior of many of the owner’s family members, but the relentless pursuit of “cola hunters” who will do anything to find out the drink’s famous “secret ingredient.”

American Pop has been chosen as an Okra Pick by the Southern Independent Booksellers Alliance. Wright’s debut novel, Play Pretty Blues, received the 2012 Summer Literary Seminars’ Graywolf Prize. His work has also appeared in The Atlantic, Salon, Esquire, the New York Daily News, and other publications.

A graduate of Dartmouth College and Columbia University, Wright now lives in Atlanta.

Tell me about your life as a child in Mississippi.

Snowden Wright

Born and raised in Meridian, I went to Lamar School, where I was an embarrassingly good student, a spectacularly bad athlete, and an obnoxiously voracious reader.

Meridian’s lack of a bookstore for much of my childhood made that last point a bit of a problem. Fortunately, I would often spend time on my family’s farm in Yazoo County, and on weekends my father and I would come to Jackson. He would give me a $20 bill to buy a book upstairs at Lemuria while he enjoyed a couple Scotches at the bar. Back then there was a bar on the first floor of the building.

I would spend hours picking out just the right book. It was basically my indoctrination to the written word. So I often like to say I have two things to thank for my writing career: Lemuria Books and Johnnie Walker Black.

American Pop is a sprawling historical novel about one family’s rise to wealth and success in the soft drink business across much of the 20th century. What inspired you to write a nearly 400-page novel based on a soft drink business?

The inspiration was as easy as opening the fridge. I’m sure most readers will find in their fridge at least a can or two of Coke, Diet Coke, Sprite, or Dr. Pepper. To me, soda is emblematic of America, not only because it came into mass popularity here, but also because it’s an ingenious feat of capitalism. Take some water, carbonate it, and stir in some syrup, then, presto, you’ve got a multi-billion-dollar industry.

Once I’d settled on the idea of a soft-drink company, though, I faced a challenge in creating the family that owned it. To craft a narrative with complete omniscience, the kind that provides flash-forwards as well as flashbacks, I needed to know all the family members from the very first line, their personalities as well as their life stories. It was going to take forever!

Then I remembered my multiplication tables.

In second grade, when we were taught the multiplication tables, I gave each number between zero and 12 a place within a large family–10 was the father, 5 the mother, etc.–and when they multiplied with each other, a little story played out in my head, reminding me of their product. I taught myself math through narrative. So, to create the Forster family, I just transposed those numbers into the novel.

Besides its humorous moments, American Pop takes readers on a thought-provoking, emotional ride through the lives of Panola Cola’s founding family members from the late 1800s to the 1970s. What are we to make of the fact that this family lost its fortune, despite the country’s lasting love affair with cola?

The first epigraph in the novel is from Nathanial Hawthorne: “Families are always rising and falling in America. But, I believe, we ought to examine more closely the how and why of it, which in the end revolves around life and how you live it.”

I wanted the novel to embody that quote–as well as its follow-up, “Southerners need carbonation,” by Nancy Lemann–through the use of a fluid timeline. I tried to create a collage of time periods that, from a distance, represents the entire country and, up close, examines the individual lives of the Forsters.

American Pop is a how-and-why-it-happened novel.

Thanks to the Forster family’s Mississippi heritage, the book has a decidedly Southern slant. How does that affect the story?

Do my characters know it’s Sunday because they have a craving for Chick-fil-A? Do they use dilly beans as stirrers in their Bloody Marys? Are there a pair of duck boots wedged upside down between their pickup’s tool box and back window? Yes, on all accounts!

I have a fondness for getting anthropological about the South. From our language to our social customs to our innate “sense of story,” as I like to think of it, the South in general and Mississippi in particular influence everything I write. That’s especially true with American Pop. Its characters are Southerners who, by dint of their wealth, social prominence, and political aspirations, are put on the national stage. That in turn creates conflict, internal and external, due to this region’s tragic history and the weight of its subsequent, persistent guilt.

I’ve experienced those concerns firsthand. Even though I lived up North for most of my adult life, the fork of the South has forever left its tine marks in the peanut-butter cookie that is my subconscious.

Why did you return to Mississippi to write this book?

After college, I lived in New York for nearly a decade, waking early in the morning to write before heading in to a day job. I began American Pop shortly after the publication of my first novel, Play Pretty Blues, and because of the second novel’s greater scope and length, I soon realized it would take me at least five years to finish. Then, sadly, my grandfather, to whom I’ve dedicated this book, passed away, leaving me a small inheritance. I decided to honor his memory and his generosity by using that inheritance to quit my day job, return to Mississippi, and work full-time on American Pop.

My primary residence during that period was in Oxford, but I also spent a lot of time writing in an old shotgun cottage on my family’s farm, where I’d spent much of my childhood. Being in a place rife with memories and family lore…proved the perfect inspiration for a novel that is, essentially, the story of a family.

Do you have another book in the works?

I do, in fact. Although I’d rather keep its plot a secret for the time being, I can tell you a bit about where I will be writing it. On my family’s farm in Yazoo County lies a pecan grove, where, until it burned down 50 years ago, the house my grandmother was raised in used to sit. I recently completed construction of a house in the same spot. I’ve been calling it “The Sweetest Thing,” after the slogan for PanCola in American Pop.

So, when my book tour is over, I’ll live part-time in The Sweetest Thing, writing my next novel and, ideally, raising a yellow Labrador puppy that I plan to name Falkor.

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.

Ed Scott’s story in Julian Rankin’s ‘Catfish Dream’ is essential and hopeful reading

By Guest Author

On August 7, 2018

In Civil Rights, Southern Culture

By Ellis Purdie. Special to the Clarion-Ledger Sunday print edition (August 5)

In our divisive times, we must recall those moments when the worst of the American experiment was overcome. Though prejudice in America remains, it has not had the final say in every situation.

Too often it takes years, but right can triumph over wrong. In Catfish Dream, Julian Rankin delivers one such story, covering the life of Ed Scott Jr. and his struggle to farm in the face of systemic racism in the Mississippi Delta.

Scott and the black community, in nearly every facet of their existence, were burdened by the obstacle of white supremacy, even into the post-civil rights era. The author focuses particularly on how blacks were held back in their attempt to create businesses in which whites held monopoly. Thus, the book is a fine source for understanding how racism endures even when laws are abolished or changed on paper.

The book begs the question of how someone manages to make a life for themselves when their context has always been against them. Scott proves inspiring for his unparalleled work ethic and refusal to quit.

For every period in Scott’s life, barriers were set up to keep him and his community from the success whites enjoyed. As a boy, Scott is thrown into an educational system bereft of adequate funding. In the military, he and his commanding officers are denied the same treatment as white soldiers. As a farmer, he is forbidden success.

However, Scott uses these opportunities to stand up to authority, finding leverage in peaceful resistance from the moral high ground. Rankin’s coverage of Scott’s life, from childhood to war and beyond, is accessible and often thrilling.

Some of the book’s most powerful moments come when Scott’s previous experiences transfer in a later fight for justice and equality. When finished fighting for both democracy and his own civil rights in Europe, Scott brings the battle back home. The dangers of World War II amply prepare Scott for situations such as the march against hate in Selma, Alabama.

In one of the most powerful sections of Catfish Dream, Scott takes his skills as a quartermaster to those putting their bodies on the line in Selma. When the marchers get hungry, Scott serves them with food by driving a truck of water and sandwiches, feeding as many as possible from his truck bed.

In such passages, food and Scott’s cause intersect beautifully, reminding us of the goodness and hope that exists even in our darkest days. They drive home the truth that food and the human spirit work together, a truth Scott embodies in every page of Rankin’s work.

Catfish Dream centers around Scott’s becoming the first nonwhite operator of a catfish plant in America. As a black man, Scott was treated differently than whites in his attempt to establish a livelihood. White fear of Scott’s success leads to a full-scale assault on his ambitions.

When whites drive Scott out of rice farming, he goes into catfish. This decision brings about its own problems, however, when white agribusiness calls in Scott’s loans, taking away his entire operation. Rankin reveals how this move is based strictly on race, as white farmers also in debt continue in their work.

Rankin keeps the narrative moving in prose that reaches the heights of excellent creative nonfiction: a must when covering the ground of history, politics, and biography all at once.

Catfish Dream leaves the reader wishing they had known Scott. Fortunately, Scott’s words and person are rendered with clarity and charm in this fine book. As Rankin proclaims, “…he didn’t live by the expectations of others. . . .He spoke truth to power.” We would do well follow him.

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

Julian Rankin will be at Lemuria on Thursday, August 9, at 5:00 p.m. to sign and read from Catfish Dream: Ed Scott’s Fight for His Family Farm and Racial Justice in the Mississippi Delta.

Rankin will also appear at the Mississippi Book Festival Aug. 18 as a participant in the “Delta Dawn and Dusk” panel at 4:00 p.m. at State Capitol Room 113.

Author Q & A with Isabelle Armand

By Guest Author

On July 16, 2018

In Civil Rights, Photography

Interview by Jana Hoops. Special to the Clarion-Ledger Sunday print edition (July 15)

New York City photographer Isabelle Armand said she was “instantly inspired” to tell the stories of the wrongful convictions, incarcerations, and eventual exonerations of two rural Mississippi men when she first read about their cases more than five years ago.

In her new book, Levon and Kennedy: Mississippi Innocence Project (PowerHouse Books), Armand has visually documented the everyday lives of Levon Brooks and Kennedy Brewer over a five-year period after their release from the Mississippi State Penitentiary in Parchman. The black and white images of the men and their families, captured in and around their homes in the small rural Mississippi town of Brooksville, includes quotations that convey their thoughts and feelings of regret and joy about the miscarriage of justice and the eventual outcome of their cases.

The men had been charged in separate murder cases committed 18 months apart in the early 1990s. Brooks was sentenced to life and was imprisoned 18 years; Brewer received a death sentence and served 15 years.

It was through the diligent work of The Innocence Project, along with DNA testing, that Brewere and Brooks were cleared of all charges and freed in 2008.

Armand’s book includes text by Tucker Carrington, director of the George C. Cochran Innocence Project at the University of Mississippi School of Law, who, with Washington Post reporter Radley Balko, co-authored the book The Cadaver King and the Country Dentist, also related to the cases of Brewer and Brooks.

Armand acknowledges the support of artist Olivier Renaud-Clement, the Shoen Foundation, PowerHouse Books, and Meridian Printing for the production of her book.

Her distinctive photography works can be found in private and museum collections, and have been exhibited in the United States. They have also been featured in national and international publications.

Tell me about your background, and how you became interested in photography.

I was born and raised in Paris. My mother was a Vogue editor and worked with amazing photographers such as Helmut Newton and Guy Bourdin. We had many photography books of the masters. I was always around photography and got the best possible education. I was especially drawn to the works of Walker Evans, Dorthea Lange, Brassai, Cartier-Bresson, Roy DeCarava, Edward Curtis, who documented people and places. They were storytellers of life. But at first, I followed in my mother’s steps and worked as a stylist there, and here.

I left France at 20 to come to New York, which I still love some 30 years later.

Do you have family or other connections to Mississippi?

A lifelong inspiration would be my only connection to Mississippi. I grew up fascinated with the U.S.; at first, it was through cinema. The West, New York, and the South seemed mythical places.

In Paris, I was around Blues musicians, and our idols were Robert Johnson, Little Walter, Muddy Waters, and the like. Mississippi captured my imagination, a fundamental American culture was born there, and I find the place incredibly rich and deeply textured.

How did you hear about the cases of Levon Brooks and Kennedy Brewer? When and why did you decide to become involved in them?

I came across an article about the cases’ forensics in 2012. It was a troubling account of a flawed and corrupt process, when reality goes beyond fiction. It triggered many questions; how, why, and where could this happen? I was instantly inspired to tell their story in photographs. I waited for several months, but the story stayed with me. Finally, I contacted Tucker Carrington, and suggested a photographic documentary around Levon’s and Kennedy’s experiences.

When did you begin photographing the images in this book, and how long did it take?

I began to photograph Levon and Kennedy and their families in June 2013. The last images and interviews were done in July 2017. I would go each year to spend time with them, take pictures, and collect interviews. With printing, editing both the images and the interviews, it took five years.

What were your goals (artistic and otherwise) for this project, as far as what you wanted to capture, how you envisioned the large photo collection would be organized, etc.?

The goal was to create a compelling visual essay to raise awareness about wrongful conviction. It’s a reality, which mostly remains abstract until we see it with our own eyes. I felt an intimate photo essay would bring the story of Levon and Kennedy to the forefront. We’d get to know them and their families like our own, and realize that the system can crush anyone.

I envisioned this essay pretty much like it is now. I started with retracing Levon’s and Kennedy’s childhoods, and visiting places which were meaningful to them, then and now. I’d document everyday life; family members, families’ gatherings, birthdays, July 4th, as well as their rural environment. With time, the project took a life of its own.

I love black and white film. It mutes unnecessary noise, and it sets off the essence of the subjects for me. Also, light on film is magic.

I edited as I went along, for each family, until editing for the book, when I had to look at the images in a new light. I eliminated a few photographs and created a new visual narrative. Damien Saatdjian, the graphic designer, gave it great breathing space and rhythm.

Both men and their families seem to have very forgiving spirits about their ordeals. Did that surprise you?

I knew a little about them prior to meeting them, so I wasn’t surprised. They were very angry when it happened. But spending 18 years in prison, or 10 on death row, they had to deal with it in a certain way, or it would destroy them. They had to make some peace with their situation, so they could endure and still be the men they wanted to be. Levon was thrown into a dangerous general population and chose to become a good influence. He saved lives and he was respected. Kennedy, isolated in his cell 24/7 while facing death, chose to educate himself, read, wrote, and prayed. Thinking of his ordeal every day was not an option, like he says in the book, “You’d go crazy.” Yet, he thought about it because he was trying to save himself, which he did by writing to the Innocence Project.

Besides where, how, and why this happened, my question was, “How does one and one’s family cope with wrongful conviction?” Both men and their families stick to a strong philosophy of life.

Levon and Kennedy have large families who supported them during their incarcerations, and you got to know them during the course of this project. What can you tell me about them–their thoughts on their loved ones’ false imprisonment, their attitudes about living in their rural Mississippi communities, their hopes for their own futures and that of their children and grandchildren? (It’s notable that, although many of them mentioned racial prejudice as an everyday event, most prefer to stay because of close family ties and the “peace and quiet” they enjoy.)

I interviewed everyone for the quotes you see in the book, and it depends on the individual. Most feel that the criminal justice system needs major changes. They lived through the most tragic consequences of this system, and their community still does in many ways. Levon and Kennedy’s wrongful incarceration is something they all want to put behind them, even though they have strong opinions about it.

These families have been there for generations, they are attached to their land loved ones, and most don’t want to leave. Some of the younger people are torn between the desire to go places offering more opportunities and diversity, and their love for their family and area. Every parent hopes for a better future for their children, but few think things will change in Mississippi. However, they all go about living their full lives. They ignore and rise above external pressures.

Sadly, Levon passed away this past January, after 10 years of freedom. Did he get to see this book?

Levon was the first person to receive the book right from the printer. He took it all around town, and he was proud of it.

The way the book is bound is wonderful–I love the way the book itself is the book jacket! As an artist, tell me about the decision to create this book like this, in that it makes such a strong impression before it’s even opened!

I don’t like jackets on books and I wanted the cover printed with a discreet lamination. I didn’t want any typo on the cover, either. I felt Levon and Kennedy were so powerful in this photograph that they drew you in. The book wouldn’t be what it is without the work of my lab Laumont on the book files, and the amazing printing of Meridian Printing. And again, Damien Saatdjian’s input was also invaluable to achieve the results we wanted.

Isabelle Armand will appear at the Mississippi Book Festival Aug. 18 as a participant in the “Seeing the Light in Mississippi” photography panel at 4:00 p.m. at the Galloway Fellowship Center.

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.

‘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.

Story of Cat Island resonates in prose, photographs

By Guest Author

On May 24, 2018

In Nature, Southern Culture

By Don Jackson. Special to the Clarion-Ledger Sunday print edition (May 20)

Southern storytelling is a beautiful art form. Through the ages it has been the glue that has bound us across generations. Although facts are always subject to questioning, the truth is always there. It becomes a shared truth that gives us strength and meaning within a framework of profound identity, and as a people with a common heritage.

Such is the wonder and the power of Discovering Cat Island by John Cuevas. It gives us the story of a unique and fascinating place on the Mississippi Gulf Coast, and of the people who have been part of its history. It brings us light and shadows, and allows the reader to fill in the colors, both in prose and in photography.

This is not a scholarly work created for academics, although it is rich in information and required extensive research. Rather, it is a story that will hold the reader transfixed, with wonderfully-written, almost poetic, prose. A word of warning here… Do not sit down with this book unless you are prepared to sit where you are for at least a couple of hours. You will not be able to put it down. You very likely will read the entire text in one sitting. I certainly did.

Typically I consider books like Discovering Cat Island as coffee-table books that allow one to leisurely pick up the volume and thumb through the photographs… easy to pick up… easy to put down. They provide opportunity for light, transient entertainment. They’re on the table as fillers, just there as something to do, while other things are going on. Interruptions don’t matter. Accordingly, I’m more inclined to spend time with the photographs in such books than I am with their text. Rarely will I even bother with the text.

But with Discovering Cat Island, it was just the opposite. The photography was excellent. But it was the text that kept me spellbound. I’m not sure why, but I broke my rule and started reading the text when I first got a copy of this book.

Once I did that I could not take time to look at the photographs as I desperately turned the pages to get beyond the photographs and to where the story continued.

Only afterward did I go back to look at the gorgeous black and white photography of Jason Taylor. And when I did this, those photographs provided rich seasoning for the story I’d just read. The echoes of the story reverberated deeply within me as I went page by page, slowly catching the spirit of each one of Taylor’s masterpieces.

I strongly suggest that this be the sequence for future readers of this book. Start with the story. But, don’t just read the story. Listen to it! After you’ve heard the story then, as it resonates within you, go back through the book and let the photographs etch this powerful story deeply into your heart.

It is, after all, your story too. Soon thereafter you will realize that this story must be shared with those near and dear to you… with a daughter, son, grandchild, or good friend… together in a porch swing, or out under a live oak, or in front of a fireplace, or wherever your special place may be.

Cat Island is and has for been for generations such a special place for so many people. So, why not just go there with that special someone and share the story there, together. Become part of that story, right there where it all happened and is happening. Pass it along through the tumbling generations for whom, in their hearts, the Deep South and its Gulf Coast is home. It really doesn’t matter whether or not you live here. Cat Island is part of your story. Come discover it.

Donald C. Jackson is the Sharp Distinguished Professor, Emeritus at Mississippi State University. He is Past President of the American Fisheries Society, Past President of the Mississippi Wildlife Federation, and has worked extensively with fisheries resources along the Mississippi Gulf Coast. He is the author of three collections of outdoor essays: Tracks, Wilder Ways and Deeper Currents.

Signed copies of Discovering Cat Island are available at Lemuria’s online store.

Campbell’s ‘Conversations’ probes heart of Christianity

By Guest Author

On April 12, 2018

In Religion, Southern Culture

By Jim Ewing. Special to the Clarion-Ledger Sunday print edition (April 1)

University Press of Mississippi has produced one its most fascinating books in years with publication of Conversations with Will D. Campbell.

A collection of interviews with Campbell over the course of nearly 40 years, the book edited by retired Jackson lawyer Tom Royals is thought-provoking, humorous, outrageous, and delightful—like Campbell himself.

conversations will campbell Campbell, an Amite County native, died in 2013, but his impact remains. He got his preaching certificate at age 17 at East Fork Baptist Church, and prized it above all his awards and degrees—including one for divinity from Yale.

He first distinguished himself as chaplain at the University of Mississippi, 1954-56, leaving after being threatened for his tolerant racial views. He became a staff member of the National Council of Churches and worked closely with such luminaries in the civil rights movement as Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.

Afterwards, he attracted a celebrated following—including much of the country music scene in Nashville—publishing more than a dozen books and writing prolifically in magazines and journals.

Called alternatively a “renegade bootleg preacher” or a preacher without a church, he was reviled and celebrated by both liberals and conservatives—sometimes by both at the same time—immortalized by a cartoon character named Will B. Dunn and dubbed variously the “Aquinas of the Rednecks” and “the conscience of the South.”

As Conversations fleshes out, his theology goes to the heart of Christianity. His was a uniquely Southern Christian spirituality grounded in the Protestant tradition of direct relationship with God and personal connection with Christ. It requires honesty, humility, acts of faith, self-doubt, open-mindedness, and willingness to disobey rules when they conflict with conscience.

He was focused on the miracle of grace, extended to all people, from liberal firebrands to KKK. He believed it was his duty to “witness” to all sinners, which he said, included everyone. He remonstrated his beloved Baptist church for straying from its early roots as a revolutionary pillar of liberty and individual conscience to become a rules purveyor with its own orthodoxies and proscriptions.

Yes, he was an iconoclast, following only what he believed “Mr. Jesus” and his Gospel would approve.

A few nuggets from “Conversations” include:

Jesus “didn’t say which prisoners to visit—black or white—guilty or not guilty—which sick, which poor to bring good news to, deserving or undeserving.”
“I believe that our Lord was among the most antireligious ever to come along, for He came breaking the rules, smashing idols, tearing down structures, and proclaiming freedom from all such. And rules, crusades, and structures are the stuff religion is made of, whereas Jesus came proclaiming deliverance.”
“Love of country is not the same as love for God.”
“The blacks and whites worshiped together until the Civil War…. (if) the church had managed to stay as a nonracial institution, I think it would have made a great deal of difference.”
“I never rejected Mississippi.…You can’t grow up in that atmosphere and environment and not, I think, have that as long as you live. Even in your denying of it is affirming it.”

It was my honor to visit with Campbell at his Mt. Juliet, TN, farm shortly after the 1986 publication of his book 40 Acres and a Goat. At the time, I was an editor at the old Jackson Daily News, and we spent an afternoon talking about all things Mississippian. I was in awe.

Reading Conversations is just like sitting on the porch with him.

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.

Tag: Mississippi books (Page 3 of 6)

Snowden Wright’s effervescent ‘American Pop’ goes down smooth

Author Q & A with Snowden Wright

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

Ed Scott’s story in Julian Rankin’s ‘Catfish Dream’ is essential and hopeful reading

Author Q & A with Isabelle Armand

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)

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

Story of Cat Island resonates in prose, photographs

Campbell’s ‘Conversations’ probes heart of Christianity

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