A New History of Mississippi

The talk, accompanied by a PowerPoint presentation, will present the case for a new understanding of Mississippi’s past. The speaker will argue that the Eurocentric past account ignored the role of blacks, Indians, women and minorities, providing example biographies to prove the case. Touching on neglected topics such as the history of the ecology, the speaker will demonstrate the dire condition created by the near destruction of the environment and illustrate how the New Deal programs and a few individuals began to restore the state and develop its system of state parks. Touching on the Civil Rights Movement in Mississippi, the speaker will argue that segregation was a complex, local system open to negotiation for much of its history and that local Mississippians did most of the work to end segregation rather than the more heralded outsiders, who have received much of the credit in the past. The speaker will trace the evolution of religion including what some historians term the civic religion of the lost cause.Concluding the lecture, the speaker will make the case for Mississippians adopting a new perspective on their past.

Speakers Expertise:

Dennis J. Mitchell is professor emeritus at Mississippi State University where he taught and administered the Division of Arts and Sciences for twenty years until he retired in 2016. Mitchell now divides his time between Mississippi and New Mexico. He edits the Journal of Mississippi History and is the author of several articles and books including the New History of Mississippi.  His graduate degrees are from the University of Mississippi in British History. After a stint as Assistant Director of the Mississippi Humanities Council, he taught mostly world history at Jackson State University for twenty years. During that time, he traveled widely, financed by summer grants, in places such as India and Africa. One grant enabled him to study Shona at Michigan State University and later in Zimbabwe. When Mitchell turned to studying and writing Mississippi history, he did it with a different perspective.