On April 30, the Marion County Historical Society in Columbia will host Dr. John Green, state scholar for the Crossroads exhibit, to present his free program, “From Snapshots to a Collage: Exploring Rural Mississippi through Population Studies.” The program will take place in conjunction with the Smithsonian traveling exhibit Crossroads: Change in Rural America, on display in Columbia through May 8.
Many popular images of rural people and places present them as homogeneous in terms of demographic, social, and economic characteristics and trends. This may lead to oversimplification of rural areas and limited efforts to meet the needs and priorities of people living in these places. Achieving a better understanding of rural communities requires defining our concepts and identifying indicators of rural life in terms of continuity and change. Following an exploration of the terms “rural” and “non-metropolitan,” Dr. Green will share a series of graphical images and narratives about Mississippi’s rural people and places using population-level information, emphasizing what these “snapshots” of rural life tell us about Mississippi and how we might use them to form a “collage” that captures both the similarity and diversity.
Crossroads: Change in Rural America offers small towns a chance to look at their own paths to highlight the changes that affected their fortunes over the past century. The exhibition will prompt discussions about what happened when America’s rural population became a minority of the country’s population and the ripple effects that occurred.
The exhibit will be on display in the Marion County Museum and is open to the public Tuesdays to Saturdays 9am-5pm. Crossroads is free to visit.
