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Support for Grantees

2024 Grantees

University of Mississippi Center
$7,000.00

The Thirty-First Oxford Conference for the Book

The Oxford Conference for the Book is a three-day annual gathering inaugurated in 1993. The event takes place in various locations throughout Oxford and on the campus of the University of Mississippi. The mission of the conference is to promote reading, literacy and literature and to broaden knowledge about contemporary writing and publishing, as well as the history and role of books in American culture, particularly but not exclusively in the South.

Foundation for Mississippi History
$9,600.00

Teaching Hard History: Places, Objects, and
People

History Is Lunch (HIL) is a weekly lecture series exploring Mississippi’s history and providing a platform for presentations by scholars, experts, authors and thought leaders from both local and national spheres. Topics have ranged from Mississippi’s musical and literary legacies to pivotal moments in Civil War and civil rights history. In its upcoming season, HIL will prioritize lecture series that reflect the cultural heritage of Black communities. This request is for two speakers, Dr. Sharbreon Plumber, curator of an upcoming quilt exhibit (“Of Salt and Spirit”) at the Mississippi Museum of Art, who will spotlight the work and story of Hystercine Rankin, a native of Jefferson County, MS, who created 46 quilts throughout her lifetime. The second speaker is Dr. Hasan Kwame Jeffries, who lectures on the physical sites associated with formerly enslaved people in Mississippi.

Emmett Till Interpretive Center
$10,000.00

Remembering Emmett: From Silence to Social
Justice

The Emmett Till Interpretive Center (ETIC) will mark the 70th anniversary of the murder of Emmett Till in 2025 and its impact on Mississippi, the South and the nation. As part of this year-long reflection, with multiple events culminating in an August 2025 commemoration, ETIC will create a traveling exhibit and programming intended to educate young people about this tragic yet triumphant story in American history.

Mississippi College
$3,850.00

Surviving Southampton: A Story in Three Grandmothers

Mississippi College has secured Dr. Vanessa Holden of the University of Kentucky to present a keynote lecture as part of its 2025 African American Studies Lecture Series. Holden will share research from her award-winning book Surviving Southampton: African American Women and Resistance in Nat Turner’s Community (University of Illinois Press, July 2021), which explores the contributions that African American women and children made to the Southampton Rebellion, often called Nat Turner’s Rebellion.

Hancock County Library System
$7,540.00

HOMEGROWN: A WRITERS’ EXCHANGE

The third annual literary arts event will take place in early 2025 presenting acclaimed southern authors in moderated panel discussions pertinent to writing and publishing, hosted at the University of Southern Mississippi’s Gulf Park Campus. The two-day event includes one day devoted to a youth audience from area middle and high schools, with sessions facilitated by USM faculty and graduate students from the USM Center for Writing in Hattiesburg. The second day will be directed primarily to an adult audience featuring author panels throughout the day.

Margaret Walker Center, Jackson State University              
$8,641.00

The History of the Mississippi Movement: Honoring 30 Years
of John Dittmer’s Local People &
Charles Payne’s I’ve Got the Light of Freedom

JSU Margaret Walker Center will host a retrospective panel on local people’s activism and organizing tradition, featuring two texts of the Mississippi Civil Rights Movement—John Dittmer’s Local People: The Struggle for Civil Rights in Mississippi (1994) and Charles M. Payne’s I’ve Got the Light of Freedom: The Organizing Tradition and the Mississippi Freedom Struggle (1995). The panel discussion will be part of multiple events centered around the University’s annual MLK Convocation and For My People awards. Originally envisioned as a conversation between Dittmer and Payne, due to Dittmer’s unexpected passing in July, the event will now feature a conversation among past For My People award recipients.

Mississippi Museum of Art        
$9,250.00

L.V. Hull: Love is a Sensation

L.V. Hull: Love is a Sensation is the first solo museum exhibition to chronicle the art and life of visionary artist L. V. Hull (1942–2008), a self- proclaimed “unusual artist” who merged artmaking and the Southern art of “visiting” to transform her home in the rural town of Kosciusko, MS, into an immersive art environment that attracted visitors from around the world. Various public engagement activities related to the exhibit will be offered, including a screening of a new documentary film about Hull and her work.

The SouthWay Foundation      
$8,500.00

The Small-Town Preservation Symposium in Eupora,
MS

The SouthWay Foundation will coordinate a Small-Town Preservation Symposium in Eupora, MS, with a goal of bringing together local, state and national leaders for discussions on the preservation movement, cultural heritage and the value of sharing an inclusive history. The symposium agenda will include two panel conversations addressing themes of architectural preservation, the power of historic preservation and its relevance to small towns.

Rosa Foundation      
$10,000.00

Behind the Big House 2025

The Rosa Foundation plans to continue its annual public event, Behind the Big House. The 2025 event will take place April 2-5 at the antebellum home known as the Craft House in Holly Springs, which includes the 1847 living quarters and kitchen built for enslaved Africans and the 1851 family home of Hugh and Elizabeth Craft. Experienced interpreters will interact with visitors, highlighting the challenges encountered and the skills required by those enslaved workers on this property. Featured presenters will include historical interpreter with the Slave Dwelling Project, Joseph McGill (Charleston, SC), who will speak about the daily life and work of the enslaved in historical context; Chef Jordan Wimby (Chicago), who will provide the history of the African origins of mid- 1800s food and cooking methods; and historical interpreter Tammy Gibson (Chicago), who will illustrate the complex and demanding task of the laundress. Additionally, a total of seven uniquely themed stations will be available to all audiences on the property.

Friendly City Books
$10,000.00

Mississippi Poetry Week

A collaboration between the Friendly City Books Community Connection, a special project of the CREATE Foundation, and the Mississippi Poetry Project, led by Mississippi Poet Laureate Catherine Pierce.
Mississippi Poetry Week will feature events for children and adults in four different regions of the state: Cleveland, Hattiesburg, Starkville and Jackson. Planned events include hands-on learning experiences with professional poets, panel presentations by established poets and a culminating poetry celebration in Jackson featuring presentations about former, current and future Mississippi poets.

University of Mississippi Center
$10,000.00

The Thirtieth Oxford Conference for the Book

Annual three-day conference celebrating books, reading, and writing with author panels and lecture sessions, as well as book-signings and writer exchanges.

Mississippi College
$4,350.00

Something Better for My Children: Black Education in and Freedom

Public lecture by award-winning historian, author and professor Dr. Crystal Sanders of Emory University, as part of Mississippi College’s continued effort to bring lived and scholarly expertise of the African American experience to MC students and the metro Jackson community. Sanders will share her award-winning research from her book A Chance for Change: Head Start and Mississippi’s Black Freedom Struggle. Sanders’s lecture will serve as the keynote for a month-long commemoration of the 70th anniversary of the Brown decision.

Copiah-Lincoln Community College
$10,0000.00

Rites, Rituals, and Religion in the Deep South

Annual event exploring southern history and culture through film and books. The 2024 festival theme will be “Rites, Rituals, and Religion in the Deep South,” will include scholarly presentations and various public events examining topics such as death and burial rites, historical cemeteries and their influence on landscape architecture, mourning practices, church rituals, voodooism and antebellum Christmas traditions. Sessions will illuminate how early Mississippians used these traditions to establish cultural norms, institutional practices, and patterns of social responsibility which continue to define us today.

The Mississippi Aviation Heritage Museum—$10,0000.00

Mississippians in the Vietnam War Exhibit

The creation of a permanent exhibit highlighting Mississippians who served in the Vietnam War.

The Rosa Foundation—$10,000.00

Behind the Big House 2024

Educational tour of former slave dwellings, and related programs, offered in conjunction with annual pilgrimage of historic homes in Holly Springs. Both Joseph McGill of the Slave Dwellings Project and culinary historian Michael W. Twitty have again committed to participate, as well as Tammy Gibson, a professional storyteller whose work focuses on illuminating the African American experience. The 2024 event will also bring back Dale DeBerry, artist, storyteller and brickmaker, who will demonstrate how enslaved men and women created construction materials for the “big houses.” Events will include lectures, tours, antebellum cooking demonstrations, African American genealogy presentations and more.

Mississippi Museum of Art—$5,800.00

Depictions of Mental Health in American Film

Collaborative public panel discussion series to explore depictions of mental health and illness in American cinema. The discussion series will take place in conjunction with an upcoming exhibition at the Mississippi Museum of Art about an itinerant optometrist whose mental illness and subsequent disappearance resulted in his erasure from the family history. The discussion series also connects with ongoing work with the University of Mississippi Medical Center’s Asylum Hill project to excavate, preserve and study burial sites on the UMMC grounds where the Mississippi State Insane Hospital once stood – and where the missing optometrist from the MMA exhibit was eventually institutionalized.

Jimmie Rodgers Foundation, Inc. —$7,870.00

The Jimmie Rodgers Foundation Music History Seminar, Rodgers: Blues to Bluegrass

Public history seminar exploring the intersection of the work of music artists Bill Monroe (the “Father of Bluegrass”) and Jimmie Rodgers (the “Father of Country”).

The Alluvial Collective—$10,000.00

Critical Places: Mississippi Sites of Slave Rebellion Community Engagement

Photo exhibit, dialogue circles and panel presentations exploring historic sites of rebellion by enslaved men and women in Mississippi.

Operation Shoestring—$5,500.00

Raising Children in Central Jackson Oral History Project Phase II: Community Engagement

Phase II of an oral history project to capture the memories, opinions and beliefs about being raised and raising children in central Jackson.

International Museum of Muslim Cultures—$10,000.00

“Discovering the Soul of Oman and Mississippi” through Basel Almisshal’s Lens

Photography exhibit contrasting and comparing Mississippi and Oman, two vastly different landscapes with similar histories and cultural integrations from Africa, through the lens of photographer Basel Almisshal

Pike School of Art-Mississippi—$4,950.00

LOCKED / LABELED

A series of four panel discussions examining various aspects of the criminal justice system, part of a larger art project and platform for formerly incarcerated individuals to share their stories and encourage dialogue about the juvenile system in Pike County. The aim of both the art project and the panel discussions is to address the dual challenges faced by formerly detained youth: the physical imprisonment (locked) and the societal stigma and stereotypes that came with it (labeled).

Mississippi Department of Archives and History—$6,700.00

Increasing Equity and Access with MDAH’s Digital Archives

Digital exhibits highlighting two important topics in Mississippi history—Freedom Summer and Eudora Welty. The exhibits, while aimed at educators and students, will be available to the general public, once online. Contextualizing historical essays will be created to accompany both digital exhibits.

Mississippi University for Women—$2,000.00

Banned Book Week 2023

Banned Book Week- October 1-7, 2023- is a celebration of our right to create, share and have access to the diverse experiences, thoughts and feelings of all people of the world. Librarians and educators in Columbus will participate in Banned Book Week by hosting a series of events at Mississippi University for Women and the Columbus-Lowdes Public Library. October 4th kicks off the series of events, where a panel featuring educators, lawyers and librarians who have experience in combatting book challenges will speak about their experiences. On October 5th, there will be an art exhibit and read aloud at Columbus Art council, where artist will share their work and excerpts from banned books. Friday, a planned discussion about Ban This Book by Alan Gratz is planned with student involvement at MUW and MSMS. Other activities include a library scavenger hunt for banned books and a themed craft.

Community Foundation of Washington County—$2,500.00

Coleman High School Oral History Project

Comprehensive oral history project about  Coleman High School in Greenville, MS. The project will focus on the black history of Greenville that specifically relates to Coleman High School and how the school is critical to our understanding of Greenville and of black education in the Delta region as a whole. The intent of this project is to allow the graduates of Coleman High School to share their stories in their own voices and to create a repository accessible to all present and future Greenville residents.

Friends of Valena C. Jones School— $2,319.00

Valena C. Jones School Oral History Project

Oral history project about Valena C. Jones school concerning integration of schools. Former teachers and students will be interviewed  about the school’s lasting reputation as a hub for the black community during segregation. The school was  designated a Mississippi Landmark in April 2023, and this project aims to educate, entertain, and empower the black community from Bay St. Louis and the surrounding area.

Operation Shoestring— $2,500.00

Planning Grant for the Raising Children in Central Jackson Community-Based Oral History Project

Oral history project that provides a platform for community members of Georgetown, Midtown, Midcity, and Virden Addition neighborhoods of Jackson to explore and document how children across generations grow up in these neighborhoods that are systemically underserved.

Mississippi State University— $2,500.00

Mississippi and Liberia: Public Education Project on Prospect Hill Excavation

Public archaeology project at the Prospect Hill site in Mississippi. Includes a highly interactive community-engaged project that collaborates with the public about the history of Prospect Hill, a former plantation, and the history of enslaved life in Mississippi. This project also includes onsite interpretative panels to educate about the site’s history, the material culture that will be unearthed, and the incorporation of recent anthropological research that highlights the voices of descendants who now reside in Liberia, Africa.

Care Now—$2,500.00

Juneteenth Festival 

Juneteenth Celebration that consists of a Freedom Parade, Reenactment of Notification to African Americans being freed from slavery, Tour of Actual Slave Quarters at Craft House, and many opportunities of teaching and learning about slavery and black history.

Rosedale Freedom Project —$2,462.50

Freedom Project Network Summer Poetry Workshop

A set of two 5-day intensive workshops for 7-12-graders. Students are recruited from West Bolivar and Sunflower counties, and the workshop will be led by Mississippi-based Latinx poet C.T. Salazar. Students will read and study Ashley M. Jones’s Reparations Now!, create their own poems, and perform their poems, which will also be included in a short collection reflecting the students’ work. The culmination of the project will be a public showcase at the end of the summer in which families and community members are invited to see performances of the poems and receive copies of the students’ performed pieces.

Land, Literacy, and Legacy —$2,500.00

Voice of Freedom: Fannie Lou Hamer

A theatrical adaptation of the award-winning children’s book, Voice of Freedom Fannie Lou Hamer Spirit of the Civil Rights Movement, authored by Carole Boston Weatherford. The actors are faith, school and civic community members in Winona and the counties of Montgomery and Carroll. Voices of Freedom chronicles Mrs. Hamer’s life from childhood through the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago. At the conclusion of each performance, there will be an opportunity for audience members to ask questions and share commentary of their experiences.

Center for Social Entrepreneurship—$2,500.00

iVillage E-Summer Camp

The Center for Social Entrepreneurship will provide a free E-STEAM Summer Camp to promote entrepreneurship, STEAM, and the arts for 4th– and 5th-graders residing in West Jackson, MS. This camp aims to offer children a safe, engaging, and supportive learning environment during the summer months, introduce children to various literary forms, to encourage children to express themselves through writing and storytelling, and to foster a love for reading and writing among children.

Hancock County Historical Society—$2,500.00

Mercy Train: Next Stop Bay St. Louis, MS

“Mercy Train: Next Stop Bay St Louis” will be performed September 10, 2023, at 2pm at the Bay St Louis Little Theatre. The one-act play outlines the history of Orphan Trains and tells the life stories of the five children who were adopted by Bay St. Louis families in 1909. The large cast of characters includes at least seven children and 10 adults.

Cottrell Street Music & Heritage Festival Organization —$2,500.00

The Role of Education in West Point during the Civil Rights Movement

Symposium that includes five guest panelists and a moderator to discuss the importance of an education in West Point before and during segregation. This symposium will be presented to high school students from history classes in the Golden Triangle area with a focus on West Point High School, Mary Holmes College, and the Freedom Schools.

Mississippi2—$2,000.00

Unveiling Ceremony for Lynching of Bootjack & Red

A historical marker in Duck Hill, MS, at the site of Roosevelt (Red ) Townes’ and Robert (Bootjack) McDaniels’ lynching.  Townes and McDaniels were lynched April 13, 1937, by a white mob after being labeled as the murderers of a white storekeeper, George Windham. In addition to the unveiling of this marker, an upcoming documentary film is being produced that will shed light on the events leading up to the lynching and its aftermath, exploring the impact of the incident on the local community and the country.

Hinds Community College—$2,500.00

The Utica Jubilee VR Experience

Creation of a new, interactive exhibit allowing participants to sing with the Utica Jubilee Singers in a virtual reality environment as part of the Utica Institute Museum’s Utica Jubilee Singers exhibit. As part of the museum exhibit, visitors will use a VR headset to experience a concert from the perspective of a Jubilee Singer.

Mississippi State University—$2,500.00

Making Space for Lucy: Philosophy, Race and the Arts in Nashville Ballet’s “Lucy Negro Redux”

Three-day conference hosted by Mississippi State University intended to bring together the artist who created Nashville Ballet’s Lucy Negro Redux with both senior and junior scholars in relevant academics. Featured events include a roundtable discussion with poet, Caroline Randall Williams, choreographer Paul Vasterling, and originator of the role of Lucy, Kayla Rowser, a public screening of Nashville Ballet’s Lucy Negro Redux, and invited paper sessions featuring an international and interdisciplinary roster of scholars from African American and African Studies, Dance and Performance Studies, Literary Studies, and Philosophy.

Jackson State University—$1,282.00

THEE Mississippi Culture Forever

EFLSC  (English, Foreign Language, Speech, and Communication) Week celebrates the talents, research, and creative arts of Jackson State University by fostering their deep sense of community among faculty and students while also striving to share their research and accomplishments amongst the Mississippi community. Some events include a film screening of Beauty in Truth, an alumni panel showcasing various careers in humanities, the “THEE I Believe” open forum where students, faculty, administrators, and community presenters share brief statements concerning what they believe about humanities as related to life, civic engagement, social justice, and popular culture, and Mississippi Story-Telling Under the Stars.

Delta State University—$1,050.00

2023 Sammy O. Cranford

Historical lecture at Delta State University given by Dr. Ted Ownby, William Winter Professor of History and Professor of Southern Studies at the University of Mississippi. The lecture is entitled “Mississippi’s Jean Valjean: Chasing, Celebrating, and Maybe Pardoning and Escaped Convict in 1909.”

Mississippi State University—$2,500.00

Writer in Residence 2023

Kali Fajardo-Anstine, a nationally bestselling author, finalist for the 2019 National Book Award, and the Endowed Chair in Creative Writing at Texas State University, will spend a week at Mississippi State University as the Writer in Residence, engaging with students and faculty as well as the wider community of the Golden Triangle area. She will visit classes and meet with faculty and students, as well as holding a workshop and performing a reading of her work that are free and open to the public.

Mississippi University for Women—$2,000.00

Shirley Chisholm and Black Feminist Politics: A Conversation with Biographer Anastasia Curwood

Martha Swain Speaker Series highlights the life and legacy of Shirley Chishom, who made history as the first black woman elected to the US Congress (1968) and the first black candidate to seek a major party’s presidential nomination (1972), for Women’s History Month 2023. Anastasia Curwood, professor of history and director of African American and Africana studies at the University of Kentucky, will discuss her new biography of Chisholm, Shirley Chisholm: Champion of Black Feminist Power Politics. A book-signing will also take place.

University of Southern Mississippi—$2,200.00

Katrina and the Mississippi Gulf Coast

By documenting and digitizing material present in the McCain Archives, this project aims to visualize, for the general public, the impact of Hurricane Katrina on the Mississippi Gulf Coast. On a web-based platform, information concerning the Gulf Coast/Pine Belt region prior to Hurricane Katrina’s impact, the disaster phase, post-Katrina recovery, and ways in which hurricanes like Katrina relate to broader conversations in the present, such as climate change, environmental justice, and affordable housing will be presented.

Mississippi Urban League—$1,950.00

National Day of Racial Healing

The Mississippi Urban League is collaborating with the Mississippi Museum of Art and the Alluvial Collective to host a Jackson-based event in observance of the National Day of Racial Healing. With the Mississippi Museum of Art as the backdrop, the event is being curated as an evening of inspiring conversation about how art can be a catalyst for change. Acclaimed writer and Libby Shearn Moody Professor of English and Creative Writing at Rice University Kiese Laymon is the event’s keynote speaker. The event will be live-streamed to allow for participation from all corners of the world.

Community Library Mississippi—$2,000.00

Community Library Mississippi- Intellect Matters

Community Library Mississippi re-establishes in-person festivities for the Jackson Book Festival. Events include Dr. Janice Neal-Vincent, who directs a Spoken Word Choir, and Tiffany Coleman-McGee, an award-winning gospel artist who is also an actor. The 9th Poetry Contest requires participants to write and recite original poems, with the participants ranging from 6-60 years old. The categories include elementary, middle, high school, and adult competitions.

Delta State University—$2,500.00

“Inaugural Ballers: The Story of the First U.S. Women’s Olympic Basketball Team” with Andrew Maraniss

The New York Times-best selling author Andrew Maraniss talks about his new book, Inaugural Ballers: The Story of the First U.S. Women’s Olympic Basketball Team at Delta State University. DSU is the alma mater of Lusia” Lucy” Harris, a member of the 1976 U.S. women’s Olympic basketball team and the first woman to ever score in an Olympic basketball game. This event is a continuation of a series of events celebrating the life and legacy of Lucy Harris, the upcoming 50th anniversary of the restart of women’s basketball at Delta State, and the 50th anniversary of Title IX.

The following are regular grants awarded for the most recent grant deadline, May 1st, 2023.

Mississippi Action for Community Education (MACE)— $9,750.00

Having Our Say: Women WriteHER Literary Art Series

One-day public literary program, during the three-day Mississippi Delta Blues and Heritage
Festival in Greenville, featuring 13 authors, humanities scholars, literary artists and creatives
reflecting on southern women of the Civil Rights Movement. The schedule includes four sessions
featuring three authors per session, moderated by a humanities scholar.

Invisible Histories Project—$8,000.00

Magnolia Memories: Mississippi’s LGBTQ History

Exhibit and related public programs documenting and exploring Mississippi’s LGBTQ history. The
exhibit will focus on Mississippi LGBTQ history from the 1960s through the 2000s and will
include not only text but also artifacts, textiles, audio/visual content and art. Three separate panel
discussions will address the importance of researching and preserving LGBTQ history in
Mississippi, the experiences of LGBTQ people in Mississippi and the role art plays in Mississippi’s
LGBTQ history in culture.

Jackson/Hinds Library System—$3,000.00

Our Stories, We Remember: Oral Histories of the Jackson/Hinds Library System Eponyms

Oral history project to capture memories of the people for whom the Jackson/Hinds Library System
branches are named.

New Orleans Photo Alliance—$10,000.00

My Mind to Me a Kingdom Is: The Legacy of Dr. Jane Ellen McAllister

Documentary film project exploring the history of education, race relations and African American
studies through the life and work of Dr. Jane Ellen McAllister.

GRAMMY Museum—$4,000.00

Highway 61: Traveling America’s Music Highway

Free museum day for community members and visitors to tour a new contemporary exhibit
exploring the musical history along Highway 61 from New Orleans to St. Louis, including the
Mississippi Delta. An MHC grant would support a public panel discussion about the history of
Highway 61 and how the artists and the music of the Mississippi Delta contributed to the shaping of
other music genres including jazz, blues and rock and roll. Other grant-funded activities would
include a free exhibit viewing day and activities designed for students.

Alex Foundation—$5,729.50

Landmarks in Humanities: Teaching Architecture, History, and Culture with Historic Places

Free summer youth workshop engaging middle school students with local architecture, history and
culture. Programming will take place at The Belmont 1857, a former plantation home.

Walter Anderson Museum of Art—$10,000.00

Culture on the Open Road: Travel and Exchange in the American South

Following a similar model as past community outreach programs that inform the creation of a new
exhibition, the applicant proposes a series of public programs and dialogues focused on Mississippi
artist Walter Anderson’s bicycle travels across the Americas. Four public programs will explore
topics such as the history and art of the Highwaymen, a group of mostly self-taught African
Americans who devoted themselves to capturing Florida’s landscapes beginning in the late 1950s—
landscapes Anderson encountered on his bicycle trips through the Sunshine State. These
community dialogues will contribute to the vision for a new WAMA exhibit in early 2024, “The
Bicycle Logs.”

Coahoma Community College—$10,000.00

2023 Mississippi Delta Tennessee Williams Festival 

Annual festival examining the life and works of playwright Tennessee Williams. The 2023 festival
will explore two Williams’ plays, The Unsatisfactory Supper and Twenty-seven Wagons Full of
Cotton, upon which the controversial 1956 film Baby Doll was based. Festival activities will include
panel discussions featuring Williams scholars, a public screening of Baby Doll, a tour of the Baby
Doll house in Benoit, a performance of The Unsatisfactory Supper followed by a scholar panel
discussion and the annual student drama competition and porch plays.

University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill—$5,000.00

Okay, Mr. Ray!

Documentary film about a beloved Vicksburg auctioneer and storyteller, Ray Lum, using footage
collected more than 50 years ago by recent MHC Cora Norman Award recipient and folklorist
William Ferris. The film project is presented as a tribute to the power of storytelling and oral
traditions to understand a particular place and time.

Jackson State University—$10,000.00

Phillis Wheatley Poetry Festival

Fiftieth anniversary celebration of a groundbreaking conference for Black women writers hosted
Margaret Walker at Jackson State University in 1973. While the festival is a ticketed event, an MHC
grant would support a free closing lecture by Walker biographer Dr. Maryemma Graham.

The following are regular grants awarded for the September 15th, 2022 deadline.

University of Mississippi —$7,500.00

The Twenty-Ninth Oxford Conference for the Book

Annual three-day event celebrating books, reading, and writing. The 2023 conference will explore a variety of topics, including ongoing work through research and books to illuminate a fuller history of slavery in the U.S. and the Caribbean South, the life and works of Oxford writer Larry Brown and the work emerging from the Mississippi poetry community.

Copiah-Lincoln Community College —$6,600.00

Natchez Literary and Cinema Celebration

Annual event exploring southern history and culture through film and books. The 2023 festival theme will be “The Better Half: Fact, Fiction or Fable?” and will focus on the achievements of women and their contributions to a variety of sectors of home and civic life in the South and the nation. Public humanities events will include scholar panel discussions and author Q&A sessions.

Preserve Marshall County & Holly Springs, Inc. —$7,500.00

Behind the Big House Program & Tour

Educational tour of former slave dwellings, and related programs, offered in conjunction with annual pilgrimage of historic homes in Holly Springs. Both Joseph McGill of the Slave Dwellings Project and culinary historian Michael W. Twitty have again committed to participate, as well as Tammy Gibson, a professional storyteller whose work focuses on illuminating the African American experience. Events will include lectures, tours, antebellum cooking demonstrations and more. The MHC supported the creation of a 15-minute film telling the story of the BTBH project.

Mississippi College —$3,650.00

Mississippi Founders and Black Resistance

Speaker series to accompany MHC’s Mississippi Founders traveling exhibit at Mississippi College. Presentations will address topics related to the exhibit themes. Proposal requests honorarium for only one speaker, Dr. Kellie Cherie Carter Jackson of Wellesley College, who will speak from her book, Force and Freedom, which analyzes the history of Black abolitionism, as well as from her forthcoming book project on Black responses to white violence.

Austin Film Society —$7,500.00

It’s In the Voices

Documentary film project exploring the life and work of Daisy Greene, who led the Washington County (Mississippi) Oral History Project from 1976-1979.

University of Southern Mississippi —$7,500.00

Yakni Achukma Olka Achukma (Healthy Land, Healthy People)

Four public programs centered around a Medicine Wheel Garden, featuring indigenous and organic plant life, on the campus of the University of Southern Mississippi. Sessions will cover topics related to native plants and their traditional uses.

Dr. John Bowman Banks Museum —$5,000.00

St. Catherine Street, Natchez, MS: Yesteryear through Today

Multifaceted project to preserve and share the history of St. Catherine Street in Natchez, MS – a mini-version of Black Wall Street in Tulsa, OK. Applicant proposes two components for MHC support: development of a walking tour of the St. Catherine Street area and an oral history project with people who once lived in the area of St. Catherine Street.

The Bean Path —$5,450.00

The Meaning in Making for our Community: The Makers’ Narrative Toolbox

Planning grant to fund facilitated conversations with “makers” in west Jackson communities in the 39203 Zip Code area, which will inform future public programs and offerings at The Bean Path, whose outreach includes a “Makerspace”—a collaborative, community workshop space to engage Jackson in S.T.E.A.M. (Science, Technology, Engineering, Art & Math) pursuits. Project partners include the Margaret Walker Center, the Mississippi Museum of Art and the Wolfe Studios & Foundation.

Mississippi Center for Investigative Reporting —$5,000.00

Mississippi Banned Books Festival

Support requested for Spring 2023 event centered on the increasing practice of banning certain in the U.S. Planning partners include the Medgar and Myrlie Evers Institute and Millsaps College.

2021 Grants