The Mississippi Humanities Council is pleased to announce more than $46,000 in grants to eight Mississippi organizations in support of public humanities programs. In addition to this direct support, each organization was required to present matching cash or in-kind cost share, pledging an additional $46,000 to humanities programming around our state. The humanities programs funded in this major round support projects exploring the histories of two segregation-era African American schools; literary connections between William Faulkner, Eudora Welty and Richard Wright; the challenges and triumphs of life in a small Southern town through a mid-century photograph collection; and Southern depictions of life and death through art, nature and the land.
Dr. Stuart Rockoff, executive director of the Mississippi Humanities Council, said, “These grants reflect the diversity of our state’s history and culture. We are very excited to help document important local stories that add to the rich tapestry of Mississippi history.”
Humanities grants are awarded to Mississippi nonprofit organizations in support of programs that foster the public’s understanding of our rich history and culture.
“The Mississippi Humanities Council is pleased to support this rich array of projects that will use the humanities to examine our history and our culture through new and different lenses,” said Council Board Chair Sharman Smith.
Major grants are offered twice each year. Deadlines are May 1 and September 15. Please visit http://mshumanities.org/grants/, or contact Carol Andersen, carol@mhc.state.ms.us, for additional information.
The organizations and projects that were awarded grants, listed by community, include:
Clarksdale:
Coahoma Community College —$7,500.00
2021 Mississippi Delta Tennessee Williams Festival
Twenty-ninth annual festival examining the life and works of playwright Tennessee Williams. Given a possible need to continue social-distancing in the fall, the 2021 festival will offer both in-person and virtual programming. The 2021 theme is “the exchange of culture, history and music along the Mississippi River,” using Williams’ A Streetcar Named Desire as the foundation for various components of the three-day program schedule.
Columbus:
Columbus Arts Council—$7,500.00
O.N. Pruitt’s Possum Town: Photographing Trouble and Resilience in the American South
Traveling multimedia exhibition and related public programs featuring the photography of a white photographer, O.N. Pruitt, in Lowndes County, circa 1920s-1950s, which reveals the everyday life of a small Southern town, including the realities of a community segregated by race.
McComb:
Pike School of Art —$3,500.00
Charles Edward Williams: FORWARD
Various public events related to visiting artist Charles Williams, whose project, FORWARD, examines, through art and music, the McComb community’s place in the civil rights struggle.
New Albany:
Union County Historical Society & Heritage Museum—$7,500.00
Oral History of Union County Training School/B.F. Ford School
Oral history project to interview former students and graduates of the Union County Training School and later B.F. Ford School, at one time the only school in Union County that African Americans could receive high school diplomas.
Oxford:
University of Mississippi—Department of English —$2.600.00
“Faulkner, Welty, Wright: A Mississippi Confluence” 2021 Faulkner and Yoknapatawpha Conference)
Annual literary conference will use a virtual format to look at three Mississippi literary standouts who left an indelible mark on American literature and modern intellectual life: William Faulkner, Eudora Welty, and Richard Wright. A program highlight will be virtual appearances by Julia and Malcolm Wright, daughter and grandson of Richard Wright.
Ocean Springs:
Walter Anderson Museum of Art —$7,500.00
Mississippi Elegy: Southern Depictions of Life & Death
Exhibition and related programming exploring concepts of grief and mourning through the lens of nature and the Southern land. Public events will address talismans of cultural memory, notions of spirituality and nature, memento mori silhouettes as a mode of remembering loved ones, elements of death and remembrance in the life and work of William Faulkner, the history of early photography to document the dead, themes of death and the spirit world in Blues music and foodways traditions surrounding the Southern funeral.
Shannon:
University of Mississippi—Center for the Study—$7,152.00
Siggers High School Oral History Project
Oral history project to interview former students, teachers and graduates of Siggers High School in Lee County, formerly the Shannon Colored School. Most of the material records of the school were discarded or destroyed when public schools integrated in 1967.
Statewide:
Mississippi Heritage Trust —$3,000.00
10 Most Endangered Historic Places in Mississippi
Annual awareness-building program about endangered historic structures in Mississippi.