Mississippi Humanities Council

"Preserving Family Photographs" Public Workshop
2018-01-11 09:00 - 12:00 (America/Chicago) | Columbus-Lowndes Public Library, 314 7th St N, Columbus, MS, 39701, United States
The Columbus-Lowndes Public Library is hosting a workshop titled “Preserving Family Photographs” on January 11th from 9am-12pm.
The workshop will teach participants how to identify various historic photographic formats and processes. It will also instruct on how to properly handle, store, and preserve one’s family photographic treasures.
Participants are encouraged to bring up to three family photographs, negatives, or films that they would like to have evaluated by a conservator.
Kim R. Du Boise, the Senior Conservator and President of PhotoArts Imaging Professionals, will be conducting the workshop. She is a peer-reviewed Professional Associate in the American Institute for Conservation of Historic and Artistic Works. Du Boise has worked in art and photography for over forty years while developing coursework and workshops for teaching photography and photographic processes. For more information about PhotoArts Imaging Labs visit www.photoartsimaging.com.
The workshop has been made possible through a grant from the Mississippi Humanities Council and support from the Friends of the Columbus-Lowndes Public Library.
Seating is limited. Register for free at 662-329-5304 or by email at mvance@lowndes.lib.ms.us by January 5th.

MLK Youth Weekend
2018-01-12 18:00 - 2018-01-15 14:00 | MS
MLK gathering for Delta middle- and high-schoolers to examine issues of race, service and friendship. Youths will be recruited through area churches. Activities will include dialogues, workshops, readings and journaling around the subjects of race, race relations, civil rights and Mississippi history.

Ideas on Tap
2018-01-23 17:30 - 19:00 | Hal & Mal’s, 200 Commerce Street, Jackson, MS, 39201, United States
Join the Mississippi Humanities Council, Rethink Mississippi, and the Women’s Foundation of Mississippi at Hal and Mal’s on January 23 for the first installment in our spring series “Emerging Mississippi.” Each month, we’ll look at areas in which young people are making a difference in Mississippi.
On January 23, we’ll focus on young people working in politics and policy in Mississippi. Panelists include Rep. Roun McNeal, Rep. Jarvis Dortch, and Jackson City Councilman Melvin Priester Jr. Rethink’s Jake McGraw will moderate.
As always, compelling conversation is on us, and drinks are on you.

"A Place for All People" Exhibit Installation
2018-02-01 08:00 - 17:00 | Margaret Walker Center at Jackson State University, 1400 John R. Lynch Street, Jackson, MS, 39217, United States
Through the Prison to College Pipeline, founded to provide access to college curriculum to state inmates in Mississippi, the Margaret Walker Center has the opportunity to bring the exhibition A Place for All People to the Central Mississippi Correctional Facility and Parchman Penitentiary. The exhibition details the history of the National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC), built and opened on the Mall in Washinton, D.C., in 2016, and it highlights the work that the NMAAHC continues to do. The exhibit will be open to the public beginning February 2018, at the Margaret Walker Center of Jackson State University.

"Mississippians Forever Free" Gallery Exhibit
2018-02-01 08:00 - 17:00 | Library of Hattiesburg, Petal, and Forrest County, 329 Hardy Street, Hattiesburg, MS, 39401
Part of Library of Hattiesburg, Petal, and Forrest County’s “Celebrating African American History & Culture” series that will be on display during February, Black History Month, in the library galleries.

"Marshall" Movie Screening
2018-02-01 14:00 - 20:00 | Library of Hattiesburg, Petal, and Forrest County, 329 Hardy Street, Hattiesburg, MS, 39401
Part of The Library of Hattiesburg, Petal, and Forrest County’s Celebrating African American History & Culture series.

"Why We Call It Soul Food"
2018-02-06 18:00 - 19:30 | Train Depot, 308 Newman Street , Hattiesburg , MS

Oxford Film Festival Screening and Discussion on Restorative Justice
2018-02-10 16:00 - 18:00 | MS
Partnership with the William Winter Institute to observe Black History Month with a screening of a film about the Restorative Justice movement, which works to combat racial discrimination in schools by addressing trauma that often leads to misbehavior and delinquency. Screening of “Circles” will begin at 4:15PM on Malco Screen 1.

Hattiesburg Library Lecture-- "Camp Van Dorn"
2018-02-12 18:00 - 19:30 | Library of Hattiesburg, Petal, and Forrest County, 329 Hardy Street, Hattiesburg, MS, 39401
Part of the Hattiesburg, Petal, and Forrest County Library’s Celebrating African American History & Culture Series. Lecture by Dr. Charles Bolton titled “Camp Van Dorn, WWII Mobilization, & Black Troops in the Deep South.”

Bringing Forward the Past: Art, Identity, and the American South
2018-02-16 08:00 - 2018-02-18 17:00 | MS
A day-and-a-half long interdisciplinary symposium that will convene artists, curators, scholars, and the public to explore issues related to identity, race, indigeneity, trauma, and memory. Occurring February 16-18, Bringing Forward the Past will intersect several concurrent projects and its local community, with deep ties to national conversations about these issues. Speakers include historians Dr. Sarah Lewis and Dr. Gwendolyn Dubois Shaw. Updated speakers and panelists to come.
You can see a full schedule of the symposium and also register by visiting the event website here.

2018 Public Humanities Awards Gala
2018-02-16 17:45 - 20:00 | Old Capitol Museum, 100 South State Street, Jackson , MS, 39201
The Mississippi Humanities Council will present its 2018 Public Humanities Awards at the Old Capitol Museum in Jackson. The Public Humanities Awards recognize outstanding work by Mississippians in bringing the insights of the humanities to public audiences. Details about this year’s award recipients and ordering tickets can be found here.

Monday Night Book Club: "Sing, Unburied, Sing"
2018-02-19 18:30 - 20:00 | Library of Hattiesburg, Petal, and Forrest County, 329 Hardy Street, Hattiesburg, MS, 39401
Part of Library of Hattiesburg, Petal, and Forrest County’s Celebrating African American History & Culture Series.

Ideas on Tap
2018-02-20 17:30 - 19:00 | Hal & Mal’s, 200 Commerce Street, Jackson, MS, 39201, United States
Join the Mississippi Humanities Council, Rethink Mississippi, and the Women’s Foundation of Mississippi at Hal and Mal’s in Jackson on February 20 for the second installment in our spring series “Emerging Mississippi.” Each month, we’ll look at areas in which young people are making a difference in Mississippi.
On February 20, we’ll focus on young people in business and enterprise. Panelists include Candie Simmons, Senior Vice President and Regional Marketing Director at Regions; Lauren Rhoades, owner of Sweet & Sauer; and Mary Claire Parrish, Manager of Talent Strategies at C Spire. The conversation will be moderated by Kim Burke, Dean of the Else School of Management at Millsaps College.
As always, compelling conversation is on us, and drinks are on you.

29th Annual Natchez Literary and Cinema Celebration: Southern Gothic
2018-02-22 08:00 - 2018-02-24 17:00 | MS
Annual literary and cinema festival. The 2018 festival will focus on “Southern Gothic” elements in scholarly literature, popular fiction, biography and history.

"Back in the Day" Black History Celebration
2018-02-22 18:00 - 21:00 | MS
Annual ecumenical Black History Celebration. The 2018 celebration features Greenwood native, Dr. Tonea Stewart, actress and dean of the College of Visual and Performing Arts at Alabama State University. Stewart will talk about the importance, as a black actress, of choosing her roles carefully to provide positive representations of African American characters on film and on stage.

Jackson Africana Drum and Dance Symposium
2018-02-24 10:00 - 2018-02-25 18:00 | F.D. Music Hall, Jimmie James Recital Hall and Art Gallery, JSU, 1400 John R. Lynch Street, Jackson , MS , 39217
This two-day symposium will engage the community and scholars on the performance and preservation of African music and dance expressions in Africa and in the diaspora as well as to see the connection between the “traditions” and the contemporary “remembered” elements in diaspora forms. Specifically, traditional African music and dance will be discussed in relation to its use to assert identity among Americans, its role in “Southern” culture development, and contemporary popular music and dance forms in the South such as hip-hop, blues, and folk, This Symposium will include twp panel discussions, breakout sessions with panelists to discuss their traditions in relation to those that symposium attendees are a part of, and hand on workshops of drumming, dance, and emceeing/storytelling.
Saturday, February 24 will feature panel discussions and breakout sessions dealing with African music on the continent and in the diaspora as manifested in community drum and dance classes, drum circles, and the roles the art plays in rites of passage, mental health, and African retention in African American music. Dr. Nzinga Metzger will provide the keynote address. All panels are free and open to the public! There will also be a free head wrapping presentation.

The WPA Slave Narratives: Giving Voice to Freedom
2018-02-26 18:00 - 19:30 | Library of Hattiesburg, Petal, and Forrest County, 329 Hardy Street, Hattiesburg, MS, 39401

Ida B. Wells and the Campaign Against Lynching
2018-02-27 17:00 - 19:00 | Old Capitol Museum, 100 South State Street, Jackson , MS, 39201
Ida B. Wells was born into slavery in Holly Springs, Mississippi, and went on to become one of the highest-profile voices for civil rights in the nineteenth century. On Tuesday, February 27, biographer Paula J. Giddings will present “Ida B. Wells and the Campaign against Lynching” at the Old Capitol Museum.
Wells attended Rust College and became a teacher. In 1887, she won a lawsuit against the Chesapeake and Ohio Railroad after being forcibly removed from a first-class car for which she had purchased a ticket. Wells purchased a stake in a small newspaper and began a public campaign against inequitable school funding, lynching, and segregation, and supporting economic boycotts and women’s rights. She eventually moved to New York City and then Chicago, where she continued to write exposes of lynchings in the South. In 1909, Wells helped form the NAACP, and in 1930 she became one of the first African American women in the nation to run for public office with an unsuccessful attempt at a seat in the Illinois legislature. She died in 1931. In 2016 she was elected to the state’s Hall of Fame.
David Levering Lewis, the Pulitzer Prize-Winning biographer of W.E.B Dubois, wrote that “Ida B. Wells was an inspired journalist, an uncompromising civil libertarian, and a woman far ahead of her patriarchal times–a ‘difficult’ woman. Paula Giddings’s monumental achievement restores this extraordinary contrarian to her place as one of the grand pace-setters of American social justice and female empowerment.”
Paula J. Giddings is the author of “Ida: A Sword among Lions,” which won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Biography and the inaugural John Hope Franklin Research Center Book Award presented by the Duke University Libraries. Giddings is Elizabeth A. Woodson 1922 Professor Emerita of Africana Studies at Smith College, where she edited “Meridians,” a journal for scholarship and creative work by and about women of color in U.S. and international contexts.
Giddings is a former book editor and journalist who has written extensively on international and national issues and has been published by the Washington Post, the New York Times, the Philadelphia Inquirer, Jeune Afrique (Paris), The Nation, and Sage: A Scholarly Journal on Black Women, among other publications.
A reception and book signing will begin at 5 p.m. in the Old Capitol rotunda, and the program will be in the historic House of Representatives Chamber at 6 p.m. This program is free and open to the public. For more information call 601-576-6920 or email info@oldcapitolmuseum.com.
This program is supported by the Mississippi Humanities Council through the “Democracy and the Informed Citizen” Initiative.”

"Mississippians Forever Free" Gallery Exhibit--Final Day
2018-02-28 08:00 - 17:00 | Library of Hattiesburg, Petal, and Forrest County, 329 Hardy Street, Hattiesburg, MS, 39401

Engaging citizens: How you can participate in the legislative process using reliable information
2018-02-28 18:00 - 20:00 | Southaven Public Library, 8554 Northwest Dr., Southaven, Mississippi, 38671
Learn how a bill becomes a law, how to look up the actual text of bills by name, keyword, bill number, and even congressional representative using congress.gov.

Angie Thomas: "The Hate U Give: Finding Your Activism and Turning the Political into the Personal"
2018-03-01 10:00 - 12:30 | MS
Jackson State University welcomes Angie Thomas, author of The Hate U Give to speak in a community forum on March 1, 2018. She will engage her audience in dialogue on social justice issues presented in the novel that specifically address the audience, and will take place in the Jackson State University Student Center Theatre. Thomas will also lead a workshop with creative writing students, discussing the process for successful publication.

Literary Arts in the Delta Festival
2018-03-10 09:00 - 18:00 | MS
The Washington County Library System in Greenville, Miss., in partnership with the Greenwood, Miss.-based Turnrow Book Company kicks offl Literary Arts in the Delta Festival (Lit in the Delta Fest) March 10, 2018.
The free all-day Festival will convene during National Reading Month, at E. E. Bass Cultural Arts Center, 323 South Main Street and at 9 a.m. – 6 p.m. and at William Percy Library, 341 Main Street in Greenville, Miss. Food vendors, art and books for all ages also will be available.
The Festival seeks to engage communities from 18 counties in the Mississippi Delta Region including: Bolivar, Carroll, Coahoma, DeSoto, Holmes, Humphreys, Issaquena, Leflore, Panola, Quitman, Sharkey, Sunflower, Tallahatchie, Tate, Washington and Yazoo in the State of Mississippi; and the counties of Chicot and Desha in the State of Arkansas. A Young Authors Competition will engage 8th and 9th graders from these 20 invited Mississippi Delta Region counties.
The Festival will have more than 30 literary artists, including Internet and social media sensation, Officer Tommy Norman; comedian and film artist, Keith Morris, national best-selling author, ReShonda Tate Billingsley and the legendary songwriter, documentary producer, former owner of Memphis-based Stax Records and former president of Motown Records Group, Al Bell.Bell, a Delta native (Brinkley, Ark.) is a Lifetime Grammy Award recipient and will present a lecture on his literary works in entertainment and the music industry. He has written and promoted artists including Prince, the Staple Singers, Issac Hayes and countless others. Bell’s award-winning documentary, Wattstax, will be discussed.
Dolly Parton Imagination Library, Heifer International and Scholastic will be featured in a panel discussion on how books in the homes and hands of youth and families impact learning for a lifetime.
Dr. Maya Angelou’s film, Still I Rise will also be presented throughout the Festival day as well as art by ArtsPlace Mississippi. Still I Rise is directed by Bob Hercules and Rita Coburn Whack and chronicles the life of poet laureate and literary scholar Dr. Maya Angelou.
Tickets are free, register here by February 15!

NEH Grant Workshop
2018-03-20 09:30 - 12:30 | MS
Dr. Daniel Sack, program officer with the National Endowment for the Humanities, Division of Research Programs, will be visiting our region on Tuesday, March 20, 2018. Mississippi State University (MSU) is happy to be serving as the host institution for the NEH program officer to provide an NEH regional seminar. During his time at MSU, Dr. Sack will share special NEH initiatives, discuss grant-writing strategies, and provide mock panel sessions – all extremely valuable to all humanists interested in opportunities with NEH.
REGISTER HERE

Ideas on Tap
2018-03-20 17:30 - 19:00 | Hal & Mal’s, 200 Commerce Street, Jackson, MS, 39201, United States
Join the Mississippi Humanities Council, Rethink Mississippi, and the Women’s Foundation of Mississippi at Hal and Mal’s on March 20 for the third installment in our spring series “Emerging Mississippi.” Each month, we’ll look at areas in which young people are making a difference in Mississippi.
On March 20, we’ll focus on young people in arts and culture. Panelists include artist Ginger Williams Cook and DJ and Offbeat owner Phillip Young-venom Rollins. Garrad Lee will moderate the conversation.
As always, compelling conversation is on us, and drinks are on you.

25th Oxford Conference for the Book
2018-03-21 09:00 - 2018-03-23 18:00 | MS
Annual literary conference based on the University of Mississippi campus. The 2018 conference will explore a range of topics, from the desegregation of public libraries, the role of long-form journalism in our current news environment and award-winning poetry to the Latino experience in the American South.

Ben Jonson, Our Contemporary
2018-03-21 16:00 - 20:00 | MS

Problem Solving Charrette: Teacher Shortage in the Delta
2018-03-24 10:00 - 12:00 | I.T. Montgomery Elementary, 202 W M.L.K. Jr. Drive, Mound Bayou, MS, 38762

Delta State University's Winning the Race Conference 2018
2018-03-26 - 2018-03-27 | Delta State University, 1003 W Sunflower Rd, Cleveland, MS, 38733, United States
The Winning the Race Conference was developed with three overarching goals: engage in conversations with campus and community constituencies that will build an appreciation for diversity differences and a spirit of community through shared ideas; promote a broad discourse on race relations by building conversations to bring together diverse communities in the Delta through sharing of ideas and building cooperation; and to rekindle a hope that Delta communities will move toward greater equality and forward and open thinking while reducing racial disparities and tensions. Keynote speaker 2018: Kevin Powell.

Registration is FREE but required for all conference attendees. You can register here beginning February 1, 2018.

Freedom of Information Act: Learn how researchers are using FOIA at the University of Mississippi
2018-03-28 12:00 - 14:00 | J.D. Williams Library, 1 Library Loop, University, Mississippi, 38677
Join this panel discussion and learn how researchers across the university use FOIA to access valuable government information for their research.

Speakers Bureau: Shalom, Y'all: The History of Jews in Mississippi
2018-04-03 19:00 - 20:00 | South Mississippi Genealogy & Historical Society, 307 2nd Ave , Hattiesburg , MS
In the early 19th century, Jewish immigrants from Europe began to arrive in the Magnolia State, settling initially in towns along the Mississippi River. Concentrating in retail trade, these Jews became visible symbols of economic modernity and market capitalism in Mississippi. Throughout much of their history, Mississippi Jews have worked to lessen the cultural differences between themselves and their neighbors. In recent decades, due to region-wide economic and demographic trends, the Jewish population of Mississippi has declined and become concentrated in the state’s population centers.

Dr. Stuart Rockoff holds a Ph.D. in American History and is the Executive Director of the Mississippi Humanities Council.
