Mississippi

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• SOURCE: Mississippi Free Press
  4/29/2022
  

  Natchez's Deacons For Defense HQ on National Register of Historic Places

  A Natchez barbershop will be recognized as the meeting place of the group organized for Black community self-defense against racist terrorism. 

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• SOURCE: The Atlantic
  4/28/2022
  

  Why Isn't Joetha Collier Known as a Victim of Racism in Mississippi?

  by Keisha N. Blain

  A young woman's murder by white men in 1971, on the day she graduated from a newly integrated high school, doesn't fit easily into a narrative framework established by Emmett Till's killing – of martyrdom leading to change for the better.

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• SOURCE: WLBT
  4/14/2022
  

  Former Mississippi Governor Slams Tate Reeves over Confederate Heritage Remarks

  Ray Mabus did not sign a Confederate Heritage Month declaration, a tradition which began with former Governor Kirk Fordice, whom Mabus also called "an overt white supremacist." 

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• SOURCE: The Atlantic
  4/7/2022
  

  Citizen Tour Guides Protect the Memory of Civil Rights Killings in Mississippi

  "Obbie is of the opinion that if something needs to get done, especially something as important as ensuring that the legacy of your community and family doesn’t get erased, you’d better first employ yourself to do something about it."

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• SOURCE: Mississippi Free Press
  4/7/2022
  

  Historic Echoes as Mississippi Senators Vote No on Jackson Nomination

  Did some statements made by Republicans echo Senator James Eastland's questioning whether Thurgood Marshall was "prejudiced against the white people of the South"? 

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• SOURCE: Mississippi Free Press
  3/14/2022
  

  Itta Bena, Miss. Works to Preserve Civil Rights History

  Shannon Bowden of Mississippi Valley State University is leading a public history project for the nearby Delta town of Itta Bena, preserving the sites and stories of voting rights activism. 

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• SOURCE: Hyperallergic
  

  Mississippi Museum of Art Exhibition Opens on Legacies of Great Migration

  Opening April 9, this exhibition features newly commissioned works by 12 acclaimed Black contemporary artists, including Carrie Mae Weems, Theaster Gates, and more.

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• SOURCE: Mississippi Today
  2/2/2022
  

  A Mississippi Conservative Took the Only CRT Course in the State. Here's What Happened

  Engaging with the now-notorious body of legal scholarship shook up Brittany Murphree's assumptions about the law and society, leading her to oppose her party's state legislation restricting how issues of race can be taught.

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• SOURCE: Mississippi Free Press
  1/26/2022
  

  Christian Dominionism, History, and the War on Abortion in Mississippi

  Mississippi's stringent abortion restrictions are the product of a decades-long, cross-denominational project of Christian Dominionism, the view that conservative Christians should control the institutions of society to advance what they consider "Biblical" policies. 

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• SOURCE: University of Mississippi
  1/18/2022
  

  University of Mississippi Makes Available Oral Histories of Student Protesters Sent to Parchman Prison Farm

  Historian Garrett Felber and his students began a project to document the experiences of Mississippi students arrested in 1970 and sent to the notorious prison farm. 

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• SOURCE: The Guardian
  1/8/2022
  

  A Racist 1890 Law Still Blocks Black Americans from Voting

  Fewer than 200 Mississippians in the last 25 years have successfully petitioned for the restoration of their voting rights after felony convictions.

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• SOURCE: New York Times
  12/5/2021
  

  Ghosts of Mississippi

  by Charles M. Blow

  The Times columnist argues that the oral arguments in the SCOTUS abortion case recall the bitter history of disenfranchisement in Mississippi, and the subsequent decades when rights were stripped away from Mississippians without democratic process.

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• SOURCE: New York Times
  12/6/2021
  

  Justice Department Closes Emmett Till Investigation Without Charges

  Historian Timothy Tyson wrote in a 2017 book that witness Carolyn Bryant Donham disavowed her testimony that Till had grabbed her and made suggestive remarks before he was lynched. The DOJ has said that materials given them by Tyson did not corroborate the claim of a recantation. 

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• SOURCE: The Atlantic
  11/30/2021
  

  Mississippi Judge Refuses to be Gaslit about State's History in Abortion Rights Case

  Judge Carlton Reeves rejected Mississippi's cynical argument, now before the Supreme Court, that its new abortion ban seeks to protect women and African Americans, calling the law a revival of the "old Mississippi" that sought above all to control them. 

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• SOURCE: Mississippi Free Press
  10/28/2021
  

  Black Women in Noxubee County, Miss. Fight Historical Inequities Exposed by COVID

  COVID-19 has highlighted the historical processes of agricultural labor, land ownership, and economic underdevelopment that have made Black residents of Noxubee County in eastern Mississippi vulnerable to both illness and economic from the pandemic. 

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• SOURCE: New York Times
  10/5/2021
  

  The Enduring Influence of Fannie Lou Hamer, Civil Rights Advocate

  by Jill Watts

  New books by Kate Clifford Larson and Keisha N. Blain aim to restore Fannie Lou Hamer to a position of prominence in the history of Black freedom struggles. 

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• SOURCE: Mississippi Free Press
  9/1/2021
  

  Journalist William Huie Concealed Lynchers In Emmett Till Case And Got Away With It

  The commonly-know story of Emmett Till's lynching has long been distorted because a journalist who reported the accounts of two acquitted killers had written out other conspirators from the story for legal reasons. 

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• SOURCE: Biloxi Sun-Herald
  9/2/2011
  

  Ida Floods Another Historically Black Gulf Community

  The Forest Heights neighborhood of Gulfport, Mississippi was redeveloped in the 1960s as one of the first racially integrated developments promoting home ownership. Like the rest of historically Black north Gulfport, it is threatened by more frequent flooding.

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• SOURCE: New York Times
  8/16/2021
  

  The Complicated History of One Mississippi Restaurant

  Booker Wright, a Black waiter, shocked the community of Greenwood by shedding his genial tableside manner to tell a documentary crew about the burdens of racial subordination. After the film aired, he was assaulted by a police officer and his bar was vandalized.

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• SOURCE: Los Angeles Times
  8/10/2021
  

  Greenwood, Mississippi Asks What Comes After Confederate Monuments

  As political pressure brings down Confederate statues, the question of what replaces them becomes more urgent but remains unanswered.