News Releases

The estate of William Alexander Percy has donated the original handwritten manuscript of Percy's 1941 autobiography and bestseller, Lanterns on the Levee: Recollections of a Planter's Son, to the Mississippi Department of Archives and History (MDAH). 

The local government records committee will review, approve, disapprove, amend, or modify records control schedules for all counties and municipalities on Tuesday, July 16, at 10:30 a.m. Once approved, schedules shall have the force of effect of law.

HII’s Ingalls Shipbuilding division is sponsoring free admission to the Two Mississippi Museums  in honor of Juneteenth on Wednesday, June 19.  

Mississippi blues and Grammy award-winning artist Christone “Kingfish” Ingram will headline the free 2024 Mississippi Makers Fest—a music, food, and arts festival sponsored by Nissan—at the Two Mississippi Museums from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. on Saturday, May 11. Additional musical performers include Hud & The Hurricane and American Blonde. Concerts start at 4 p.m.

Higher Purpose Co. is sponsoring free admission to the Two Mississippi Museums Friday, May 31, through Sunday, June 2, to commemorate the 60th anniversary of Freedom Summer.

Mississippi Department of Archives and History (MDAH) hosted the 2024 Mississippi History Day competition at the Two Mississippi Museums on Saturday, April 20. The competition drew middle and high school students from across the state. 

Gabrielle Bowden, a doctoral student at the University of Mississippi, has been named the Eudora Welty Research Fellow for 2024. Bowden will use archival holdings in the Eudora Welty Collection housed at the Mississippi Department of Archives and History (MDAH) to research the influence of Welty’s travel in Ireland on her 1951 publication “The Burning.” 

At its April 19 quarterly meeting, the Mississippi Department of Archives History (MDAH) Board of Trustees approved a demolition permit for the Eudora Welty Library building in Jackson. The permit approval followed a period of public comment during which two comments were received supporting the demolition and three against.  This building was built in 1946 as a Sears department store. In the late 1980s, it became the downtown public library and was named for Mississippi author Eudora Welty. By 2023, the building was in serious disrepair, the City declared that it would no longer maintain it, and the Jackson/Hinds Library Board voted to move the library to a different location.  

The Mississippi Department of Archives and History has awarded grants totaling more than $97,000 to eight preservation projects in seven Certified Local Government (CLG) communities across the state.   The scope of work for awarded projects ranges from professional assessments, as with the evaluation of three National Register-listed buildings for future use by the City of New Albany, to more advanced phases of rehabilitation, as with the Lundy House project in Lexington.