2023 Evers Research Fellow Chosen
Kymara Sneed, a doctoral candidate in history at Mississippi State University, has been named the Medgar and Myrlie Evers Research Fellow for 2023.
Sneed will research archival holdings in the Medgar Wiley and Myrlie Beasley Evers Papers and The Mississippi Farm Bureau Federation Collections (MFBF) housed at the Mississippi Department of Archives and History (MDAH) in Jackson.
By examining the MFBF collection and the records and correspondence of Medgar Evers during his time as Mississippi field secretary for the NAACP, Sneed hopes to gain insight into the various hierarchies and perspectives—Mississippi’s Cooperative Extension Service agents, the MFBF, civil rights activists, and Black farmers—operating during the Jim Crow era.
“Because my topic covers this intersection of race and civil rights as it pertains to Mississippi State University’s Cooperative Extension Service and its relationship with Black farmers, the Evers Papers are integral to this project,” said Sneed. “This specific collection will be helpful in illustrating what civil rights activism looked like from a local perspective, how it might have clashed with the regimented duties of cooperative extension agents, and its reception within Mississippi’s Black farming community.”
The Medgar and Myrlie Evers Research Scholars Program is a collaboration between MDAH and the Medgar and Myrlie Evers Institute that seeks to nurture upper-level graduate students and faculty scholars at the beginning of their academic careers, to increase their life-long interest in history, and to promote continued academic and public appreciation of Medgar Evers’s life and work, the Civil Rights Movement in Mississippi, and the struggle for human rights.
Sneed will use the $5,000 fellowship to cover travel, housing, and other expenses incurred while doing primary research at the archives.
Medgar Wiley and Myrlie Beasley Evers Papers may be accessed at the William F. Winter Archives and History Building, 200 North Street, in Jackson. For more information on the fellowship or about the collection contact Laura Heller at 601-576-6850, or by email at lheller@mdah.ms.gov.