News Releases

Chelsea McNutt, a Cornell University doctoral student, will research the role of Black women and their care work within the NAACP during the Civil Rights Movement in Mississippi 

Chelsea McNutt, a doctoral student at Cornell University, has been named the Mississippi Department of Archives and History’s Medgar and Myrlie Evers Research Fellow for 2026. McNutt will explore the Medgar Wiley and Myrlie Beasley Evers Papers at MDAH this summer to pursue research related to the care work of Black women within local NAACP branches – work she describes as “foundational” to sustaining the Civil Rights Movement. 

“I am deeply grateful to the selection committee for their confidence in my project,” McNutt said. “The opportunity to conduct research in the Medgar and Myrlie Evers Papers at the Mississippi Department of Archives and History is incredibly meaningful, and I look forward to engaging these collections in ways that will strengthen my current work.”

McNutt’s research will center on the organizing networks that surrounded Myrlie Evers, exploring how women within those networks cultivated relationships, managed organizational responsibilities and maintained the continuity of civil rights work amid persistent threats of violence and surveillance. McNutt will examine correspondence, organizational materials, and personal papers housed at MDAH.

McNutt received a Bachelor of Arts in History and a Master of Arts in History from Arkansas State University. She also received a Master of Arts in History from Cornell University. She’s working toward a PhD with the dissertation, “Hidden Architects: Black Women NAACP Activists in the Jim Crow South 1935-1970.”

McNutt will use the $5,000 fellowship to cover travel, housing, and other expenses incurred while doing primary research at the archives.  

Laura Heller, MDAH acquisitions and collections coordinator, said the department welcomes the opportunity to host a fellow each summer, and credits the partnership with the Medgar and Myrlie Evers Institute for making it possible.

“McNutt will have access to an extensive collection of archival material to support her research this summer,” Heller said. “The fellowship also seeks to increase scholars’ lifelong interest in history and to promote continued academic and public appreciation of Medgar and Myrlie Evers’ life and work, the Civil Rights Movement in Mississippi, and the struggle for human rights.”

The Medgar Wiley and Myrlie Beasley Evers Papers may be accessed at the William F. Winter Archives and History Building in Jackson. For more information on the fellowship or about the collection, contact Heller at 601-576-6889, or by email at fellowships@mdah.ms.gov.