MDAH News

Mississippi Department of Archives and History (MDAH) is pleased to announce that The Eudora Welty Digital Archives is now available to the public on the MDAH website. This digitization project was funded by a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities with a matching contribution from the Eudora Welty Foundation. 

The Eudora Welty Digital Archives represents only a sample of Welty-related material housed at MDAH and features selections of correspondence, manuscripts, photographs, and other media related to Eudora Welty (1909-2001), master of the short story and one of America's greatest authors. 

"MDAH is grateful to the National Endowment for the Humanities for their generous grant which allowed for the construction of the world's most extensive digital archive of Eudora Welty materials," said Katie Blount, director of MDAH. "We are excited to share this incredible resource with researchers and fans of Eudora Welty."

Eudora Welty had a long relationship with the MDAH, making her first donation of manuscripts, papers, and photographs in 1957, and continuing to donate throughout her life. In addition to documents, the collection includes the house where Welty lived most of her life and wrote her greatest works, her furniture, art, and books, and the garden in which she worked alongside her mother. The complete collection is accessible at the MDAH.

Eudora Welty was born on April 13, 1909, the daughter of Christian Webb Welty and Chestina Andrews Welty. In 1925 the family moved to 1119 Pinehurst Street in Jackson, where Welty would reside until her death. Welty graduated from Jackson's Central High School in 1925, attended Mississippi State College for Women, University of Wisconsin, and Columbia University in New York City.

She received a Guggenheim Fellowship and the 1973 Pulitzer Prize for her book, The Optimist's Daughter—originally published in The New Yorker in 1969. Welty was also an accomplished photographer.

From 1955 to 1970, Eudora Welty published two short stories dealing with the Civil Rights Movement, "Where Is the Voice Coming From?" and "The Demonstrators," and worked on scenes for a novel while caring for her family.  

Eudora Welty died in Jackson on July 23, 2001. 

Any views, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this database do not necessarily represent those of the National Endowment for the Humanities.                              

For more information call 601-576-6850, or email info@mdah.ms.gov.   

The Mississippi Department of Archives and History (MDAH) is accepting applications for the 2023 Eudora Welty Research Fellowship and the 2023 Medgar and Myrlie Evers Research Fellowship. The competitive scholarships may be used for research at MDAH for a minimum of two weeks during the summer.   

Offered in partnership with the Eudora Welty Foundation, the annual Eudora Welty Research Fellowship awards a $5,000 stipend to one graduate student to conduct research using the Eudora Welty Collection at MDAH for at least two weeks during the summer. The deadline is March 3, 2023. 

The Eudora Welty Collection is the world’s finest collection of materials related to Welty and one of the most varied literary collections in the United States. The collection is divided over forty-five series and includes manuscripts, correspondence, photographs, drawings, essays, family papers, and audio and visual material that spans Welty’s entire life. 

The Medgar and Myrlie Evers Research Fellowship is in partnership with the Medgar and Myrlie Evers Institute and awards a $5,000 stipend to one graduate student or faculty member within the first five years of their academic career to conduct research using the Medgar Wiley and Myrlie Beasley Evers Papers at MDAH for at least two weeks during the summer. The deadline is March 24, 2023. 

The Medgar Wiley and Myrlie Beasley Evers Papers at MDAH include Evers and Beasley family papers dating from the early 1900s to around July 1964, when Myrlie Evers and her children moved to Claremont, California. The papers are divided into four subgroups: the papers of Medgar Evers as Mississippi field secretary of the NAACP; family papers of Medgar Evers; family papers of Myrlie Evers; and records relating to the case of the State of Mississippi v. Byron De La Beckwith. 

For more information about the fellowships visit https://www.mdah.ms.gov/careers-volunteering/fellowship-opportunities.  

For additional information and questions about the Eudora Welty Fellowship, email ecambonga@mdah.ms.gov. 

For additional information and questions about the Medgar and Myrlie Evers Fellowship, email lheller@mdah.ms.gov.