MDAH News

At noon on Wednesday, June 10, as part of the department’s History Is Lunch series, Wilma Mosley Clopton will present “Mississippi Justice: Then and Now.” The streaming-only program will be shown live on the Mississippi Department of Archives and History’s Facebook page and uploaded to the MDAH YouTube channel afterwards.

The program will feature a screening of Clopton’s new film Mississippi Justice, which examines a 1951 murder in Pike County. “Hattie Lee Barnes was a twenty-year-old African American who shot and killed a white male from a prominent family,” said Clopton. The film draws on trial records and interviews to depict the case’s twists and turns.

In less than three weeks after the shooting Barnes was indicted, entered a not guilty plea, and was on trial for murder. Joe Pigott, PIke County’s newest and most inexperienced public defender, was appointed as Barnes’s attorney. “According to our research the courtroom was overflowing with onlookers, and the spite and anger for Ms. Barnes was obvious,” said Clopton. “That same spite and anger was equally as obvious for Mr. Pigott as he defended this black woman who killed a respected member of the white community.”

Following the screening Clopton will be joined in a panel discussion by Pauline Rogers, co-founder and president of Reaching and Educating for Community Hope, and Regina Quinn, a partner in the May Law Firm, PLLC.

Production of the film Mississippi Justice was made possible by contributions from the Medgar and Myrlie Evers Institute, Women for Progress of Mississippi, Inc., the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, One Voice, the Jackson Branch of the NAACP, and the Mississippi Humanities Council.

Wilma Mosley Clopton is a graduate of the University of Mississippi Filmmaking Workshop and the Barefoot Filmmakers Workshop. Her body of work to date includes twelve short films, four books, one play, and the Margaret Walker Alexander coloring book for children. Clopton is the recipient of the 2011 Mississippi Humanities Council Educator Award, the 2014 Mississippi Arts Commission Media Fellowship Award, the 2013 and 2015 Mississippi Film and Video Alliance’s “Emerging Filmmaker Award.” Her work has been recognized by the Margaret Walker Center at Jackson State University, the Mississippi Historical Society, and Women for Progress of Mississippi, Inc.

History Is Lunch is broadcast from the Craig H. Neilsen Auditorium in the Two Mississippi Museums—the Museum of Mississippi History and Mississippi Civil Rights Museum—in Jackson. For more information call 601-576-6998 or email cgoodwin@mdah.ms.gov.

At noon on Wednesday, June 17, as part of the department’s History Is Lunch series, William C. Lester will present “The Delta and Dockery.” The streaming-only program will be shown live on the Mississippi Department of Archives and History’s Facebook page and added to the MDAH YouTube channel afterwards.

Dockery Plantation was a 25,600-acre cotton plantation and sawmill on the Sunflower River between Ruleville and Cleveland. It is widely regarded as the place where Delta blues music was born.

“They say the Delta starts in the Peabody in Memphis and ends on Catfish Row in Vicksburg,” said Lester. “Over 100 miles long and 50 miles wide, an alluvial flood plain of the Mississippi River untold years in the making, on that flood plain swamp lived many different people and their families. And the stories of those families that tamed the swamp into one of the most productive farmlands in the world is the story of the Delta.”

Lester is executive director of the Dockery Farms Foundation, whose mission is to preserve the historic property and heritage of Dockery Farms and to develop these for educational purposes and the public interest in music, agriculture, and the history of the Mississippi Delta.

William C. Lester was born in Memphis. He earned a BA and MFA from the University of Mississippi. From 1974 to 2008 he worked in the art department of Delta State University, serving as chair from 2004 to 2008. He has been executive director of the Dockery Farms Foundation since 2004.

History Is Lunch is broadcast from the Craig H. Neilsen Auditorium in the Two Mississippi Museums—the Museum of Mississippi History and Mississippi Civil Rights Museum—in Jackson. For more information call 601-576-6998 or email cgoodwin@mdah.ms.gov.

The Mississippi Department of Archives and History (MDAH) and the Medgar and Myrlie Evers Institute have named Teona Williams, a doctoral candidate at Yale University, the 2020 Medgar and Myrlie Evers Research Scholar. Williams’s research covers African American tenant farmers and civil rights activists who advocated for land cooperatives from the 1930s through the 1980s.

While at the Mississippi state archives, Williams will use the papers of Medgar and Myrlie Evers to understand how the NAACP advocated for black sharecroppers across the Delta, materials on the Republic of New Africa (RNA), Emergency Land Fund ephemera, and the Tougaloo College Civil Rights Collection.

“I eagerly await the opportunity to explore the Jackson Advocate and other associated material of the RNA to document the multiple strands of land ideology that sprouted out of black nationalists movements,” said Williams. “I am excited to explore the Medgar Evers papers to understand how the NAACP advocated for black sharecroppers across the Delta.”

Williams graduated with a BA in environmental studies and history from Bowdoin College. She holds an MA from the University of Michigan, and she is currently at work on a PhD in the Department of History at Yale University. Her dissertation follows the wide network of Delta farmers and civil rights activists and their collective struggle to establish land cooperatives.

Williams will use the $4,000 award to cover travel, housing, and other expenses while doing primary research at MDAH.

“We’re delighted to partner with the Evers Institute on this scholarship,” said David Pilcher, director of the MDAH Archives and Record Services Division. “Our goal is to facilitate new and exciting research using the tremendous resources here at the state archives.”

The Medgar and Myrlie Evers Research Scholars Program, a collaboration between MDAH and the Medgar and Myrlie Evers Institute, encourages work in the history of civil and human rights using the state archives’ holdings to publish original research.

The Evers Papers may be accessed at the William F. Winter Archives and History Building in Jackson. For more information on the Evers Scholar program or about the Evers Papers, contact Laura Heller at lheller@mdah.ms.gov.

Based on information provided by the Mississippi Department of Health about the coronavirus pandemic, the Mississippi Department of Archives and History will close all sites beginning Friday, March 13. The Museum of Mississippi History, Mississippi Civil Rights Museum, Eudora Welty House and Garden, Mississippi Governor’s Mansion, Old Capitol Museum, and William F. Winter Archives and History Building, and Charlotte Capers Building in Jackson, Grand Village of the Natchez Indians in Natchez, and Winterville Mounds near Greenville will all close until further notice.

All public events at MDAH sites through the end of May have been postponed, including the weekly History Is Lunch program and the Mississippi Freedom Seder event on April 2, at the Two Mississippi Museums. The New Stage Theater event at the Old Capitol Museum on March 31, and the Powwow at the Grand Village of the Natchez Indians on March 28, have also been postponed.

For more information email info@mdah.ms.gov or call 601-576-6822.