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Mississippi
An honest telling of history, including deeply disturbing events such as the murder of Emmett Till, allows us to look at our past in a richer and more meaningful way.
Editor’s Note: Dr. Lonnie G. Bunch, III is the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution and founding director of the Smithsonian's National Museum of African American History and Culture.
In 1673, a Jesuit missionary, a fur trader, and a small group of canoe men traveled 2000 miles from what is now upper Michigan down to Arkansas and back.
In a pivotal trip in 1967, Senator Kennedy saw first-hand the effects of poverty in the Delta.
Although marred by the grisly murders of three young activists, the Freedom Summer of 1964 brought revolutionary changes to Mississippi and the nation.
WILLIE MORRIS revisits a book that nourished him as a boy and discovers that the landscapes which the young Samuel Clemens navigated are in fact the topography of Morris’ own life.
MARK TWAIN WAS BORN ALMOST EXACTLY a century before I was into a small-town Mississippi Valley culture that, despite the centennial difference, bore remarkable resemblances to my own.
Unloved and unlovely, the fragile boats of the “Tinclad Navy” ventured, Lincoln said, “wherever the ground was a little damp,” and made a contribution to the war that has never been sufficiently appreciated.
In the late summer and autumn of 1864 two brothers, Norman and George Carr, aged twenty-two and twenty-four respectively, left their upstate New York home of Union Springs to join the United States Navy. The motives that sent them may have been complex.
Willie Morris interviews William Ferris, a connoisseur and chronicler of everything Southern.
William Ferris, fifty-two years old, is a prolific writer in folklore, American literature, fiction, and photography and is co-editor of the monumental Encyclopedia of Southern Culture .
Willie Morris interviews William Ferris, a connoisseur and chronicler of everything Southern.
William Ferris, fifty-two years old, is a prolific writer in folklore, American literature, fiction, and photography and is co-editor of the monumental Encyclopedia of Southern Culture .
Before there was William Faulkner, there was the small Southern universe of Oxford, Mississippi.
The trouble with coming to Mississippi in winter is that, throughout his writing, William Faulkner has rarely pictured it that way for you. He almost always has that heavy summer air over everything, and you would not imagine these crisp brown January lawns.
Deep South states are taking the lead in promoting landmarks of a 300-year heritage of oppression and triumph, and they’re drawing visitors from around the world.
Kate is waiting for us by the kitchen garden. Her owner, Benjamin Powell, has warned us that she “often has a case of the grumps,” so we approach her cautiously.
Robert Johnson died in obscurity in 1938. Since then, he has gradually gained recognition as a genius of American music. Only recently have the facts of his short, tragic life become known.
Who was Robert Johnson? For so many years, that question haunted all of us who loved the blues. Certainly, we knew about Robert Johnson’s music.
The 1,200-Mile Race Between the Natchez and the Robert E. Lee
The first days of July, 1870, found busy river ports along the Mississippi stewing in an unprecedented atmosphere of oppressive, sticky heat and blazing excitement all the way from St. Louis to New Orleans.
A Tireless Photographer’s Record of a River Town
FORTY YEARS ON GLASS
A Scottish émigré became the most powerful man in the French government, and sold hundreds of thousands of shares in land holdings in the Mississippi Valley
The curious table shown opposite, with its montage of hand-painted scenes, commemorates a grand financial debacle in eighteenth-century France that was commonly known as the Mississippi Bubble.
IN THE DELTA
The low-lying Delta—six and a half million acres of land rich with soil left by the Mississippi and Yazoo rivers in flood—was first opened to a cotton-hungry world in the mid-1820’s. The price of cotton was high.
The wonderfully evocative photograph spread across the two preceding pages has a great deal to say, in the way that pictures do, about America, its heritage, and the importance of historic preservation.
“An unconquerable mind in a frame of iron”
Forgotten paintings by George Catlin, who saw the West unspoiled, turn up again to recall the marvels that unfolded before the eyes of the heroic French explorer
Along the Mississippi the spirit of vanished culture lingers in the ruined columns of the great plantations
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