Tag: Mississippi

“You Know Who I Am? I’m Mr. John Paul’s Boy”

“You Know Who I Am? I’m Mr. John Paul’s Boy”

Keri Watson
And the Devil Take the Hindmost

And the Devil Take the Hindmost

Bethany Moreton and Pamela Voekel
Reclaiming the Beat

Reclaiming the Beat

Antron D. Mahoney
In Mind and Place

In Mind and Place

Kristin Gee Hickman

This article analyzes the covert racism concealed in the phrase "Ole Miss," a longstanding nickname for the University of Mississippi.

Stand Strong, Stand Long

Stand Strong, Stand Long

Loretta Pierre
Bobbie Gentry’s Odes to Mississippi

Bobbie Gentry’s Odes to Mississippi

Kristine M. McCusker
Front Porch: Built/Unbuilt

Front Porch: Built/Unbuilt

Tom Rankin

Front Porch essay for the Built/Unbuilt issue.

Snapshot: The Land, 2018

Snapshot: The Land, 2018

Timothy Ivy

For this short “Snapshot” feature, photographers selected one of their photographs and wrote a short reflection on what it shows us about the ever-shifting relationship between people and place in the South.

The Making of Appalachian Mississippi

The Making of Appalachian Mississippi

Justin Randolph

In October 1967, Mississippi joined the Appalachian Regional Commission (ARC), a Great Society program that distributed federal money to local governments across mountainous states like West Virginia, Kentucky, and North Carolina. There’s just one problem: Mississippi lacks mountains. This article explores how segregationist Southern Democrats came together with northern liberals to reimagine and remap Mississippi as a place not reeling from the legacies of plantation slavery but merely suffering from a lack of economic development. I argue that this movement to invent “Appalachian Mississippi” countered the liberal War on Poverty’s economic empowerment of rural Black communities and tapped into larger currents of color-blind popular music. In considering the first hit song from a native of Appalachian Mississippi, Bobbie Gentry’s “Ode to Billie Joe,” this article suggests that popular culture resonated with political intrigue to redistribute American wealth through the South’s white powerbrokers.

Taking Our First Steps

Taking Our First Steps

Patricia Crosby
Refuge

Refuge

Houston Cofield
Remembering Ida, Ida Remembering

Remembering Ida, Ida Remembering

Beth Kruse, Rhondalyn K. Peairs, Jodi Skipper, and Shennette Garrett-Scott