“Lost Bodies and Stolen History: Slavery and Memory in Mississippi” by Dr. Max Grivno

News item published on: 2017-02-14 08:48:37

This year marks Mississippi’s Bicentennial, and University Libraries’ Special Collections at The University of Southern Mississippi is hosting a series of events that will highlight Mississippi’s past. The series kicks off with “Lost Bodies and Stolen History: Slavery and Memory in Mississippi,” a lecture by Southern Miss History Professor, Dr. Max Grivno, at 6 p.m. on February 23 in the Cook Library Art Gallery.

In his lecture, Grivno will use the defacing of markers commemorating the murder of Emmett Till as a starting point for a discussion of how the state has attempted to obscure the histories of the black Mississippians whose bodies were broken, and whose histories were erased, over the course of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.  He will also explore how those histories were expunged and sanitized in a range of settings, ranging from textbooks, to official state histories, and to museums. 

Additional events during the spring will include an exhibit highlighting Parchman, Mississippi’s state penitentiary, a lecture by biographer, Carolyn Brown, a lecture on Mississippi’s first newspaper and a panel discussion on Parchman. A series of events will follow in the summer and fall semester and will aim to present a multifaceted view of Mississippi’s first 200 years.

For more information, contact Jennifer Brannock at 601.266.4347 or .  To view a list of upcoming events relating to Mississippi’s Bicentennial, visit http://manager.lib.usm.edu/about_us/news/msbicentennial.html