Digitizing Mississippi History

With funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities, faculty at the University of Southern Mississippi created *The Civil War & Reconstruction Governors of Mississippi* digital documentary edition. Image courtesy of the Mississippi Department of Archives and History.

Libraries and archives at the University of Southern Mississippi (USM) hold a rich collection of resources related to the Civil Rights Era and Mississippi history more broadly. Faculty in the university’s Center for Oral History & Cultural Heritage and the Dale Center for the Study of War & Society undertake projects that make these resources accessible and engaging. With NEH funding, faculty at USM have created significant online resources that make invaluable historical materials related to the Civil Rights and the Civil War and Reconstruction eras broadly available.

With a 2014 grant, Jeanne Gillespie and Louis Kyriakoudes, faculty with the Center for Oral History & Cultural Heritage, preserved and made widely accessible an extensive collection of oral histories documenting the Civil Rights Movement in Mississippi. Previously, these were only available to scholars who visited the university’s special collections; additionally, they were fragile and in danger of being lost. NEH funding helped faculty in the center digitize and publish these oral histories, which are now freely available online. Both transcripts and audio files from this collection were used to develop exhibits at the Mississippi Civil Rights Museum, bringing important perspectives on the Civil Rights Movement to new audiences.

More recently, a 2020 NEH grant, as well as support from the National Archives, has helped Susannah Ural, a professor of history at USM, develop the <em>Civil War & Reconstruction Governors of Mississippi Digital Documentary Edition</em>. This virtual archive brings together an extensive collection of digitized, transcribed, and annotated documents related to the governor’s office. Because people of all backgrounds contacted the governor’s office about their concerns, this rich collection showcases the lives of ordinary people during this period. It touches on topics ranging from the monumental to the everyday. The collection, which is accompanied by educator resources and a podcast, is already being used in Mississippi classrooms and beyond.