The history of racism in America is also the history of ordinary Black Americans who accomplished extraordinary things in their pursuit of freedom. Faced with oppression throughout their journey, they ...

The fall and holiday season in the South are beautiful times of the year. As the sweltering heat of summer gives way to the sweetness of autumn, many feel inspired to decorate their homes for the upcoming ...

For over eighty years, tourists have flocked to Natchez, Mississippi, seeking the “Old South,” but what they encounter is invention: a pageant and rewrite of history first concocted during the Great ...

What do exotic area rugs, handcrafted steel-string guitars, and fiddling have in common today? Many contemporary tradition bearers embrace complexity in form and content. They construct objects and performances ...

Artist, columnist, and poet Gertrude McCarty Smith (1923–2007) of Collins, Mississippi, carried herself as a demure and proper southern lady, yet this was deceiving as she was a prolific, creative trailblazer ...

Edward Gorey (1925–2000) was a fascinating and prolific author and artist. Of the one hundred delightful and fascinating books that Gorey wrote and illustrated, he rarely revealed their specific inspirations ...

Painters Robert Duncanson (ca. 1821–1872) and Edward Bannister (1828–1901) and sculptor Mary Edmonia Lewis (ca. 1844–1907) each became accomplished African American artists. But as emerging art ...

While growing up in rural Indiana during World War II, William Fagaly began his first venture—collecting and selling earthworms to locals—from which he was christened with a childhood moniker. The ...

The Properties of Violence focuses on two connected issues: representations of lynching in late-nineteenth and twentieth-century American photographs, poetry, and fiction; and the effects of those representations. ...

Folklore Recycled: Old Traditions in New Contexts starts from the proposition that folklore—usually thought of in its historical social context as “oral tradition”—is easily appropriated and recycled ...