[Applause]
thank you very much I’m going to talk to
you today about the American South a
subject that’s close to my heart I’ve
worked in for many years and I’m going
to take you on a journey with me using
photographs that I’ve made of these
places it’s people the world’s along the
way the American South has been compared
to a Sphynx
that rarely if ever fully reveals her
secrets
William Faulkner once remarked that in
the South the past is never dead it’s
not even past Faulkner has a novel
Absalom Absalom in which a character
named Quentin Compson has just arrived
as a freshman at Harvard from
Mississippi and he meets his Canadian
roommate Shrieve who is curious about
the south Shrieve ask Quentin tell about
the south what’s it like there
what do they do there why do they live
there why do they live at all I love to
tell my students an African proverb that
says when an old woman or man dies a
library burns to the ground and it’s in
that sense of urgency that folklorists
tried to preserve the stories the places
the memory of the south my grandfather
once told me that he had been raised on
corn bread and recollections
and my father would sometimes tell me
that you can always learn a lesson from
each person you meet in life and as a
folklorist I’ve tried to follow that
southerners love places they love the
sense of place and when a southerner
meets a stranger
the first question always is where are
you from oh you’re from New Orleans
you’re from Memphis you’re from Durham
well come on in I’ve known a lot of
strange people from Durham and you are
welcome in my house so stories and
places are at the heart of the cell and
race is the Achilles heel of the
American self when I was five I went to
a four room schoolhouse where each
teacher taught two graves my black
friends all went to a one-room
schoolhouse where one teacher taught
sixth grades and I knew in my heart that
was wrong and I’ve been bothered and
obsessed by race the murder of Emmett
Till in money Mississippi of Trayvon
Martin in Sanford Florida of the black
worshippers in Charleston South Carolina
remind us that race is an open sore and
my work as a folklorist has been an
attempt to build bridges across the
troubled waters of race by focusing on
stories and the people who tell those
stories so I want to carry you on the
journey
that world of the American South and how
southerners deal with race my first
experience was growing up on a farm in
Mississippi and as a child a young child
a lady named Mary Gordon took me to a
small black church on the farm called
Rose Hill Church and I learned the hymns
and I realized as I grew older that once
the families were no longer there
because there were no hymnals in the
church the music would disappear so I
began to record and photograph those
worlds and the families who were part of
that church were descended from
ancestors who first built the church as
a brush Arbor church from limbs of trees
as slaves they worshiped there the
minister Reverend Isaac Thomas would
greet me when I came to the church and
he would say the doors of this church
will always swing open on the hinges of
welcome for you I was welcomed by the
families the families like the family of
Amanda Gordon who was the matriarch of a
wonderful family and she was one of
those living libraries
she was the elder in the church who
remembered the ancestral spirituals the
dr. Watts hymns and sang them from
memory I was also privileged to see
Amanda Gordon’s beautiful quilts which
she holds here
with her grandchildren a string quilt
which evolved from the textiles of West
Africa I remember my friend Robert
Appleton
me the story
of how his ancestors walked up the
Natchez Trace as slaves from Natchez
Mississippi to the farm and stayed there
for generations his son William Appleton
on the left is an old friend I call him
every few weeks and we talk about the
memory of friends and family who are no
longer alive like Jessie Cooper who was
married by Reverend Thomas to Artemisia
Cooper and a man the Gordon’s sang hymns
at the wedding and Jessie Cooper’s
grandmother was also a witness to the
marriage so my father was another anchor
on that farm he understood land he loved
equipment and was a master at working
the fields and making them more
productive he was also a courageous
person who stood by his five children
when we insisted on meeting with civil
rights workers in Vicksburg during
Freedom Summer
he sat across the table one evening from
Robert Moses the head of Freedom Summer
and Moses told my father this is the
first time I’ve ever had a civil
conversation with a white Mississippian
my brother gray and I worked with daddy
in the summers in the fields with the
men on the farm gray later became a
state senator and was an advocate for
health care and education for the state
of Mississippi my three sisters from the
Left Shelby Hester and Martha all became
writers and artists and my mother was
the heart
of our family it was she who taught us
the meaning of love and compassion so
that farm wrapped its arms around us in
a powerful way and anchored us in its
place and allowed me to go further as a
folklorist and to capture friends in the
neighborhood like Cecil Crosby a master
mechanic who could repair any piece of
equipment he loved to say that he could
repair anything but a broken heart
across the Big Black River was the
crossroads and the crossroads store run
by Aidan white whose ancestors built
that store a hundred and fifty years
earlier
mrs. white told me how her father had
been murdered in the store by a
disgruntled customer and when she and
her mother took her father home he
looked at the wound in his side and said
what a small hole for your life to run
out of so I began to visit with
neighbors like Mary Regan who lived in a
home that her ancestors built a home
where a General Grant stayed as he and
his troops were moving toward the Battle
of Vicksburg
I traveled further down the road to
Utica Mississippi and spent time with a
wonderful man Jim Steve who was a
blacksmith who had shod thousands of
hooves of horses and mules over his
lifetime I also began to look at the
community at the sense of color the
light the beauty of the everyday life
what the French call la vie
and I traveled up highway 61 to Leland
Mississippi and worked with a blues
singer named James Thomas who was also a
gifted sculptor who would carve faces of
people out of Mississippi clay like this
woman that he then painted and added a
wig on the top of her head today James
Thomas’s son Pat Thomas still plays the
blues and does sculpture in memory of
his father the patriarch of the Blues
world in Leyland was Shelby Papa jazz
Brown who lived in a home on Kent’s
alley in Leland and every Saturday night
friends would gather like Lee and Joe
Cooper to listen and dance to the blues
to eat sandwiches with corn liquor and
all ages would gather Joe Cooper and
younger people would come together in
what I came to see as a blues family
related and joined by a shared love of
the music
I also saw wonderful baskets that were
made by Leon Peck Clark who would cut a
wonderful sapling of white oak and split
it into splits and make baskets that he
would sell so on the porches of stores
of churches of homes there was always
conversation and story being shared
there were also the roadside signs and
people where I would stop photograph and
talk with people whom I met everyone had
a story to tell
everyone taught me people like Hickory
stick Victor Bob who made walking canes
out of Hickory and would give them to
friends when a friend would say but I
don’t need a walking cane he would say
if you live long enough you will there
was of course Oh Thor Turner who played
Fife and drum using the African sounds
from which blues were born and today
sadly otha Turner is no longer alive but
his daughters keep the music alive and
play it and affirmed to us that the
circle is indeed unbroken in his life
these are my teachers these are the
people who taught me the meaning of what
the South is all about I spent time in
those worlds those places like parchment
penitentiary a twenty-eight thousand
acre penal farm in the heart of the
Mississippi Delta and in the prison
cells and in the fields I interviewed
the inmates and tried to understand what
it was like to be black and in prison in
the state of Mississippi I also
interviewed the prison warden sergeant
Webb to get a sense of what that world
was all about you never knew what you
were going to see on the streets of
places like Yazoo City where I spent
time with pakodi a Warner whose pea
quilt was a celebration of the first
initial of her first name
Pecola and I asked mrs. Warner how did
you first learn to put together such
beautiful images and
pieces of fabric she responded fireplace
learning at the side of her mother and
grandmother she learned to be a master
quilter on the walls of clubs and homes
and inside the artists are constantly
working in these places in places like
belzoni Mississippi the California Club
is decorated with musicians whose faces
embody the sound of music there there is
also a sense of color that brings alive
and animates the community in the home
of Harry Warren Vicksburg Mississippi
where I grew up
mr. Warren does incredibly beautiful
signage for restaurants to advertise
their special foods of barbecue ribs and
chicken and in the Lizard Lounge in
belzoni there is color welcoming you
into the lounge and in Oxford
Mississippi
the visionary painter fiora hamblett had
a vision of her brother that appeared in
a dream to her one night and the next
morning she had a phone call telling her
that her brother had died the night
before so she painted that vision as a
way of remembering his presence memory
is what it is all about the memory trail
of JW garrison in Rossville Tennessee
was literally a warehouse of objects
from his past so we are constantly
feeling the presence of the past and the
power of love and the intimacy of family
in homes like luster Willis and his
wife Annie Mae Willis mr. Willis was a
gifted artist who painted the faces of
family and neighbors and those paintings
adorned their walls in their homes he
also sculpted from cedar wood walking
canes with faces of family and friends
on the top of the handle and also his
heroes like reverend martin luther king
so places are animated worlds they speak
to us in the same way that people speak
to us in the south and in documenting
with the camera the tape recorder and
film these pieces and their places we
pledge to never forget the complicated
and rich history of the American South
thank you
[Applause]
thank you very much I’m going to talk to
you today about the American South a
subject that’s close to my heart I’ve
worked in for many years and I’m going
to take you on a journey with me using
photographs that I’ve made of these
places it’s people the world’s along the
way the American South has been compared
to a Sphynx
that rarely if ever fully reveals her
secrets
William Faulkner once remarked that in
the South the past is never dead it’s
not even past Faulkner has a novel
Absalom Absalom in which a character
named Quentin Compson has just arrived
as a freshman at Harvard from
Mississippi and he meets his Canadian
roommate Shrieve who is curious about
the south Shrieve ask Quentin tell about
the south what’s it like there
what do they do there why do they live
there why do they live at all I love to
tell my students an African proverb that
says when an old woman or man dies a
library burns to the ground and it’s in
that sense of urgency that folklorists
tried to preserve the stories the places
the memory of the south my grandfather
once told me that he had been raised on
corn bread and recollections
and my father would sometimes tell me
that you can always learn a lesson from
each person you meet in life and as a
folklorist I’ve tried to follow that
southerners love places they love the
sense of place and when a southerner
meets a stranger
the first question always is where are
you from oh you’re from New Orleans
you’re from Memphis you’re from Durham
well come on in I’ve known a lot of
strange people from Durham and you are
welcome in my house so stories and
places are at the heart of the cell and
race is the Achilles heel of the
American self when I was five I went to
a four room schoolhouse where each
teacher taught two graves my black
friends all went to a one-room
schoolhouse where one teacher taught
sixth grades and I knew in my heart that
was wrong and I’ve been bothered and
obsessed by race the murder of Emmett
Till in money Mississippi of Trayvon
Martin in Sanford Florida of the black
worshippers in Charleston South Carolina
remind us that race is an open sore and
my work as a folklorist has been an
attempt to build bridges across the
troubled waters of race by focusing on
stories and the people who tell those
stories so I want to carry you on the
journey
that world of the American South and how
southerners deal with race my first
experience was growing up on a farm in
Mississippi and as a child a young child
a lady named Mary Gordon took me to a
small black church on the farm called
Rose Hill Church and I learned the hymns
and I realized as I grew older that once
the families were no longer there
because there were no hymnals in the
church the music would disappear so I
began to record and photograph those
worlds and the families who were part of
that church were descended from
ancestors who first built the church as
a brush Arbor church from limbs of trees
as slaves they worshiped there the
minister Reverend Isaac Thomas would
greet me when I came to the church and
he would say the doors of this church
will always swing open on the hinges of
welcome for you I was welcomed by the
families the families like the family of
Amanda Gordon who was the matriarch of a
wonderful family and she was one of
those living libraries
she was the elder in the church who
remembered the ancestral spirituals the
dr. Watts hymns and sang them from
memory I was also privileged to see
Amanda Gordon’s beautiful quilts which
she holds here
with her grandchildren a string quilt
which evolved from the textiles of West
Africa I remember my friend Robert
Appleton
me the story
of how his ancestors walked up the
Natchez Trace as slaves from Natchez
Mississippi to the farm and stayed there
for generations his son William Appleton
on the left is an old friend I call him
every few weeks and we talk about the
memory of friends and family who are no
longer alive like Jessie Cooper who was
married by Reverend Thomas to Artemisia
Cooper and a man the Gordon’s sang hymns
at the wedding and Jessie Cooper’s
grandmother was also a witness to the
marriage so my father was another anchor
on that farm he understood land he loved
equipment and was a master at working
the fields and making them more
productive he was also a courageous
person who stood by his five children
when we insisted on meeting with civil
rights workers in Vicksburg during
Freedom Summer
he sat across the table one evening from
Robert Moses the head of Freedom Summer
and Moses told my father this is the
first time I’ve ever had a civil
conversation with a white Mississippian
my brother gray and I worked with daddy
in the summers in the fields with the
men on the farm gray later became a
state senator and was an advocate for
health care and education for the state
of Mississippi my three sisters from the
Left Shelby Hester and Martha all became
writers and artists and my mother was
the heart
of our family it was she who taught us
the meaning of love and compassion so
that farm wrapped its arms around us in
a powerful way and anchored us in its
place and allowed me to go further as a
folklorist and to capture friends in the
neighborhood like Cecil Crosby a master
mechanic who could repair any piece of
equipment he loved to say that he could
repair anything but a broken heart
across the Big Black River was the
crossroads and the crossroads store run
by Aidan white whose ancestors built
that store a hundred and fifty years
earlier
mrs. white told me how her father had
been murdered in the store by a
disgruntled customer and when she and
her mother took her father home he
looked at the wound in his side and said
what a small hole for your life to run
out of so I began to visit with
neighbors like Mary Regan who lived in a
home that her ancestors built a home
where a General Grant stayed as he and
his troops were moving toward the Battle
of Vicksburg
I traveled further down the road to
Utica Mississippi and spent time with a
wonderful man Jim Steve who was a
blacksmith who had shod thousands of
hooves of horses and mules over his
lifetime I also began to look at the
community at the sense of color the
light the beauty of the everyday life
what the French call la vie
and I traveled up highway 61 to Leland
Mississippi and worked with a blues
singer named James Thomas who was also a
gifted sculptor who would carve faces of
people out of Mississippi clay like this
woman that he then painted and added a
wig on the top of her head today James
Thomas’s son Pat Thomas still plays the
blues and does sculpture in memory of
his father the patriarch of the Blues
world in Leyland was Shelby Papa jazz
Brown who lived in a home on Kent’s
alley in Leland and every Saturday night
friends would gather like Lee and Joe
Cooper to listen and dance to the blues
to eat sandwiches with corn liquor and
all ages would gather Joe Cooper and
younger people would come together in
what I came to see as a blues family
related and joined by a shared love of
the music
I also saw wonderful baskets that were
made by Leon Peck Clark who would cut a
wonderful sapling of white oak and split
it into splits and make baskets that he
would sell so on the porches of stores
of churches of homes there was always
conversation and story being shared
there were also the roadside signs and
people where I would stop photograph and
talk with people whom I met everyone had
a story to tell
everyone taught me people like Hickory
stick Victor Bob who made walking canes
out of Hickory and would give them to
friends when a friend would say but I
don’t need a walking cane he would say
if you live long enough you will there
was of course Oh Thor Turner who played
Fife and drum using the African sounds
from which blues were born and today
sadly otha Turner is no longer alive but
his daughters keep the music alive and
play it and affirmed to us that the
circle is indeed unbroken in his life
these are my teachers these are the
people who taught me the meaning of what
the South is all about I spent time in
those worlds those places like parchment
penitentiary a twenty-eight thousand
acre penal farm in the heart of the
Mississippi Delta and in the prison
cells and in the fields I interviewed
the inmates and tried to understand what
it was like to be black and in prison in
the state of Mississippi I also
interviewed the prison warden sergeant
Webb to get a sense of what that world
was all about you never knew what you
were going to see on the streets of
places like Yazoo City where I spent
time with pakodi a Warner whose pea
quilt was a celebration of the first
initial of her first name
Pecola and I asked mrs. Warner how did
you first learn to put together such
beautiful images and
pieces of fabric she responded fireplace
learning at the side of her mother and
grandmother she learned to be a master
quilter on the walls of clubs and homes
and inside the artists are constantly
working in these places in places like
belzoni Mississippi the California Club
is decorated with musicians whose faces
embody the sound of music there there is
also a sense of color that brings alive
and animates the community in the home
of Harry Warren Vicksburg Mississippi
where I grew up
mr. Warren does incredibly beautiful
signage for restaurants to advertise
their special foods of barbecue ribs and
chicken and in the Lizard Lounge in
belzoni there is color welcoming you
into the lounge and in Oxford
Mississippi
the visionary painter fiora hamblett had
a vision of her brother that appeared in
a dream to her one night and the next
morning she had a phone call telling her
that her brother had died the night
before so she painted that vision as a
way of remembering his presence memory
is what it is all about the memory trail
of JW garrison in Rossville Tennessee
was literally a warehouse of objects
from his past so we are constantly
feeling the presence of the past and the
power of love and the intimacy of family
in homes like luster Willis and his
wife Annie Mae Willis mr. Willis was a
gifted artist who painted the faces of
family and neighbors and those paintings
adorned their walls in their homes he
also sculpted from cedar wood walking
canes with faces of family and friends
on the top of the handle and also his
heroes like reverend martin luther king
so places are animated worlds they speak
to us in the same way that people speak
to us in the south and in documenting
with the camera the tape recorder and
film these pieces and their places we
pledge to never forget the complicated
and rich history of the American South
thank you
[Applause]
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