Mississippi Moments Podcast

Hattiesburg native Clarence Williams was drafted into the army in the final days of WWII. In this episode, he shares some of his many experiences gained during a decades-long military career. Not many veterans can claim to have served in WWII, Korea, and Vietnam, but Williams saw service in all three conflicts. Williams recounts his brief service in Germany and returning to Mississippi afterwards...

In 1918 New Orleans residents George Walter and Annette McConnell Anderson purchased 24 acres of land facing the Mississippi Sound in Ocean Springs. Annette wished to establish a retreat for artists. They named their new venture, Fairhaven. Their three sons, Peter, Walter and Mac, shared Annette's love of the Arts and found inspiration there. Shearwater Pottery was founded in 1928 by Peter Anderso...

Rev. Carolyn Abrams is perhaps best known as the mother of voting rights advocate, Stacey Abrams, but she has accomplished much more than being the matriarch of a dynamic and successful family. After earning her first master's degree from the University of Wisconsin at Madison in Library Science, she spent fourteen years working as the director librarian for William Carey University. She then answ...

Growing up black in the 1940s, Katharine Carr Esters learned at an early age to stand up for herself. In this episode, she shares her memories of racial segregation and the struggle for dignity and respect. She recalls being taught by her father to "know who you are, and to be what you can be." During the Jim Crow era, blacks in the South were expected to sit in the back of public buses behind a p...

Dr. Joseph Clements, a former USM professor, was drafted into the U.S. Army in the Fall of 1941. In this episode, he shares his memories of the war. Clements remembers hearing about the attack on Pearl Harbor while training in Texas and his first assignment in Alaska, where he encountered the "midnight sun."  During WWII, thousands of allied troops gathered in England in preparation for the invasi...

Dr. Louis Kyriakoudes joined the USM History Department in fall of 1997. In this episode, he discusses the importance of community connections locally, and political connections in Jackson. In 2008, Kyriakoudes became the director of the Center for Oral History and Cultural Heritage. He recalls his goals for continuing the Center's work and the need for digitizing the oral history collection. Acco...

During WWII, Illinois Central Railroad started an apprentice program for McComb high school boys. In this episode, Edwin Etheridge recalls working at the railroad maintenance shop during the day while taking classes at night.  As an apprentice at the McComb railroad shop, Etheridge was expected to learn all aspects train car and locomotive maintenance. He remembers the older men who patiently shar...

As a lifelong resident of Port Gibson, James Allen witnessed many important moments in his hometown's history. In this episode, he shares some of those memories. Allen attended the Chamberlain-Hunt Military Academy in Port Gibson in the early 1920s. He recalls the night McComb Hall burned and three student's harrowing escape from the third floor. Allen's father owned one of the first car dealershi...

Lt. General Emmett H. "Mickey" Walker joined the Mississippi State ROTC program in 1941. In this episode, he recalls being activated in 1943 and going through basic training in the Texas summer heat. As war raged in Europe during WWII, soldiers who were wounded or killed in action needed to be replaced. Walker discusses being a replacement soldier and his long journey to the front lines. During WW...

Mississippi's Country Comedian, Jerry Clower, described himself as having "backed into showbusiness." Clower began his career as an assistant county agent in Oxford before taking a job selling seed corn and then fertilizer for Mississippi Chemical Corporation. It was while calling on customers, he began telling stories about his rural upbringing in East Fork, Mississippi. The homespun humor, combi...

Bill Stallworth was a Biloxi city councilman when Hurricane Katrina hit the Coast in August 2005. In this episode, he recalls the shock and fear in the eyes of his constituents as he viewed the devastation.  Basic necessities like food and water were unavailable for days after Hurricane Katrina struck the Gulf Coast. Stallworth gets emotional when he recounts early efforts to feed the survivors. B...

Linda VanZandt began working for the Center for Oral History and Cultural Heritage in 2003, shortly after graduating from USM with a degree in International Studies. During a trip to Vietnam, she recounts being deeply affected by the generous spirit of the Vietnamese people and their culture. In this episode, VanZandt explains her decision to reach out to the East Biloxi Vietnamese fishing communi...

Dr. Stephen Sloan accepted the position of Assistant Director of the Center for Oral History and Cultural Heritage in 2003.  In this episode, he discusses those years and how his tenure was shaped by the arrival of Hurricane Katrina in September of 2005. Sloan begins the conversation with memories of how his family survived the storm and the cleanup that followed. Soon after Katrina, the COHCH beg...

Curtis Austin became the Assistant Director of the Center for Oral History and Cultural Heritage in 2000, before assuming the Directorship one year later. During his seven year tenure, the Center would expand its Civil Rights Documentation Project, becoming the definitive resource for researchers, teachers and museums seeking answers on the Civil Rights Movement in Mississippi. In this episode, Au...

Dr. Shana Walton began working with the Mississippi Oral History Program in 1992. As an anthropologist, Walton worked to expand the MOHP's mission to include preserving the state's cultural heritage. She and Director Chuck Bolton assembled a team that included not just historians, but also political science majors, anthropologists, and folklorists. During that transformative decade, the MOHP becam...

During the yearlong celebration of our 50th Anniversary, the Center for Oral History and Cultural Heritage has been interviewing former directors and staffers to preserve our own history. This week, we share the memories of Dr. Charles Bolton. In 1990, Chuck Bolton became the fourth director of the Mississippi Oral History Program at USM. A Picayune native, Bolton had graduated from USM with a bac...

This week, for our 50th Anniversary, we begin to document the story of us with a short series of episodes based on interviews conducted this spring of former directors and staffers. Unfortunately, our first director, Dr. Orley B. Caudill, Sr., passed away in 2015 at the age of 97. But luckily for us, his son, Brandt Caudill was willing to share his memories of his father and he had plenty of good...

Lloyd Munn grew up in Mendenhall, Mississippi, the third of four brothers. In this episode, he remembers being part of a musical family and why he chose to play the harmonica. Munn began sitting-in with bands at the George Street Grocery and Subway Lounge in the 1990s. He recalls the talented musicians he met and befriended at those iconic Jackson music venues. Greg "Fingers" Taylor played harmoni...

Even though Kat Bergeron was not born on the Mississippi Gulf Coast, when she moved here with her family in the early 1960s, she fell in love with the sights, sounds, music, history and lore of the area. In other words, all the things that make a place feel like home. It's a phenomenon she calls having a "sense of place." In this episode, she explains what it means to have a "sense of place" and w...

After the Deep Water Horizon Oil Spill of 2010, NOAA asked us to conduct an oral history project to preserve the stories of those who fished the Gulf for a living. What one hears in these interviews a decade later is a myriad of emotions: pride in the past, exasperation at the evolving markets and conditions, and fear for the future. This week, we return to the interview of Thomas Schultz, junior,...

As a new class of inductees ascend to the Rock n Roll Hall of Fame, we look back to this classic episode featuring Jai Johanny Johanson, a founding member of the Allman Brothers band. "Jaimoe" as he is known, had many interesting stories to share and we were all ears! Inducted into the Hall of Fame in 1995, please enjoy this classic MSMO. We will be back next week with a new episode. 2012 - Ocean...

1975 – Doyle Ball moved from Amite County, Mississippi to Kansas in 1912 and took a job on a large cattle ranch. In this episode, he recalls learning to rope and ride and how to tend to the cows when they were sick. During WWII, Ball leased out his farm in Crystal Springs and began working at a shipyard. He describes building mine sweepers and other ships critical for the war effort. After the war...

Some of Sam Alman's earliest memories are of sleeping upstairs in his family's fledgling soft drink business as the machinery below filled the bottles to be delivered the next day. And his stories of a life spent as part of the Gulf Coast community are filled with love and appreciation for the place he called home. 2004 – Sam Alman's father moved their young family to Gulfport in the 1930s in sear...

1974 – During the timber boom of the early 20th Century, logging camps harvested virgin pine trees across Mississippi.  In this episode Carriere native Spence Lumpkin recalls visiting one of the camps as a boy in the early 1930s. Prior to the development of mechanized tree harvesting, giant yellow pines covered Mississippi. Lumpkin describes the way these majestic forests were clear-cut by norther...

1978 – G. R. Sullivan of Raleigh, Mississippi joined the army one month before the attack on Pearl Harbor. In this episode he recalls being assigned to an armored reconnaissance unit and boarding a ship bound for England. On Christmas Day, 1943, Sullivan's troop ship lay off the coast of Gibraltar. He describes the submarine countermeasures and being attacked by the German Luftwaffe. While station...