Mississippi Moments Podcast

For as long as he could remember, Will Davis Campbell wanted to be an evangelical preacher in a small southern church. He was ordained by the elders of the East Fork Baptist Church at the age of seventeen and was attending Louisiana College when the United States entered WWII. Campbell volunteered for the army in 1943 and was assigned to a medical unit in the Pacific. While serving in that capacit...

As a professional musician in the early 20th Century, Joe Berryman faced many challenges. Before the days of airliners and modern highways, just getting to the next gig could take days or even weeks. Please enjoy this classic Mississippi Moments from 2018. 1972 - Dr. Joe Berryman spent his life and career involved with high school, college and professional bands as a musician, composer, instructor...

When Claude E. Ramsay sat down with us in April of 1981 to discuss his career and tenure as President of the Mississippi AFL – CIO, the three main topics of that series of interviews were: worker's rights, voting rights, and civil rights. Forty years later, those same three issues are still grabbing headlines across the nation. Whether it is Amazon employees in Alabama trying to unionize, GOP effo...

Through the years, we have delved through our large collection of veteran oral histories, many times, to find impactful war stories that really bring home the hardships and sacrifices of our soldiers and sailors during WWII. This is not one of those episodes. For while Albert Russell did escape calamity on multiple occasions during his service as a navigator aboard a Navy patrol bomber in the Paci...

Besides cotton, the timber industry generated more money and jobs in Mississippi during the early 20th Century than any other. When European settlers came to the territory, they found vast stands of virgin long-leaf yellow pine trees. But it took until the late 1800s before the technology was developed to harvest these giant trees for their high-quality lumber. By WWI, hundreds of sawmills covered...

As we continue our 50th Anniversary celebration, we turn our attention this week to Public Health. COVID-19 has given most of us a fresh appreciation for our healthcare professionals. We look at how far public health in Mississippi has evolved by dipping into this interview from 1975 when Ms. Edith Reece ended her thirty-five-year career as a public health nurse by sitting down to record her oral...

O.C. McDavid never wanted to be THE Editor of the Jackson Daily News because he didn't want to be the face of the paper at official functions, nor did he want to be a firebrand "pulpiteer" in the image of Fred Sullens or Hodding Carter, Jr. Instead, he wanted to be the man who put out the "best newspaper in the world." 1975 - As a boy, O. C. McDavid knew he wanted to pursue a career as a newspaper...

From a young age Patrick Carr dreamed of being a pilot in the Army Air Corps, even sending for literature from Jackson when he was twelve. After the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor and the United States entered WWII, nineteen year old Carr enlisted in the Army Air Corps determined to make that dream a reality. Unfortunately, Carr washed out of the pilot program because of faulty depth perception. It...

During our 50th Anniversary Celebration , the Center for Oral History and Cultural Heritage will continue to dig deep into our collection to bring you significant stories of Mississippians from all walks of life. On the 25th Anniversary of the Mississippi Humanities Council's founding, Dr. Cora Ellen Norman made this observation on being selected as the group's first Executive Director. "If I were...

During our 50th Anniversary Celebration , the Center for Oral History and Cultural Heritage will continue to dig deep into our collection to bring you significant stories of Mississippians from all walks of life. Few individuals had more impact on the Civil Rights Movement in Mississippi than Dr. Aaron Henry. The son of sharecroppers, Henry was born in Dublin, Mississippi and raised on the Flowers...

During our 50th Anniversary Celebration , the Center for Oral History and Cultural Heritage will continue to dig deep into our collection to bring you significant stories of Mississippians from all walks of life. 1978 – From a young age, Burris Dunn of Jackson was interested in learning the printing business. In this episode, he recalls going to work for a political newspaper owned by Governor The...

1972 - Hiram Todd grew up on his family's Newton County farm in the 1880s. In this episode, he describes how they grew their own food and raised cotton for cash. After graduating high school, Todd decided to pursue a career in education. He taught school in Ellisville, Crystal Springs and Hattiesburg before moving to Natchez to accept a position with Stanton College, a private academy. After eight...

1973 - In 1915 Hawkins Vickers went to work for his brother-in-law selling vegetable plants to local farmers. In this interview from 1973, he explains how that pioneering business model grew into a nationwide industry. Vickers moved to Hattiesburg in 1923 to start his own vegetable plant business. He recalls how two years of bad weather nearly convinced him to return to Georgia. Raising vegetable...

Gov. William F. Winter passed away on Dec. 18, 2020. He served as Mississippi's 58th governor from 1980 – 1984. Winter, a Democrat, championed public education, historical preservation, and racial reconciliation. His legacy includes the Education Reform Act of 1982, the Two Mississippi Museums, and the William Winter Institute for Racial Reconciliation. In honor of his passing, we present episode...

The Mississippi Moments Decades Series continues counting down to the Center for Oral History and Cultural Heritage 50th Anniversary Celebration in 2021. This week we hear from Aino Driegert's oral history recorded on January 12, 1973. It would the first of seven interviews documenting the story of Finnish immigrants who came to Mississippi beginning 1899. They settled on the Gulf Coast in a small...

The Mississippi Moments Decades Series continues counting down to the Center for Oral History and Cultural Heritage 50th Anniversary Celebration in 2021.       Al Key and his brother Fred developed a passion for aviation while in their teens and worked hard to make their dreams of flying a reality. They started their own flying service and took over as managers of the Meridian airport in the early...

The Mississippi Moments Decades Series continues counting down to the Center for Oral History and Cultural Heritage 50th Anniversary Celebration in 2021. Today we dip into an interview conducted in August of 1973. Mrs. Mary Lillian Peters (Ogden) Whitten graduated from Mississippi Normal College (USM) with a degree in Music Education in 1923. She has many fond and entertaining memories of college...

The Mississippi Moments Decades Series continues counting down to the Center for Oral History and Cultural Heritage 50th Anniversary Celebration in 2021. This week, we dip into a terrific interview conducted in 1972 of William Hubbell, a longtime resident of Biloxi who served as a merchant marine before opening his own business. After retirement, Mr. Hubbell enjoyed collecting and sharing stories...

The Mississippi Moments Decades Series continues counting down to the Center for Oral History and Cultural Heritage 50th Anniversary Celebration in 2021. This week, we are happy to share a few memories from Pulitzer Prize winning editor and Hattiesburg native, Robert Woodrow Brown. At the time of this interview on November 3, 1973, Brown was still working as a newspaper editor in a career spanning...

The Mississippi Moments Decades Series continues counting down to the Center for Oral History and Cultural Heritage 50th Anniversary Celebration in 2021. This week, we delve into one of our first POW interviews. Lt. Commander James W. Bailey (Bill) sat down to share his experiences with us on September 11, 1973, less than a year after his release. His memories of sixty-eight months as a POW were s...

The Mississippi Moments Decades Series continues counting down to the Center for Oral History and Cultural Heritage 50th Anniversary Celebration in 2021. This week, we look back with pride at our interview of civil rights icon, Fannie Lou Hamer . The first part was conducted in Fall of 1972 and focused more on her work with voter registration and the Freedom Democratic Party. In the second part, c...

The Mississippi Moments Decades Series continues counting down to the Center for Oral History and Cultural Heritage 50th Anniversary Celebration in 2021. This week, we dip into the interview of Dr. William Penn Davis , conducted on March 24, 1972. During the Civil Rights Movement, no white church leader in Mississippi showed more bravery or strength of his convictions than Reverend Davis. His life...

The Mississippi Moments Decades Series continues counting down to the Center for Oral History and Cultural Heritage 50th Anniversary Celebration in 2021. As the last layperson to be elected president of the Southern Baptist Convention, Owen Cooper recognized the need for fundamental changes in the organization's approach to racial issues. While the nation attempted to build on the tenuous gains of...

The Mississippi Moments Decades Series continues counting down to the Center for Oral History and Cultural Heritage 50th Anniversary Celebration in 2021. This week we look at the career of civil rights attorney R. Jess Brown. Brown originally came to Mississippi in 1946 as a public-school teacher. After Gladys Noel Bates was fired and black-listed from teaching in Mississippi for agreeing to be th...

The Mississippi Moments Decades Series continues counting down to the Center for Oral History and Cultural Heritage 50th Anniversary Celebration in 2021. This week we look at the life of George Edward Allen. Few figures of the 20th Century had a bigger impact on American politics and business. Following in his father's footsteps, Allen became an attorney, but made a name for himself early as an in...