Project showcase: "Cotton Memories" sessions

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Cotton Kingdom SymposiumAs part of a larger project focusing on the history and legacy of cotton-picking and sharecropping in the Mississippi Delta, the non-profit organization Khafre, Inc. is holding weekly sessions throughout the summer of 2014 to gather memories and oral histories from people with roots in the Delta region, especially older African Americans with first-hand knowledge of work in “America’s Cotton Kingdom.” Khafre is based in Indianola, Mississippi, and is led by C. Sade Turnipseed, an educator and cultural preservationist who is compiling the data for a doctoral dissertation in the Public History program at Middle Tennessee State University.

Khafre, Inc. and Turnipseed are working to inspire a “community-driven historic preservation” movement that brings together heritage tourism with community empowerment and commemoration. They hope to reframe public perceptions of cotton-picking, sharecropping, and tenant farming through public education programs and the establishment of a “place” planned as the Cotton Pickers of America Monument complex (Sharecroppers’ House Museum and Sharecroppers Interpretive Center), designed by sculptor Ed Dwight for Mound Bayou in Bolivar County.

This fall will see the third annual “Sweat Equity Investment in the Cotton Kingdom” symposium and Cotton Pickers Ball event at Mississippi Valley State University in Itta Bena, a gathering that combines performance, scholarship, memorializing, and fund-raising. (The poster for the 2013 event is shown above.) The summer 2014 “Cotton Memories” sessions will take place in two locations: da’ House of Khafre in Indianola on Wednesday afternoons and at Mound Bayou City Hall on Thursday afternoons. More information about the sessions and the larger project can be found on Khafre’s website.

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