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Project Details

Civil War & Reconstruction Governors of Mississippi (CWRGM) is a digital history project that provides free online access to all of the state's governors' papers from just before the Civil War through the era of Reconstruction and into the New South. It didn't matter if you were a man or woman, young or old, rich or poor, or black or white — Mississippians across the spectrum contacted their governor about every issue imaginable, which makes this collection truly representative of this diverse state and of incredible value to scholars, educators, students, and the public. CWRGM is writing and reviewing metadata, transcriptions, and subject tagging annotations for all 20,000+ documents in the collection.

Subjects or Themes

African Americans, Military families, Veterans, Widows, Enslaved people, Freed peoples, Conscription, Illiterate persons, War Dissenter, Native Americans, and many more. See discussion of CWRGM Subject Tagging protocols at: https://cwrgm.org/protocols

Project Language(s)

English

Time Period

Geographic Location

Project Categories

Content Type

This is a digital exhibit and digital documentary edition. It benefits from crowd-sourced transcription work, features livestream, videos, and a podcast episodes about the project, and sample documents with lesson plans. In the future, CWRGM will also feature mapping, network analysis, growing numbers of images, and a blog.

Target Audience(s)

Creators

CWRGM is a partnership between the University of Southern Mississippi, the Mississippi Department of Archives and History, and the Mississippi Digital Library, and directed by Dr. Susannah J. Ural, Professor of History, University of Southern Mississippi.

Year(s)

2019

Host Institution / Affiliation / Project Location

The University of Southern Mississippi

Software Employed

Labor and Support

This is an ongoing project that employs a digital archivist, assistant editor, and over a dozen undergraduate and graduate researchers each academic year and summer. It also benefits from the paid and in-kind support of a digital librarian, historian/director, and state archivists. To learn more about the CWRGM staff, visit https://cwrgm.org/partners MDAH staff oversees all digitization and quality review of original documents. MDL staff and CWRGM's digital archivist oversee all metadata creation and quality review. The USM History research team, led by CWRGM dir. Susannah Ural and CWRGM assist. ed. oversees all transcription and subject tagging/annotation creation and review. June 2021 marks the end of the project's first fully-funded year, and CWRGM will commemorate this with the release of its first 2,000 documents at its new Omeka-S site.

Project Cost

Partnerships, funding sources, or grant-funding acknowledgement

CWRGM is made possible through the generous support of the National Endowment for the Humanities, the National Historical Publications and Records Commission (National Archives), the Watson-Brown Foundation, the Mississippi Department of Archives and History, the Mississippi Digital Library, and the Dale Center for the Study of War & Society at the University of Southern Mississippi.