University Press of Mississippi

In the summer of 1964, Mississippi became a flashpoint for the civil rights movement during Freedom Summer—a season marked by courage, terror, and relentless struggle. Chicago Daily News reporter Nicholas von Hoffman journeyed deep into the heart of the state to capture the unvarnished reality of life in Mississippi during this pivotal moment. Over ten tense weeks and 6,000 miles, von Hoffman bore witness to the Delta’s heat, the piney hills’ quiet, and the Gulf’s restlessness, documenting the complex and volatile relationships between white and Black Mississippians. His reporting reveals a state caught between its violent past and a potential for change, illuminating the ordinary lives and extraordinary bravery of those who stood on the front lines of justice. Now, over sixty years later, Mississippi Notebook endures as a vital document of a transformative period in American history. This edition features a new introduction by civil rights scholar Charles W. McKinney Jr., who contextualizes von Hoffman’s sharp and poignant observations as a powerful counter to oversimplified narratives about Freedom Summer. Mississippi Notebook reminds us of the enduring importance of movements powered by collective courage and the necessity of confronting the forces of fear and bigotry to achieve lasting change.

Mississippi Conviction: Betrayal, Brotherhood, and the Fall of the Klan recounts a remarkable and underreported story of conscience, courage, and moral reckoning at the height of the civil rights era in Mississippi. On Father’s Day, June 21, 1964, three civil rights workers were murdered by the White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan after visiting a burned church in Neshoba County. The brutal killings shocked the nation and launched a major FBI investigation into Mississippi’s "closed society." Amid the search for justice, federal agents turned to an unlikely ally: Reverend Delmar Dennis, a Methodist minister and chaplain for the WKKKK. Dennis’s decision to become an FBI informant came after a pivotal conversation with his friend and mentor, Reverend Carl McArn, a civil rights supporter and advocate for church integration. Their friendship—and the ideological divide it represented—mirrored the broader split within Mississippi’s white churches over race and justice. Coauthored by novelist Stephen J. Gordin and Carl E. McArn II, son of Reverend McArn, this gripping narrative explores the power of moral influence and personal transformation. Drawing on extensive interviews and archival research, Mississippi Conviction reveals how one man’s betrayal of the Klan became a critical turning point in dismantling a violent domestic terrorist network—and how another’s quiet mentorship helped make that decision possible.

Steve Cochran (1917–1965) was Hollywood’s ultimate contradiction—an intense, rugged leading man with a con man’s charm, a craftsman’s discipline, and a wild streak that made him both irresistible and dangerous. In Steve Cochran: Bad Boy of Hollywood, author Michelangelo Capua paints a richly detailed portrait of a man who was more than just a Hollywood rogue. Drawing from rare sources and packed with revealing anecdotes, this volume reclaims Cochran’s rightful place in film history. With breakout roles in White Heat, The Damned Don’t Cry, and Dallas, Cochran quickly earned a reputation as the quintessential "virile villain"—often cast as a gangster, a racist, or a ruthless playboy. Yet behind the screen persona was a surprisingly nuanced actor, whose greatest performance came in Michelangelo Antonioni’s Il Grido. Though he never quite reached marquee-name status, Cochran worked with such legends as Joan Crawford, James Cagney, Ginger Rogers, Doris Day, Burt Lancaster, and Rock Hudson, under the direction of some of the industry’s finest filmmakers. Off-screen, Cochran lived as boldly as he acted. He built a rustic retreat in the Hollywood Hills and filled it with animals, raced planes and cars, and romanced countless women. His personal life, often tabloid fodder, included three marriages, brushes with the law, and an obsession with freedom that culminated in his mysterious and still-unresolved death at age forty-eight when his body was found aboard his schooner adrift in the Pacific. A compelling blend of Hollywood scandal, cinematic insight, and cultural history, this biography is an essential read and a long-overdue examination of one of classic cinema’s most charismatic and controversial figures.

Return to Elkins Creek combines a series of fishing stories, descriptions of changing cultural norms, and the peculiar history of freshwater fishing gear. Beginning with subsistence fishing in very rural Mississippi at a time "when the poorest among us in the Deep South still took our water from holes in the ground and high school was considered an optional step along the career path," the stories continue chronologically, with descriptions of learning to fish with rod-and-reel combos and artificial lures; coming-of-age angling misadventures with dubious backwoods characters; swapping fish for toilet paper during the Pandemic; a cheerfully inept expedition to a Florida bay where things were enlivened by a hurricane; and a return to where it all began, alongside a small creek in the hills of the Choctaw County backwoods, cane pole and bait jar in hand. Part memoir, part cultural history, and part historical vignette, Return to Elkins Creek is held together by the common thread of fishing as a touchstone in changing times. One need not be a fishing enthusiast to appreciate the stories or descriptions of the many colorful characters therein, including the clever and eccentric inventors of modern fishing gear.

Tall in the Saddle: The Life of Ben Johnson, Hollywood’s Real Cowboy is the definitive biography of Ben Johnson (1918–1996), the only man to win both an Academy Award and a world rodeo championship. Born on a historic Oklahoma ranch, Johnson could rope cattle before he could read, and his horsemanship took him straight to Hollywood when tycoon Howard Hughes needed horses for The Outlaw in 1943. What started as a behind-the-scenes gig turned into an acting career that spanned six decades. Discovered by legendary director John Ford, Johnson became a fixture in classic Westerns alongside John Wayne, before stepping into more complex roles with filmmakers like Sam Peckinpah, Steven Spielberg, and Peter Bogdanovich—who guided him to his Oscar-winning performance in The Last Picture Show. Though he worked with Hollywood greats like Steve McQueen, Marlon Brando, and Clint Eastwood, Johnson remained rooted in the authenticity of the American West, both on and off screen. Drawing from a wealth of interviews with costars, directors, and rodeo companions, Kathryn Jones captures the grit, grace, and enduring legacy of a man who didn’t just play a cowboy—he was one. Tall in the Saddle is a rich, cinematic portrait of a Hollywood legend whose real-life story is as unforgettable as any role he played.

On September 8, 1935, Huey Long, a United States senator and former Louisiana governor, was fatally shot in a back corridor of the Louisiana state capitol. Although the most widely accepted theory holds that Dr. Carl Weiss, son-in-law of Long’s political opponent Judge Benjamin Henry Pavy, was responsible, the assassination remains one of the most debated events in American political history. In Killing the Kingfish: The Huey Long Assassination, author Jack B. McGuire offers a comprehensive and revelatory examination of what really happened that night. Killing the Kingfish explores critical incidents leading up to the assassination, including Long’s investigation of a murder plot in early 1935 and his battles with Judge Pavy. These events, often overlooked by other historians, are crucial to understanding the volatile climate that surrounded Long’s leadership. The volume also presents previously undisclosed information, including secret state investigative files that have never been made public—until now. McGuire uncovers secret plots to assassinate Long, some involving local political figures and law enforcement officials. He details planned attempts on Long’s life originating from influential factions in Louisiana. McGuire’s findings suggest that, had Long not been killed when he was, an ambush would likely have occurred within weeks. McGuire’s scholarship not only corrects the historical record but also offers essential insights into the dangerous political landscape of 1930s Louisiana. Incorporating rare investigative materials, Killing the Kingfish will be an invaluable resource for scholars and readers interested in the true story behind Huey Long’s tragic end.

Lauren Bacall (1924–2014), or Betty, as she was known to friends, was one of the last great movie stars of the Golden Age of Hollywood. Her career spanned seven decades and was one of the longest and most distinguished in the history of show business. Yet it wasn’t easy. After becoming a star at nineteen with her first film, To Have and Have Not (1944), she joked there was nowhere for her to go but down. She became an icon of film noir before the term was even coined. A cool, sophisticated, sexy, and ultramodern woman, she projected confidence and independence. Lauren Bacall: The Queen of Cool is the first book to bring together all aspects of the legendary star’s life and career, exploring her iconic style, her extensive body of work, as well as her friendships and relationships with some of the most famous figures of the twentieth century. Her relationship with Humphrey Bogart is the stuff of legend, the most beloved pairing of classical Hollywood, a perfect blend of romance, glamour, and cinematic glory. When Bogart died in 1957, Bacall was a mere thirty-three years old, and for the rest of her life she would wrestle with the legend of her late husband, struggling to prove to the industry that she was more than just the most famous widow in Hollywood. That she managed to achieve in spades, becoming a two-time Tony Award–winning Broadway star, a bestselling author, and continuing a successful, though at times rocky, screen career, which brought her an Academy Award nomination in 1996 and an Honorary Oscar in 2009. Combining meticulous research with stunning photographs, author Anthony Uzarowski presents in this volume a multidimensional portrait of the woman and the star that was Lauren Bacall.

When fiddler and farmer Henry Smith and his wife Harriet moved from Michigan to southwest Missouri in 1858, they considered themselves part of a Yankee cultural community whose taste and aspirations were shaped by northern publications and represented by the new Republican Party. By 1861 Vernon County Court Judge Henry Smith no longer called himself a Yankee or Republican, but he hoped his isolated prairie community would remain in the Union. Montevallo’s location at the intersection of roads from Boonville and Lexington south to Carthage and from Springfield to Fort Scott, Kansas, placed the Smith family’s log house in the path of troops fighting to establish Confederate or Union control of Missouri. The Smiths saw neighbor turn against neighbor as they played reluctant host to the succession of Union troops, Confederate soldiers, bushwhackers, and jayhawkers who swarmed past their homestead. Border War: A Yankee Family in Civil War Missouri features the evocative writings of the young couple to illuminate wide-ranging challenges faced by many rural American households in the Civil War era. Throughout the turmoil, the Smiths documented their experiences in diaries, letters, school essays, magazine publications, and petitions. Drawing on archives, family papers, and government records, author Marilyn Ferris Motz pieces together the Smiths’ saga. As the Civil War divided family and community alike and future dreams were abandoned to focus on immediate survival, these personal writings capture what it meant to live during a time of immense uncertainty and mortal danger.

American actress and socialite Diana Barrymore (1921–1960) was a figure often overshadowed by her famous lineage and tragic narrative. In Too Fast, Too Short: The Life of Diana Barrymore, author Jennifer Ann Redmond illuminates Barrymore’s complex world, revealing a woman caught between the glittering facade of Hollywood and the dark shadows of her personal struggles. That she was the confused, neglected daughter of legendary actor John Barrymore is common knowledge. Just as central to Barrymore’s story is the profound influence of her mother, poet/playwright Michael Strange. Both distant and domineering, Strange’s contradictory nature stifled Barrymore and her siblings, thrusting her into a socialite world she neither desired nor understood. Barrymore’s familial relationships were marked by pain and complexity. Her older brother, Leonard, was detached and the golden child brother Robin, who lived openly as a gay man in an era of secrecy, died by suicide after the death of his lover, Billy Rambo. Barrymore’s later years were colored by her relationship with the iconic playwright Tennessee Williams. Viewing Williams as the gateway to her dreams of a successful career, a happy marriage, and motherhood, Barrymore’s interactions with him reveal her vulnerability and resilience. Unpublished correspondence with mutual friends sheds light on her aspirations and the poignant desperation of her delusions. This biography endeavors to present Diana Barrymore not as a cautionary tale but as a complex individual. Volatile, bristly, and unreliable, yet also clever, funny, and profoundly intelligent, Barrymore was a woman of remarkable talent and beauty, even if she rarely saw it herself. Through this volume, Barrymore emerges as a fully realized person, reclaiming her place in Hollywood’s history.

Established by Congress as part of the New Deal, the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) designated parts of seven southern states for economic rehabilitation through various means, including flood control, rural electrification, and social programs. The goal was to deploy federal resources to reshape the region through infrastructure—mainly a network of hydroelectric dams. To garner political and public support, TVA officials mobilized artists. Soon state-sponsored cultural productions emerged, resulting in a body of work comprising an array of mediums. The TVA swayed public opinion and generated positive reviews at the outset because of the vital role that culture played in making public meaning, particularly regarding the near-total transformation of the Tennessee Valley through infrastructural development as part of a larger ideological and economic investment in public works. While the content was geared toward promoting the TVA agenda, aesthetic innovations had a lasting impact, influencing subsequent generations of artists who portrayed the TVA enterprise with complexity, nuance, and depth. At a time when the country is grappling with issues surrounding climate change, fossil fuels consumption, and strip mining, the TVA now struggles to balance its reputation for prosperity and development with public suspicion and skepticism. In Monumental Designs: Infrastructure and the Culture of the Tennessee Valley Authority, author Ted Atkinson presents a cultural history of the TVA that examines representations of the agency in selected works from the New Deal era to the present. With chapters organized according to medium—photography and photobooks, documentary films, New Deal theater, fiction film, and novels—Monumental Designs seeks to illuminate the entwined forms of infrastructural development and cultural production that have made the TVA a source of multivalent power and influence. This examination of cultural history intends to foster critical thinking about how public works can come to be regarded as monumental expressions of national purpose and modern engines of progress defined in terms of perpetual growth and development.

Chris Claremont (b. 1950) is best known for his landmark sixteen-year author run on Uncanny X-Men. This is the longest author run in Marvel comics history, one that saw X-Men go from a title on the verge of cancellation to one of the most popular comics for over a decade and, eventually, a multibillion-dollar film franchise. While Claremont’s influence on popular culture is becoming more widely recognized, this volume offers an in-depth exploration of how his life shaped his work and the deep sources of inspiration behind his iconic characters and storylines. From Britain to Israel to the New York demimonde, Claremont’s relationships, education, upbringing, collaborations, and faith all contribute to his voice and to the creations that he wrought with it. The story of Chris Claremont is the story of a creator who achieved popular success whilst making a significant artistic contribution to his chosen medium, including the first African American superheroine, the first Black superhero team leader, the first canonically Jewish Marvel superhero, extensive queer subtext, extensive BDSM imagery, the first superhero team with a strong female roster, and the best-selling single-issue comic of all time. This volume heralds an impressive career and marvels at how Claremont accomplished all of this within mainstream comics.

Ray Milland (1907–1986) was the inaugural Welshman to win the Best Actor Academy Award, as well as a performer boasting a rich and varied oeuvre from the silent era in 1920s Britain to New Hollywood in the 1980s. Despite being one of the most prolific actors in cinema history who left behind a legacy of almost 180 film and television appearances across seven different decades, Milland remains a somewhat forgotten figure of cinematic history. Ray Milland: Identity, Stardom, and the Long Climb to "The Lost Weekend" fills this void in scholarship by offering a detailed examination of Milland as one of Hollywood’s most durable and fascinating performers of the studio era. The volume begins by exploring Milland’s unique Welsh identity in Hollywood, which was essentially erased by the studios. It then turns to his underexplored early career at MGM prior to signing with Paramount Pictures, where he remained for over two decades. Author Gillian Kelly discusses his early roles as a stereotypical "Brit" in Hollywood as well as his "stardom years" at Paramount where he often provided support for the studio’s leading ladies, including Claudette Colbert, Dorothy Lamour, and Paulette Goddard. A chapter is dedicated to his Oscar-winning performance in The Lost Weekend, and important later films like Dial M for Murder and Love Story also receive detailed analysis. Overall, Ray Milland provides a reappraisal of Milland’s earlier career and situates his performances within the broader tradition of star studies.

In the spring of 1969, hundreds of workers, all Black and mostly female, went on strike at Medical College Hospital and Charleston County Hospital to protest racial discrimination, low wages, and the marginalization of their dignity. The movement began with an incident of wrongful termination in 1967 involving five Black women at Medical College Hospital that uncovered the pervasiveness of racial and economic discrimination at both hospitals. The termination sparked outrage among other hospital workers who, with support from local community leaders, organized a movement that galvanized the city, state, and nation. We Paved the Way: Black Women and the Charleston Hospital Workers’ Campaign explores this campaign in the context of a broader protest tradition, revealing it to be a full-scale movement that demonstrates the power and complexity of Black women’s activism in the mid-twentieth century. O. Jennifer Dixon-McKnight argues that the experiences of the women at the center of this conflict offer a window into the plight of Southern Black working-class women and the ways in which they fought for equality, access, and well-being. Though much of what has been written about the hospital workers’ campaign focuses on the strike through an institutional lens, Dixon-McKnight uses extensive interviews and oral history to expand the scope of existing scholarship. Local leaders such as Septima Clark, Esau Jenkins, William Saunders, and Isaiah Bennett served as bridge builders for the Black community’s involvement in protest, which helped shape and nurture the hospital workers’ campaign. By discussing the grassroots organizing that sparked the strike and tracing the aftermath of the conflict, including what workers experienced in their return to work and their relationships with the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and Local 1199 Hospital and Nursing Home Employees Union, this volume situates the hospital workers’ movement as a critical moment in the nation’s long civil rights history.

Throughout the ten-year period following the end of the Civil War, Mississippians responded to broader movements in the country, to changes in the national and international economy, and to congressional and presidential initiatives as they worked to recover from the devastation of war and pursue new expressions of freedom. Reconstruction in Mississippi, 1862–1877 is a compelling account of how Black Mississippians embraced this freedom and how white Mississippians could not. Recording the mechanics of how the Confederate states were allowed to resume representation in Congress, the restoration of civil governments, and the political freedoms the formerly enslaved people acquired, Reconstruction in Mississippi, 1862–1877 documents the ways economic freedoms, such as the acquisition of land and the negotiation of fair labor contracts, evolved. Jere Nash begins this exploration with how the formerly enslaved men and women changed the political landscape for Abraham Lincoln by taking matters into their own hands as the Union Army moved into Mississippi in 1862. Nash then traces the federal occupation of the state, the adoption of the infamous Black Codes by the state legislature in 1865, the drafting and approval of the new constitution in 1869, the selection of the first two Black men to ever serve in the United States Senate, and the use of terror and fraud by white Democrats to steal the election of 1875 and regain political power. Reconstruction in Mississippi, 1862–1877 is a detailed and comprehensive history of this turbulent and eventful era in Mississippi.

This compilation of Evanira Mendes’s biography and translated publications offers for the first time in English an opportunity to revisit the music and culture of 1950s Brazil. Examining the trajectory of the Brazilian Folklore Movement, this book provides a new perspective on contemporary accounts that have overlooked the participation of women scholars from that era and seeks to grant Mendes the recognition she so richly deserves. Growing up on a farm in rural Sao Paulo State, Evanira Mendes (1929–2022) exhibited an early love of folklore, cultivated through the stories, songs, and gossip of wandering travelers in exchange for food and shelter. As she got older, she entered the Conservatório Dramático e Musical de Sao Paulo to study piano, but her love of folklore persisted, and she was invited to work in the school’s folklore archive and later as a folklore researcher for the Sao Paulo Folklore Commission from 1949 to 1959. There, she won awards including the national Sílvio Romero folklore medal; won second place in a national folklore monograph competition; helped to organize the folklore pavilion at the IV Centenary of the Founding of Sao Paulo celebration; and worked closely with important names of the era. Despite these accomplishments, she has essentially been forgotten. This book follows Evanira Mendes’s experiences working as a field researcher as part of the Sao Paulo Folklore Commission, her participation and organization at national and international folklore conferences, her participatory research in Afro-Brazilian community dances and observation and critique of Brazilian modern artistic expression in the theaters of Sao Paulo, and her work as editor of the folklore page and later weekly columnist in the Correio Paulistano newspaper. Her first-person accounts of fieldwork and participation in folklore courses are supplemented by separate published accounts from various sources, helping to compile a comprehensive portrait of music and culture in Sao Paulo and Brazil from that era.

In Comics Art in Korea, comics scholar John A. Lent embarks on a comprehensive exploration of the vibrant world of Korean comics, cartoons, comic strips, graphic novels, webcomics, and animation. This meticulously researched work delves deep into the intricate history, cultural significance, and artistic innovations that have shaped the comics landscape in both North and South Korea. Drawing from extensive research, decades of interviews with comics creators and artists, and firsthand study, Lent offers readers a profound understanding of the societal, political, and cultural factors that have played a pivotal role in shaping Korean comics. Korean comics have a storied tradition that stretches back decades. In this insightful book, Lent not only traces the origins of Korean comics but also places them within the broader context of Asian comics, highlighting the interconnectedness of comic art across the continent. From the early days of Korean comics to their contemporary evolution, Lent unravels the forces that have influenced and shaped the industry and sheds light on the ways in which comics have been used as a medium for social commentary, political expression, and cultural identity in Korea. Comics Art in Korea is not merely a historical account but a celebration of the art form itself. Lavishly illustrated with examples of Korean comics, this book showcases the incredible talent and creativity of Korean comics artists. Lent's impeccable attention to detail and his ability to contextualize each work within its cultural and historical framework make this book an invaluable resource for both comics enthusiasts and scholars.