Jackson Free Press

Carolyn Morris—the storyteller, singer, songwriter, connector—is the product of the two strong women who raised her. The 40-year-old South Jacksonian was born in the University Medical Center in 1962 and then bounced back and forth between her feminist mother, Tahira'h Abubakr, and her more traditional grandmother, Gussie Seals. Abubakr raised Morris in New York City and Indianapolis to be politically aware and determined and independent. She visited Miss Gussie, a former sharecropper, back here in Pocahontas and learned the feminine arts. "Otherwise, I'd never have put on a dress," Morris says, laughing softly as she nibbles at a tofu burrito outside High Noon Café.

That "prim and proper Southern Belle stuff," as she calls it, suits Morris; she always seems perfectly assembled from her eyebrows to her fingernails to her draped scarves. Sitting in the Rainbow Plaza, dressed in black with a beige beret tied prettily in the back above a silk leopard scarf, she radiates poise and quiet confidence. When her mother, who now is a Rainbow chef, walks up to say hello, the resemblance is striking; so are Morris' softer edges. But just because she's a girl doesn't mean Morris isn't mom's feminist. "Women are going to naturally rise to power and harmonize things," she predicts. "Whenever I meet a woman making a positive contribution to her world and community, I make sure I stay in contact with her."

Now the arts industry director of the Mississippi Arts Commission, Morris fights what can be an uphill battle to get more Mississippians to appreciate the power of the arts to heal wounds and bring people together. Before she joined the Arts Commission in 1999, she was already working to "reach" young people and women through the arts with a focus on her own community. She had a Mississippi Cultural Crossroads grant to get artists to work with black children in the poor Port Gibson public schools. "Kids need to be reached and reminded who they are so they have a sense of responsibility. They need to know where they are and where they want to go," Morris says.

Morris knows that road can be bumpy. She dropped out of high school in Indianapolis when she was 17 and moved to Jackson to live with her grandma. "Here I'd go to church every Sunday; it was part of the Southern culture," she says. Morris graduated from Murrah High School in 1981. After bouncing around a bit, getting married and having three kids, Morris graduated from Belhaven College in 1999. "All my kids came to graduation," she says.

"A connector" is the way Morris describes herself. In 1996 she started an artists' networking group she calls "WHOA" (Women Helping Others through the Arts), which she calls "my life's work." She adds, "It is real clear that the arts are a part of why I'm on the planet." Creatives must believe they can survive on their art, she says: "I'm tired of this starving artist mentality. Don't put me in that class."

— Donna Ladd