Jackson Free Press

Sept. 17-19; deadline for registration Aug. 30. Port Gibson. Mississippi Cultural Crossroads will co-sponsor a state-wide conference, "Telling the People's Story: From Tape and Transcript to
Public Programs," in Port Gibson on Friday, Sept. 17 through Sunday, Sept. 19. The three-day event, also co-sponsored by the Mississippi Humanities Council, will feature a schedule of speakers, exhibits, demonstrations, theater performances, and hands-on workshops designed to show how oral histories can provide the basis for public programs in the humanities

Among the key national figures who will participate in the conference
are:

· Paul Hendrickson, author of Sons of Mississippi, the National
Book
Critics Circle Award-winning book about seven Mississippi sheriffs and
their
descendants, and how they have coped with changing attitudes toward
race
since the 1960s;

· Alan Trachtenberg, professor emeritus at Yale University,
whose
pioneering book Reading Photographs: Images as History, Mathew Brady to
Walker Evans, has become a classic in the field, will speak on "Stories
Pictures Tell: Photographs and Cultural Memory;

· Marsha MacDowell, professor of art and art history as well as
curator of folk arts at Michigan State University Museums, will
demonstrate
"Quilt Treasures," a web-based collection of videotaped oral histories
of
quilters and quilt preservationists;

· Alison Carey, co- founder of Cornerstone Theater Company and
a
prolific playwright and adapter of classic plays, will talk about
producing
theater in small rural communities, drawing in part on her experience
adapting and producing a bi-racial production of Romeo and Juliet in
Port
Gibson in 1988-89;

· Roland Freeman, a photographer and author of A Communion of
the
Spirits: African-American Quilters, Preservers, and their Stories, has
extensive experience creating exhibits that have traveled the world;
one of
them, the Mississippi Panel Exhibit, is on permanent display at
Mississippi
Cultural Crossroads.

The conference will feature sessions on using oral history to create
community theater, exhibits for touring and permanent installation,
informational and educational websites, radio and television
documentaries,
and publications from newspaper and magazine articles to full length
books
and CDs.

The conference is directed to persons and groups who have collected or
are
thinking of collecting oral histories and want to explore how the
stories of
the people interviewed can be incorporated in public programs that will
educate, delight, and celebrate the communities that generate them. We
hope
to stimulate the public use of oral history stories at the grass roots
community level, and to encourage teachers of language arts and social
studies to incorporate oral history material in their classrooms.
Continuing
education units can be arranged.

Local presenters include Larry Morrisey, Charles Bolton, Deanne Nuwer,
Deborah Boykin, and David Crosby.

Selections from three oral history plays will be presented: I Ain't
Lying,
by David and Patty Crosby and Jerry Bangham; What It Is, This Freedom?
by
Nayo Watkins; and How the Deal Rocked Up by Jo Carson. All will be
directed
by Maya Gurantz.

For further information contact Patricia Crosby at Mississippi Cultural
Crossroads, 601-437-8905, or Barbara Carpenter at the Mississippi
Humanities Council, 601-432-6752.

This conference is financially assisted by the Mississippi Legislature
through the Mississippi Department of Archives and History and by the
Mississippi Humanities Council.

To access a flyer, registration form, and schedule of events, click on
the
following link and follow the links to "Telling the People's Story."
http://www.msculturalcrossroads.org/CulturalConservation/CCFrameset.htm