Ethnic Heritage in Mississippi

Shana Walton is professor of English, modern languages, and cultural studies at Nicholls State University. Formerly, she was director of the Center for Oral History and Cultural Heritage at the University of Southern Mississippi, program coordinator for the statewide Mississippi Oral History Project, and project director for the Mississippi Civil Rights Oral History Bibliography. She is coeditor of Ethnic Heritage in Mississippi: The Twentieth Century and Language in Louisiana: Community and Culture, both published by University Press of Mississippi. Barbara Carpenter, executive director emeritus of the Mississippi Humanities Council, taught college English for fifteen years at Southeastern Louisiana University, St. Joseph Seminary College, and the University of Southern Mississippi before joining the MHC. As an element of programming for the Columbus Quincentenary, she developed, secured funding, and oversaw the council's ethnic heritage project, serving as editor for Ethnic Heritage of Mississippi and coeditor for Ethnic Heritage of Mississippi: The Twentieth Century, both published by University Press of Mississippi. She continues to research, speak, and write on the topic in her retirement.

This book has brought together a remarkable set of essays analyzing the ethnic heritage of Mississippi, a state with one of the smallest foreign-born populations in the nation. Does that mean that ethnicity is not important? This volume demonstrates that it is. Race has been the lens through which most scholars have viewed the state's history and culture, for quite legitimate reasons, but that focus should not ignore the state's fascinating ethnic groups whose lives and experiences complicate and enrich our understanding of the state's cultural heritage. This remarkable collection takes us from the state's earliest settlers--Native Americans--to more recent immigrant groups like Hindus and Latinos and explores how immigration has changed over time. This is pioneering work, important to both scholars and the general public, and readers will take away a new understanding of the state's changing contemporary culture and the ways new immigrant groups have found a place in the Magnolia State.--Randy J. Sparks Ethnic Heritage in Mississippi: The Twentieth Century is a landmark study that traces the diverse ethnic worlds that have defined Mississippi from the colonial period to the present. [This book] views the state as a meeting ground for these cultures and introduces us first to French, Spanish, English, German, Native American, and African families who were 'colonizers, ' then to the contemporary world of Croatian, Lebanese, Vietnamese, Jewish, Filipina, Latino, and Hindu families. It carries us beyond the popular view of Mississippi as a world solely defined by Black and white people by revealing in exquisite detail the wonderful mix of people who call the state 'home.'--William R. Ferris