When wealthy Mississippi cotton planter Isaac Ross died in 1836, his will decreed that his plantation, Prospect Hill, should be liquidated and the proceeds from the sale be used to pay for his slaves' passage to the newly established colony of Liberia in western Africa. Ross's heirs contested the will for more than a decade, prompting a deadly revolt in which a group of slaves burned Ross's mansion to the ground. But the will was ultimately upheld. The slaves then emigrated to their new home, where they battled the local tribes and built vast plantations with Greek Revival-style mansions in a region the Americo-Africans renamed “Mississippi in Africa.” In the late twentieth century, the seeds of resentment sown over a century of cultural conflict between the colonists and tribal people exploded, begetting a civil war that rages in Liberia to this day. Tracking down Prospect Hill's living descendants, deciphering a history ruled by rumor, and delivering the complete chronicle in riveting prose, journalist Alan Huffman has rescued a lost chapter of American history whose aftermath is far from over.

Mississippi to Africa captures Collier's fourteen-year journey in unearthing the buried history of his maternal grandmother's family - a journey that took him back seven generations, from northern Mississippi to the Piedmont hills of South Carolina, and even back to a specific people and region in West Africa where his ancestry undoubtedly began. Trekking the paths of his ancestors and their displaced relatives before Emancipation (1863), this emotion-filled journey traversed down an intricate paper trail of federal, state, and local records, other public records, and oral histories, presented in a narrative style to inspire, entice, and propel readers into the fascinating world of genealogy and historical discoveries. Collier also uncovered the ways in which his ancestors ingeniously retained aspects of their African heritage. DNA technology confirmed his research findings and verified ancestral ties. The reader will gain many research tips and techniques along the journey.

In the years immediately following the Civil War_the formative years for an emerging society of freed African Americans in Mississippi_there was much debate over the general purpose of black schools and who would control them. From Cotton Field to Scho

From Timbuktu to the Mississippi Delta explores how West African standards of aesthetics and sociocultural traits have moved into mainstream American culture and become social norms. I was curious to know why African Americans (and the country as a whole, for that matter) began clapping on beats two and four, and why we'd get dirty looks if we were caught clapping on the wrong beat. I had a desire to know why the identity of the music of our nation, with its majority population of European descent, had the musical textures, bent pitches, and blue notes of Africa. I wondered why a sense of swing developed here that was closer in syncopation to African culture than to the classical music of Vienna or the Paris Opera. And finally, I wanted to know why our nation's youth moved suggestively on the dance floor with their hips-movements that are closer in aesthetics to African dance than to ballet. The journey began on the banks of the mighty Niger River. Pascal Bokar Thiam, Ed.D., is on the faculty of the University of San Francisco, California, and the French American International School where he teaches jazz and world music courses in the Performing Arts Division. He is a jazz guitarist and vocalist of Senegalese and French background. His CD Savanna Jazz Club, which combines the music of Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie with Senegalese rhythms, made the top 40 of U.S. jazz radio stations nationwide. He is the owner of the award-winning Savanna Jazz Club of San Francisco. His areas of interest include jazz education, social justice, and diversity.

Colonial Mississippi: A Borrowed Land offers the first composite of histories from the entire colonial period in the land now called Mississippi. Christian Pinnen and Charles Weeks reveal stories spanning over three hundred years and featuring a diverse array of individuals and peoples from America, Europe, and Africa. The authors focus on the encounters among these peoples, good and bad, and the lasting impacts on the region. The eighteenth century receives much-deserved attention from Pinnen and Weeks as they focus on the trials and tribulations of Mississippi as a colony, especially along the Gulf Coast and in the Natchez country. The authors tell the story of a land borrowed from its original inhabitants and never returned. They make clear how a remarkable diversity characterized the state throughout its early history. Early encounters and initial contacts involved primarily Native Americans and Spaniards in the first half of the sixteenth century following the expeditions of Columbus and others to the large region of the Gulf of Mexico. More sustained interaction began with the arrival of the French to the region and the establishment of a French post on Biloxi Bay at the end of the seventeenth century. Such exchanges continued through the eighteenth century with the British, and then again the Spanish until the creation of the territory of Mississippi in 1798 and then two states, Mississippi in 1817 and Alabama in 1819. Though readers may know the bare bones of this history, the dates, and names, this is the first book to reveal the complexity of the story in full, to dig deep into a varied and complicated tale.

Between 1927 and 1962, the Huffman family, among other friends gathered repeatedly at the Ten Point Deer Club in Issaquena County, Mississippi. For more than three decades Florence photographed the camp and its visitors. In a skillful integration of Alan Huffman's text with his grandmother's vintage photographs, here is a vivid record of the last wooded stronghold of the Mississippi Delta. 100 photos.

Liberia was founded by the American Colonization Society (ACS) in the 1820s as an African refuge for free blacks and liberated American slaves. While interest in African migration waned after the Civil War, it roared back in the late nineteenth century with the rise of Jim Crow segregation and disfranchisement throughout the South. The back-to-Africa movement held great new appeal to the South's most marginalized citizens, rural African Americans. Nowhere was this interest in Liberia emigration greater than in Arkansas. More emigrants to Liberia left from Arkansas than any other state in the 1880s and 1890s. In Journey of Hope, Kenneth C. Barnes explains why so many black Arkansas sharecroppers dreamed of Africa and how their dreams of Liberia differed from the reality. This rich narrative also examines the role of poor black farmers in the creation of a black nationalist identity and the importance of the symbolism of an ancestral continent. Based on letters to the ACS and interviews of descendants of the emigrants in war-torn Liberia, this study captures the life of black sharecroppers in the late 1800s and their dreams of escaping to Africa.

From the colonial period to the present, the Mississippi River has impacted religious communities from Minnesota to the Gulf of Mexico. Exploring the religious landscape along the 2,530 miles of the largest river system in North America, the essays in Gods of the Mississippi make a compelling case for American religion in motion—not just from east to west, but also from north to south. With discussion of topics such as the religions of the Black Atlantic, religion and empire, antebellum religious movements, the Mormons at Nauvoo, black religion in the delta, Catholicism in the Deep South, and Johnny Cash and religion, this volume contributes to a richer understanding of this diverse, dynamic, and fluid religious world.

When Eddy Harris went to Africa, he ended up learning a great deal about his own identity as a black American as well as witnessing both the splendor and squalor of the continent. From encounters with beggars and bureaucrats to a visit to Soweto and a hellish night in a Liberian jail, Harris evokes Africa with candor and vividness.

Follows the adventures of Minn, a three-legged snapping turtle, as she slowly makes her way from her birthplace at the headwaters of the Mississippi River to the mouth of river on the Gulf of Mexico.