Voices from the Hill Country
The Hill Country Project Has released a Book!
On October 29, 2022 the Hill Country Project celebrated the release of their book at The Umbrella Event Space in Lamar, Mississippi. This is the program from the event, featuring a new video clip about voting rights as well as the unveiling of a Mississippi Freedom Trail Marker for Henry Reaves.
A greeting from Benton County's Superintendent of Schools, Regina Biggers, on the occasion of the Hill Country Project's book release October 29, 2022.
To buy the enhanced Apple eBook, use the camera on your iPad or iPhone to capture this QR code, or tap from an iOS device.
NOTE: The enhanced eBook is only available on the Apple Book store and requires an iPad or iPhone to read.
For over 25 years, the Hill Country Project has been capturing oral histories of residents of Benton County. We are thrilled to announce that work is culminating in a book, “Voices from the Mississippi Hill Country” that was just published by the University Press of Mississippi. The Hill Country Project has also published an enhanced eBook, available exclusively from the Apple Books store, featuring additional photographs as well as audio clips from each interviewee. All proceeds from the book will benefit the Hill Country Project Scholarship Fund, an initiative created to help young Benton Countians subsidize their secondary education.
“Voices from the Mississippi Hill Country is more than a glimpse into the lives of several dozen citizens from Benton County. This book chronicles and memorializes the long-neglected lived experience of millions of citizens born into Jim Crow and those born, decades later, into the multi-generational aftermath of that era’s terrors and indignities. In the stories of each citizen, not only did I hear their voices, I also heard the voices of my grandmothers and grandfathers, my aunties and uncles, my mother and father, my sisters and myself…Thank you for crafting this invaluable book, a resource that beckons us to deeper engagement with our untold, unsung, undocumented true histories and birthright freedoms.”
-Dr. Gloria J. Burgess, Author of Flawless Leadership: Connecting Who You Are with What You Know and Do, Dare to Wear Your Soul on the Outside, and Pass It On!
From the introduction:
This is a book about life before, during and after the Civil Rights Movement, as told in their own words by the residents of a rural county in northern Mississippi. It examines one of the most revolutionary periods in American history through the voices of farmers, teachers, sharecroppers and students. Rather than the polished words of the movement’s icons, we hear the simple eloquence of an elderly woman recalling her long days toiling in the cotton fields. We hear the courage of a sharecropper remembering voting for the first time. We hear the determination of parents deciding to send their children to integrate an all white school. We hear the terror in a first grader’s voice, walking into an all white classroom on the first day of school. We hear the resolve in a janitor recalling his first civil rights meeting. And we hear the wisdom and grace of a community talking about justice, equity, and the promise of a better future.