Regional Meetings

Mississippi Truth Project regions

Click here to open a PDF document showing the MTP regions.

A letter from our oral historian

As a primary thrust of the Mississippi Truth Project (MTP), an ongoing effort to engage Mississippi communities and citizens in the process of learning, gathering and preserving their own histories is now underway.

The William Winter Institute for Racial Reconciliation (WWIRR) offers further training to interested citizens and communities on civil rights history, oral history purposes and practices, hands–on experience through oral history interview simulations as well as ongoing support to communities as they implement their own oral history projects. To this end three sequential training module have been developed. Module One is designed to assist communities with providing historical context for their projects and inviting community members to understand how their personal histories intersect with broader history especially during the time period 1945 to 1975. Module Two seeks to clarify the purposes and use of oral history and why its application in the MTP is a sound exercise It also gives the community an opportunity to brainstorm and do some preliminary planning. Module Three allows both the context and techniques involved in conducting an actual oral history interview. All of these meetings/trainings will be tailored to your community and its needs because we know that all communities are different.

Conducting an oral history project gives community members an opportunity to be heard in their own individual interviews, but also allows their communities to work closely together and benefit from oral history interviews not only in their communities, but from communities throughout the state. The impact of having meaningful and honest conversations about our collective culture, woes, triumphs, past and future which acknowledge all stories as equal and valuable is essential to moving forward together. As a result community oral history projects can

  • Enhance and expand the local/statewide historical record through uncovering previously unknown stories and empower citizens through the sharing of their stories.
  • Document any incidents or patterns of discrimination, especially as they pertain to institutional racism, crimes against the body, crimes against property, and collusion of public officials and conspiracies of silence especially for the time period of 1945–1975.
  • To create and provide better local primary source documents as a curriculum resource in accordance with the 2006 Mississippi state law that mandates that all students learn about human rights and civil rights in K–12.

A familiar verse of Christian scripture says that “the truth shall make us free,”; the first portion of the verse is often omitted when quoted. One translation of the complete verse states it this way, “Ye shall know for yourselves the truth and it will make you free.” The multi–faceted and complex truths of our state over the last seventy years lie often unheard and undocumented. Mississippi has long had its history told through the eyes of others with their own perspectives, agendas and motivations. Oftentimes we watch and wonder, even get offended as our stories are told by someone else because we “know or heard different.” In 1940 Langston Hughes wrote the following verses in “Note on Commercial Theatre”—But someday somebody'll stand up and talk about me and write about me—I reckon it'll be me myself! Yes, it'll be me. We are the people, the ones that we have been waiting for to tell the whole story and to tell it right.

For additional questions, information or to schedule a preliminary interest meeting please contact Rhondalyn Peairs, Coordinator of Documentary Projects at rkpeairs@olemiss.edu or (662) 915-1605. I look forward to hearing from you.