The second volume in an unprecedented series by the Smithsonian's National Museum of African American History and Culture highlighting museum and archival collections at Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs).
Featuring more than seventy-five images alongside essays by historians, scholars, and educators, this publication tells the powerful story of Jackson State University (JSU) and its Margaret Walker Center, an archive and museum dedicated to the preservation, interpretation, and dissemination of African American history and culture.
Essays in this book highlight JSU's remarkable history as a public HBCU in Mississippi and its status and work today as the state's only urban research university. Also featured is the artistic, academic, and activist legacy of Margaret Walker and the Black Studies Institute she founded in 1968, now named in her honor.
In addition to beautiful examples of the collections at JSU and the Margaret Walker Center, this book features stories of key Mississippians, including photographers Doris Derby and Roy Lewis, educator Jane Ellen McAllister, cartographer William D. Lamson, and activist Frankye Adams-Johnson. Important events in JSU's history such as the tragic 1970 police shootings and the groundbreaking 1973 Phillis Wheatley Poetry Festival underscore both the daunting obstacles and the intellectual and artistic achievements at JSU. Throughout this volume, the campus vibrancy and resiliency are prominently featured in images that invite readers to examine the richness of the collection at the Margaret Walker Center at Jackson State University.