Mississippi Roads comes to you from the capitol city of Jackson. We are downtown at the Smith Robertson Museum and Cultural Center.
http://www.jacksonms.gov/visitors/museums/smithrobertson
The Smith Robertson Museum and Cultural Center is dedicated to increasing public understanding and awareness of the historical experiences and cultural expressions of African Americans in the Deep South.
They accomplish that goal by housing a number of permanent and traveling exhibits. “Field to Factory” was a traveling exhibit that is now on permanent loan from the Smithsonian Institute in Washington D.C.
It chronicles the 1915 to 1945 migration of African Americans from the rural south to the industrialized north.
More than 65,000 African Americans left Mississippi during this time; thus causing a drastic change in the culture, workforce and landscape of our state.
This movement is credited with rise in popularity of blues music. The working poor of the south brought their soul-felt songs to the big cities up north where they were electrified and exposed to whole new audience.
In our first story, we follow the newly established Blues Trail of Mississippi to discover what role this soul- felt music has played in our state.
The Mississippi Blues Commission is a consortium of blues historians, musicians, and various state agencies that was founded to preserve the heritage of Mississippi’s blues music. The establishment of the Mississippi Blues Trail became just one way to recognize and preserve this heritage. One of the Blues Trails’ goals was to erect hundreds of Blue Markers at various notable blues locations throughout the state. The purpose of each Blues Marker is to tell the story of each musician, honor their memories, their contributions to the genre, and inform the public of their importance to blues music. Living legend Bobby Rush is celebrated with the unveiling of his marker in this story.
http://www.msbluestrail.org/blues_trail/
Another permanent exhibit on display at Smith Robertson Museum is the African American Lifestyles in Mississippi.
Here you will find photographs, agricultural tools, artifacts, furniture and even a horse drawn wagon all circa 1900’s.
“Slavery in America” is another exhibit that you will always find here at the museum. History of slavery in Mississippi, Emancipation Proclamation, Reconstruction and the Jim Crow era are all explored in this thought-provoking display.
And speaking of thought-provoking, the group in our next story is using advanced technology and brain power to exonerate some wrongfully convicted citizens in our state.
The Innocence Project began in 1992 by Barry Scheck and Peter Neufeld. They saw that across the country, holes in the judicial system led to innocent people getting locked up in prison. Many had life sentences and some were even put on death row for crimes they did not commit. So far 232 men across the country, with 4 from Mississippi have been freed. After a combined 63 years in prison these four men are finally free.
www.mississippiinnocence.org
www.innocenceproject.org/ |
