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Please visit our Archaeology Month pages for events around the state.

Raymond Pilgrimage, Reenactments

A Place Called Raymond, the sixth annual fall pilgrimage, will be held Friday evening, October 8, through Saturday, October 9. The theme is "Living with the Arts," and each homeowner has selected an art form to feature: music, quilting, photography, gardening, and other arts. Twelve historic homes will be open, in addition to other historic buildings and churches. Proceeds benefit programs of the Friends of Raymond. The Battles of Port Gibson, Raymond, and Champion Hill will be reenacted on November 13-14 on the Raymond Battlefield. Other events planned for the weekend include a parade, haversack lunch at the Confederate cemetery, and period dress dance. For more information, visit their web site.

Notable Mississippi Women

MDAH recently submitted a list of nationally important Mississippi women to the National Museum of Women's History in New York in response to a nationwide survey. Beginning with this issue, the Newsletter will highlight the lives and works of some of these women.

Althea Brown (1874-1937) was an African American missionary to Africa. She left Rolling Fork, Mississippi, to study at Fisk University, graduated with honors, and went on to teach school in Pikeville, Tennessee. In 1901 she applied to be a missionary in the American Presbyterian Congo Mission. She said goodbye to her family in Mississippi and sailed for Africa in August 1902, stopping in London to assemble supplies.

Brown survived much fierce fighting in the rebellion in the Congo and married co-worker Alonzo Edmiston there, sewing wedding garments herself, as their clothes had burned with their mission station. They came back to America to raise money for the mission and returned to Africa, taking their child with them. Althea Brown Edmiston wrote the first dictionary of the Bakuba language. She died in 1937 in Africa of sleeping sickness and malaria. A biography, A Life for the Congo: The Story of Althea Brown Edmiston, by Julia Lake Kellersberger, was published in 1947.

Exhibitions Available from MHC

The Mississippi Humanities Council is currently overseeing two exhibitions from the Smithsonian Institution. Key Ingredients: America by Food addresses the diversity of our country's food traditions and regional influences on the way Americans eat. After showing in Oxford until mid-September, it travels to Gautier, Cleveland, and Port Gibson before closing in Columbus in March of next year.

The second exhibit, Between Fences, a cultural history of fences and land use in America, will tour the state beginning in the fall of 2005. This exhibit examines how neighbors and nations divide and protect, offend, and defend through the boundaries they build. Proposals are now being solicited from potential venues for Between Fences. Contact MHC at 601/ 432-6752 for details.