Shannon Evans Wins Oakley Award!
Please give a huge congratulations to our very own vice president, Shannon Evans, for receiving the Oakley Award from the Board of Trustees of the Association for Gravestone Studies (AGS).
Shannon Evans
Hostility & Hatred
In October 2023, MZMF field agent Joe Austin attended the Mississippi John Hurt Memorial Walk to witness the dedication of the historical marker at St. James MB Church Cemetery. In this blog post, he explains how hostility and hatred have inhibited efforts to preserve African American history in Carroll County, MS.
Shannon Evans – Oakley Award Nomination
Shannon Evans is dedicated to preventing the silencing of African American History as the Vice President of the Mt. Zion Memorial Fund, which is nominating her for the 2023 Oakley Award from the Association of Gravestone Studies.
White Supremacy & Historic Preservation
Shannon Evans details the similarities between plantation tourism and blues tourism, both of which employ similar mechanisms of erasure, nostalgia, and mythology. By relying on romanticized narratives that align with the expectations of white tourists, both blues and plantation tourism are detached from the historical realities of the African American experience.
Preserving the Legacy of John Hurt
Shannon Evans has worked closely with Mary Frances Hurt of the Mississippi John Hurt Blues Foundation to help preserve St. James Missionary Baptist Church in Teoc, Mississippi. This blog post details her work over the past year.
Robert Gleed: Black Power & White Violence in Lowndes County
Shannon Evans examines the white supremacist violence and turmoil that plagued the political career of Robert Gleed, an African American politician from Lowndes County who served as Senator and Columbus Alderman during Reconstruction.
W. I. Mitchell: Respectability and Resource Hoarding in Jim Crow Columbus
Shannon Evans examines the struggle for education for African Americans after the Civil War in Lowndes County, and she highlights the politics of respectability embraced by William Isaac Mitchell, an African American educator and community leader who served as principal of Union Academy from 1878 until his death in 1916.