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• 1 2024-09-17T06:02:22+00:00 Historical Distance and the Mississippi Civil Rights Movement: Opening Windows into Mississippi’s Civil Rights History 3 image_header 2025-01-07T19:49:21+00:00

  by Jeffery Hirschy

  University of Southern Mississippi
  Abstract

  Introduction
  The Mississippi Civil Rights Movement and Mississippi History
  Historical Distance and Why It Matters
  Four Windows into Mississippi History
  >The Freedom Riders
  >Allen Dulles and the Murdered Civil Rights Workers
  >Patterson and the Attack on Tradition
  >Governor Barnett and the Citizens’ Council
  Conclusion

  Introduction

  Stop a person or a group of people on the street and ask them where the civil rights movement happened, and you might get answers like “Alabama,” “Birmingham,” “the deep South,” or simply “the South.” While all these answers are technically correct, they are leaving out other parts of the broader story that took place from the mid-1950s to the early 1970s across the entire American South. Both African Americans and their white allies wanted change, and they were going to try to make it happen. Groups and individuals from Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. to local volunteers whose names are lost to history spread out across the region trying to achieve equal rights for all. By the early 1970s, they had achieved some victories, like the Civil Rights Acts, the Voting Rights Act, and other new laws and regulations.¹ A few battles had been won, but there were plenty of others to fight. The struggle for civil rights is a never-ending one.

  Now, nearly fifty years after the end of the first stage of this struggle, archives and museums are endeavoring to remember and preserve the stories of this time for the edification of present and future generations. Enough historical distance has passed to make this possible in a productive and informative way. Mark Salber Phillips describes the subject of his book On Historical Distance as “the ability to talk more about something, more openly, now that more time has passed.”² When it comes to events like the struggle for civil rights, especially in places like Mississippi, the concept of historical distance is an important one and a necessary lens to look at the historical and archival evidence left behind by those engaged in this struggle. This means examining stories of violence, discord, conflict, and hope, in which the major players are left feeling incomplete at the end. This sense of incompletion means that the meanings of the lessons and stories of the era are still being debated. By examining some of the historical and archival evidence surrounding the civil rights movement in Mississippi through the lens of historical distance, one can understand more about the civil rights struggles of the past and the lessons and experiences they left behind.

  The Mississippi Civil Rights Movement and Mississippi History

  From the coming of the first Europeans to the early twentieth century, Mississippi is a case study in abuse, strained human relationships, and tragedy.³ Events like the expulsion of Indigenous Americans, the introduction of African slavery, and the rise of Jim Crow and the populists laid the foundations for the continued propagation of oppression. Mississippi seemed set in stone. At the beginning of the twentieth century, the state was at the back of the line on so many things. Most northern life insurance companies wouldn’t issue policies to Mississippians because of conditions in the state.⁴ It seemed like a place that time and change had forgotten. But later events began to crack the edifice—two world wars and the Great Depression broke Mississippi out of the historical and cultural mud and caused some citizens to reconsider many things. African Americans had gone north and overseas and seen places where they were treated with more respect—even, in some situations, as full members of their communities. They wanted to bring the freedom they had experienced back to their home state. Federal funds brought new roads and expanded electrical service to Mississippi after World War II and led people to think more about embracing the modern world. Those who supported the introduction of new rights and modern infrastructure realized that Mississippi needed to be pulled into the present day. These desires, along with the brutal murder of Emmett Till in 1955, would strike the spark that brought the civil rights movement to life in Mississippi.⁵

  When the movement broke out in the mid-1950s, it was supported by African Americans and some white allies who wanted to change the state for the better.⁶ They followed many of the same protest techniques—sit-ins, voting demonstrations, and marches—that other groups had used across the American South and wider United States. These protests and movements were met with contempt and violence from the government of Mississippi and those who supported Jim Crow and white supremacy. From the riot that would eventually be known as the Battle of Oxford in 1962—fought over the admission of James Meredith to the University of Mississippi—to the murder of civil rights workers near Philadelphia, Mississippi, those supporting the status quo tried to do whatever it took to preserve their system.⁷ This contest, often a violent one, raged for most of the 1950s and 1960s and into the 1970s. From Oxford to Biloxi, the two sides fought for the soul of the state. Only with the historical distance of half a century are we able to examine the historical and archival evidence and unpack some of its lessons for the present and future.

  Historical Distance and Why It Matters

  In 2007 an apology was read out on the steps of the Tallahatchie County Courthouse:

  We the citizens of Tallahatchie County believe that racial reconciliation begins with telling the truth. We call on the state of Mississippi, all its citizens in every county, to begin an honest investigation into our history. While it will be painful, it is necessary to nurture reconciliation and to ensure justice for all. By recognizing the potential for division and violence in our own towns, we pledge to each other, black and white, to move forward together in healing the wounds of the past, and in ensuring equal justice for all its citizens.

  Over fifty-two years ago, on August 28, 1955, 14-year-old Emmett Till was kidnapped in the middle of the night from his uncle’s home near Money, Mississippi, by at least two men, one from Leflore County and one from Tallahatchie County, Mississippi. Till, a black youth from Chicago visiting family in Mississippi, was kidnapped, and murdered, and his body thrown into the Tallahatchie River. He had been accused of whistling at a white woman in Money. His badly beaten body was found days later in Tallahatchie County, Mississippi. The Grand Jury meeting in Sumner, Mississippi, indicted Roy Bryant, and J. W. Milan for the crime of murder. These two men were then tried on this charge and were acquitted by an all-white, all-male jury after, a deliberation of just over an hour. Within four months of their acquittal, the two men confessed to the murder.

  Before the trials began, Till’s mother had sought assistance from federal officials, under the terms of the so-called Lindbergh Law which made kidnapping a federal crime but received no aid. Only a renewed request in December 2002 from Till’s mother, supported by Mississippi District Attorney Joyce Chiles and the Emmett Till Justice Campaign, yielded a new investigation.

  We the citizens of Tallahatchie County recognize that the Emmett Till case was a terrible miscarriage of justice. We state candidly and with deep regret the failure to effectively pursue justice. We wish to say to the family of Emmett Till that we are profoundly sorry for what was done in this community to your loved one.

  We the citizens of Tallahatchie County acknowledge the horrific nature of this crime. Its legacy has haunted our community. We need to understand the system that encouraged these events and others like them to occur so that we can ensure that it never happens again. Working together, we have the power now to fulfill the promise of liberty and justice for all.⁸

  This apology, issued by a group of citizens of Tallahatchie County and members of the governments of the town of Sumner and Tallahatchie County, was designed to take the first steps toward embracing and working through the history of the county and city, especially the murder of Emmett Till.⁹ The apology is now preserved on both a monument in the courthouse square and at the local Emmett Till Interpretive Center. Both the apology and the Interpretive Center allow for the stories of visitors to become a part of the story of Till and what it meant for the nation and its people. 

  The example of the apology and the cultural, societal, historical, and political conditions that made it possible are a near perfect example of historical distance. Phillips describes historical distance as the ability of people and groups to have new forms of conversation about historical events and their contexts that could not have happened earlier in history.¹⁰ Examples can range from the Till apology to the words of the president of the Federal Republic of Germany (1984–1994), Richard von Weizsäcker:

  There is no such thing as the guilt or innocence of an entire nation. Guilt is, like innocence, not collective but personal. There is discovered or concealed individual guilt. There is guilt which people acknowledge or deny. . . . All of us, whether guilty or not, whether young or old, must accept the past. We are all affected by the consequences and liable for it. There can be no reconciliation without remembrance.¹¹

  These examples, and others like them, point also to the potential danger that history and its interpretations can cause. Historical interpretation is a tool, and like any tool, it can be used for negative purposes in the wrong hands. Those hands can range from the white supremacists who managed the culture and information systems of the American South in the early and midtwentieth century to uninformed people who share false information on social media today. Take, for example, this quote from The False Cause: Fraud, Fabrication, and White Supremacy in Confederate Memory by Adam H. Domby:

  The past has been weaponized, and historians must adapt to fight lies and fabricated memories. Technology has allowed a democratization of history but has also furthered the fabrication of the past. While online resources allow anyone to do research more easily, they also circumvent traditional guardians of quality like peer review and editors. Anyone can make up a story or interpretation without any critical consideration and post it online.¹²

  This shows the power of historical distance to do many things for many different types of organizations. For example, the Mississippi Department of Archives and History, the Mississippi Civil Rights Museum, and institutions outside the state like the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute all use historical distance to engage their chosen communities with the history, stories, and lessons within their walls. Historical distance allows them to engage with their materials in a more open and honest manner as time passes. This is partially because with time, the events become more history and less things that happened to people. This transformation is extremely important for memory institutions where difficult history is brought up through interactions inside and outside their walls. Phillips describes his realization of this process:

  I came away thinking through the passage of time had provided some of the necessary conditions, the fundamental change of perspective involved impulses that were more complex and wide-ranging that could be included in our customary ideas of historical distance. Paradoxically, too, increased temporal distance has made possible a new, more democratized proximity. The ideas that historical sensibilities change over time was hardly a surprise but was perhaps the first occasion that I saw such changes as entailing a shift of distance or that I began to consider the multiple distances that structure our engagement with the past.
  
  [ . . . ]
  
  For both the historian and the reader, I have come to realize, distance is both historically given and historiographically constructed in ways that move far beyond the standard association of distance with objectivity and the passage of time.¹³

  As time passes, people, groups, governments, religions, and cultures can reevaluate historical events and reinterpret what happened. This reevaluation is not just something that happens in places like the American South that have gone through long periods of well-known historical trauma, generating numerous stories that society, culture, and communities throughout the region are still grappling with. It also happens in less tumultuous places like Indiana. James H. Madison wrote that he needed to update the history of Indiana he wrote in 1986:

  This is a new book, with a new title, because Indiana has changed. So has the knowledge of our past. New scholarship in the last three decades has given us a better understanding of French fur traders, Native Americans, Civil War soldiers, women seeking equality, the Great Depression of the 1930s, and economic development from canals in the 1830s to Japanese auto factories in the 1980s. New scholarship has also helped us understand those individuals and groups whom some Hoosiers struggled to embrace, including Catholics, Jews, and African Americans. African American Hoosiers especially have a larger presence here than in the earlier book. The outpouring of articles and books about race in recent years makes it clear that such stories are not only about African Americans but about all Hoosiers.¹⁴

  This is a form of historical distance. Madison realized that he needed to update his book not just because time has passed and new history had occurred but because the interpretation of previous history needed to be updated to better serve the community. To provide a better and more complete story, analysis, and interpretation, Madison brought in forgotten strands and contexts of Indiana’s history. 

  Mississippi was the second state to have an official archive. Created in 1902, it was designed along the lines of newly created professional archives in Europe.¹⁵ It was a professional archive with professional ideas, but it didn’t manage to collect all the materials generated by its citizens.¹⁶ From 1902 to the aftermath of Mississippi’s struggle for civil rights, the Mississippi Department of Archives and History told only the white version of the state’s history. Proudly on the side of organizations like the Daughters of the Confederacy, it did not want to remember all the stories or have open and honest discussions about Mississippi’s history. Not until the 1980s did the department reform itself and set a new course to remember and preserve all the state’s history, about all of its people. Phillips describes how institutions change their perspective over time: “Strong ideological commitments fueled this democratized interest in questions of gender, memory, or trauma, just as they inspired a whole generation of left-leaning historians to rally to Edward Thompson’s call to rescue forgotten lives from ‘the enormous condescension.’”¹⁷

  The extra historical distance available to the Mississippi Department of Archives and History, the Mississippi Civil Rights Museum, and the Mississippi History Museum allows them to do more with the materials they have. Multiple forms of justice and technologies like the internet and social media are integrated into their operations as part of their reforms and updated goals.

  With this distance and a new willingness to tackle uncomfortable topics, these institutions, which are all located in Jackson, Mississippi, are a solid example of how sufficient historical distance can lead to reevaluation and how institutions can and should embrace new ideas to meet the changing needs of their communities. “Objective knowledge [has] to be put in context with other forms of engagement that mediate the now/then of history,” writes Phillips. “Formal structures of engagement that mediate the now/then and rhetoric, affective coloring, the strong summons of ideology, the quest for intelligibility and understanding—the push and pull of these fundamental investments gives distance a new complexity that has been missing from older formulations.”¹⁸

  More history, distance, and time between the present and the events they were designed to analyze allow these institutions to fully engage with new ideas that wouldn’t have been possible, for example, when the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute opened in November 1992. The Mississippi Civil Rights Museum, one of the two museums under the control of the state archive, presented the following goals for what exhibit spaces should embody:

  • Core Values
    • Truth
      • A factual account of the history of the civil rights struggle and an affirmation of the dignity retained by African Americans throughout the period of slavery, emancipation, and attainment of civil rights.
    • Identity
      • The identity of the Museum, and in particular its exhibits, will be forthright in providing human identity for the struggle by placing names and faces on the enslaved and emancipated people who were noteworthy in their persistence and quest to attain full civil rights.
    • Place
      • The prominent role Mississippi played in the struggle for civil rights offered insights into the shaping of people by place and circumstance, and frames through example the opportunity for all to pursue ongoing change for the betterment of the common good.
    • Memory
      • The telling of collective stories of the struggle, both individual and group, to provide a sense of the influence of the past on the present.
    • Exhibits
      • Museum exhibits are like no other medium in that they present the opportunity to immerse visitors in a focused reconstruction of time, place, and event in order to extract the essence of a story that deserves telling. Exhibits are now expected to function as immersive environments, carefully constructed to set a mood, and instill feelings. Drawing upon a carefully orchestrated series of experiences, they can provide visitors with a series of encounters that inform, inspire and delight. The process of discovery in a museum is on opportunity to learn as well as to confirm, and to have the experience of finding out new and unexpected things.¹⁹

  Historical distance is a key part of engagement between historical institutions and their communities. This framing lens allows the Mississippi Department of Archives and History, its two museums, and museums like the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute to engage with history on an institutional, personal, and community level. Without this interaction, neither the institution nor the community would be able to work toward understanding and learning from the lessons of the past and applying them to the present and future. This process is at the heart of a modern professional information institution and a key to understanding video clips like those on hand at the Mississippi Department of Archives and History.²⁰

  Four Windows Into Mississippi History

  The Mississippi Department of Archives and History holds an extensive collection of materials that display many aspects of the complex history of the state. Some of these materials can be accessed online at https://da.mdah.ms.gov, including a collection of television recordings. The videos from the civil rights movement period are especially fascinating because television itself was a battleground in the struggle. From not airing the television show Bonanza because its stars supported civil rights to a long court battle over licensing and equal access around Jackson stations WLBT and WJTV, television was a place where viewers came to find support for their arguments or validation of their beliefs.²¹

  Television’s critical role was not limited to Mississippi. Birmingham’s firehoses and dogs, Jackson’s mass arrests and speechifying segregationist mayor—these were tools used by both sides and appear in clips from the state archive. Applying the lens of historical distance gives viewers new understanding about these clips, the roles they played at the time, and the roles they can play today. In the following sections, I analyze four videos from the archive that epitomize the movement and offer new insights to those who lived through those days and those learning about these events for the first time.

  The Freedom Riders

  This protest started as a response to inaction in the South regarding the Supreme Court decisions Morgan v. Virginia and Boynton v. Virginia, which declared that segregated restaurants, waiting rooms, and buses were unconstitutional. The Freedom Rider plan was to travel from Washington, D.C., to New Orleans to show how the region had failed to implement these decisions and shame it into doing so.²² From May to December 1961, students and other volunteers working with the Congress of Racial Equality and Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee traveled across the region to demonstrate the South’s failure to uphold the law. The Freedom Riders were of diverse cultures and races and believed that the United States could and should do better for its people.²³

  After leaving Washington and crossing the Potomac, the Freedom Riders encountered little resistance in Virginia, North Carolina, and South Carolina. Most folks in those states wanted the Freedom Riders to pass so things could go back to normal. Keeping them around would only stir up trouble, in their opinion. But deeper in the South, in Alabama and Mississippi, groups like the Ku Klux Klan and some police were willing to attack the Freedom Riders, whom they considered to be an extreme threat to their way of life.²⁴

  The South’s war against the Freedom Riders began in Anniston, Alabama, and spread to Birmingham, Montgomery, and any city or community where the Riders stopped.²⁵ On May 16, 1961, citizens of Anniston attacked buses, beat passengers, threatened others, and made sure the Freedom Riders found no peace. The attackers thought they were fighting the second coming of William Tecumseh Sherman or Karl Marx, and they were not going to lose. 

  By May 24, 1961, the Freedom Riders were beaten, battered, and bruised but still standing. They were escorted out of Alabama by US Marshals. When they entered Mississippi, they were promised “protection” by the state government, which meant the protection of a jail cell. When the Freedom Riders arrived in Jackson, they were arrested by local and state law enforcement and sent to Parchman Farms, Mississippi’s worst prison. But instead of fleeing, the Freedom Riders decided to make a stand. As many as three hundred Freedom Riders were arrested, multiple times for multiple reasons, in Mississippi. They showed the state they were not afraid and would not be deterred from achieving their goals.²⁶

  The video, showing Martin Luther King Jr., Ralph Abernathy, and some of the Freedom Riders who were arrested, demonstrates that the Riders came from different races, cultures, and geographic locations. Seeing this, it’s a bit clearer why the Freedom Riders and their supporters were so alarming to the authorities in Mississippi. This group represented one of the greatest threats to the story constellation and memory structure of the state. The events in Jackson weren’t a local anomaly but part of the larger battle for civil rights nationwide.
  

  Allen Dulles and the Murdered Civil Rights Workers

  The second video covers the arrival of Allen Dulles, former director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), at Jackson Airport in 1964. Dulles was there at the request of President Lyndon B. Johnson. At the time of his arrival, the state and the country were locked in another crisis over civil rights. Earlier that week, James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner had been murdered near the city of Philadelphia, Mississippi, while working to achieve the goals of Freedom Summer.²⁷

  The movement was launched earlier that month when civil rights activists and volunteers tried to register as many African Americans to vote as possible. They also tried to educate African Americans across the state and give them the tools to escape the swamps of white supremacy.²⁸ Because Chaney, Goodman, and Schwerner were enemies of Mississippi’s tradition, they were harassed, threatened, and bullied across the state. Their assailants included the local police. It was especially dangerous on the backroads, where they were far from allies and often surrounded by enemies. These enemies finally murdered the three men and buried their bodies in a mass grave on June 21, 1964.²⁹

  In the aftermath of the murders, the state and county descended into crisis. It was a shocking and brutal act, much like the Birmingham police attacking children in the streets with dogs and firehoses. People were outraged around the world, and because of this Dulles was deployed by the president to manage the situation and try to keep the peace.³⁰ Dulles had been the CIA director for Dwight Eisenhower and John F. Kennedy.³¹ He was known for his service to the CIA and in World War II. Sending him to Mississippi was supposed to show that the president respected the government and people of the state. 

  The video shows Dulles landing at the airport like a diplomat preparing to begin talks with a foreign power. This was by design. President Johnson was making sure that Mississippi was taken care of and pampered. Dulles was there to make sure that Mississippi would cooperate with the federal government in the investigation into the disappearance and murder of the three civil rights workers. 
  These two video clips focus on the side of freedom in the struggle for civil rights in Mississippi. The next two focus on the side of white supremacy. The juxtaposition of these videos can help viewers understand the complexities of this struggle and why each side acted as it did, allowing a more informed analysis of this period.

  Patterson and the Attack on Tradition

  The third video takes the viewer into the minds of Mississippi’s white political leadership during the civil rights movement. Mississippi’s attorney general, Joe Patterson, was at the forefront of white supremacist resistance. Men like him used the power of their political office to fulfill their own social and political desires instead of serving all the people of Mississippi. 

  Like the British in India, the government of Mississippi practiced a “divide and rule” style of leadership. Across its policies, it made sure that different groups and factions fought against each other, hated each other, and never realized that their true enemies were the people in political and economic power.³² The civil rights movement was a threat to men like Patterson because it wanted to break down the walls between groups, stop the fighting, and create a better Mississippi with no room for the old governing clique. 

  Because of this perceived threat, Patterson and his associates did their best to make sure the movement did not achieve its goals in Mississippi. As attorney general, he had authority over the state police and other levers of power that he could use to fight his enemies. He supported the Mississippi State Sovereignty Commission, the state’s secret police force, and profiled and bullied people from the 1950s to the 1970s to make sure traditional Mississippi survived. 

  In the video, Patterson engages with his audience on a variety of subjects related to the murders of the three civil rights workers. He claims to have a lot of power but is willing to help local authorities. Most of all, he wants to come off as a neutral voice of reason rising above the crisis the state and county find themselves in. He claims that both sides are to blame for what is happening. If the civil rights workers hadn’t been there, the supporters of traditional Mississippi wouldn’t have been scared and forced to do what they did. Patterson, like so many throughout history, wants to seem like an innocent bystander with no control over the situation while making sure that the people who committed the crimes are allowed to continue with their harassment.
  

  Governor Barnett and the Citizens’ Council

  The fourth video is a speech given by Governor Ross Barnett to the Mississippi Citizens’ Council, a government-supported white supremacist front that was organized to fight the civil rights movement and the US government. The speech was a call to arms for the Citizens’ Council and its supporters. The Citizens’ Council was a group dedicated to the preservation of the story constellation of traditional Mississippi. Like Barnett, they were willing to do whatever it took to accomplish their aims. Barnett was there to fire up his supporters and ask them to rally to his side in the ongoing struggle. 

  While George Wallace of Alabama was more famous, Barnett was just as much of a segregationist. As governor from 1960 to 1964, he fought James Meredith’s integration of the University of Mississippi, which resulted in the Battle of Oxford in 1962.³³ He made sure the Freedom Riders were arrested and sent to the worst Mississippi prison in 1961 and helped fund and expand the Mississippi State Sovereignty Commission.³⁴ Barnett did not serve the people of Mississippi; he practiced “divide and rule” just as his predecessors had. He was going to support traditional Mississippi no matter what. 

  In his speech, Barnett declarers himself to be a segregationist, a supporter of states’ rights, and a protector of Mississippi’s heritage. He clarifies that this is what he is going to fight and stand for. Instead of being booed or shouted down, he is applauded and hailed as a hero. Like Wallace in Alabama, Barnett imagined himself as the reincarnation of Jefferson Davis fighting the tyranny of the Kennedy and Johnson administrations. Like them, Barnett and his supporters lost the war. 

  Change is hard, and it is often slow. By using historical distance as a lens of analysis, one can see that the Mississippi of 2023 is still dealing with the issues of its past. But while the state has a history of strained human relationships and abuse, it also has a history of hope against all odds. For example, after the civil rights movement in Mississippi ended in the early 1970s, the battle across the nation continued. Slowly but surely, African Americans entered politics, business, and different class spheres in Mississippi.³⁵

  There was hope, and the lessons of the past were being applied to the present, but this did not mean that the struggle for civil rights was over. The forces of white supremacy rearmed and returned to the battlefield with new ideas and old ideas dressed in new clothes. From Jackson to the Delta, African American communities were drastically underfunded by the state government. This led to mass poverty and a slow but steady collapse of the infrastructure, creating incidents like the 2022 water crisis in Jackson, when the largest city and the capital of the state was without running water for several weeks.³⁶

  The water crisis is just one example of a new form of the environmental racism that has stalked Mississippi for centuries. By recognizing this and connecting this crisis to, for example, the 1927 Great Mississippi Flood, one can discover lessons from history that can apply to the present and future. This realization is the power of historical distance and why it works as an analytical tool for Mississippi’s history and the evidence in the Mississippi Department of Archives and History.³⁷ These stories have power, and they should be available.

  Conclusion

  The process of understanding the historical and cultural value of the audiovisual material at the Mississippi Department of Archives and History is just beginning. Through the lens of historical distance, one can see that these stories are complex and have numerous lessons for the present and future. The words of John Patterson and Ross Barnett could easily be mistaken for those of current politicians, suggesting that the ideas supported by these men were never totally defeated. There are lessons in recognizing and defusing their power in these clips. The availability of this material could also help those living during the civil rights era talk about what happened then and what is happening today, especially in the aftermath of the racial reckoning surrounding the 2020 murder of George Floyd.³⁸ These stories have power, and historical distance helps unlock that power. Knowing this history will empower present and future generations to make decisions that will hopefully lead Mississippi toward becoming a place based less on conflict and more on bonds of community and acceptance.
  
  A list of external links featured in this essay can be found here.³⁹
  
  Jeff Hirschy is an Assistant Professor of Library and Information Science at the University of Southern Mississippi in Hattiesburg, Mississippi. There he manages the Archives and Special Collections Certificate and conducts research related to the public history and memory surrounding natural disasters, general Environmental History, archives, archives and social justice, and community archives. Outside the classroom, he enjoys walking, cats, and Star Trek.
  
  Historical Distance and the Mississippi Civil Rights Movement: Opening Windows into Mississippi’s Civil Rights History © 2025 by Jeffery Hirschy is licensed under CC BY 4.0.
  
  The Journal of e-Media Studies is published by the Dartmouth Library.