Porter L. Fortune, Jr.
Speaker Series on the Global South 2006-07

James L. Peacock, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, "Grounded Globalism: How the U.S. South Embraces the World or the South Ain't Flat"
Michael A. Gomez, New York University, "'Black' Identity in the American South: An Atlantic Perspective"
Matthew Pratt Guterl, Indiana University, "From the South of France to the Global South: the Meaning of Josephine Baker's Argentinean Idyll."
Nancy Raquel Mirabal, San Francisco State University, "Hemispheric Notions: Blackness, Diaspora and the Politics of Cubanidad, 1865-1933."

2005
Silences Broken
New Directions in African American
Gender History

Program Participants:

Chana Kai Lee, University of Georgia, "Black Women, Psychic Injury and Murder: Is There a History to be Written?"
Cheryl Hicks, Williams College, "'Colored women of Hard and Vicious character': Respectability, Domesticity and Marraige in New York, 1893-1931."
Nichole Rustin, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, "'I Can't Get Started': Exploring Gender, Genius and Difference in Jazz Culture."
Heather Williams, University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, "Information Wanted: Reclaiming Family after the Civil War."
Bobby Donaldson, University of South Carolina, "In Our Own Defense: Race, Manhood and the 1906 Georgia Equal Rights Convention."
Beverly Bond, University of Memphis
Michele Mitchell, University of Michigan, "The Body as Archive: African Americans and Taxonomies of 'Miscegenation.'"
Elsa Barkley-Brown, University of Maryland-College Park

2004
Manners & Southern History

"After considerable experience in coming into contact with wealthy and noted men, I have observed that those who have accomplished the greatest results are those who 'keep under the body'; are those who never grow excited or lose self-control, but are always calm, self-possessed, patient, and polite."

Booker T. Washington, Up From Slavery (1901)

Program Participants:

Anya Jabour - "Southern Ladies and 'She-Rebels'; or Feminity in the Foxhole: Changing Definitions of Womanhood in the Confederate South"
Jennifer Ritterhouse - "The Etiquette of Race Relations in the Jim Crow South"
Valinda Littlefield - "A Peach Out of Reach: Southern African-American Women Schoolteazches and the Intersection of Race, Gender, and Manners"
Rebecca Snedeker - "By Invitation Only"
Catherine Clinton - "Scepter and Masque: Debutante Rituals in Mardi Gras New Orleans"
Charles F. Robinson, Jr. - "What's Sex Got To Do With It? Southern White Responses to Interracial Relationships"
Lisa Lundquist - "Fifty Percent Moonshine and Fifty Percent Moonshine: Social Life and Youth Culture at the University of Alabama, 1913-1933"
Joseph Crespino - "Manners and the End of Massive Resistance"
Jane Dailey
John Kasson

2003
The Environment and Southern History

Program Participants:
Jack Temple Kirby - "Of Bears and Necessities: Southern Eco-History Today"
Mart Stewart - "A New Look at the Southern Climate"
Shepard E. Krech III - "American Indians and Birds in the south: An Environmental History"
Donald E. Davis - "An Environmental History of the Appalachians"
Margaret Humphreys - "Disease and Environment in Southern History"
Timothy Silver - "An Environmental Historian's Civil War: View from the Mountaintop"
Paul Sutter - "Georgia's Little Grand Canyon"
Ted Steinberg - Commentary

2002
Race and Sport:  THE STRUGGLE FOR EQUALITY ON AND OFF THE FIELD

Program Participants:
Kellen Winslow - The Role of Today's African-American Athlete in the Ongoing Process of Racial Equality in Sports
John Carroll - Fritz Pollard and Integration in Early Professional Football
Kenneth Shropshire - Sugar Ray Robinson and the Birth of the Celebrity Athlete
Rita Liberti - Fostering Community Consciousness:  The Role of Women's Basketball at Black Colleges and Universities, 1900-1950
Michael Lomax - Separate but Equal:  The African-American and Latino Experience in Spring Training, 1946-1961
Gerald Gems - Sport, Race, and American Imperialism
Earl Smith - The African-American Student Athlete
Patrick Miller - Muscular Assimilationism: Sport and the Paradoxes of Racial Reform
C Keith Harrison - The Uneven View of African-American Ballers, Ball and Ballin: A Textual and Content Analysis
 
2001
Britain and the American South:  ENCOUNTERS AND EXCHANGES FROM COLONIAL TIMES TO ROCK 'N' ROLL

Conference Description from the 2001 Program:  The Porter L. Fortune, Jr., History Symposium began as an annual conference on Southern history in 1975.  In 1983, it was named for Porter L. Fortune, Jr., chancellor emeritus, to honor his contributions to the success of the symposium.  Past events have examined topics in Southern history such as slavery, the civil rights movement, religion, and the role of gender in shaping public power.  The variety of topics that the Fortune Symposium has addressed over the past quarter-century reflects both the diversity of the lived experienced of the South and the continued interest of scholars in a number of fields in Southern history.

The 2001 symposium continues that tradition by examining the relationship between Britain and the South from the 17th to the 20th centuries.  Along with the Spanish and the French, the British were among the first Europeans to have meaningful contacts with the Native American populations of the South.  During the 17th and 18th centuries, the British were intensively engaged in colonizing much of the region and developing its economy, a process facilitated by their importation of hundreds of thousands of enslaved Africans.

The War of American Independence severed the governmental links between Britain and its Southern colonies, but economic, social, religious, and cultural ties persevered during the 19th and 20th centuries.  By considering Britain's evolving relationship with the South over a period of four centuries, this year's symposium illuminates a crucial aspect of the South's interaction with the wider world.
Participants:  Kathryn E. Holland Braund, S. Max Edelson, Holly Brewer, Franklin T. Lambert, Marcus Wood, Richard Blackett, Hugh Wilford, Brian Ward, Michael O'Brien.
 
2000
A 25th Anniversary Reprise:  SLAVERY IN THE U.S. SOUTH

Conference Description from the 2000 Program:  In celebrating its 25th anniversary this year, the Porter L. Fortune, Jr., History Symposium returns to the subject that sparked its beginnings.

The original symposium in 1975 actually was not planned as the first in a series.  Rather, it was organized to break the silence that was echoing across the South following the publication in 1974 of the controversial book Time on the Cross, an examination of slavery by Robert Fogel and Stanley Engerman.  The book had received much attention elsewhere, but no conference on the subject of slavery had recently taken place in the South.

Led by David Sansing, the History Department at The University of Mississippi eagerly embraced the idea of such a symposium and received solid support from Chancellor Porter Fortune, Jr.  To the surprise of some people, a panel of distinguished scholars accepted invitations to participate.

In 1975, at Ole Miss, that first symposium was a bold plunge.  It was, after all, only 13 years after the riots set off by the enrollment of James Meredith, the first African American to attend The University of Mississippi.   As a commentator at that session (my first visit to this campus), I was impressed by the genuine apprehension of some top administrators that such a conference would inevitably bring about more riots.  Yet the worst (or perhaps best) thing that happened was Eugene Genovese informally and successfully debating outdoors against an entire busload of students from traditionally black Mississippi Valley State College.

After this first success, the symposium became an annual event concentrating on the history of the U.S. South.  As such, it received enthusiastic backing from Chancellor Fortune and, after his death, from his widow Elizabeth Fortune and their family, from the University's Center for the Study of Southern culture, and from the Mississippi Endowment for the Humanities.

The explosion of scholarship on slavery that characterized the 1970s subsided a bit during the next decade, but the sparks of interest re-ignited in the 1990s.  Thus it seems appropriate to have a reprise on the subject of slavery in the South to explore 25 years of scholarship that has so greatly expanded our understanding of this long-standing, growing, and deeply tragic congeries of historical phenomena.

                                                                                                                    Winthrop D. Jordan

Participants: Annette Gordon-Reed, Peter S. Onuf, James Oakes, Walter Johnson, Ariela Gross, Laura F. Edwards, Norrece T. Jones, Jr., Jan Lewis, Robert Olwell, William Dusinberre, Sterling Stuckey, Roger D. Abrahams
 
1999
THE ROLE OF IDEAS IN THE CIVIL RIGHTS-ERA SOUTH

Conference Description from the 1999 Program:  The 1999 Fortune Symposium analyzes the role ideas played in the American South in the 1950s and 1960s.  What ideas were part of debate and discussion, who formulated those ideas, who used them, and how did they use them?  Topics include the nature of protest; the meanings of liberalism and conservatism; the local, regional, national, and international contexts for ideas; the relationships between Southern life and national ideals; and religious ideas as inspiration for protest and opposing protest.

Participants:  Linda Reed, David Chappell, Tony Badger, Thomas Borstelman, Walter Jackson, Daryl Scott, Richard King, Elizabeth Jacoway, Charles Payne, Keith Miller, Charles Marsh, Lauren Winner, and Gerald Smith.

Publication:  Ownby, Ted, ed. The Role of Ideas in the Civil Rights South.
Jackson:  University Press of Mississippi, 2002.

1998
EARLY SOCIAL HISTORY OF THE SOUTHEASTERN INDIANS, 1526-1715

Conference Description from the 1998 Program:  The 1998 Fortune Symposium reaches further back in time--to the beginnings of Spanish, French, and English colonization--and places Native Americans at the center of the historical action.  In the past twenty years, historians, anthropologists, and archaeologists have made considerable progress in interpreting the lifeways of the native peoples of the late prehistoric and early historic Southeast.  From these works, we now understand that the first two hundred years of the historical era was a time when fundamental--even catastrophic--changes occurred in native societies of the South.  The task of this year's symposium is to examine the various forces at play and to assess their role in the transformations of the native peoples of the Southeast between the era of Spanish exploration during the sixteenth century and the Southern Indian uprising of 1715, known as the Yamasee War.

Participants:  Charles Hudson, Paul Kelton, Marvin Smith, John Worth, Stephen Hahn, Helen Rountree, Chester DePratter, Patricia Galloway, Timothy Perttula, Vernon James Knight, Peter Wood.

Publication:  Ethridge, Robbie and Hudson, Charles, ed., The Transformation of the Southeastern Indians.  Jackson:  University Press of Mississippi, 2002.
 
1997
GENDER AND THE SOUTHERN BODY POLITIC

Conference Description from the 1997 Program:  The 1997 Fortune Symposium will examine the role of gender in shaping the Southern political order from the colonial period to the present.  In the South, seemingly private relations between husband and wife, master and slave, and parent and child were (and in some cases still are) used to shape public power.  The right to vote, the privileges of citizenship, and the protection of economic and civil rights are often contested in the intimate relations of home and family.  In recent years, new scholarship points to the importance of gender in the construction of power and politics in the South.  This symposium will bring many of these scholars together to address this new direction in Southern history.
 
Participants:  Jacquelyn Hall, Kathleen Brown, Winthrop Jordan, Laura Edwards, Peter Bardaglio, Stephanie McCurry, Tera Hunter, Bryant Simon, Louise Newman, Nancy MacLean, Chana Kai Lee.

Publication:   Bercaw, Nancy, ed., Gender and the Southern Body Politic.
Jackson:  University Press of Mississippi, 2000.
 
1996
THE SOUTH IN THE CARIBBEAN

Conference Description from the 1996 Program:  The 1996 Fortune Symposium will examine the relationship between the American South and the Caribbean, focusing on the Caribbean cultural area that includes the American South, northern parts of Latin America, and the Caribbean Islands.  Forming a common bond among these areas are themes such as slavery, a colonial economy, and a multiracial society.  The symposium will also look at the South as part of the American nation that has often played an active political, economic, and cultural role in the Caribbean.

Participants:  Bonham C. Richardson, Charles Joyner, Stanley Engerman, Aline Helg, Daniel C. Littlefield, Roger Abrahams, Kenneth Bilby, Ralph Lee Woodward, David Eltis, Milton Jamail, William Beezley.

Publication:  Wilson, Charles and Sullivan-Gonzalez, Douglass, eds., The South and the Caribbean.  Jackson:  University Press of Mississippi, 2001.
 
1995
CHILDHOOD IN SOUTHERN HISTORY

Conference Description from the 1995 Program:  The 1995 symposium will bring together leading scholars to examine the experiences of southern children in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.  The history of childhood has become an exciting field in the past two decades, but this will be the first conference to concentrate on the place and experiences of children in the South.  Speakers will examine challenges children face today as well as issues children faced in the past.  Historians, teachers, parents, and anyone else interested in children should feel welcome at the symposium.
Participants:  Robert Moses, Peter Bardaglio, Felton O. Best, Joyce Bickerstaff, Philip J. Greven, Suzanne Jones, Wilma King, Kriste Lindenmeyer, Sally McMillen, Gail S. Murray, Steven M. Stowe.
 
1994
IS THERE A SOUTHERN POLITICAL TRADITION?

Conference Description from the 1994 Program:  The 1995 Symposium will bring together leading scholars to examine the experiences of southern children in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.  The history of childhood has become an exciting field in the past two decades, but this will be the first conference to concentrate on the place and experiences of children in the South.  Speakers will examine challenges children face today as well as issues children faced in the past.  Historians, teachers, parents, and anyone else interested in children should feel welcome at the symposium.

Participants:  Lacy K. Ford, Jr., William J. Cooper, Jr., Michael Perman, Manning Marable, Patricia Sullivan, Raymond Arsenault, George C. Wright, Paul K. Conkin, David M. Oshinsky, Robert C. McMath, Jr., Jimmie Lewis Franklin.

Publication:  Eagles, Charles W., ed.  Is There a Southern Political Tradition?  Jackson:  University Press of Mississippi, 1996.
 
1993
THE NEW REGIONALISM

Conference Description from the 1993 Program:  The 1993 Porter L. Fortune, Jr., History Symposium will bring together historians of key American regions and regional issues to present representative examples of the most recent scholarship and to consider how current work on regions may represent a "new regionalism."

Participants:  Robert Dorman, Charles Reagan Wilson, Jack Temple Kirby, Barbara Fields, James Shortridge, Andrew Clayton, Patricia Limerick, Katherine Morrissey, Stephen Nissenbaum, Howard Lamar, Allen Tullos, David Whisnant.

Publication:  Wilson, Charles Reagan, ed.  The New Regionalism.  Jackson:  University Press of Mississippi, 1998.
 
1992
PUBLIC EDUCATION IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY SOUTH

Conference Description from the 1992 Program:  The 1992 Porter L. Fortune, Jr., History Symposium will bring together leading Southern historians and historians of education to examine the interaction between Southern schools and Southern society in the twentieth century.  The scholars will examine the forces and influences that have shaped Southern schools during periods of depression, war, and social revolution and explore the options open to Southern schools in the brink of the twenty-first century.

Participants:  William F. Winter, John Best, William B. Thomas, William Link, James Anderson, James Cobb, Marsha Turner, Clinton Allison, Joseph Newman, Clarence Mohr, Thomas Dyer, Wayne Urban.
 
1991
W. J. CASH'S THE MIND OF THE SOUTH

Conference Description from the 1991 Program:  The 1991 History Symposium will observe the fiftieth anniversary of the publication of W. J. Cash's The Mind of the South by bringing together leading students of the South to assess the impact and persisting importance of Cash's classic.  Participants will examine Cash's personal background, his literary style, his interpretation of the Old South, his view of continuity in southern history, his analysis of the New South, and his explanation of southern distinctiveness.  They will also evaluate The Mind of the South's effect on southern historiography and suggest its continuing influence.

Participants:  Bruce L. Clayton, Anne Goodwyn Jones, Michael O'Brien, Orville Vernon Burton, Armstead Robinson, James L. Roark, Lacy K. Ford, Jr., Edward L. Ayers, Linda Reed, John Shelton Reed, Bertram Wyatt-Brown.

Publication:  Eagles, Charles W., ed.  The Mind of the South:  Fifty Years Later.  Jackson:  University Press of Mississippi, 1992.
 
1990
THE INTERACTION OF CULTURES
IN THE ANTEBELLUM SOUTH

Participants:  Sylvia R. Frey, Elliott J. Gorn, Robert L. Hall, Charles Joyner, Lawrence T. McDonnell, Bill C. Malone, Leslie Howard Owens, Mechal Sobel, Brenda Stevenson, John Michael Vlach.

Publication:  Ownby, Ted, ed.  Black and White:  Cultural Interaction in the Antebellum South.  Jackson:  University Press of Mississippi, 1993.
 
1989
THE AMERICAN SOUTH IN COMPARATIVE PERSPECTIVE

Conference Description from the 1989 Program:  The 1989 Chancellor's Symposium will examine the American South in the light of comparative history.  Its purpose is to determine through the comparative method what is truly distinctive and unique about the South, and in which ways the region is part of more general historical patterns.  The symposium will bring together some of the nation's leading scholars in comparative American history.

Participants:  Eugene Genovese, Shearer Davis Bowman, Edward L. Ayers, Elizabeth Fox-Genovese, Barbara Fields, Steven Hahn, Peter Kolchin, Richard Graham, Gerald Jaynes, George Frederickson, Michael Craton.

Publication:  Gispen, Kees, ed.  What Made the South Different?  Jackson:  University Press of Mississippi, 1990.
 
1988
WAR AND SOUTHERN SOCIETY

Participants:  Don Higginbotham, Robert K. Wright, Jr., Emory Thomas, Bertram Wyatt-Brown, Tennant S. McWilliams, Charles W. Johnson, Arvarh E. Strickland, Neil R. McMillan, Morton Sosna, David O. Whitten, Lee Ann Whites, Anne C. Loveland.
 
1987
THE SOUTH AND THE CONSTITUTIONAL CONVENTION
& BILL OF RIGHTS, 1787-1791

Conference Description from the 1987 Program:  The 1987 Chancellor's Symposium will be a major part of the University's celebration of the Bicentennial of the Constitution.  Six scholars will examine the contributions of delegates from the five Southern states to the writing and ratification of the Constitution and the adoption of the Bill of Rights.  Each paper will be followed by a general discussion period.

Participants:  Jack P. Greene, David Konig, Edward Papenfuse, Walter F. Pratt, James W. Ely, Jr., Peter Hoffer.

Publication:  Haws, Robert J., ed.  The South's Role in the Creation of the Bill of Rights.  Jackson:  University Press of Mississippi, 1991.
 
1986
SOCIETY IN THE COLONIAL SOUTH

Conference Description from the 1986 Program:  The 1986 Chancellor's Symposium will examine society in the colonial South.  Six scholars will present papers dealing with (1) trends and developments in the study of the colonial South; (2) women and the family; (3) slavery; (4) the development of the plantation system in South Carolina; (5) Indians in French Louisiana; and (6) new directions in the study of the colonial South.

Participants:  Thad Tate, Daniel Blake Smith, Philip Morgan, Russell Menard, Patricia Galloway, Robert Middlekauff.

Publication:  Jordan, Winthrop D. and Sheila L. Skemp, eds.  Race and Family in the Colonial South.  Jackson:  University Press of Mississippi, 1987.
 
1985
CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT

Conference Description from the 1985 Program:  The 1985 Chancellor's Symposium will examine the Civil Rights Movement in the South.  Six scholars will present papers dealing with (1) the sources and origins of the movement; (2) the various methods employed by activists; (3) the importance of different leaders and leadership styles; (4) the movement in the key state of Mississippi; (5) the importance of federal legislation and judicial decisions for the movement; and (6) the changes brought by the movement.
 
Participants:  David Levering Lewis, Clayborne Carson, Nancy J. Weiss, John Dittmer, Charles V. Hamilton, William H. Chafe, Robert Weisbrot, Steven F. Lawson, David J. Garrow, Neil R. McMillen, Mark V. Tushnet, Howell Raines.

Publication:  Eagles, Charles W., ed.  The Civil Rights Movement in America.  Jackson:  University Press of Mississippi, 1986.
 
1984
RELIGION IN THE SOUTH

Conference Description from the 1984 Program:  This year the symposium examines the role of religious values and institutions in southern life.  In six sessions scholars will present papers (1) examining the relationship of southern religious history to the American religious tradition; (2) outlining the development and distinctiveness of the South's dominant religion, evangelical Protestantism; (3) exploring religious diversity in the region by focusing on three groups outside the evangelical mainstream - Catholics, Jews, and Protestant sectarians; (4) comparing and contrasting the southern black religious tradition with southern white religion and national religious trends; (5) evaluating whether southern religion has had a social reform dimension; (6) discussing the involvement of the region's churches and ministers in political activities, both in the past and in the contemporary period.

Participants:  Edwin S. Gaustad, John B. Boles, David E. Harrell, C. Eric Lincoln, J. Wayne Flynt, Samuel S. Hill, Jr., Kenneth K. Bailey, Jean Friedman, Randall Miller, James M. Washington, Edwin Akin, Leslie B. McLemore.

Publication:  Wilson, Charles Reagan, ed.  Religion in the South.  Jackson:  University Press of Mississippi, 1985.
 
1983
THE NEW DEAL AND THE SOUTH

Conference Description from the 1983 Program:  This year the symposium explores the impact of the New Deal on the South.  Participants in the 1983 Chancellor's Symposium will examine from several angles the question of whether the New Deal broke the continuity that seemed to characterize the post-Reconstruction South.  In six sessions, historians will present papers dealing with (1) the goals of the New Deal in the South and the methods used to achieve them; (2) the impact of the New Deal on southern agriculture and the implications of this impact for other sectors of the economy; (3) the New Deal's short- and long-term political impact with specific attention to the exacerbation of tensions between white southerners and the national Democratic Party; (4) the effect of the New Deal on southern blacks, in terms of tangible, immediate gains as well as the heightened expectations that may have contributed to early civil rights activism; (5) the New Deal's impact on southern workers as measured not only by better wages, working conditions, and the freedom to organize, but their subsequent inability to maintain the momentum they enjoyed in the New Deal era; (6) a summary consideration of the New Deal as a "turning point" in southern history.

Participants:  Numan Bartley, Alan Brinkley, Pete Daniel, Wayne Flynt, Frank Freidel, Harvard Sitkoff.

Publication:  Cobb, James C. and Michael V. Namorato, eds.  The New Deal and the South.  Jackson:  University Press of Mississippi, 1984.
 
1982
SEX, RACE, AND THE ROLE OF WOMEN IN THE SOUTH

Conference Description from the 1982 Program:  This year the symposium examines the interrelationship of sex, race, and the role of women in the South.  Beginning with a survey of historians' treatment of Southern women, the program will explore the public role of Southern women, working class women, black women, and ways in which Southern literary women have portrayed life in the region.  Participants in the symposium will attempt to explain, from a historical perspective, why Southern women of all classes and races have managed to achieve less equality than their counterparts in the rest of the nation.  In an effort to explain the traditional attitude that the South has had toward its women, the speakers will focus on the question of how Southern racial and sexual attitudes have affected the role of white and black women alike.

Participants:  Jean E. Friedman, Martha H. Swain, Dolores Janiewski, Sharon Harley, Anne Goodwyn Jones, Anne Firor Scott, Cynthia Neverdon-Morton, Orville Vernon Burton, Alferdteen Brown Harrison, Sandra Y. Govan.

Publication:  Hawks, Joanne V. and Sheila L. Skemp, eds.  Sex, Race, and the Role of Women in the South.  Jackson:  University Press of Mississippi, 1983.
 
1981
THE CONFEDERACY: THE OLD SOUTH IN THE CRUCIBLE OF WAR

Conference Description from the 1981 Program:  This year the symposium examines the impact of the Civil War on the traditions and values of the Old South.  The symposium joins the debate on "continuity" or "persistency" between the Old and the New South by considering the experience of Confederate nationalism on public officials, private citizens, Afro-Americans and Confederate soldiers.  The Civil War abolished chattel slavery, but was the Old South fundamentally altered by the war years?  Or did lines of continuity extend to such a degree as to require another look at the New South era?

Participants:  Emory M. Thomas, Paul D. Escott, Lawrence N. Powell, Michael Wayne, Leon F. Litwack, Michael Barton, Thomas B. Alexander.

Publication:  Owens, Harry P. and James J. Cooke, eds.  The Old South and the Crucible of War.  Jackson:  University Press of Mississippi, 1983.
 
1980
THE INDIAN EXPERIENCE IN THE SOUTHEAST
Conference Description from the 1980 Program:  This year the symposium examines the Indian experience in this region of the United States in general, and focuses in particular on the Mississippi Band of Choctaws.  It is hoped that a symposium organized in this way will contribute to a preservation of much of this region's diverse cultural heritage.
Participants:  Charles Hudson, Wilcomb E. Washburn, John Peterson, Lon Kile, Phillip Martin, Robert Ben, Edwin R. Smith, Robert Ferguson, Arrell M. Gibson.
 
1979
WHEN THE SOUTH WAS WEST:  THE OLD SOUTHWEST,
1780-1840

Conference Description from the 1979 Program:  This year the symposium turns to a new topic, the Old Southwest.  This area that is now Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana was a frontier before it became the "cotton kingdom" and seat of antebellum culture.  Through lectures, a panel discussion, and audience participation, the symposium will examine life in the Old Southwest between 1780 and 1840, looking for the evolution of the frontier into "the South."

Participants:  David Bailey, Winthrop Jordan, Forrest McDonald, Grady McWhiney, John H. Moore, Barbara Welter.
 
1978 - HAVE WE OVERCOME?:  RACE RELATIONS SINCE BROWN

Conference Description from the 1978 Program:  For the past three years, the Department of History of the University of Mississippi has sponsored the Chancellor's Symposium on Southern History dealing with the problem of race relations in the American South.  The 1975 symposium dealt with slavery, the 1976 program analyzed race relation sin the Reconstruction period, and the 1977 symposium studied race relations from the 1890s through the Second World War.  This year, the symposium will complete the race relations topic by presenting a 25-year retrospective evaluation of the historic Brown decision and its effects.  The symposium will provide scholars from across the country a forum for the discussion of this important event.  At each session, following the presentation, the floor will be open for questions and general discussion.

Participants:  Lerone Bennett, Vicent Harding, Morton Horwitz, William Leuchtenburg, Henry Levin, C. Eric Lincoln, Robert Wiebe.

Publication:  Namorato, Michael V., ed.  Have We Overcome?:  Race Relations Since Brown.  Jackson:  University Press of Mississippi, 1979.
 
1977 - RACE RELATIONS IN THE SOUTH, 1890-1945

Conference Description from the 1977 Program:  Same as 1976 program.

Participants:  Derrick Bell, Mary Berry, Dan Carter, Al-Tony Gilmore, Robert Higgs, George Tindall.

Publication:  Haws, Robert J., ed.  The Age of Segregation:  Race Relations in the South, 1890-1945.  Jackson:  University Press of Mississippi, 1978.
 
1976
WHAT WAS FREEDOM'S PRICE?

Conference Description from the 1976 Program:  Recent scholarship has produced new and significant information on race relations in the New South.  This symposium will provide historians from across the country a forum for the discussion of this important era in American history.  At each session, following the presentation of a paper and a commentary by recognized scholars in this period, the floor will open for questions and general discussion.

Participants:  Willie Lee Rose, Joel Williamson, Richard Sutch, George Frederickson, C. Vann Woodward.

Publication:  Sansing, David G., ed.  What Was Freedom's Price?  Jackson:  University Press of Mississippi, 1978.
 
1975
THE SLAVE EXPERIENCE IN AMERICA:  A BICENTENNIAL PERSPECTIVE

Conference Description from the 1975 Program:  A number of recently published works have caused historians to reconsider the traditional views on slavery.  The symposium is designed to foster historical scholarship by bringing together leading authors, professional historians, and those interested in the subject.  Seven of the foremost scholars in the field of slavery will present papers during the three-day symposium.  Each presentation will be followed by a discussion initiated by questions from the audience.

Participants:  Carl N. Degler, Eugene D. Genovese, William K. Scarborough, John W. Blassingame, Stanley Engerman, David Brion Davis, Kenneth M. Stampp.

Publication:  Owens, Harry P., ed.  Perspectives and Irony in American Slavery.  Jackson:  University Press of Mississippi, 1976.