Karen Glynn wanted to know the story behind the photograph. What was Mr. C. M. Allen, a white resident of Clarksdale, Mississippi, doing in an African American juke joint that day in the 1930s, standing on the dance floor, waving a $5 bill, as couples danced all around him?

This mysterious image was captured more than 60 years ago by Farm Security Administration (FSA) photographer Marion Post Wolcott. It is only one of more than 1,230 pictures that Glynn, visual resources curator of the University’s Southern Media Archive, sought to understand while creating one of the most comprehensive cultural data bases and curriculum resources ever assembled in the state.

When A Mississippi Portrait: Farm Security Administration Photographs, 1935-1940 debuts at the Southern Cultural Heritage Foundation in Vicksburg on August 12th, Mississippians will learn more than the long-lost story behind the Allen juke joint picture. Thanks to the melding of modern computer technology with early black and white documentary photography, they’ll also discover a new way to access their past.

“What this CD-Rom does is give voice to an important part of Mississippi history,” said Glynn, who in 1995 began digitizing the work of the seven FSA photographers who were sent to Mississippi in the late 1930s to record the conditions that characterized life in the Deep South during the Great Depression.

In addition to being a significant example of the work of some of America’s most accomplished documentary photographers, the FSA collection offers a relatively complete visual record of the Resettlement Administration’s efforts to relocate farmers onto productive land and to give them a stake in the American dream. “They were starting them off with 40 acre lots, new houses, new farm buildings, farm animals and equipment,” said Glynn. “The photographers came to document conditions on the land. FSA headquarters in Washington then mounted photographic exhibitions in public spaces and made the photographs available to the press in a massive effort to inform the public of the continued need for New Deal programs such as the Resettlement Administration.”

Marion Post Wolcott, Walker Evans, Dorothea Lange, Carl Mydans, Arthur Rothstein, Russell Lee, and Ben Shahn photographed in Mississippi between 1935 and 1940. The CD-Rom includes the original captions written by the photographers. Sometimes the captions were two or three sentences long; other times a general phrase such as “Mississippi Delta area, 1935” described a photograph. And, as Glynn discovered in reviewing the collection, “A photographer might have made dozens of photographs in a given area, but only one or two were selected to become part of the official FSA file. Over the years, publishers, artists, and authors seem to use the same FSA images to depict that period of our history. So, even though it’s a large, rich, public domain collection, the public has only seen a tiny fraction of the photographs.”

But now, at the click of a computer mouse, these long tucked-away images of town life, vernacular architecture, grand houses, Saturdays on the square, plantations, sharecroppers, and factory workers, photographed in 31 counties, appear in a digital format approximating that of a family portrait album.

A Mississippi Portrait will be distributed free to public libraries and public school libraries from K-12 to university level throughout the state. This CD-Rom organizes the photographs by county, subject, and photographer, making it possible for students and historians to focus their study on an individual county, compare the work of one photographer with another, as well as trace individuals depicted in the photographs as they work in the cotton fields, go shopping in town, or gather for a Saturday night game of cards.

By clicking on the hypertext for either Coahoma County or Marion Post Wolcott, for example, one can easily discover the plausible story behind C. M. Allen’s presence in the African American juke joint in Clarksdale, a fact that Glynn sleuthed out on one of many trip throughout the state to interview locals who could identify people, places, and events in the photographs.

“As it turns out, Allen was Wolcott’s escort to the juke joint that day,” said Glynn, who found Allen in Clarksdale and interviewed him about the photo. “Their arrival at the place brought a stop to the dancing, so Allen initiated a dance contest, offering a money prize to the best couple. This ploy got the dancing going again so that Wolcott could take her photographs.”

As part of its debut in Vicksburg on August 12, the Mississippi Portraits CD-Rom will be demonstrated by some of the individuals who provided context to the FSA photographs. The premier event will also include demonstrations of lesson plans for teachers in the audience.

“We are very grateful to the Center for the Study of Southern Culture for including us in this important project,” said Ted Smith, executive director of the Southern Cultural Heritage Foundation. “It offers the Vicksburg and Warren County community the opportunity to learn about and reflect upon the 1930s in this part of the state. The event also highlights the availability of this invaluable educational resource for school teachers, not only in Vicksburg but in the entire state of Mississippi.”

The event begins at 1:30 p.m. at the Southern Cultural Heritage Foundation in Vicksburg. For more information on the premiere, contact the Center for the Study of Southern Culture at 662-915-5993 or cssc@olemiss.edu. For additional information, including driving directions to the event and a preview of the FSA photographs taken in Warren County, visit the Southern Cultural Heritage Foundation Web site at www.southernculture.org.

Michael Harrelson