I’ve been working on the Farm Security Administration (FSA) CD-Rom for over five years, and I'm good and ready to let it go. A Mississippi Portrait: Farm Security Administration Photographs, 1935-1940 will be an important asset for K-12 teachers as well as for university professors. The black and white photographs on the disk can be searched according to photographer, county, subject, and negative number. The screen resolution of the photographs will allow students to print images from the disk for use in reports and papers. For those who wish to buy a copy of a photograph, the disk includes instructions and contact information for the Library of Congress, which cares for the original negatives.

Over the next few months, K-12 teachers and university professors will use A Mississippi Portrait to create sample lesson plans that will be placed on the Southern Culture Catalog’s Web site (southfilm.com). The publication party on August 12th at the Southern Cultural Heritage Center in Vicksburg will feature demonstrations of sample lesson plans as well as photograph interpretation by local residents familiar with the photographs documenting their communities.

Though many people have seen some of the photographs taken by the Farm Security Administration photographers in Mississippi, few people outside of the Southern Media Archive have looked at all 1,230 of them. Walker Evans, Dorothea Lange, Russell Lee, Carl Mydans, Arthur Rothstein, Ben Shahn, and Marion Post Wolcott photographed life in 31 Mississippi counties. Coverage was uneven. Some counties, such as Lafayette, are represented by a few photographs; others, such as Holmes, by over 20. Seldom did two people photograph the same town or plantation. Natchez was an exception. Both Ben Shahn and Marion Post Wolcott photographed the city extensively.

A Mississippi Portrait includes the original captions written by the photographers and new information gathered from local residents during the course of this project. I hope the images inspire further study and documentation of the photographed communities. The beauty of working with 20th-century history is the opportunity to meet and learn from the people who lived it.