The
American South, Then and Now
From
the L.Q.C. Lamar Society to the Endowment for
the Future of the South
November
18-20, 2004
Center for the Study of Southern Culture
University of Mississippi
Center
faculty and staff are busy planning for the
Endowment for the Future of the South, a new initiative
that will bring together leaders of the American
South
for a series of conversations and resulting research
that
examine Southern culture for insights on contemporary
public
policy issues. The initiative aims to provide
a meeting place for all those engaged in thinking
about the problems and
opportunities facing the region.
The first activity of the Future of the South
project is the
American South, Then and Now Symposium, which
will be
held at the Center November 18-20, 2004. Leaders
from
academia, government, the media, business, and
nonprofit
organizations, along with others interested in
the region’s
issues, will gather to examine the South’s past
and current
public policy concerns. The meeting will feature
keynote
addresses from William Winter, former Mississippi
governor,
and H. Brandt Ayers, former editor and publisher
of the
Anniston Star in Alabama. Panels will address
such issues as
race relations, religion and public policy, philanthropy
in the
South, the media, and political parties. A separate
session
will look at the continuities and changes in contemporary
Southern culture.
Highlighting the symposium will be a reunion of
the L. Q. C.
Lamar Society, which celebrates the 35th anniversary
of its
founding this fall. The Lamar Society comprised
a notable
group of Southerners who came together after the
dramatic
changes of the 1960s to consider the future of
the South. Their manifesto, You Can’t Eat Magnolias,
is a call to go beyond ideology in rethinking
the South’s development, and their work led to
the Southern Growth Policies Board, still a
key regional development agency.
We
invite—and encourage—former members and friends
of the L. Q. C. Lamar Society to attend the American
South, Then and Now Symposium and participate
in the Lamar Society Reunion. The symposium includes
a special session on the society’s work and a
dinner that will honor former
members.
The
Phil Hardin Foundation has provided a grant to
begin the work of the Endowment for the Future
of the South, including the symposium and reunion.
The Center is currently raising matching funds
for the grant. Anyone who is interested in finding
out more about Future of the South projects, and
contributing to the Endowment, should contact
Center Director Charles Reagan Wilson at 662-915-5993.
Attendance
at the symposium is free, but anyone interested
should register. There are costs for attending
the reception, lunch, and dinner. For more information
on registration and on staying in Oxford during
the gathering, please contact Mary Beth Lasseter
at marybeth@olemiss.edu. Also check the Center’s
Web site (www.olemiss.edu/depts/south).
Watercolor
portrait by Laura McCarthy, courtesy University
of Mississippi School of Law
Lucius
Quintus Cincinnatus Lamar was born in 1825 in
Georgia and studied at Emory College before gaining
admittance to the Georgia bar in 1847. In 1850,
Lamar moved to Oxford, where he held various teaching
and administrative posts with the University of
Mississippi before going on to serve as U.S. senator,
secretary of the interior, and supreme court justice
(Lamar is the only Mississippian ever to sit on
the U.S Supreme Court).
Although
Lamar drafted Mississippi’s Ordinance of Secession
as part of the state’s 1861 secession convention,
his 1874 eulogy of Massachusetts senator Charles
Sumner, who had been an active abolitionist, called
for reconciliation between North and South. It
was Lamar’s struggle for reconciliation—between
black and white as well as North and South—that
led John F. Kennedy to write about the statesman
in Profiles in Courage,which in turn led
Southern leaders in the late 1960s to attach Lamar’s
name to a newly formed group dedicated to finding
practical solutions to the South’s major problems.
Lamar
died in 1893, while still serving on the Supreme
Court, and his body was re-interred in Oxford’s
St. Peter’s
Cemetery after initial burial in Macon, Georgia.
Besides the St.Peter’s gravesite, the public will
eventually be able to visit the Oxford house where
Lamar lived from 1868 until 1888. The national
historical landmark, located on North 14th Street,
was purchased last December by the Oxford-Lafayette
County Heritage Foundation and is currently undergoing
restoration, made possible through grants from
the National Park Service and Mississippi Department
of Archives and History.
JENNIFER
SOUTHALL
