Civil rights topic of Brown Bag

BRANDON NIEMEYER
DM Staff Writer

Susan Sullivan will speak today as a part of the Center for the Study of Southern Culture's Brown Bag Lunch and Lecture Series.

Sullivan, a freelance writer from Atlanta, will speak on Majorie Baroni and her efforts during the Civil Rights Movement.

"Baroni was the daughter of a sharecropper who married at the age of 17 and had her first child under a year later," Sullivan said. "Her background is really amazing because she had the same life as many of the Klansman and racists.

"Baroni did a great deal of work, even though some of her actions could have been detrimental to her family."

Baroni and her family were harassed by Klansman and dealt with numerous bomb threats.

"Her husband worked at the same factory as George Metcalf who was killed by a car bomb," Sullivan said.

"For a person who did not earn a GED until her 50s, Baroni had a large collection of books. I haven't seen that amount of books owned by a private individual who wasn't a scholar or such," Sullivan said. "When you read her letters, it's amazing to read as she writes very well."

Baroni earned her degree from the University of Southern Mississippi and was working on her master's degree when she died.

When Baroni died in 1986 at the age of 61, she left behind many books and papers, which have been recently donated to the university.

"There were enough boxes of hand-signed letters and such to fill up an entire van," Sullivan said.

Baroni's husband and children will attend the lecture, which is expected to last around 45 minutes in the Barnard Observatory Lecture Hall.

The event is made possible by a grant from the National Endowment of the Humanities through the Mississippi Humanities Council.