Mississippi Women

Their Histories, Their Lives, Volume 1

Assisted by Brenda Eagles

Associate editor Susan Ditto

Edited by Elizabeth Anne Payne, Marjorie Julian Spruill and Martha H. Swain

Title Details

Pages: 328

Illustrations: 16 b&w photos

Trim size: 6.000in x 9.000in

Formats

Hardcover

Pub Date: 11/17/2003

ISBN: 9-780-8203-2502-6

List Price: $120.95

Paperback

Pub Date: 11/17/2003

ISBN: 9-780-8203-2503-3

List Price: $34.95

Mississippi Women

Their Histories, Their Lives, Volume 1

Assisted by Brenda Eagles

Associate editor Susan Ditto

Edited by Elizabeth Anne Payne, Marjorie Julian Spruill and Martha H. Swain

Skip to

  • Description
  • Reviews
  • Contributors

This collection of seventeen fascinating biographies, produced by the Mississippi Women's History Project, is an important step toward gaining the state's women their deserved place in its written record. The women whose absorbing life stories are told here range from Felicité Girodeau of old Natchez, who was both a person of color and a slaveholder, to Vera Mae Pigee, who "mothered" the civil rights movement in the Mississippi Delta. Some of the women are well known, others were prominent in their time but have since faded into obscurity, and a few have never received the attention they deserve.

Readers may already know such figures as writer and photographer Eudora Welty, civil rights activist Fannie Lou Hamer, and poet and educator Margaret Walker Alexander. Others are probably less familiar: the microbiologist Elizabeth Lee Hazen, the black businesswoman and civic leader Sadye Wier, the flapper feminist Minnie Brewer, or the jurist Burnita Shelton Matthews. All the featured women, whether suffrage pioneers, champions for higher education for women, or luminaries in art and literature, shared similar experiences in their struggles for success. From Winnie Davis, daughter of the Confederacy's president, to Hazel Brannon Smith, a journalist and antilynching crusader, they had in common the pains and privileges that were part of womanhood in their times.

As multifaceted as the state they helped to build, the women portrayed in this engaging volume will interest and inspire Mississippians of all ages. Scholars will find here a valuable resource that adds nuance and texture to southern and women's history.

One cannot read these pages without developing a greatly enhanced sense of appreciation of the role these gifted and dedicated individuals played in shaping for the better the lives of the people of our state.

—William F. Winter, former governor of Mississippi

David D. Carson

James Carson

Cita Cook

Constance Curry

Susan Ditto

Sarah Wilkerson Freeman

Kate Greene

Françoise N. Hamlin

Robert Harris

Joanne Hawks

Kathleen Jenkins

John F. Marszalek

Mark Newman

Bridget Pieschel

Linda Reed

Dorothy Shawhan

Emily Clark

Anne Scott

About the Author/Editor

Elizabeth Anne Payne (Editor)
ELIZABETH ANNE PAYNE is a professor of history at the University of Mississippi.

Marjorie Julian Spruill (Editor)
MARJORIE JULIAN SPRUILL is a professor of history at the University of South Carolina.

Martha H. Swain (Editor)
MARTHA H. SWAIN is Cornaro Professor of History Emerita at Texas Woman's University.