Possum Town: Pictures of a Place in the American South

FAIN: GE-50790-13

Mizzou (Columbia, MO 65211-3020)
Fraser Berkley Hudson (Project Director: January 2013 to March 2016)

Planning of a traveling exhibition of 55 to 75 large-format photographs, a website, and related public and scholarly programming that examine the lives of blacks and whites in the rural, racially segregated community of Columbus, Mississippi.

This planning grant will aid in the development of the project "Possum Town: Pictures of a Place in the American South" which will feature a traveling exhibition of the work of O.N. Pruitt, a white man in a racially segregated community of Columbus, Mississippi, in the early and middle twentieth century. Unlike most photographers of his time, Pruitt recorded the local black community as well as the white, both inside and outside his studio, representing more fully everyday life in the South as well as the horrific sublime of the racially charged American South. Along with the exhibit will be related educational events, including three separate conferences at the University of Missouri, the Wilson Library at the University of North Carolina, and the Columbus-Lowndes Public Library in Columbus, Mississippi, to be held throughout in 2016.