Down South with the Dixie Press: Saving the Images of the Pre-Katrina Mississippi Gulf Coast HURRICANE KATRINA EMERGENCY GRAN

FAIN: PC-50027-06

Mississippi Gulf Coast Community College, Perkinston Campus (Perkinston, MS 39573-0012)
Charles L. Sullivan (Project Director: March 2006 to December 2007)

The Mississippi Gulf Coast Community College Archives holds two significant photographic collections that document the South Mississippi region. The Dixie Press collection contains 1,200 photographs from 1925 to 1971, and the C. C. "Tex" Hamill Down South magazine collection includes 9,000 negatives and transparencies and 1,000 photographs from 1950 to 1980. Both of these collections depict the architecture, cuisine, ethnic diversity, music, and arts of the Gulf region. Previously owned by private individuals, these collections were housed in buildings severely damaged by Hurricane Katrina. The collections have since been donated by their owners to the college archives, which has a sizable Mississippi Gulf Coast photographic collection of its own. Before the transfer took place, the photographic materials had been exposed to five months of high heat and humidity, with the result that they will require conservation treatment and archival rehousing.