Special Collections at Mississippi State University Libraries

This 1905 copy of Washington Irving’s Rip Van Winkle, illustrated by Arthur Rackham, is #79 of a signed 250-print limited edition by Heinemann. The binding is vellum, and the second half of the book is composed of over four dozen colored plates separated by tissue guards that bear quotes from the story.

A quote from one of the tissue guards, just because it made us smile:

In celebration of Arbor Day, we thought you’d enjoy some lovely engravings from a 1786 edition of John Evelyn’s famous work, Sylva: or A Discourse of Forest-Trees and the Propagation of Timber in His Majesty’s Dominions, first presented to the Royal Society (of which Evelyn was a founding Fellow) in 1662. This edition includes “An Historical Account of the Sacredness and Use of Standing Groves” and “Terra: A Philosophical Discourse of Earth.”

“The Cedar Tree”

“A South East View of the Green Dale Oak near Welbeck”

This gorgeous trained wedding gown, leather slipper, and orange blossom headpiece were worn by Lucy Lee Scarborough at her wedding to Joseph M. Chestnutt in Attala County, Mississippi, on June 7, 1893. Part of the Hays-Ray-Webb Family Papers.

In celebration of the spookiest season, Special Collections’ current exhibit, “A Cabinet of Curiosities,” features some of our favorite weird items!

The case above features Minié balls (a type of bullet) from Vicksburg, a 1612 manual for identifying witches (detailed in this post), an 1829 book about magic and miracles, and a lacquer box and eggs from Russia.

This taxidermy oddity, a two-headed bobcat, comes from the Jerry Clower Collection!

On this day in 1865, President Abraham Lincoln was shot by John Wilkes Booth at a performance of Our American Cousin at Ford’s Theatre. Below is a broadside advertising the play’s final night, along with an illustration of the devil whispering into John Wilkes Booth’s ear. Both items are on display in the Lincolniana Gallery at the Ulysses S. Grant Presidential Library @msstate.

In 1948, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Ray Sprigle shaved his hair and mustache and went to Florida to acquire a deep tan. Then he went South as James R. Crawford, a light-skinned Black man from Pittsburgh. Sprigle was on an undercover mission, aided by the national secretary of the NAACP, to expose Jim Crow injustices and cruelties.

For four endless, crawling weeks I was a Negro in the Deep South.

I ate, slept, traveled, lived Black. I lodged in Negro households. I ate in Negro restaurants. I slept in Negro hotels and lodging houses. I crept through the back and side doors of railroad stations. I traveled Jim Crow in buses and trains and street cars and taxicabs. Along with 10,000,000 Negroes I endured the discrimination and oppression and cruelty of the iniquitous Jim Crow system.

In one of the most harrowing stories in the article, Sprigle is horrified to learn about a Clarksdale, Mississippi, mother and newborn baby who died because their local hospital didn’t admit Black people:

Dr. Hill didn't even seek admission for his wife and unborn baby. Just before midnight he put them into an ambulance and started a mad drive north to Memphis and its Negro hospital, 78 miles away, in a desperate race with death.

Though we balk at blackface (however it is presented) today, many in 1948 saw Sprigle’s undercover work as the only way to reach a large segment of the white population, in that white people would believe the experiences of a white man. Sadly, this is often still true today.

Listen to Black people. Believe them when they tell you about their experiences.

This booklet, reprinted from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, includes a response from Mississippi journalist Hodding Carter. It is held in the Mississippi State University Libraries’ Special Collections.

Happy International Women’s Day! Here are some of our favorite photographs of women from the library’s Special Collections.

1. Robert and Sadye Wier papers

2. Frank and Virginia Williams Collection of Lincolniana

3. John E. Rodabough papers

4. Lucius Marion Lampton, MD Historical Images Collection

5. Clayton Rand papers

The Charles Templeton sheet music collection contains dozens of original songs from "King of Ragtime" Scott Joplin. View them in the digital collections here: https://msstate.contentdm.oclc.org/digital/search/searchterm/scott%20joplin

We were saddened to hear of the death of Charley Pride. A native of Sledge, Mississippi, Pride served in the Army and played semiprofessional baseball before pursuing music full time. Despite racial discrimination from radio stations and record companies, Pride broke barriers throughout his decades-long, legendary country music career. In 1971, Pride won the Country Music Association’s entertainer of the year award, the first (and still the only) Black artist to do so. In 1993 he was invited to join the Grand Ole Opry and in 2000 he became the first Black member of the Country Music Hall of Fame. He amassed over 50 top 10 country hits throughout his career. One of 11 children from a sharecropping family, Pride grew up listening to Grand Ole Opry radio broadcasts and bought his first guitar from a Sears Roebuck catalog. We send our thoughts to his family. 

The first Master’s thesis submitted at @msstate​ was written by a woman, Clara Southmayd Ludlow (1852-1924). She attended MSU, then called the Mississippi Agricultural & Mechanical College, while her brother worked as a professor of military science. Concerning Lichens was submitted in 1901, the year she earned her Master of Arts degree in Botany. She went on to earn her PhD at George Washington University in 1908. The American Society of Tropical Medicine & Hygiene awards a medal in her honor.

This collection of short stories by writer and lawyer Samuel Alfred Beadle (1857-1932) was published in 1901 in Jackson, Mississippi, and includes wonderful photographs of African American social life.

The Lantern Project is one of only a few in the South and is funded by a $340,424 grant from the National Historic Publications and Records Committee, a branch of the @usnatarchives National Archives. In addition to MSU Libraries, the University of Mississippi Libraries, Delta State University, the Historic Natchez Foundation, Columbus-Lowndes County Public Library and the Montgomery County (Alabama) Archives also are participating.

This undertaking compiles a wealth of 19th-century documents from across the South and, upon completion, will provide a fully text-searchable, indexed collection containing digital images of original documents that include individuals’ names and detailed physical descriptions. Primarily inspired by patron need, the project is based on a similar effort at the Virginia Museum of History and Culture called “Unknown No Longer.”