22065 total results

Oral history.; Dr. Forest Kent Wyatt was born on May 27, 1934, in Berea, Kentucky. He graduated from Delta State College (now Delta State University) with a double degree in mathematics and health, physical education, and recreation. He then began a teaching career that included work for the University Military School in Mobile, Alabama and at his high school alma mater, Cleveland High School. Dr. Wyatt became Delta State College's first alumni secretary and he also completed his doctoral degree from the University of Mississippi. Having served Delta State University as alumni secretary for four years, Dr. Wyatt worked as the administrative assistant before becoming the fifth president of Delta State University in 1975. Dr. Wyatt served in that capacity for twenty-four years, retiring in 1999.

Oral history.; Dr. Antone Walter Tannehill, Jr., was born May 22, 1929, in New Orleans, Louisiana, but grew up in Hattiesburg, Mississippi. He attended Vanderbilt University and Duke University Medical School. He served an internship at the Medical College of Virginia in Richmond, Virginia, and then in the United States Air Force as a medical officer. Dr. Tannehill practiced medicine in Mississippi from 1964 until his retirement in 1997. He has been awarded several medical and civic awards.

Oral history.; Ms. Eleanora Hayes was born on May 28, 1930, in Bay St. Louis, Mississippi. She grew up on her father's farm in Catahoula, Mississippi. During winter months, she and her siblings attended school, and during the six-month cotton-growing season, they stayed out of school to pick cotton. She attended Valena C. Jones High School in Bay St. Louis, until her junior year, when she began working, including work as a housekeeper, a bartender, a model, and an outfield worker for the Weatherization service in Biloxi, Mississippi. Ms. Hayes' extended family lives in New Orleans, Louisiana, and she has passed much time there, working as well as participating in Mardi Gras. In the 1960s, she participated in one of the Gulf Coast wade-ins, the harbinger of desegregation of the Mississippi Gulf Coast.

Oral history.; Reverend Robert James Jamison was born on May 28, 1936, and lived in both St. Louis, Missouri, and the community of Shake Rag in Tupelo, Mississippi. Reverend Jamison earned money in high school from carpentry and upon graduation, he married. He attended Mississippi Industrial College in Holly Springs, Mississippi, on an athletic scholarship. After graduating he taught school and then attended several universities to attain advanced degrees including a Master of Divinity degree from Memphis Theological Seminary in Memphis, Tennessee. When he returned to Mississippi, Reverend Jamison became a Head Start director with Lift, Incorporated, and eventually became the first African American to run for alderman of Ward Four. Additionally, he worked to establish the NAACP in Tupelo. Later, he became the assistant vice president of the regional Community Action Agency.