Lakeport Legacies · July 27 · Ironclads, Cotton and Corn: The Civil War in the Mississippi Delta · Jim Woodrick (Mississippi Department of Archives and History)

Today, many people associate the Mississippi Delta as the birthplace of the Blues. Tourists from across the globe visit the Delta each year to, as one travel writer put it, “soak up the raw authenticity” of the region. Steeped in agriculture (and specially cotton), the Mississippi Delta is indeed a unique place and the stories of Blues legends and Civil Rights heroes deserve to told and retold. But there is another legacy of the Mississippi Delta which is often overlooked, and that is the important role the region played in the Civil War. Seen by many historians as a sideshow to more significant campaigns, the reality is that the Delta was vital to Confederate interests and was the target of repeated Union attempts to utilize the region’s waterways as an avenue of invasion.

A native of Meridian, Mississippi, Jim Woodrick serves as Director of the Historic Preservation Division at the Mississippi Department of Archives and History, where he worked for a number of years as the Civil War Sites Historian. In that capacity, he managed the Mississippi Civil War Trails program, participated in a number of battlefield and campaign studies with the National Park Service, and worked closely with the Civil War Trust and the American Battlefield Protection Program to identify Civil War battlefield properties in Mississippi for acquisition and preservation. Jim is a graduate of Millsaps College in Jackson, Mississippi. He is the author of The Civil War Siege of Jackson Mississippi, published by The History Press (2016).

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Lakeport Legacies is a monthly history talk held on one of the last Thursdays at the Lakeport Plantation during the spring and summer. Each month a topic from the Delta region is featured. The event is free and open to the public. The Lakeport Plantation is an Arkansas State University Heritage Site. Constructed ca. 1859, Lakeport is one of Arkansas’s premier historic structures and still retains many of its original finishes and architectural details. Open to the public since 2007, Lakeport researches and interprets the people and cultures that shaped plantation life in the Mississippi River Delta, focusing on the Antebellum, Civil War, and Reconstruction periods. Arkansas Heritage Sites at Arkansas State University develops and operates historic properties of regional and national significance in the Arkansas Delta. ASU’s Heritage Sites include the Hemingway-Pfeiffer Museum and Educational Center, Southern Tenant Farmers Museum, Lakeport Plantation, the Historic Dyess Colony: Boyhood Home of Johnny Cash, and the Arkansas State University Museum.

“‘Cotton Pile’ Near the Worthington Plantation – Collection Confiscated Cotton” and “Rolling Cotton on Board the ‘Tatum’,” Harper’s Weekly, May 2, 1863

Lakeport Legacies · June 29 · A Case Study in Diversity: Southeast Arkansas Legislators, 1868-Jim Crow · Rodney Harris (University of Arkansas)

Many people assume that African American office holding ended with Redemption. Despite Arkansas Democrats regaining control of the state government, office holding on the local and legislative level remained quite diverse until 1893. Southeast Arkansas continued to elect Republicans, both black and white, along with Democrats at the county level and to the general assembly. This electoral diversity makes Southeast Arkansas unique and worthy of further examination.

Rodney holds a B.A. in Political Science from Arkansas State University, and a M.A. in History from the University of Central Arkansas. Rodney spent 10 years as a real estate broker, ran for State Representative in 2004, and was named one of the 25 Outstanding Young Executives in Northeast Arkansas.  Rodney wrote his Dissertation, “Divided Saints: Democratic Factions in the 1874 Arkansas Constitutional Convention” under the direction of Dr. Patrick Williams at the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville. Rodney specializes in Political History and Southern History. He will join the faculty at Williams Baptist College in Walnut Ridge, Arkansas this fall.

Lakeport Legacies · May 25 · From Mosaic Templars to Royal Circle of Friends: Identifying Arkansas’s African American Fraternal Headstones
Dr. Blake Wintory (Lakeport Plantation)

Arkansas’s African American cemeteries are dotted with monuments from fraternal organizations founded in late 19th and early 20th centuries. Membership was often social, but also came with desirable sickness and death benefits. Several Arkansas-based fraternal organizations, like the Mosaic Templars, Supreme Royal Circle of Friends, and Knights and Daughters of Tabor, provided standardized monuments as part of their benefits.

In this presentation you will learn about the rise and decline of these organizations and see examples African American fraternal monuments throughout Arkansas and the Mississippi Delta.

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Organizations like the Knights and Daughters of Tabor (above), Mosaic Templars, and Supreme Royal Circle of Friends issued standard monuments to deceased members.

Lakeport Legacies · March 30 · Building Delta Plantations: Connecting Washington County, Mississippi, and Chicot County, Arkansas  · Dr. Blake Wintory

Lakeport Plantation director, Dr. Blake Wintory, will begin 2017’s Lakeport Legacies with the presentation “Building Delta Plantations: Connecting Washington County, Mississippi, and Chicot County, Arkansas” on March 30.

Brian R. Lockhart, P.h.D., a forest researcher, will discuss the meanderings of the Mississippi, Arkansas and Ohio rivers in the Mississippi Alluvial Valley (MAV) over the past 6,000 years. These meanderings have affected human settlement and trade, as well as, the species of  bottomland hardwood forests. Dr. Lockhart, who has degrees from the University of Arkansas at Monticello, Yale University, and Mississippi State University, will also discuss how humans have recently affected the flow of rivers in the MAV and how scientists study and manage bottomland hardwood forests.