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University of Texas History Professor Speaks at Mississippi College


Jacqueline Jones, who chairs the University of Texas History Department, will deliver the Lipsey Humanities Lecture at Mississippi College on October 27.

Jacqueline Jones, who chairs the University of Texas history department, will serve as the keynote speaker at a Mississippi College program on October 27.

The prominent Texas historian will headline the 45th annual Lipsey Humanities Lecture Series on the Clinton campus. Her lecture in the Gore Gallery begins at 7 p.m. that Thursday evening.

The MC English Department began the program in 1971. It honors the memory of Sue Price Lipsey, who became an MC English professor in 1946 and retired in May 1974.

Jones is well-known nationally as the award-winning author of several books including “The Dreadful Deceit: the Myth of Race from the Colonial Era to Obama’s America.”

During her talk, Jones will focus on one of the 2013 book’s chapters she titles “A Dangerous Thing: Black Schooling in William Holtzclaw’s Mississippi.”

Mississippians may remember Holtzclaw was the founder of the Utica Normal & Industrial Institute in 1903. The school in Utica, MS was the forerunner of what became historically black Utica Junior College. The two-year school is now the Utica campus of Raymond-based Hinds Community College.

Jones will deliver the Lipsey Humanities Lecture at MC in partnership with a Hinds-Utica National Endowment for the Humanities grant.

The University of Texas professor will sign copies of her book at 6:30 p.m. in the Gore Gallery that’s adjacent to the Leland Speed Library.

Among many honors, Jones was recognized as a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for History. She’s authored other books, including “Saving Savannah: The City & Civil War 1854 to 1872.” Jones was the recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship from 1999 to 2004. She received her doctorate in 1976 at the University of Wisconsin in Madison.

Jones teaches subjects including American history since 1865 and has placed her focus on the American South following the Civil War.

Her lecture is open to the Mississippi College and Hinds Community College community as well as the public. The event is free.

Last year’s lecture series guest speaker was Mississippi College graduate Brannon Costello, an English professor at LSU.

For more information, contact the MC English Department at 601-925-3215.