Announcements

Mississippi Department of Education announces new Mississippi U.S. History framework training opportunities (PDF file)

Mississippi Truth Project begins statewide truth and reconciliation process

Student Network for Inquiry and Dialogue (SNID) releases new website

New course on Restorative Justice and Public Education in Mississippi offered Fall 2009 and Spring 2010

Visit our new resource for teachers and students: www.mscivilrightsproject.com

UN International Year of Reconciliation 2009 (link opens pdf file)

Join the Welcome Table: An Era of Dialogue on Race

Our Current Work

The Winter Institute serves the University of Mississippi and the larger academic community through public speakers, scholarly research, curriculum for teachers, and conferences.

Speakers and Special Events

• List of speakers and presenters we've hosted
• Annual Civil Rights Education Summits for Teachers:
  Philadelphia, MS (2005) [this 4-page booklet requires Adobe Acrobat Reader to view]
  McComb, MS (2006)
  Oxford, MS (2007)
  
• "The Legacy of Slavery", Rita Bender's talk at the University of Mississippi on October 25, 2005
• The Mississippi Politics Symposium, about the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, during the week of the first 2008 Presidential Debate
• First International Conference on Race: Racial Reconciliation, October 2003
• Open Doors commemoration of 40 years since the University of Mississippi's integration, 2002-2003 academic year

Economic Development Resources

• The Mississippi Economic Policy Center Report on the Mortgage Foreclosure Crisis
• An Econometric Study on the impact of racism on Mississippi's economy
• The Economic Policy Institute’s briefing paper “Do subprime loans create subprime cities? Surging inequality and the rise in predatory lending”

Documentary Projects

• The Mississippi Civil Rights Project website and curriculum resource for teachers and students
• Documentary film on the Freedom Riders, free to educators
• Opening Doors/Forging New Paths multimedia oral history project about the integration of the University Medical Center and the University of Mississippi School of Law

Resources on the History of Slavery and African American History

• The African American Registry, based in Minneapolis, Minnesota
• Breaking the Silence: Teaching the Transatlantic Slave Trade, from Tulane University
• From Slavery to Reconciliation, a site by a direct descendant of two slave-owning families from Charleston, South Carolina
• The Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition at Yale University
• National Underground Railroad Freedom Center in Cincinnati, Ohio
• Post-Traumatic Slave Syndrome
• Steering Committee on Slavery and Justice at Brown University includes links to curriculum and interactive documents
• UNESCO's Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade project

Academic Classes and Papers

• Restorative Justice and Public Education in Mississippi class: Education 333, cross-listed as EDUC 555 and LAW 698
• An excerpt of Winter Institute Director Susan Glisson's dissertation "Neither Bedecked Nor Bebosomed:" Lucy Mason, Ella Baker and Women's Leadership and Organizing Strategies in the Struggle for Freedom" (Link opens a PDF document.)
  This 19-page paper requires Adobe Acrobat Reader to view.
• Hugh S. Whitaker's 1963 FSU master's thesis report "A Case Study in Southern Justice: The Emmett Till Case" (Link opens a PDF document.)
  This 218-page study requires Adobe Acrobat Reader to view
• Ellen Whitten's paper on the original trial and the reopening of the Emmett Till case

Future Academic Service

As part of its strategic plan for the next five years, the Winter Institute will create a world class multi-disciplinary center for scholarly research, study, and teaching on race and the impact of race and racism across traditional academic areas.

The needs of communities served by the Institute will help identify academic research projects for the Institute. The research capacity and accumulated knowledge of the academic arm will provide hard data to ground the community building programs and provide protocols to measure results and verify best practices.

The teaching function of the academic center will support the Institute’s education outreach programs, and assist in developing curriculum on matters of race. The Institute’s local programs will maintain the Institute’s focus on achieving tangible results in the everyday world, provide field verification for academic research, expand the University’s definition of teaching and education to include service programs, and bring local communities and other non-campus constituencies within the University’s mission.

The Institute will provide a setting where educators, scholars, business and professional leaders, policy makers, politicians, local community leaders and members, and grassroots activists can meet to listen to and learn from each other on matters of race and racism.