Deep South

Alabama

Alabama Black Belt National Heritage Area
Muscle Shoals National Heritage Area

The Alabama Black Belt National Heritage Area (ABBNHA) is part of a larger, national Black Belt which stretches from Virginia to Texas. Home to a rich history that includes pre-history Indigenous settlements, conflicts between the states leading up to and during the Civil War, and the fight for civil rights, the ABBNHA is home to unique natural habitats and a growing cultural Renaissance that celebrates the history and heritage of the South.

Selected canned searches include:

Robert Sonkin Alabama and New Jersey collection, 1937-1941
Call Number: AFC 1941/018
Sound recordings, recording logs, transcripts, correspondence, field notes, reports and ethnographic information from a trip to Gee's Bend and other locations in Alabama in June-July 1941. Includes discussions about health and home remedies, the Gee's Bend school, and the FSA Gee's Bend project. Narratives by two former enslaved individuals, Isom Moseley and Alice Gaston, were recorded in Gee's Bend on July 21, 1941.

There is an online presence for this collection.

University of Alabama record projects collection, 1980-1982
Call Number: AFC 1982/016
Recordings of "In the Spirit: Alabama's sacred music traditions" - produced by Black Belt Press for the Alabama Folklife Association, c.1995.
Gee's Bend Quiltmakers Mary Lee Bendolph, Lucy Mingo, Nettie Young, Essie Pettway, and China Pettway, 2008-07-31: National Visionary Leadership Project
Call Number: AFC 2004/007: 266.MV.001
Part of the National Visionary Leadership Project collection. The interview includes footage of an intergenerational group of women from Gee's Bend working on a quilt together.

Locality and nation: civil rights and voting rights in the Deep South, 1963-1966, 2014 April 17

Hasan Kwame Jeffries, Assistant Professor, Ohio State University and Thomas F. Jackson, Assistant Professor, University of North Carolina-Greensboro and Visiting Fellow, Virginia Foundation for the Humanities were featured presenters in a Scholars Roundtable in the Many Paths to Freedom series at the Library of Congress on April 17, 2014 discussing their research using collection materials in the Library's Moving Image and Prints and Photographs Divisions. Hasan Kwame Jeffries' talk "The Ballot and the Bullet: Grassroots Organizing in Lowndes County, Alabama, 1965-1966," explores the sustained canvassing activities of Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) organizers in the Alabama Black Belt in mid-1960s, which is given short shrift in histories and commemorations compared to the marches led by Martin Luther King in Birmingham and Selma during the same period. Sponsored by the American Folklife Center, Blacks in Government, LC Chapter, and the Library of Congress National Audiovisual and Conservation Center.

The Muscle Shoals National Heritage Area (MSNHA) preserves and promotes the cultural heritage of six counties spread across the Tennessee River basin. Major themes of the heritage area are conservation, Indigenous culture and history, music, and cultural tourism related to the Tennessee River.

Radio Research Project recordings
Call Number: AFC 1941/011
Collection of field recordings made during a trip that documented areas affected by the Tennessee Valley Authority project. Numerous interviews were conducted with musicians, farmers, doctors, and plant workers on electrification, effects of TVA, building the Cherokee Dam, the fertilizer and nitrate plants at Muscle Shoals, Alabama, and opinions about politics and the war.

The Atchafalay National Heritage Area encompasses 14 parishes in south-central Louisiana and is home to Cajun culture, as well as a diverse population that reflects the European, African, Caribbean and Indigenous cultures which have shared the region for generations. The heritage area preserves music, foodways, language and both cultural and natural landscapes.

Jean Lafitte National Historical Park and Preserve collection, 1985
Call Number: AFC 1985/022
Collection of field recordings of interviews and photographs collected by Mary Hufford comprising part of the preliminary fieldwork for a proposed cooperative project with the National Park Service's Jean Lafitte National Historical Park and Preserve in southern Louisiana. Photographs document a local cemetery, boats, waterways, traditional foods and housing, the preparation of nutria hides, Park Service staff, and aerial photographs of the Mississippi Delta, some taken by Tom Tankersley.

There is an online presence for this collection.

A. James Delahoussaye collection of Atchafalaya River Basin recordings
Call Number: AFC 2012/044
Collection of field recordings of interviews with Atchafalaya River Basin, Louisiana, residents about their lives, traditions, and folkways, recorded from 1974-2010, as well as approximately 635 digital images documenting the same traditions.
Acadian folksongs from Louisiana
Call Number: AFC 1956/004
Acadian folksongs sung by John DuBois who learned these songs as a child, while he spent summers on his grandfather's farm in Kaplan, Louisiana.
John DuBois collection of Acadian French folk songs
Call Number: AFC 1973/038
Collection of recordings of ten Acadian folk songs and lullabies sung by John DuBois originally by Kaplan, Louisiana, accompanied by Bunyan Webb on guitar.

This collection consists of video/sound recording and photographs of a concert in the Coolidge Auditorium, Thomas Jefferson Building, Library of Congress on September 7, 2016 as part of the Homegrown concert series sponsored by the American Folklife Center. Yvette Landry grew up in Breaux Bridge, Louisiana, not far from the levees of the Atchafalaya Basin. She is a member of The Lafayette Rhythm Devils, Balfa Toujours, and several other Cajun bands.

Folklorist and University of Louisiana Professor Barry Jean Ancelet discussed his career in the academic study of Cajun and Creole folk culture, as well as his work creating archives where the culture has been preserved, festivals, and other programs where Cajun and Creole culture has been shared with diverse audiences.

The Cane River National Heritage Area (CRNHA) was home to Indigenous people, as well as French and Spanish settlements. The interaction of these groups, along with enslaved Africans, led to the development of a distinctive Creole culture which forms the heart of the heritage area's preservation efforts.

Harry Oster collection of Louisiana, Mississippi and Iowa recordings
Call Number: AFC 1967/003
Field recordings made by Harry Oster in Iowa, Louisiana, and Mississippi, March 11, 1957-November 12, 1966. The collection includes songs, folk tales, rhymes, street cries, jokes and recitations from African American, Anglo American, German American, and French-speaking Creole performers.

Video recording, sound recording, and photographs of a concert in the Coolidge Auditorium, Thomas Jefferson Building, Library of Congress on July 29, 2015 as part of the Homegrown concert series sponsored by the American Folklife Center. Creole United is a group representing three generations of Louisiana Creole music culture from southwest Louisiana. Their goal is to bring together active, retired, and upcoming Creole musicians of both traditional and emerging styles, and who each perform with other groups, to collaborate on recording projects and concerts. The current group includes Edward Poullard, Lawrence Ardoin, Rusty Metoyer, Sean Ardoin, and Andre Thierry. The event included Zydeco dance by audience participants.

Joshua Caffrey, Alan Lomax Fellow in Folklife Studies, Kluge Center, examines the songs recorded in the summer of 1934 by John A. Lomax with assistance from his son Alan, who was then a teenager. While the music they recorded there has often been described as Cajun or Creole music, what they actually found was much more complex. This talk coincides with the release of Caffery's book "Traditional Music in Coastal Louisiana"

Marce Lacouture concert collection, 2010 June 23

Collection consists of digital sound recordings and photographs documenting a concert performed by Marce Lacouture with David Greely and Kristi Guillory in the Coolidge Auditorium. The concert features songs, ballads, and waltzes referred to as "home music" -- traditional songs sung among family and friends, in Cajun and Creole French; several of these songs were first recorded by John and Alan Lomax in Louisiana in 1933-1934.

Mississippi

Mississippi Delta National Heritage Area
Mississippi Hills National Heritage Area

The Mississippi Delta National Heritage Area (MDNHA) preserves an important piece of American musical history and traditions. Known as "the land where Blues began," the MDNHA also gave birth to Rock and Roll, and is home to a vibrant Gospel music scene. The land has also been shaped by stories of agriculture, the Civil Rights Movement, and the Great Migration. The MDNHA preserves a rich culinary, religious, artistic and literary heritage through five themes:

The River & The Land
The Blues
Moving Towards Freedom
A Wellspring of Creativity
Diverse Communities

Library of Congress and Fisk University Mississippi Delta collection, 1941-1943
Call Number: AFC 1941/002
In 1941 and 1942, the Library of Congress and Fisk University of Nashville, Tennessee, jointly undertook a sociological study of African American communities centered in Coahoma County, Mississippi, in the Mississippi Delta region. Field recordings were made of secular and religious music, sermons, testimonies, church services, children's games, singing games, jokes, folktales, interviews, toasts, hollers, blues, and dance music in African American communities in Mississippi.
The land where the blues began
Call Number: AFC 9999/011
Blues songs, interviews with blues musicians, sermons, sounding calls, and gospel songs from the Mississippi Delta region. Field recordings made by Alan Lomax, Lewis Jones, John W. Work, John A. Lomax, and Herbert Halpert between Dec. 1933-Sept. 21, 1959, principally in Miss.; some selections recorded in Ark., Tex., New York City, or Detroit, Mich.
Michael Ford international collection
Call Number: AFC 2016/028
Moving image footage and still photographs documenting three topical groups, 1982-2015 from ethnographic filmmaker Michael Ford. The first documents African-American music culture in and around the Delta town of Greenville, Mississippi, including footage of the 1997 annual Delta Blues and Heritage Festival.
Mississippi freedom summer, 1964: memory, legacy and the way forward, roundtable discussion, 2014 May 19
Call Number: AFC 2014/016
Many Paths to Freedom freatures roundtable conversations among scholars and civil rights movement participants, book talks, film screenings, and concert performances, among other events. Four leaders who participated in the Mississippi Freedom Project in 1964 discussed their experiences and the legacy of their civil rights work.

Digital sound recordings, video recordings, and photographs documenting a concert performed by Ben Payton and the Thundering Harps in the Coolidge Auditorium, Library of Congress on May 25, 2011 as part of the Homegrown concert series sponsored by the American Folklife Center. Concert of traditional Mississippi Delta-style blues music and compositions by Ben Wiley Payton.

Lecture delivered by William R. Ferris as part of the American Folklife Center's Benjamin Botkin Folklife Lecture Series. Bill Ferris presented selections from interviews that he recorded beginning in the 1960s with African American women and men in communities in Mississippi near the Natchez Trace and Mississippi Delta.

The Mississippi Hills National Heritage Area (MHNHA) covers 19 full counties and parts of 11 others in northeastern Mississippi. The goal of the heritage area is to preserve a cultural landscape influenced by Appalachian and Delta cultures.

Pete Welding collection, 1958-1995, bulk 1961-1980
Call Number: AFC 2011/053
Collection of over eight hundred sound tape reels, including blues and jazz music and interviews with musicians; several hundred photographs of prominent blues and jazz musicians, primarily from the 1960s and 1970s; manuscript materials about blues and jazz musicians, arranged by the name of performer; and articles, drafts, and notes written by Pete Welding. Notable figures include Howlin' Wolf, who is one of the key features of the Mississippi Hills National Heritage Area.
Tennessee-Tombigbee Waterway Folklife Project collection, 1977-1988
Call Number: AFC 1985/
Collection of audio recordings regarding a contract offered by Interagency Archeological Services (IAS) and the Army Corps of Engineers for a proposed folklife survey in areas affected by the Tennessee-Tombigbee Waterway. Tombigbee sits within the Mississippi Hills National Heritage Area.
Tombigbee Historic Townsites Oral History Project collection
Call Number: AFC 1983/002
Field survey project conducted under contract with the U.S. Department of the Interior between October 1979 and August 1980. The project examined the lifeways, material culture, social organization, and settlement patterns of the Colbert, Barton, and Vinton townsites in Clay County, Mississippi.

National Heritage Areas: Resources in the American Folklife Center

Deep South

Alabama

Louisiana

Mississippi