Mr. Pruitt’s Possum Town: Photographing Trouble and Resilience in the American South
Curated by Berkley Hudson, Ph.D. Emeritus Associate Professor, University of Missouri School of Journalism
“Photographer Otis N. Pruitt bore witness…he captured truths about the Jim Crow South from the early 1920s to 1960, in a time when Black and white Baptists were immersed in the same muddy river on Sundays and then returned to segregated streets with restrooms labeled Ladies, Gentlemen, and Colored…where Black people feared that at any moment they could be chased down and lynched.”
Janine Latus National Endowment for the Humanities, HUMANITIES Magazine
Woman sitting on porch steps, n.d.
Teenage “hostesses” in hoopskirts for annual spring Pilgrimage of antebellum homes, c. 1955
Church of Christ tent revival, c 1955
Potato farmers with politician-farmer Johnny Williams (left foreground), Caledonia, c. 1930s
Alligator Lake, c. 1930s
Fifteen people alongside railroad tracks with engine and train cars, c. 1925
A farmers’ hay market where pigs, chickens, and sorghum and cane syrup were sold, Main Street at Fourth Street intersection, c. 1927
Three dozen women outside F. W. Woolworth store, Market Street, c. 1920s
Men at work, n.d.
Grocery store interior, late 1940s
Kitchen, c. 1920s
Boy with bloodied nose, n.d
Preacher with baptismal group, Tombigbee River, c. 1930s
Tombigbee River baptism, c. 1930s
Boy in coffin, n.d.
Tombigbee River flooding with men in boat by house, n.d.
Church Halloween party during World War II, n.d.
Miller's Traveling Museum, "World Fair Freaks", c. 1930
Woman, man, and boy on crutches on front porch, n.d.
Woman fishing from boat, n.d.
Wood frame house with woman on porch swing, n.d.
Mr. Pruitt’s Possum Town: Photographing Trouble and Resilience in the American South reveals life between 1915-1960 in Columbus, Mississippi – a town, according to curator Berkley Hudson, “shaped in the crucible of slavery and cotton and the Civil War.” Built around the collection of photographer Otis Noel Pruitt, a white man in the racially segregated South, the exhibition explores race relations and issues of class, gender, and religion.
Described as a “national treasure'“ by William Ferris, former chairman of the National Endowment for Humanities, Pruitt’s work is distinguished by a passion to prolifically and diligently document the customs, lives, joys, and sorrows of people in his hometown. His pictures provide a candid and ultimately disturbing visual history of the inequality of that era in the Jim Crow American South, and serve as an invaluable resource for those interested in civil rights, photography, and American history.
This project aims to place in context Pruitt’s life-long work of documenting Southern culture. His photographs are representative of small towns in the American South at critical and tumultuous times in our nation’s history. Images include family picnics, river baptisms, carnivals, parades, fires, tornadoes, and even two of Mississippi’s last public executions by hanging – as well as the 1935 lynching of two African American farmers.
This exhibition, with images, film, period Mississippi music, and spoken word, provides extensive access to these important images, and the stories behind them, and will encourage conversations within our own communities as we continue to strive for equality and deeper understandings of the role of culture and history in 21st century America.
WORKS
100 photographic prints
Archival film footage and contemporary video
DIMENSIONS
Frames 11” x 14” to 30” x 40”
3D object dimensions TBD
SPACE REQUIREMENTS
Approximately 330 linear ft (100 linear m)
EDUCATIONAL PROGRAMMING
Artist available for lectures and panel discussions
INQUIRIES
exhibitions@curatorial.org
626.577.0044
FEE
Please inquire
EXHIBITION SCHEDULE
State Historical Society of Missouri | Columbia, Missouri
(July 5, 2022 – November 5, 2022)
Columbus Arts Council | Columbus, Mississippi
(February 3, 2022 – April 22, 2022)
CURATOR BIOGRAPHY
Berkley Hudson is an emeritus associate professor of journalism studies at the Missouri School of Journalism. Hudson grew up in Columbus, Mississippi and was photographed by O.N. Pruitt as a child. In the early 1970s Hudson and four of his boyhood friends discovered a collection of Pruitt’s work in their hometown. They purchased the collection of 142,000 negatives in 1987 and spent the next 30 years archiving, researching and preserving the work. Then in 2005, they transferred the photographic collection to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
ARTIST BIOGRAPHY
Otis Noel Pruitt worked as a photographer from 1915-1960 in the rural, racially-segregated town of Columbus, Mississippi. Pruitt and his assistant, Calvin Shanks, both of whom were white men, acted as the de-facto documentarians of northeast Mississippi. They photographed white and African American Mississippians alike inside the studio and beyond, a unique and unusual practice for white photographers in the early 20th century American South.
EXHIBITION CHECKLIST
Mr. Pruitt’s Possum Town:
Photographing Trouble and Resilience in the American South
EXHIBITION PROSPECTUS
Mr. Pruitt’s Possum Town:
Photographing Trouble and Resilience in the American South
EXHIBITION CATALOGUE
O.N. Pruitt’s Possum Town:
Photographing Trouble and Resilience in the American South
Read more
EXHIBITION REVIEWS
NEH: Humanities, Possum Town in Black and White
Read more
Smithsonian Magazine, Chronicling the Triumphs—and Tragedies—of Life in the Deep South
Read more
Garden & Gun, The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly of Possum Town
PARTNERS & SPONSORS
National Endowment for the Humanities
University of Missouri and the University of Missouri System
Office of the University of Missouri System President
University of Missouri System Research Board
University of Missouri Offices of the Chancellor, Provost, and Vice Chancellor for Research and Economic Development
University of Missouri Office of the Vice Chancellor for Inclusion, Diversity and Equity
Missouri School of Journalism Office of the Dean
Missouri School of Journalism Reynolds Journalism Institute
Mizzou Advantage Fund
Peace Studies Endowment
