OXFORD, Miss. – Despite an impressive collection of
accolades and awards amassed over a 40-year career in
academia, Elizabeth Payne thinks about what she’ll be doing
this fall and gets excited like a first-grader anticipating
the first day of school.
On Sept. 1, Payne begins a yearlong fellowship with The
National Humanities Center in Chapel Hill, N.C. The
University of Mississippi history professor is one of only
28 scholars to be selected from a pool of more than 400
applicants worldwide, which makes the fellowship an
unquestioned achievement. But she’s even more thrilled
about interacting with the other scholars.
“I’m a little scared, but in a good way,” Payne said with a
chuckle. “These scholars are assembled from across the
spectrum of the humanities: literature, history, classics,
philosophy and religion. They’re from different ages,
countries and backgrounds. And we’re expected to socialize
together, to eat together, to share ideas and research.
It’s a dream come true for me.”
Payne expects to have plenty of chances to interact with
scholars from American universities such as Princeton,
Yale, Duke, UCLA, Northwestern and NYU. She’ll also swap
ideas with fellows from the University of Warwick in the
United Kingdom, the Federal University of Bahia in Brazil
and the State University of Music and Performing Arts in
Germany.
“We try to cast a wide net,” said Kent Mullikin, NHC vice
president and deputy director. “The rationale for an
institution like this is to maximize the possibility of our
fellows discovering unexpected areas of mutual interest.
It’s really the imagination and intelligence of the people
we bring together that makes for an interesting community
of learning.”
Payne, the first NHC fellow from UM, was chosen based on
her research on the Southern Tenant Farmers Union, a
little-known biracial organization formed to protect the
interests of white and black tenant farmers and
sharecroppers during the Great Depression. Even though
President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Agricultural Adjustment
Act was meant to spread wealth among tenant farmers and
sharecroppers at the local level, landowners pocketed an
unfair share of the government funds. United by common
interests, black and white farmers came together to form
the STFU, Payne said.
“It was the most significant biracial initiative in the
cotton South,” said Payne, who represented the Methodist
Youth Fellowship as a lobbyist for the Civil Rights Bill
during the 1960s. “Many who know of the STFU consider it a
precursor to the civil rights movement. I’d like to shed
light on this overlooked chapter of Southern history.”
Payne plans to publish the book “Shattering White
Solidarity: A History of The Southern Tenant Farmer’s
Union” after her NHC fellowship. Mullikin said her research
should attract interest beyond just her peers at the NHC.
“There’s a great deal of interest in the kind of study
she’s doing at both UNC-Chapel Hill and Duke, where a lot
of people are interested in Southern history and civil
rights history,” he said. “It’s a very important topic and
this particular story hasn’t been told.”
Payne expects her colleagues at the NHC to scrutinize her
work, which she hopes will help give her book mainstream
appeal beyond the academic community.
“They’ll find gaps in what I need to explain,” she said. “I
want to produce a work of general interest that’s not
limited to historians. The other fellows will help me write
in a more accessible way.”
“To be chosen for a National Humanities Center Fellowship
is a signal honor and reflects the significance of Dr.
Payne’s research,” said Glenn Hopkins, dean of the UM
College of Liberal Arts. “She is most deserving of this
important award.”
“Elizabeth Payne is the first member of our university’s
faculty to be offered a fellowship by the National
Humanities Center,” added Joseph Ward, chair of the
Department of History. “It is significant recognition of
the high regard her professional peers have for her
research into the Southern Tenant Farmers Union.”
Also, the Mississippi Historical Society recently awarded
the 2008 Elbert Hilliard Oral History Prize to Payne and
five of her graduate students. Payne and her students
produced “Makin’ Do,” an oral history project featuring
women who grew up in northern Mississippi during World War
II.
“Receiving that award was very affirming for me, and I was
happy to have the light shown on north Mississippi,” she
said. “And I was happy for my students because they were
recognized for the award as well.”
At a stage in her career when many peers are looking to
slow down, Payne shows no signs of doing so.
“I’ve wanted to be an NHC Fellow for a long time; I
thought, however, that there was no chance because I’ve
spent much of my career in administration,” Payne said. “I
want to keep doing new things. I don’t want to sit down and
let the grass grow around me.”
For more information about the UM Department of History,
call 662-915-7148 or go to
http://www.olemiss.edu/depts/history.
To view the award-winning oral history project “Makin’ Do,”
visit
http://www.mpdl.outreach.olemiss.edu
and click on Documentary Projects.