{"id":63950,"date":"2017-01-06T11:19:53","date_gmt":"2017-01-06T17:19:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/news.olemiss.edu\/?p=63950"},"modified":"2017-01-20T10:33:20","modified_gmt":"2017-01-20T16:33:20","slug":"j-d-williams-library-celebrates-state-bicentennial-exhibit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/web20.olemiss.edu\/news\/wordpress\/j-d-williams-library-celebrates-state-bicentennial-exhibit\/","title":{"rendered":"J.D. Williams Library Celebrates State Bicentennial with Exhibit"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Greg Johnson arranges a new exhibit featuring the Mississippi bicentennial at the Department of Archives and Special Collections. Photo by Thomas Graning\/Ole Miss Communications<\/p><\/div>\n

OXFORD, Miss. \u2013 The Department of Archives and Special Collections<\/a> in the University of Mississippi<\/a>‘s J.D. Williams Library will celebrate a historic anniversary of the state with the exhibit “Mississippi: 200 Years of Statehood.”<\/p>\n

Mississippi was admitted as the 20th <\/span>state on Dec. 10, 1817. The library will commemorate that recognition with an ongoing exhibit focusing on the history and culture of Mississippi, opening Jan 9.<\/p>\n

“The Department of Archives and Special Collections has pulled together some of our rarest items documenting the state’s 200-year history,” said Jennifer Ford, head of special collections. “Commemorating this bicentennial year has been the focus of the department’s faculty and staff for several months.”<\/p>\n

The exhibit will feature a wide variety of items that helped define the state, including 18th <\/span>century maps of the South by European cartographers, historical Mississippi textbooks, early territorial documents, materials related to the women’s suffrage movement and the civil rights movement in Mississippi, sound recordings, photographs of the state through the years and Mississippi-themed sheet music.<\/p>\n