Ignite Ole Miss: Charles Reagan Wilson Campaign Update

Dear Friends,

As we enter the third week of our campaign to raise funds for the Charles Reagan Wilson Graduate Student Support Fund, I want to thank all of you who have given so far. We at the Center have always been proud of our engaged and enthusiastic alumni and friends, and it has been wonderful to see familiar and new names multiplying on the donor wall. With 105 donors, we are now at 66% of our goal of $25,000, with $16,744 raised. There are 16 days left, and I hope you’ll join us in giving a gift if you haven’t yet.

All of us who had the honor of studying with Dr. Wilson learned that passive voice has no place in writing about history. In the Southern Studies M.A. program, and in Dr. Wilson’s regionalism class in particular, I learned the value of scholarship engaged with questions about individual human agency. One of the most important ways for a student to understand history as a complicated web of human interaction is to engage in archival research.

Beginning in college, I had the opportunity to explore archives, first at the University of Virginia, and later in UM Archives and Special Collections. I viewed plantation ledgers in a class about the 19th century South and slavery, read letters written by Eudora Welty to friends, and explored the disturbing files of the Mississippi State Sovereignty Commission. In the archives, distinct voices come to life, and the researcher better understands history in all its complexity, tragedy, and creativity.

We want our students and those in the history graduate program to have access to collections throughout the region and nation, experiencing firsthand the archival resources that can bring to life the individual voices of the American South in its, in the words of James Agee, “six-thousand-mile parade.” We established the Charles Reagan Wilson Graduate Student Support Fund to make this possible, while also honoring a scholar who was so supportive of his students.

I hope you’ll join us in celebrating Dr. Wilson’s teaching legacy with a gift to this fund. Any amount is welcome and very much appreciated.

Best,

Becca Walton

Associate Director for Projects, Center for the Study of Southern Culture
Southern Studies MA Class of 2008
Enthusiastic #CRWfan

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