History Is Lunch: Jennifer Baughn, “Buildings of Mississippi”

Baughn is co-author of the guidebook Buildings of Mississippi, the latest volume in the celebrated Buildings of the United States series by the Society of Architectural Historians and published by the University of Virginia Press. The book surveys a range of Mississippi places from Native American mounds to plantation outbuildings that bear witness to the lives of enslaved African Americans, from twentieth-century enclaves built for sawmill workers and oil tycoons to neighborhoods that bolstered black Mississippians during segregation, and from the vernacular streetscapes of small towns to modern architecture in Greenville, Meridian, Jackson, and Biloxi.

“Eudora Welty wrote that ‘one place understood helps us know all places better,’ and nowhere is this more appropriate than in her home state of Mississippi,” said Baughn. “This book includes the white-columned antebellum mansions that have long been on tour, but it also encompasses the towns, buildings, and landscapes that make this place so complex and engaging.”

History Is Lunch is sponsored by the John and Lucy Shackelford Charitable Fund of the Community Foundation for Mississippi. The weekly lecture series of the Mississippi Department of Archives and History explores different aspects of the state’s past. The hour-long programs are held in the Craig H. Neilsen Auditorium of the Museum of Mississippi History and Mississippi Civil Rights Museum building at 222 North Street in Jackson. MDAH livestreams videos of the program at noon on Wednesdays on their Facebook page.