Please join us Tuesday from 5:30 to 7 p.m. for a book signing with Larry McCluney of his new book, “The Yazoo Pass Expedition: A Union Thrust into the Delta.” After six failed attempts to take Vicksburg, Gen. Ulysses S. Grant developed another plan. The Yazoo Pass Expedition was a Union army and navy operation meant to bypass Vicksburg by using the backwaters of the Mississippi Delta. Fort Pemberton played a major role, and McCluney examines the expedition in great detail.
Beginning April 18 and running through May 12, in partnership with The Moise A. Khayrallah Center for Lebanese Diaspora Studies at North Carolina State University, the Museum of the Mississippi Delta will host the traveling exhibit “The Lebanese in America,” an exhibition exploring 150 years of history. An opening reception will take place April 28 from 5 to 7 p.m. Attending the reception will be our local families of Lebanese and Syrian descent.
Dr. Akram Khater, director of the Khayrallah Center at NCSU, will be attending the event along with James Thomas from the Center for the Study of Southern Culture, both of Lebanese descent. On April 29, an oral history workshop will be held in conjunction with the exhibition, which will explain the importance of collecting this valuable history.
The Lebanese in America is a powerful, concise narrative of Lebanese immigration. This exhibit illuminates the role of Arab-Americans in creating modern America and shows that these immigrants came to the United States for similar reasons as other immigrant groups: economic opportunity and a better life for themselves and their children. Lebanese immigrants greatly enriched American life by bringing the cultural traditions of their homeland to this country and by contributing to the economic, social and political development of America. Along the way, they forged a new Lebanese-American identity that has had important consequences for both Lebanon and the United States. Complicated, diverse and at times controversial, the history of Lebanese immigration engages an important national debate about the role of immigration in building America.
The detailed exhibit explores the history and memories of Mississippi’s Lebanese-American community. It comprises eight narrative HopUp displays with photographs, graphics and QR codes linked to supplementary materials and an e-reader.
The panels describe the history, conditions and impact of Lebanese immigration nationally, offering a framework in which to consider the substantial Lebanese immigration to the Mississippi Delta and beyond between the 1880s and the end of World War I.
The Mississippi Delta is shaped daily by our diverse communities and cultures who have immigrated to this region and left their mark on our landscape. This is just the beginning of this historical documentation of our many immigrant families.
Seeded in 2010 and formalized in 2014, the Moise A. Khayrallah Center for Lebanese Diaspora Studies is dedicated to research about Lebanese immigrants in the U.S. and throughout the world and to preserving and sharing that knowledge with the scholarly community and general public. The center examines the historical and contemporary Lebanese Diaspora in all of its dimensions — social, political, economic and cultural — through such activities as a biennial conference, physical and digital archives and publications.
Project partners for the exhibit include the Khayrallah Center for Lebanese Diaspora Studies, the Center for the Study of Southern Culture, the Museum of the Mississippi Delta and the Mississippi Humanities Council. If you are yourself or know of a Lebanese or Syrian family, please contact me at 453-0925 or email me at director@museumofthemississippidelta.com. Be sure to visit our Facebook page and website, www.museumofthemississippidelta.com.
• Cheryl Thornhill is the executive director of the Museum of the Mississippi Delta. Contact her at director@museumofthemississippidelta.com.
