The Cotton in My Hands exhibit will close its Mississippi Valley display in the J.H. White Library on Thursday Sept. 26.
This remarkable historical exhibit has provided the entire Delta community with the opportunity to appreciate first-hand and authentic view of the cotton-picking heritage intimately known throughout the American South.
The exhibit reflects 40-years of fine-art-collecting by Drs. Leo and Gloria McGee, former professors from Tennessee Tech University.
McGee, who himself grew up picking cotton as a young boy in Arkansas said, “To me, laboring in the fields of the South is as much a part of African American heritage as the blues, jazz, chittlerlings, the dozens, and doubledutch. In many ways, I think the “field hands” may well be the unsung heroes of the American experience.”
The exhibit is the largest known collection of Cotton Pickers/Sharecropper fine art in the world; and, Phase I of this historical exhibit has been on display in the James H. White Library on the MVSU campus since, November, as part of the Seventth Annual Sweat Equity Investment in the Cotton Kingdom Symposium.
The Cotton in My Hands exhibit has been curated by three MVSU History majors – Shalae Ryan, Marshaun Street, and Kenyati Crosby, under the direction of Dr. C. Sade Turnipseed, Assistant Professor of History, MVSU, and Executive Director of Khafre, Inc.
The exhibit was made possible by the generous donations of: Leo and Gloria McGee, Khafre, Inc., MVSU President’s Office, Social Sciences department, J.H. White Library, Planters Bank, Mississippi Humanities Council, Business Management department, Criminal Justice department, English department, Mass Communications department, Academic Affairs department, Fine Arts department, and the MVSU Valley Choir.
