Dear Friends,

With this issue of Keywords, we mourn the passing of Dr. John Pilkington, one of the University Libraries’ greatest proponents. As a member of our Friends of the Library organization for more than 50 years, with 30 years as president, Dr. Pilkington made it his mission to increase support for the libraries. His strong belief that a university could not be outstanding without an outstanding library is as true today as when he arrived here as a young university professor. Although the way University Libraries delivers services and even some collections has changed significantly over the years, the need to provide our faculty and students with the best library possible has not changed. We do also continue to need library champions such as Dr. Pilkington who will encourage others to support the library and set a shining example by their own generosity.

I also would like to call your attention to our new exhibit opening in Archives in January titled “Preserving our Past: Highlights from Archives and Special Collections.” This exhibit promises something for everyone including cases devoted to William Faulkner, blues collections, Vivien Leigh and Tennessee Williams, the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants  and Revolutionary War letters. Even baseballs signed by Ty Cobb will be on display! We also hope to offer a wide variety of brown bag lectures, so we are looking forward to an exciting spring.

Best wishes,

Julia Rholes

Dean of University Libraries

Distinguished professor John Pilkington is remembered for his dedication to the university community.

Following the passing of revered professor John Pilkington, the university community has remained dedicated to advancing the cause the scholar spent decades championing — the continued support of the J.D. Williams Library.

Through the John Pilkington Library Endowment, Pilkington’s legacy continues to strengthen the library, which Pilkington believed to be the heart of the university.

“All the university library staff are saddened by Dr. Pilkington’s passing,” said University Libraries Dean Julia Rholes. “He was a steadfast champion of the libraries. As a scholar and teacher, Dr. Pilkington believed that you could not have a great university without a strong library collection, and as president of the Friends of the Library, he worked tirelessly for years to help build our collections.”Read the story …

Richard C. Bridges' family visited campus Oct. 26 to formally present the collection to the library.

A little more than a century and a half ago, a University of Mississippi student left Oxford to fight in the Civil War. The journey sent him hundreds of miles from Mississippi — a home to which he would never return.

During those years, Richard C. Bridges’ only way to communicate with loved ones was through letters, and now those letters have resurfaced.

Recently, the family of Bridges donated 27 letters written by the Crystal Springs native during his time with the University Greys to the UM Department of Archives and Special Collections. The final letter in the collection was written by the nurse who cared for Bridges. The soldier passed away from a wound sustained in the Battle of the Wilderness in Staunton, Va., in June 1864.

“He was a student at Ole Miss, so that is where the letters belonged,” said Pat Owen, great-great niece of Bridges. “We felt like they couldn’t go anywhere else because they are a vital part of Ole Miss history.”

The family, who found the letters in the attic of their great aunt’s home, realized the value of the correspondence and felt it necessary to share with others.

“These letters are a part of our family history and a part of who our family is,” Owen said. “Ancestry is who you are, and I believe this collection portrays just that.”

After the Confederate attack on Fort Sumter, Bridges joined the University Greys at UM. Like many other Mississippians, he left home and school in 1861 to fight with the Confederate Army. Many of the soldiers were young men, and Oxford was the farthest place they had ever been from home.

Bridges’ letters were written in various situations and locations throughout the Civil War. Topics in his correspondence include health, worries, holidays, lack of receiving letters, homesickness, battles and wound history.

“These letters are an extremely rare and marvelous gift,” said Jennifer Ford, head of archives and special collections and associate professor at UM. “They give us the opportunity to see the humanity of someone caught in a conflict bigger than themselves.”

During Bridges’ time in the war, he fought in Seven Pines, Ball’s Bluff, the Seven Days Campaign, Manassas, Second Manassas, Gettysburg and the Battle of the Wilderness. The Battle of the Wilderness, during which Bridges sustained his fatal injury, is believed to be the bloodiest campaign in American history.

Viewing of this collection will begin in the spring semester. For more information, click here.

It was more than 80 years ago, when Martha Alice Stewart walked into the Mississippi State Penitentiary known as Parchman Farm to assume her role as head nurse. She was one of few to get an inside glimpse between the walls that make up the most notorious penitentiary in the South.

The public can share in her experience by visiting Archives and Special Collections at the University of Mississippi, where a new collection donated by Stewart’s family is housed. The “Martha Alice Stewart: Time on Parchman Farm, 1930s Collection” comprises photos and other materials related to the penitentiary. While working at Parchman for nearly a decade, Stewart accumulated a collection of nearly 200 black and white photos portraying life inside the prison, as well as nursing documents, personal cards and even a letter from a former inmate.Read the story …

Sorting Bishop Duncan Gray Jr.’s mail into two stacks — the “good” and the “bad” — was a considerable task at the height of the civil rights movement in Mississippi.

The small-town Episcopalian priest, known nationally for his nonviolent and pro-equality stance that segregation was incompatible with the Christian faith, received piles of letters.

A selection of Gray’s papers, including correspondence from the 1960s, are open to the public for viewing this fall in the University of Mississippi’s Archives and Special Collections. Among the hundreds of papers the bishop donated to the university — a collection that spans from the 1960s to the 1990s — are newspaper clippings, Ku Klux Klan pamphlets the bishop received in the mail and correspondence from churchmen all over the nation, pledging their support.Read the story …

Judge Yates spoke on campus in October as part of the university's 50 years of integration commemoration.

As President John F. Kennedy prepared to lead a nation in 1961, James Meredith planned to integrate the University of Mississippi the following year. The two men would soon become inextricably linked in one of many battles for civil rights in the South.

A collection in Archives and Special Collections, donated by Cincinnati judge and Kennedy/Meredith history researcher Tyrone K. Yates, sheds light on Kennedy’s 1960 campaign.

“From my perspective, the crisis in 1962 really contained for me, two primary sets of actors,” said Yates. “One was Mr. Meredith and the persons who may have supported him, and the other was the Kennedy administration — John Kennedy and Attorney General Robert Kennedy and their principal staffs. With this collection, I wanted to reach behind and into the official versions, and see what I could discover about their characters and their personalities and those who supported them on both sides of that equation, to see if there were valuable lessons to be gleaned about how other persons can successfully face difficult situations that involved both physical courage and moral courage.”Read the story …