Your acceptance into this workshop is an achievement that should be shared.  Approximately 300 applications were received from very qualified teachers for 80 available spaces.  We encourage you to share this news with your local community.  If you are published, we would appreciate receiving a copy of the printed article to post in our office.

Press Release

For Immediate Release

Local Teacher Receives National Recognition

_________________, a local teacher from ____________ school, has been selected from a national applicant pool to attend one of 20 summer study opportunities supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities.  The Endowment is a federal agency that each summer supports Landmarks of American History and Culture workshops so that teachers can study with experts in humanities disciplines.

_________________will participate in a workshop entitled The Most Southern Place on Earth; the Music, Culture, and History in the Mississippi Delta.  The program will be held on the campus of Delta State University in Cleveland, MS, and directed by Dr. Luther Brown, Associate Dean for Rural and Regional Studies.  The forty teachers selected to participate each week will receive a stipend of $1200 to help cover their travel, study, and living expenses.

Topics for the 20 Landmarks of American History and Culture workshops offered for teachers this summer range from Emily Dickinson: Person, Poetry and Place; to The American Skyscraper: Transforming Chicago and the Nation; and Partisans and Redcoats: The American Revolution in the Southern Backcountry.  

The Most Southern Place on Earth: Music, Culture, and History in the Mississippi Delta will allow participants to explore the heritage of the Mississippi Delta.  The Delta is a vast floodplain formed by the Mississippi River.  It was still  largely wilderness during the Civil War, and was rapidly cleared to support cotton plantations based on sharecropping.  It is the birth place of the Blues and also Rock ‘n’ Roll.  It has been the scene of many civil rights activities and it has produced many political leaders, authors and artists.  Muddy Waters, Robert Johnson, Charley Pride, Fanny Lou Hamer, Richard Wright, Hodding Carter, Craig Claiborne, and B.B. King all hail from the Mississippi Delta. 

Workshop participants will travel throughout the Delta, visiting places where important events transpired and listening to lectures presented by historians and other experts.  

For more information, please visit www.blueshighway.org or call 662-846-4311