The Margaret Walker Center at Jackson State University is pleased to announce a Racial Equity Grant from the Mississippi Humanities Council to produce an exhibition titled “A Place for All People,” which will be installed at the Central Mississippi Correctional Facility (CMCF), Parchman Penitentiary and Jackson State University.
Organized by the Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Service, “A Place for All People” details the history and work of the National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC), a Smithsonian Institution built and opened on the Mall in Washington, D.C., in 2016.
“This is an exciting opportunity for us to serve a part of our community that is often ignored or forgotten in our prisons,” said Dr. Robert Luckett, director of the Margaret Walker Center. “We want to let incarcerated people in our state know that we see them and that we recognize their humanity.”
In addition, Dr. Deborah Mack, associate director for Community and Constituent Services at the NMAAHC, will give a gallery talk for the opening of the exhibition at CMCF to a group of female inmates on Thursday, December 7.
The exhibit will stay at CMCF for two weeks so that many of the incarcerated men, women, and youth will be able to view it before it travels to Parchman and to the Margaret Walker Center at Jackson State. The exhibit will then be made available to any public library, museum, cultural institution, college campus, and prison in the state of Mississippi.
