Latest News

• Former Jackson State University Political Science Student nominated for Southern District U.S. District Judge
  President Barack Obama nominated Carlton Reeves to serve as a Southern District United States District Judge.  Reeves, a Yazoo City, Mississippi native, clerked for the Mississippi Supreme Court Justice Rueben Anderson from 1989 to 1990. He then served the court as a staff attorney in 1991 before joining the law firm of Phelps Dunbar as an associate from 1991 to 1995. Carlton Reeves was a civil division chief of the U.S. Attorneys’ Office for the Southern District of Mississippi supervising eight attorneys and seventeen support personnel and monitoring the civil litigation.  As a partner in Pigott Reeves Johnson & Minor, P.A., Reeves is a shareholder and litigator in consumer fraud, personal injury and civil rights matters. After graduating from Jackson State University, magna cum laude with an undergraduate degree in political science in 1986, Reeves studied law at the University of Virginia School of Law where he received his Juris Doctorate in 1989.  United States Representative, Bennie Thompson said  that “Reeves will be an excellent choice”.  In addition, “there was unanimous agreement among the Mississippi Congressional delegation that Reeves is the right choice”.

• Leslie Burl McLemore to continue Jackson State University growth

• The most recent edition of the Hamer Happenings newsletter will be mailed in January 2009. A downloadable PDF version of the newsletter is available here.

• The National Endowment for the Humanities has funded our 2009 summer workshop for community college professors, Landmarks of American Democracy: From Freedom Summer to the Memphis Sanitation Workers' Strike. Two separate one-week workshops will be conducted in June; the first will be held July 5-11, and the second July 12-18. More information will be posted to the Programs section of this website as soon as it is available.

• The consultation phase of our NEH grant "Interpreting the History of the Civil Rights Movement" was completed in December 2006. During this stage of the project, The Hamer Institute identified 110 Mississippi communities in which substantial civil rights activities occurred between 1960-68. The project grouped these communities into seven regions and also identified major themes and people who played historically significant roles during the movement. Future work on this project will involve the identification of historically significant sites and the development of interpretive tours and educational materials.

• The Hamer Institute was awarded the 2005 "Educator of the Year" award by the Mississippi Humanities Council. Pictured below are Jeff Kolnick, Dave Deardorff, Michelle Deardorff, and Leslie McLemore, receiving the award at the 2006 Mississippi Humanities Council's annual banquet. (Photo courtesy of the Mississippi Humanities Council.)

• A photo archive of most of the landmarks included in the 2004 and 2005 Landmarks of American Democracy workshop field trips is online in the Resources section of this site. A companion downloadable guide is also available in PDF form.