The Margaret Walker Center at Jackson State University will partner with Foot Print Farms and Fauna Foodworks to host a 30-minute virtual cooking demonstration to celebrate Margaret Walker’s 105th birthday on Tuesday, July 7, at 6 p.m.

Chef Enrika Williams of Fauna Foodworks, JSU professor and author C. Liegh McInnis and Foot Print Farms founder Cindy Ayers-Elliott will discuss Walker’s life and contributions to Mississippi while preparing Walker's own maple nut cake recipe as part of the event. Lance Wheeler, education and public relations manager of the MWC, will moderate. JSU will livestream the event from Foot Print Farms via the university's Facebook page.

For more information, call the Margaret Walker Center at 601-979-3935 or email [email protected]. Find Walker’s handwritten recipe for maple nut cake and other examples of her cooking at https://margaretwalker.jsums.edu.

MSU Releases Revised Fall Calendar

Mississippi State University recently issued a revised fall academic calendar in light of a potential late fall peak of the ongoing coronavirus pandemic. The restructured calendar has students begin classes on Aug. 17 with commencement set for Nov. 25 in Starkville and Dec. 1 at MSU's Meridian campus. The calendar substitutes Fall Break from Oct. 8-9 with class days and usual class days from Nov. 23-24 with final exam days.

The university is also putting extra health protocols into place and enhancing campus operations to follow guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and university COVID-19 task forces, a release from MSU says.

A full fall calendar is available at https://www.registrar.msstate.edu/calendars/academic-calendar/c/?year[value][year]=2020&semester=fall. MSU will address issues such as student affairs, campus life and athletics at a later date, the release says.

USM Professor and Alumnus Creating Historical Site for Former Slave Market

Max Grivno, an associate professor of history at USM who studies the antebellum South, slavery and Mississippi history; and Christian Pinnen, a University of Southern Mississippi alumnus and member of the faculty at Mississippi College, recently received funding from the National Park Service for an effort to preserve the history of a slave market in Natchez, Miss., known as “Forks of the Road.”

“Forks of the Road” is located one mile east of downtown Natchez and became a slave trading market during the 1830s and 1840s, with thousands of slaves sold there during that time, a release from USM says. Black soldiers destroyed the market's original buildings during the Civil War, after which it became the site of a cotton warehouse and a residential neighborhood.

The NPS has acquired most of the land that encompassed the slave market and plans to develop an interpretive plan for the site and write a site history of the Forks in partnership with Grivno and Pinnen.

For more information about Grivno’s work at USM and the university’s history program, visit https://www.usm.edu/humanities/index.php.