Second annual Marszalek Lecture scheduled for later this month

Contact: Maridith Geuder

During a March 25 public program at Mississippi State, a history scholar and popular speaker will explain the federal government's efforts to aid freed Mississippi slaves during and after the Civil War.

Jane "Budge" Weidman's address, "The Freedmen's Bureau in Mississippi, 1863-70," begins at 3 p.m. in the Grisham Room of the university's Mitchell Memorial Library. She is a volunteer with the National Archives and Records Administration in Washington, D.C.

Her presentation is the second in the annual Marszalek Lecture Series sponsored by the library through an endowment from Starkville residents John F. Marszalek and his wife Jeanne. John Marszalek is a nationally recognized MSU historian who retired in 2002.

Weidman serves as project manager of the Civil War Conservation Corps that assists the National Archives in compiling military service records, especially those related to African-American troops during the Civil War. Among current projects, CWCC members are arranging records of the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen and Abandoned Lands--Freedmen's Bureau, for short--for preservation and microfilming.

"We're very fortunate to have someone so knowledgeable about original-document research share information specific to our state," said library dean Frances Coleman.

Weidman also is the author of numerous articles, including the recent "Dear Husband, Please Come Home: Civil War Letters to Black Soldiers" in Prologue Magazine.

In addition to the MSU lecture series, the Marszalek Fund provides for the purchase of library and archival materials especially related to the Civil War and Reconstruction, Jacksonian America and race relations.

During the March 25 program, the library will receive 51 microfilm reels of letters written by Union Civil War general William T. Sherman--the subject of a Pulitzer Prize-nominated biography, "Sherman: A Soldier's Passion for Order," that Marszalek wrote in 1993. Sherman's original correspondences are housed in the Library of Congress.

Marszalek, who recently returned to serve as the university's director of distinguished scholarships, said the lecture series is designed to highlight works of both nationally recognized historians and history students nationwide.

"I'm especially honored that this year's lecture will feature a research paper by M. Shannon Mallard, a graduate student studying with me who died tragically last November in an automobile accident," he said. The paper deals with another area of Civil War life in Mississippi, he added.

Mallard's report, titled "We Must Be One at Home: Divided Loyalties in Civil War Mississippi," will be presented prior to Weidman's lecture by doctoral student James S. Humphreys of Kinston, N.C.

Humphreys, who is completing his dissertation under Marszalek's direction, was Mallard's office mate and close friend.

The Marszalek endowment is an open fund in the MSU Foundation that welcomes additional contributions. For more information about the fund and lecture series, telephone Trish Hughes at (662) 325-3007.