- For decades, Patti was the quintessential tour guide for sharing the rich cultural history of Mississippi with the wider world.
Born in Sumner, in the heart of the Mississippi Delta in 1934, non-fiction author, exhibitor, scholar, editor, and promoter of the arts, Patti Carr Black’s career achievements reveal a woman ahead of her time. Her distinctive soft Southern drawl and genteel mannerisms conjure images of the Old South, yet Patti defies any stereotypical definition.
For decades as a fixture in many different capacities at the Department of Archives and History, Patti became the quintessential tour guide for sharing the rich cultural history of Mississippi with the wider world. At the same time, through her involvement in the community, she helped lead her fellow citizens to reach for a future that left some of the darker aspects of the past behind.
When she became the director of the Old Capitol Museum, she made a conscious decision to steer away from the emphasis on political and military history that had been its focus since its inception. After all, as she explained in a 2010 interview, “When you look at the great civilizations of the past, you know the architecture and the art and the sculpture. I’m sort of a missionary about art.”
Black lost her father when she was just four years old, and a friend of her mother’s offered to let young Patti come to live temporarily with his family at Magee’s Preventorium. A specialty facility on the grounds of the Tuberculosis Sanitorium, the children’s hospital’s sole purpose was preventing the disease in children who were underweight, sickly, and considered prime targets for TB. Described by most past patients as an isolating and daunting experience, Patti counted it as a positive. That isolated environment likely allowed the independent thinker time to develop the inquisitive mind that framed her creative passion forever after.
Patti graduated in 1951 from the first class of West Tallahatchie High School in Webb. She attended Mississippi State College for Women majoring in art history and library science. A serious student, she graduated in 1955 magna cum laude and was selected by her fellow students as Miss MSCW and student body president. With that impressive resume, she was just warming up. Her studies were beginning, not ending.
MSCW had expanded her awareness of a very different world beyond the borders of her state. She knew she wanted to know and see more. An observer would call her a lifelong learner, verified by her daughter, Betty Smithson, a Madison resident.
As a young bride in the late 1950’s, she settled in Jackson, accepting a job at the Department of Archives and History during the tenure of the renowned director, Charlotte Capers. A mentor who became a lifelong friend, Charlotte drew Patti into a notable circle of close friends who included Eudora Welty, Jane Reid Petty, and other active patrons of the Capital City arts community.
They were all devoted pioneers when it came to expanding opportunities for all Jacksonians to participate in top-tier artistic experiences. I am reminded of the Proverb, “As iron sharpens iron, so one person sharpens another.” Such was true with their camaraderie. Along with a few other like-minded art and theatre aficionados, Patti was among the original founders of Jackson’s New Stage Theatre in 1966. Their bold invitation (bold in the context of the times) to open the theatre to all races resulted in a bomb threat on the opening night of its premier play.
Helping birth New Stage is just one of many stars in her crown. Starting a professional theatre from the ground up was a challenge, but undertaking to bring with it changes to social norms, speaks volumes about the courage and tenacity of Patti and her friends. New Stage is in its fifty-eighth season, and Patti Carr Black remains a season ticket holder. At ninety years of age, she still enjoys an evening out for dinner and the theatre.
She enjoyed two separate stints as a New York City resident relishing the city’s bustle and the rich artistic offerings. In 1964, while spending a year there with her husband and young daughter, she took courses at the New School for Social Research. In 1968, after obtaining a Master of Arts in Library Science from Emory, Patti and her young daughter, Betty, spent two years in New York City where Patti’s credentials won her a temporary research position at the Metropolitan Museum of Art as well as a spot as a research librarian with Time magazine insuring the accuracy of articles in their arts and culture section.
In 1970, Black returned to Mississippi where she took the reins at the Mississippi Department of Archives and History pouring her expertise into every aspect of elevating and showcasing Mississippi’s history, art, and culture. Her ability to put an engaging exhibit together, to bring attention to facets of Mississippi’s native art, and to take the best of Mississippi to places like the Smithsonian brought her many well-deserved accolades.
A few of her quite storied accomplishments include establishing the Mississippi folklife program at the Old Capitol Museum in 1972, creating the first permanent exhibit in the Smithsonian’s Folklife Festival of 1974, creating the first permanent exhibit in the South on the Civil Rights Movement which won an Award of Merit from the American Association for State and Local History in 1987.
Patti designed more than 100 temporary exhibits for the Old Capitol Museum over her three decades working for the Department of Archives and History. She later designed exhibits, including the “The Mississippi Story” for the permanent collection at the Mississippi Museum of Art.
Her works include more than twenty books about Mississippi art, history, literature, and culture. Within that trove of topics reveals a great ability to write factual history as well as humor. She possessed the rare talent of condensing the complex into reader-friendly prose and dispensing a great deal of history and fact in the process.
Even after her official retirement in 1993, Patti continued to be the go-to for information and advice on all things pertinent to Mississippi’s cultural realm.
Patti Carr Black deserves credit for bringing national awareness and appreciation of rural Mississippi’s art forms to the city and to the nation. Her devoted daughter Betty describes her awareness of her mother’s photography ventures all over the state as she retrieved authentic images with an old film camera. Betty’s vivid memory of her mother’s painstaking efforts existed for a long time in rows and rows of little yellow Kodak boxes lined up on the bookcase shelves in their den.
Despite her superior intellect and awards that fill pages, Patti Carr Black has always been a great and generous friend to many. John Evans, the owner of Jackson’s favorite bookstore, Lemuria, counts Patti Carr Black as one of his dearest friends dating back about fifty years. Their friendship did not begin with books, however. John confides that once upon a time in his much younger years, he was a member of a rather “out there” avant-garde band. Patti Carr Black, in her capacity with the Department of Archives, is the only human who ever hired them for a paying gig. The band is long gone, but the friendship remains.
Only in Mississippi can you tell a story like that, and everybody understands.
