The Honorable William Winter died, December 18, 2020, at the age of 97. Mississippi and the nation have lost a tireless advocate for social justice and educational reform. His many accomplishments range from the adoption of the Education Reform Act of 1982 to founding The William Winter Institute for Racial Reconciliation (the Winter Institute). It is the Winter Institute that had such an impact on the Mississippi Museum of Art and that I would like to recognize today.
The Winter Institute was born out of the need to help Mississippi communities heal from the trauma of the Civil Rights era. More specifically, according to the archives of the Winter Institute, the focus was to be on the communities of Neshoba County, the site of the Freedom Summer murders of James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner in 1964; McComb, which was known as the “Bombing Capital of the World” in 1964, with a deep history of civil rights organizing and white resistance to it; and east Tallahatchie County, where Emmett Till’s killers were unjustly acquitted by an all-white jury in 1955. The result of many conversations in these communities was the Welcome Table™ framework that uses story telling as the primary way to connect participants to each other and reveal their shared humanity. This practice is the core of the Winter Institute methodology and is used in its workshops today.
It is this practice that was used to train the staff at the Mississippi Museum of Art as a component of CAPE, whose goal is to use engagements with art to discuss issues of race and equity. It is this practice that has had a long-lasting impact on how MMA relates to itself in terms of its staff and its constituents (visitors and members). It is this practice that provided the motivation for a bold strategic plan, adopted in July 2019, that values honesty, equity, and inclusion. Finally, it is this practice that links our mission of “connecting Mississippi to the world, and the power of art to the power of community,” to our behavior.
Thank you, William Winter; your legacy endures and will stay embedded in the DNA of the Mississippi Museum of Art.
Post by:
Monique Davis
Chief Equity and Inclusion Officer, Managing Director of the Center for Art and Public Exchange (CAPE)
Former Governor William Winter Photo credit: Rogelio V. Solis, AP
