MSM 703 Dr. Charles Bolton - Expanding Our Mission

During the yearlong celebration of our 50th Anniversary, the Center for Oral History and Cultural Heritage has been interviewing former directors and staffers to preserve our own history. This week, we share the memories of Dr. Charles Bolton. In 1990, Chuck Bolton became the fourth director of the Mississippi Oral History Program at USM. A Picayune native, Bolton had graduated from USM with a bachelor's degree in history and moved to Durham, North Carolina to attend graduate school at Duke University. In this episode, he remembers his oral history professor and mentor Larry Goodwin and how being from Mississippi lead to a unique first interview., After receiving his Ph.D. in History, Bolton returned to USM to accept a teaching position in the History Department and the Directorship of the MOHP. He recalls the legacy of the Mississippi Oral History Program's first director, Dr. Orley Caudill and how they were able to build on those early successes. The Stennis Space Center Oral History Project was launched in 1991 by the Mississippi Oral History Program. Bolton discusses the roots of that fourteen year project and the opportunities it created. In 1992 Shana Walton was hired to be Assistant Director of the Mississippi Oral History Program. Bolton explains how her background in Linguistic Anthropology allowed the Program to evolve into the Center for Oral History and Cultural Heritage. PHOTO: Ellisville Blues legend, Tommie T-Bone Pruitt performs at an early Roots Reunion show, an annual Cultural Heritage program put on by the Center during the 1990s and early 2000s.