It was the first year of integration in Mississippi public schools. Martha Olson, a graduate of Northwestern University with a B.A. in Art, was working as the girls’ physical education teacher at Marion High School in Columbia, Mississippi. During those first two years of integration, Olson photographed the students, their relatives, and other residents of Marion County, which she later compiled into a series entitled Marion Project: 1970-1972.
Thirty-two years later, Olson and a team conducted a series of interviews with the former students of Marion County High School to hear their reflections on that time and the years that followed.
⬇
Peggy Duncan and Eddie May Jefferson, 1970
“All photographs freeze time and serve as reminders of our mortality. These photographs capture a fragile yet hopeful time in the history of Mississippi and the American South. The first years of integration in Mississippi were indeed confusing, but young people were willing to believe that somehow social change would work in spite of the confusion. You can see it in their faces. And perhaps the reason you can see that hopefulness so well is that you also shared a belief in this change, which allowed you to capture a special moment in time.”
- W. Ralph Eubanks, Former Director of Publishing at the Library of Congress
