MS FOLK CULTURES

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MS FOLK CULTURES
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CHOCTAW
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Choctaw Culture

• Work hard to preserve their culture.
• Most speak the Choctaw language
• Traditional concepts of relationships, nature,
  arts, dance, music
• Choctaw Indian Fair 1st week in July
• At reservation in Neshoba County near
  Philadelphia
• Recreates the Festival of the Green Corn
• Special dances, play stickball, display crafts
• Influence on Southern cuisine (food customs)
  especially corn (hominy, grits, corn meal, etc.)

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AFRICAN - AMERICANS
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African-American Culture

• Favor improvisation and innovation always
  searching for new ideas within familiar ways
  passed down from earlier generations
• First came to MS as slaves and free blacks
• Slaves mostly on plantations and farms
• Free blacks Natchez and along Gulf Coast
• Rich African heritage with borrowed European and
  Native American traits

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Influence on Southern Culture

• Language words like boogie, gumbo, jazz, okra
• Folklore tales of trickster animals spirits
• Music Performance blues, dramatic
  speechmaking, lively preaching banjo

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• Food yams, okra, spicy ingredients, deep-fried
  chicken fish, peas greens boiled with pork,
  barbeque, and gumbo
• Crafts - baskets colorful quilts
• Afterworld Beliefs - placing personal items on
  graves to ward off evil spirits assure the
  peaceful rest of deceased

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EUROPEAN - AMERICANS
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Contributions to Southern Culture

• Country Music
• Basket making
• Boat building
• Quilting
• Storytelling

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European-American Cultures

• Largest group from British Isles
• Celtic tradition square clog dancing
• Building styles, music, cuisine
• French Spanish arrived on the Gulf Coast.
• Brought Mardi Gras
• Designed the Biloxi schooner and catboat ideally
  suited for the shallow waters of MS.

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• Other groups
• Italians (Shaw, Greenville, Gulf Coast) brought
  language, food, recreation.
• Greeks (Jackson Gulf Coast)
• Lebanese (Vicksburg)
• Jews (Natchez)
• Slavonians (Biloxi)

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ASIAN - AMERICANS
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Asian-American Cultures

• Strong identity with ancestors ancient customs
  of loyalty religious practices
• Largest group from China
• Settled the Delta in the late 1800s
• Vietnamese arrived in the 1980s.
• Settled on the Gulf Coast
• Worked in the seafood industry

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Contributions to Southern Culture

• Cuisine
• Holidays
• Chinese New Year private family celebrations
  parade in Clarksdale
• Vietnamese Tet Celebrates the New Year,
  national independence, and religious holiday for
  Buddhists (temple in Biloxi for food and prayers)
• Arts, literature, music