Below is a press release from the Mississippi Department of Archives and History:
On May 5, 2021, Jennifer V.O. Baughn presented “Buildings of Mississippi" as part of the History Is Lunch series.
Baughn is co-author of the guidebook Buildings of Mississippi, the latest volume in the celebrated Buildings of the United States series by the Society of Architectural Historians and published by the University of Virginia Press. The book surveys a range of Mississippi places from Native American mounds to plantation outbuildings that bear witness to the lives of enslaved African Americans, from twentieth-century enclaves built for sawmill workers and oil tycoons to neighborhoods that bolstered black Mississippians during segregation, and from the vernacular streetscapes of small towns to modern architecture in Greenville, Meridian, Jackson, and Biloxi.
“Eudora Welty wrote that ‘one place understood helps us know all places better,’ and nowhere is this more appropriate than in her home state of Mississippi,” said Baughn. "This book includes the white-columned antebellum mansions that have long been on tour, but it also encompasses the towns, buildings, and landscapes that make this place so complex and engaging.”
Jennifer Baughn started work as an architectural historian in 1996 with the Historic Preservation Division of the Mississippi Department of Archives and History, and has served since June 2007 as chief architectural historian. She holds a BS from Northland Baptist Bible College and an MA in history from Florida State University. Baughn is the 2019-21 president of the Southeast Chapter, Society of Architectural Historians and a board member of the Vernacular Architecture Forum.
