Berkley Hudson - O. N. Pruitts Possum Town: Photographing Trouble and Resilience in the American South

Photographing TROUBLE & RESILIENCE in the American South

Berkley Hudson

Published in association with the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University by the University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill

The Martha and Spencer Love Foundation, as a longtime champion of civil rights, welcomes this books helpful perspective on race relations in the American South.

2022 Berkley Hudson

All rights reserved

Manufactured in Canada

Designed and set by Kim Bryant in Miller and Acie types

The University of North Carolina Press has been a member of the Green Press Initiative since 2003.

Cover illustration courtesy of the Pruitt-Shanks Collection, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Hudson, Fraser Berkley, author.

Title: O.N. Pruitts Possum Town : photographing trouble and resistance in the American South / Berkley Hudson.

Other titles: Documentary arts and culture.

Description: Chapel Hill : The University of North Carolina Press ; [Durham, North Carolina] : Published in association with the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University, 2021. | Series: Documentary arts and culture | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2021038334 | ISBN 9781469662701 (cloth ; alk. paper) | ISBN 9781469662718 (ebook)

Subjects: LCSH: Pruitt, O. N., 18911967. | Documentary photographyMississippiColumbus. | Photographs as information resources. | PhotographsSocial aspects. | PhotographsPsychological aspects. | PhotographersMississippiColumbusBiography. | Columbus (Miss.)Social life and customsPictorial works. | BISAC: PHOTOGRAPHY / Photoessays & Documentaries | HISTORY / United States / State & Local / South (AL, AR, FL, GA, KY, LA, MS, NC, SC, TN, VA, WV)

Classification: LCC TR820.5 .P73 2021 | DDC 770.9762/973dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021038334

DOCUMENTARY ARTS AND CULTURE

Edited by Alexa Dilworth, Wesley Hogan, and Tom Rankin of the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University

In a time when the tools of the documentary arts have become widely accessible, this series of books, published in association with the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University, explores and develops the practice of documentary expression. Drawing on the perspectives of artists and writers, this series offers new and important ways to think about learning and doing documentary work while also examining the traditions and practice of documentary art through time.

Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University

documentarystudies.duke.edu

To Pruitts photographic subjects and to their families

And especially to the memory of my parents, Russell Hudson Sr. and Eva Byrd Fraser Hudson, and my brothers, Russell Jr., Don, and Carrollwhose photographs live forever in the archive of Otis Noel Pruitt

SUQUA TOMAHA OR POSSUM TOWN

Original inhabitants of northeast Mississippi, the Choctaw and Chickasaw, called the white settlement located between Luxapalila Creek and Tombigbee River by the name of Suqua Tomaha. This translates as Possum Town, a nickname for Columbus, Mississippi. This early nineteenth-century name derived from the local trading posts wizened-looking manager, Spirus Roach. His face reminded people of a possums.