Good morning, Miss-Lou.

We are very fortunate to have Dr. Louis Kyriakoudes, director of the Center for Oral History and Cultural Heritage and associate professor of history at the University of Southern Mississippi coming to Natchez to spend the day, Thursday.

He will conduct a free oral history workshop at Copiah-Lincoln Community College, Natchez campus, from 8 a.m. until 1:30 p.m. that day. This workshop is for students, teachers and the general public.

Dr. Kyriakoudes will conduct a second oral history workshop that afternoon especially for public school teachers enrolled in teacher academies at Natchez High School Monday through Friday.

Dr. Kyriakoudes has years of experience working with Mississippi oral history projects, including those on Hurricane Katrina, veterans of numerous wars, McComb’s railroad history, the Civil Rights Movement, and the Mississippi River Flood of 1927.

When the steering committee of the Natchez Literary and Cinema Celebration was planning the 2012 conference, which will feature storytelling in the South, we realized that stories of the Great Mississippi River Flood of 2011 and its impact on the Natchez area need to be captured while they are fresh.

We knew the best way to do that was to get volunteers properly trained so they can go into our community, sit down with people directly involved with the flood and record their memories.

Dr. Kyriakoudes readily agreed to teach us how to conduct our oral history project. Techniques can apply to any research projects by students, faculty, historians, genealogists, journalists and others. Everyone is invited to the workshop.

Dr. Kyriakoudes, a specialist in the social and economic history of the 19th- and 20th-century United States, is the author of The Social Origins of the Urban South: Race, Gender and Migration in Nashville and Middle Tennessee, 1890-1930, published by the University of North Carolina Press in 2003.

He has published articles in The Alabama Review, Agricultural History, Social Science History, Southern Cultures, and Tobacco Control as well as in various edited collections and encyclopedias. He is currently working on two projects: A history of cigarette use in the 20th century and a study of the demography of rural poverty in the American South in the 19th and 20th centuries.

Kyriakoudes holds a Ph.D. degree from Vanderbilt University and has been the recipient of numerous awards and honors.

Deadline to register for the workshop is Monday.

Those interested in attending should call project assistant Linda Bailey, 601-442-4842, or e-mail her at fourb@bellsouth.net. A light lunch, one-half continuing education unit for teachers and oral history handouts are included with the workshop.

Using equipment on loan from USM, people who attend the workshop will be able to interview dozens of Natchez-area people. Those who wish to share their stories can notify Linda Bailey, who will set up the appointments.

Copies of the interviews will be stored at the Willie Mae Dunn Library at Co-Lin Natchez and available to the public.

Original digital recordings will go to USM, where they will be transcribed, stored permanently and made available to scholars and the general public.

Partial funding for the oral history project comes from Co-Lin, the NLCC, the Natchez-Adams School District, The Center for Oral History and Cultural Heritage at USM, the Mississippi Humanities Council, the Mississippi Department of Archives and History and the Mississippi Oral History Project, funded annually by the Mississippi state legislature.

Carolyn Vance Smith is the founder and co-chairman of the Natchez Literary and Cinema Celebration.