Jim Barnett of Natchez, longtime director of Historic Properties for Mississippi Department of Archives and History, this week will serve his final time as co-chairman of the Natchez Literary and Cinema Celebration.

In June, Barnett will retire from MDAH, one of the annual co-sponsors of the conference.

The 25th annual Celebration opens Thursday and continues through Sunday with programs devoted to the theme, “60 Years and Counting: Voices of the Civil Rights Movement.”

He has been a rock all these years. He is brilliant, unflappable, dependable and always so very kind. All of us involved with the NLCC deeply appreciate his many years of hard work and his unwavering commitment to excellence.

“I have enjoyed serving on the NLCC Steering Committee as a representative of the MDAH and being part of a dedicated team of co-chairs representing several institutions,” Barnett said. “Through the years, these have included Copiah-Lincoln Community College, the National Park Service, Alcorn State University and Mississippi Public Broadcasting.”

Barnett has been part of the Celebration since it began in 1990.

“I was part of the small orchestra in the Natchez Little Theatre’s production of Eudora Welty’s ‘The Robber Bridegroom,’” he said. “It was really a thrill to be on stage with Miss Welty sitting there in the audience.”

A musician, Barnett particularly liked the 1999 Celebration.

“Perhaps my favorite NLCC is the one that featured music of the South,” he said. “A real highlight for me was the opportunity to meet James Blackwood of the Blackwood Brothers.”

Other memories also stand out to Barnett.

“The Celebration has weathered its share of storms,” he said. “Two of the fiercest happened in 1998 and 2001. The 1998 storm, blamed on straight-line winds, hit Natchez during Clifton Taulbert’s evening presentation at First Presbyterian Church. The church lights went out, but Clifton continued his program by candlelight. When we left the church, the storm had passed, leaving trees and power lines down all over town.”

The second storm, in 2001, occurred the year the conference moved into the brand new Natchez Convention Center.

“A terrible thunderstorm hit town during our first day of programs and knocked out the building’s power,” Barnett said. “When power was restored, no one could figure out how to re-start the facility’s computer-operated PA system. But we managed to overcome all that and continue.”

Barnett acknowledges two people with whom he has worked on the Celebration all 25 years.

“Governor William Winter’s longtime service as the NLCC’s Director of Proceedings has given me a wonderful opportunity to get to know him and his wife Elise,” Barnett said.

Barnett will be sorely missed by MDAH, said Duncan Morgan of Natchez, member of the Board of Trustees of MDAH from 2001-2011.

“He will be difficult to replace,” Morgan said. “He is so dedicated and so knowledgeable about all the historic sites all over the state that he manages.”

 

Carolyn Vance Smith of Copiah-Lincoln Community College is founder and co-chairwoman of the Natchez Literary and Cinema Celebration.