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Christmas by CandlelightTour Dec. 6
Traditional holiday decorations will be on display at the Mississippi Governor’s Mansion, Old Capitol Museum, Mississippi State Capitol, Eudora Welty House and Garden, and William F. Winter Archives and History Building on Friday, December
6	for the eighteenth annual Old Jackson Christmas by Candlelight Tour. Free transportation will take visitors from site to site, with parking available at the Old Capitol, state capitol, and Winter Building. The tour begins at 4:30 p.m. and runs until 8:30 p.m.
This year a giant Christmas tree returns to the Old Capitol, Jackson’s oldest building, along with many of the ornaments visitors may remember from years past. Garlands will hang around the rotunda railing on the second floor and the stairwells, and wreaths will decorate the exterior of the building. Enjoy cookies and punch while listening to musical groups from across the city. Performing will be the East Rankin Choir, 4:40-5:10; the Mississippi Boychoir, 5:30-6; the Mississippi Girlchoir, 6:20-6:50; and Madison Ridgeland Young Singers, 7:10-7:40. The Hinds Community College
Brass Ensemble will perform at
8	p.m. and between choir sets. Old Capitol holiday ornaments and gift bags will be for sale at the new Candlelight Marketplace.
At the Winter Building, the mid-century aluminum Christmas tree will be on display along with examples of Antebellum, Victorian, and Depression-era trees. The ever-popular model town of Possum Ridge and its trains will be on display on the first floor of the Winter Building. Characters from A Special Visitor Comes to Possum Ridge will read from the children’s book
inspired by the train exhibit.
The grand Mississippi State Capitol will be decorated with Mississippi-grown Leyland Cypress Christmas trees, garlands, and poinsettias, and the offices of the governor, lieutenant governor, and Speaker of the House will be open to visitors. Musical entertainment will be the Christmas Jazz Ensemble under the direction of Bob Davidson, director of Senate Legislative Services, and refreshments will be served.
The circa-1841 Mississippi Governor’s Mansion will be decorated with seasonal green-
ery. The East Garden will be open, and a very special guest from the North Pole will greet visitors in the garden’s gazebo. Light refreshments will be served.
The Eudora Welty House and Garden will feature original holiday greeting cards and decorations, as well as enlarged photos of the Welty family during the holiday season. This year’s collection of holiday cards includes a unique long, hand-painted greeting by artist Agnes Simms, whose modernist painting Rome hangs above the living room mantel. Cards from President and Mrs. Clinton, author Kathryn Anne Porter, poet laureate William Jay Smith, and others will be on display.
Guests may tour the first floor of the House and stop by the Visitors Center for hot cider and homemade white fruitcake baked by volunteers using Miss Welty’s recipe, while listening to classical, jazz, and Brazilian music performed by guitarist Leonnardo Moreira and cellist Marcelo Vieira.
For more information about the Old Jackson Christmas by Candlelight Tour call 601-576-6800.
Old Capitol to Host Smithsonian Youth Summit
On Wednesday, February 5, the Old Capitol Museum will host students from across the country in a virtual National Youth Summit on Freedom Summer and civic engagement. Civil rights activists and Freedom School interns will participate in a panel discussion about the 1964 youth-led effort to end the political disfranchisement of African Americans and race-based inequity in education in Mississippi.
Speakers will include Robert Moses, director of the Mississippi Freedom Summer Project and founder of the Algebra Project; Marshall Ganz, civil rights activist and senior lecturer in public policy at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University; Michelle Deardorff, professor
and department head of political science at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga; and Hollis Watkins, Mississippi native and civil rights activist.
A live video link from the Old Capitol to eleven regional Summit sites will enable young people from California to Pennsylvania to participate via webcast, submitting questions for the panel through email, Face-book, and Twitter.
The summit is being organized by the National Museum of American History and the Smithsonian Affiliations, a partnership
with more than 160 affiliate museums and educational and cultural institutions across the country. The Old Capitol Museum is a Smithsonian Affiliate.
“We are honored to have an event like this at the Old Capitol,” said director Clay Williams. “Our museum examines the role of government in the lives of Mississippians. It will be a powerful thing for students today to see the change that was effected in Mississippi and the United States by the participants of Freedom Summer.”
Smithsonian