The State Historical Society of Missouri

The Missouri Folklore Society (MFS) has received a $2,500 grant from the Missouri Humanities Council to support “African American Stories in Missouri: The Oral Tradition Today.”  The program will be featured at the MFS annual meeting in Hannibal, November 6-8, 2008, and is co-sponsored by The State Historical Society of Missouri. 

Storytellers from Northeast Missouri, St. Louis, the Missouri Bootheel, and the Springfield and Kansas City areas will come together to discuss the significance of stories and storytellers in the cultural lives of African Americans, and the important role stories play in promoting learning and shared understanding.  Gladys Coggswell, a master storyteller in the Missouri Folk Arts Program at the University of Missouri, will chair the African American stories program among several presenters who are also contributors to Coggswell’s forthcoming book, Stories from the Heart: Missouri’s African American Heritage, to be published by the University of Missouri Press early next year.  The program presented at the Missouri Folklore Society’s annual meeting will be recorded and placed in the holdings of the Western Historical Manuscript Collection, a joint repository of the University of Missouri and The State Historical Society of Missouri.

The Missouri Folklore Society annual meeting will be held November 6-8, 2008, at the Quality Inn and Conference Center, 120 Lindsay Drive (Mark Twain Avenue), west of Hannibal.  For more information, contact David Moore, Associate Director, Western Historical Manuscript Collection-Columbia at (573) 882-6028. 

For more information about the Missouri Humanities Council grants program, call (314) 781-9660 or (800) 357-0909.  The Council is the only statewide agency in Missouri devoted exclusively to humanities education for citizens of all ages, and has served as the state affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities since 1971.

About the Missouri Folklore Society

The Missouri Folklore Society was organized in 1906 and seeks to encourage the collection, preservation, and study of folk arts and crafts of all ethnic groups throughout the state of Missouri, including customs, institutions, beliefs, signs, legends, language, literature, and musical arts.