Photo: Artist Edward Dwight's miniature of propsed Cotton Pickers Monument
INTERNATIONAL PRESS ANNOUNCEMENT
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
April 5, 2026
Mississippi Arts Commission and Mississippi Humanities Council
Invest in Khafre, Inc.’s Monumental Vision to Honor America’s Cotton Pickers
Indianola, Mississippi— In a historic convergence of art, memory, and justice, both the Mississippi Arts Commission (MAC) and the Mississippi Humanities Council (MHC) have awarded funding to Khafre, Inc. in support of the nationally significant Cotton Pickers of America Monumental Project—an ambitious public history initiative dedicated to honoring the generations of laborers whose hands shaped the economic foundations of North America, Western Europe, and the Caribbean basin.
At the center of this movement is Dr. C. Sade Turnipseed, world-renowned public historian, scholar, and cultural preservationist, who has announced her retirement from Jackson State University to devote her full attention to ensuring the successful completion of the monument. Her decision marks a profound personal and professional commitment to elevating the lived experiences of those affectionately remembered as “grandmama’nem”—the women, men, and families whose labor in the cotton fields built unprecedented wealth, often without recognition or recompense.
The MAC grant will support a comprehensive update and expansion of CottonPickers.us, transforming it into a dynamic digital archive and public history platform. The site will serve as a living repository of oral histories, scholarly resources, educational tools, and real-time updates on the monument’s development—bridging generations through truth-telling and remembrance.
In tandem, funding from the Mississippi Humanities Council advances the forthcoming documentary:
“Voices from the Cotton Kingdom: Delta Elders Remember Cotton”
This powerful film gathers the voices of Mississippi Delta elders—custodians of memory—whose testimonies illuminate the human dimensions of labor, resilience, kinship, and survival within the cotton economy. Their stories move beyond statistics and into the realm of lived truth, offering a corrective to historical erasure.
This landmark documentary is produced through a distinguished collaboration between:
Together, these institutions bring artistic excellence, historical rigor, and cultural stewardship to a project of national and global importance.
The Cotton Pickers of America Monumental Project stands not only as a tribute, but as a moral reckoning—a declaration that the labor of Black hands in cotton fields was not peripheral, but central to the making of modern economic power.
With renewed institutional support and visionary leadership, Khafre, Inc. in collaboration with Ed Dwight are advancing a legacy long overdue for recognition—ensuring that the stories of those who built the wealth of a nation are no longer buried in its soil, but cast in bronze, memory, and permanence.
FOR MORE INFORMATION, PLEASE VISIT
Or email info@khafreinc.org ~ 662.347.8198
