History Is Lunch: Christina Thomas, “One of the Sleepless Ones: The Autobiographies of Mrs. Winson Hudson”

At noon on Wednesday, February 11, civil rights historian Christina Thomas will present a biographical lecture on Winson Hudson, a lifelong civil rights leader from Harmony, an all-Black rural community in Leake County, Mississippi, as part of the History Is Lunch series. Hudson co-founded the Leake County NAACP in 1962 and served as its president for thirty-eight years. Alongside her sister, Dovie, she helped file the first lawsuit to desegregate public schools in a rural Mississippi county, leading to local school integration in 1964. Thomas will explore Hudson’s decades-long activism across voting rights, education, health care, housing, infrastructure, and economic access, situating her work within the broader Black freedom struggle in Mississippi. Hudson’s autobiography, Mississippi Harmony: Memoir of a Mississippi Freedom Fighter, co-authored with Constance Curry, informs the presentation but serves as one lens among many for understanding her life and impact. This program will take place in the Craig H. Neilsen Auditorium of the Two Mississippi Museums and will stream live on the MDAH Facebook page and YouTube channel.