The Mississippi Humanities Council has awarded a $2,500 grant for a documentary film project whose working title is “Possum Town.” The documentary represents a contemporary exploration based on the historic photographs by Columbus photographer O.N. Pruitt who lived from 1891 to 1967.

Pruitt’s Main Street studio served as a place where citizens throughout northeast Mississippi and western Alabama came to have their portraits photographed from 1920 to 1960. Besides his studio and commercial work, Pruitt documented the lives of citizens from all walks of life, Black and white alike, rich and poor and in-between. Unusual for a white photographer, Pruitt recorded Black community life as well. He photographed baptisms, floods of biblical proportion, the aftermath of the Tupelo tornado of 1936, fires, political rallies, two of Mississippi last executions on a courthouse grounds and the lynching of two Black farmers in 1935.

The documentary draws from the book, “O.N. Pruitt’s Possum Town: Photographing Trouble and Resilience in the American South,” authored by Columbus native Berkley Hudson. UNC Press, in partnership with Duke University’s Center for Documentary Studies, published the book in 2022.

The documentary project was initiated in February 2022 in Columbus at a national premier exhibition of Pruitt’s photographs at the Columbus Arts Council. Since the exhibit’s opening, the crew has made 11 visits to northeast Mississippi, filming for 40 days. The crew has formed bonds with many in the community and are embedded in several local stories that resonate deeply with Mississippi history and its present-day moments.

Based in Atlanta, the documentary crew includes three of Hudson’s former Mizzou students: director Daniel Christian, cinematographer Cassidy Minarik and sound recordist Alexander Ransom. Additional crew members include producer Meredith Farina and sound recordist Win Marks. Ed Robbins, a longtime documentary filmmaker and adjunct professor at Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, serves as a project advisor along with Hudson. In addition, Mizzou professor Robert Greene, filmmaker-in-chief at the Murray Center for Documentary Journalism, is also an advisor.

The key sponsor of the traveling exhibition is the National Endowment for Humanities. Additional support for the exhibition came from the Mississippi Humanities Council, the Mississippi University for Women Foundation, the University of Missouri System, Visit Columbus and private donors, among others.

Hudson, along with four boyhood friends: Jim Carnes, David Gooch, Mark Gooch and Birney Imes, preserved the Pruitt collection in 1987. In 2005, they transferred the collection to the Southern Historical Collection at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. UNC has one of the nation’s foremost collections related to the American South, including many items from Mississippi and Lowndes County.

Besides more than 88,000 Pruitt photographic negatives, the Pruitt-Shanks collection includes an additional 50,000 images by Pruitt’s assistant Calvin Shanks. He bought Pruitt’s business in 1960 and maintained the studio until 1983. The photographic collection is permanently archived at the University of North Carolina Libraries in Chapel Hill.

The Friendly City Books Community Connection, a special project of the CREATE Foundation, served as the recipient of the grant.