BRANDON, Miss. (WJTV) – We think about history as stuff that happened a long time ago, although a great deal of history is being made right now. But those old stories, no matter how important they are, can get lost in the shuffle, unless you hear them now and again.
One of the newest ways we have of story telling today is now available to access the African American history stories of Mississippi.
It’s like a product roll out that any PR firm should be envious of. There are visual aids and promotional items for a new app. The app tells some old stories, and some of them are as new as today. Their theme is the African American contribution to the state. Hermon Cotton helped come up with the idea and created the app.
“Our mission, Walt, is to share a centralized access point to Mississippi’s African American contribution. The spark that actually ignited it was my participation in my kids, both public and private school, black history programs. I found it difficult to find a single source that had a platform that illuminated the entire state of Mississippi’s African American contribution. I noticed we have an abundance of historical information, but there was no platform that offered a location where you can not only just look outside of Mississippi, but in Mississippi and within your local community,” Cotton explained.
Now if you compile all of this scattered information into one place, what do you do with it? Put it in a book that will sit on a shelf? No. You go with the flow of the modern world.
“Well, what I came up with was a mobile app. Everybody has a mobile phone. And it’s kind of our tool for information. My hope is to actually serve every individual with a positive and inspiring cultural influence by taking a look at the many facets of African American contribution here in Mississippi.”
The material is as old as time. Some of it, the method is as new as right now. The message, the contribution of a culture to our state and the world is timeless.
The app is available on Google Play and the Apple App Store.
