Willie Morris - (1935-1999)
|
Houston High School
Houston, Mississippi
William W. Morris was born November 29, 1934, in Jackson, Mississippi. When he was six months old, his parents moved to Yazoo City, Mississippi, where he was raised. Morris, a wonderful storyteller, was from a generation that had to struggle while Mississippi was not at its best. Yazoo City, Mississippi, would be the setting of many of Morris's stories.
I. Upbringing, Education, and Professional Life
After his death, Polly Ladshaw, a former Yazoo City resident, remembered Morris fondly. She remembers Morris playing with her nephew, Jimmy Channel, in the neighborhood. He also played behind the National Guard Armory in Yazoo City with his father, who owned a service station, but was not too busy to take time to be with his son. As a high school sophomore, Willie Morris began to show talent in writing. He was the sports editor of the high school yearbook in 1950 and 1951. He earned "Wittiest Boy" because of his sharp mind and sense of humor. He was a member of a variety of school organizations. He was in the National Honor Society, Student Council, and the National Athletic Scholarship Society. Morris was a member of the Boys' Glee Club and made the basketball team. He played the trumpet with the musical ability inherited from his mother. In addition, Morris was also on the baseball team.
After graduating from Yazoo City High School in 1952, Morris later left the Mississippi Delta for the University of Texas in Austin. He was the editor of the student newspaper, The Daily Texan . He was a Rhodes Scholar, studying history at Oxford University. In 1963, Morris became associate editor of Harper's magazine. In 1971, he quit Harper's because of editorial disputes with the owner. Morris's departure followed with a painful divorce, so he moved to Bridgehampton, New York. A few months after leaving New York City, he published Yazoo: Integration in a Deep-Southern Town (1971). He also wrote several books over the next nine years, including the children's classic, Good Old Boy, about his love for the South.
In 1980, Morris came back to his native state to be a writer-in-residence at the University of Mississippi. He wrote The Courting of Marcus Depree, based on a standout football player in Neshoba County. In 1990, Morris married JoAnne Prichard, a long-time friend. She is an astute, imaginative editor at the University Press of Mississippi. After they were married, they moved to Jackson, Mississippi. In 1996, Morris was the winner of the Richard Wright Medal for Literary Excellence. Mississippi author Ellen Douglas says that Morris surrendered to his "call" to return home.
II. Cornea Transplants
Morris died August 2, 1999, following a heart attack in Jackson, Mississippi. He had nearly finished his latest work, a project with his only son, David Rea Morris, about his home state's history and future. He was 64. Morris had a big impact on many lives not only with his writings but also with his corneas, which were donated by his family. Dr. Connie S. McCaa performed transplants using Morris's corneas at the University of Mississippi Medical Center in Jackson on August 17, 1999.
III. Literary Works
Non-Fiction
North Toward Home (1967)
Yahoo: Integration in a Deep Southern Town (1971)
A Southern Album: Recollections of Some People and Places and Times Gone By (1975)
James Jones: A Friendship (1978)
The Courting of Marcus Depree (1983)
Faulkner's Mississippi (1990)
New York Days (1993)
My Dog Skip (1995)
The Ghosts of Medgar Evers: A Tale of Race, Murder, Mississippi, and Hollywood (1998)
Fiction
The Last of the Southern (1973)
Essay Collections
The South Today: 100 Years After Appomattox (1965)
Terrains of the Heart and Other Essays on Home (1981)
Always Stand in Against the Curse and Other Stories (1983)
Homecomings (1989)
After All It's Only a Game (1992)
My Two Oxfords (1992)
Books for Children
Good Old Boy: A Delta Boyhood (1971)
Good Old Boy and the Witch of Yazoo (1989)
IV. Willie Morris on the Web
http://www.olemiss.edu/depts/english/ms-writers/dir/morris_willie/http://www.SHS.Starkville.K12.MS.US/mswm/MSWritersAndMusicians/writers
V. Sources The Associated Press
Daily Journal from August 1999
http://www.yazoo.org
This essay was submitted by students of Beverly Doss, a teacher at Houston High School in Houston, Mississippi.