Exhibits

In 1984, Ann Jefcoat Rayburn donated several thousand postcards, trade cards, and sheet music from the late 1800's to the mid-1900's to the Department of Archives and Special Collections at the University of Mississippi. A wonderful source for cultural historians, the postcards and sheet music range thematically from holidays to town views to novelty items. Featured in both the online and onsite exhibit in Special Collections are several examples of patriotic cards and sheet music from her collection.

This exhibit also included a "holographic stanza" from Irving Berlin's "God Bless America" taken from "The Book of Gold."

An extraordinary autograph album and scrapbook, Eric Dawson kept "The Book of Gold" throughout much of his adult life. A Mississippi native, Dawson graduated from the University of Mississippi in 1908. Later he taught French at his alma mater. During World War I, Dawson served with the American YMCA in its "Foyers des Soldat" (Soldier's Club) program in France. Initially he worked in Pierrefitte, a small village in the Lorraine where Dawson began his unique book by inscribing "Foyer du Soldat de Pierrefitte" on the title page. In 1918, he joined the United States Army as a private, later becoming a sergeant in the Intelligence Corps. Beginning in the First World War and continuing through the early 1940s, Dawson collected a dazzling array of signature, autograph sentiments, signed musical notations, autograph poems, pen and pencil drawings, watercolor sketches, political documents, original photographs, and war-time ephemera. Contributors include many important writers (Ezra Pound, Thomas Mann, Rudyard Kipling, and William Faulkner), political and military figures (Winston Churchill, Marshall Foch, John Pershing, Douglas McArthur, and Woodrow Wilson), composers (W.C. Handy, Cole Porter, Igor Stravinsky, and Sergei Rachmanioff), figures from the arts (Howard Chandler Christy and Henri Matisse) and science (Albert Einstein), as well as from film and stage (Sarah Bernhardt, Lillian Gish, and Tallulah Bankhead) and sport (Jack Dempsey). The piece featured on display is an original holograph stanza form Irving Berlin's "God Bless America."