Providence

Hailed as Will Campbell's most literary work, Providence chronicles the more than 170-year history of a square mile of plantation land in Holmes County, Mississippi. Shifting between history and autobiography, Campbell illustrates the quest for justice among the Choctaws, African-Americans, and Whites on the parcel of land designated Section 13. From the forcible removal of native Choctaws, to slavery and sharecropping on the Providence Plantation, to an interracial cooperative farm in the 1930s-50s, and finally to the present-day ownership by the Department of the Interior, Providence, according to Campbell, "has seen a lot. In a way its saga is the story of the nation."

Will D. Campbell is widely considered one of the nation's most important commentators on race, religion, and community. The only white minister at the creation of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, Campbell was actively involved in the Civil Rights movement in the South. A graduate of Wakeforest University and Yale Divinity School, Campbell has authored seventeen books. His Brother to a Dragonfly was a finalist for the National Book Award and was named by Time magazine as one of the ten most notable books of the 1970s. Winner of the Lillian Smith Prize, the Lyndhurst Prize, and the Alex Haley Award, Campbell was the subject of a recent PBS documentary entitled "God's Will."