What Is Pine Hills Folklife?
Folklife is traditional knowledge, skills, stories, and ways of doing things that are handed down from one generation to the next, by word of mouth or by example. Members of a particular group–whether ethnic, regional, religious, or occupational–share a unique culture through their folk traditions. Mississippi is often divided into four cultural regions: the Delta, the Hills, Piney Woods (or Pine Hills), and the Gulf Coast. Southern Mississippi’s Pine Hills area includes all or part of thirty-two counties. These regions of the state refer not just to geographic areas, but to distinctive cultural areas. Throughout the years, the Pine Hills region has been home to many different groups: Choctaw, Anglo-Scots-Irish, African-Americans, and (in smaller numbers) Greeks, Lebanese, Syrians, and Jews. All of these cultural groups have maintained a number of their own traditions that distinguish them from other ethnic groups in the area. But people who live in the Pine Hills also share many cus
