‘HIDDEN HISTORY’ BOOK SERIES BRINGS UNKNOWN ASPECTS OF THE MAGNOLIA STATE TO LIFE

By Kelli Anthony

Fighting the national stigma of negative media attention and a challenging and unfavorable past for the Magnolia State, a Mississippi State faculty member is using his writing and communication skills to help create a restored future for Mississippi. In their “hidden history” book series, Josh Foreman––a Department of Communication instructor and advisor to MSU’s student newspaper, The Reflector––and Ryan Starrett, a high school educator and Foreman’s lifelong friend, offer audiences an opportunity to learn about state history through closely researched and fact-based storytelling. Writing the series has been a journey for the two Mississippians who are excited to fulfill their writing dreams.

Foreman and Starrett became friends at a young age when they attended the same tumbling class in Jackson. Because of the boys’ friendship, Foreman’s and Starrett’s parents also became friends––fostering the boys’ relationship though they lived in different areas of Jackson and attended separate high schools.

When it came time for college, Foreman enrolled at MSU and Starrett went to the University of Dallas, but the two kept in contact. As a student, Foreman spent much of his time at The Reflector, starting as a writer, then section editor, and finally becoming editor during his senior year.

“Getting involved with The Reflector was one of the top few life-changing decisions I ever made, along with moving to Korea and marrying Melissa,” Foreman said. “Before The Reflector, I had not found my place at MSU or in the world. After working for The Reflector for a couple of years, I realized I had found my community, my friends, my purpose, my future. I had always loved reading. The Reflector––and the communication department––taught me how to write and why writing is important. If I had never walked into The Reflector newsroom in 2003 looking for a job, God only knows how different my life might have turned out.”

During a hiatus from the University of Dallas, Starrett also attended MSU, and Foreman and Starrett had their first opportunity to work together at The Reflector. Foreman said he persuaded Starrett to get involved at the newspaper. While Foreman was editor, Starrett served as an op-ed columnist writing about campus issues from a Christian perspective.

“I was very involved at The Reflector, and when Ryan came to Mississippi State, I told him he would be a great columnist, and that’s how we got our first opportunity in the writing and editing arena together,” Foreman said.

After graduating from MSU with a bachelor’s degree in communication and a concentration in journalism, Foreman traveled to Seoul, South Korea to teach, write and edit. He lived and worked in Korea for nearly a decade before moving to New Hampshire to complete his Master of Fine Arts degree in writing with a concentration in nonfiction from the University of New Hampshire.

Starrett, on the other hand, graduated from the University of Dallas, and settled in Muenster, Texas, where he taught high school theology, debate and history for seven years. He also pursued other degrees, completing a master’s in theology from the University of Dallas, a master’s in theological studies from Spring Hill College, and a master’s in history from Adams State University.

“Ryan is a scholarly guy,” Foreman said. “He got three master’s degrees, and I got my master’s in writing. For many years we were both studying and continuing to learn. For my MFA, I was studying writing, learning how to be a better writer with a dedicated focus on producing written work and getting published.” write something together.” we started writing, so they had a huge impact. They are an amazing bookstore.”

During that decade apart, they continued to stay in touch, and when they both moved back to Mississippi, they were excited to catch up on life.

However, writing and publishing are two different feats. As Foreman explained, writers write all the time— there is always a new essay or story—but transitioning written work into published work is difficult.

As a result of the success of “Hidden History of Jackson,” Lemuria Books invited Foreman and Starrett to participate in the Mississippi Book Festival. The pair has subsequently participated in the book festival three times since publishing the first book together.

“We met at Broad Street Bakery,” Foreman said. “I was coming out of my MFA with the mindset that it was time to write and be published. So, when Ryan and I both got back to Mississippi, we started talking about writing together, which we’ve been talking about since high school. We have always wanted to write about Mississippi together.”

As they were catching up and talking about working on a project, they began discussing Richard Grant, a British author and journalist who lived in Jackson. At the time, Grant had recently published a popular book titled “Dispatches from Pluto: Lost and Found in the Mississippi Delta.”

Foreman laughingly remembered their naïve idea and said, “We were talking about Richard Grant, and we said, ‘why don’t we just look up his address, go to his house and see if we can meet him?’ So, we left Broad Street, went to his house with a bottle of Buffalo Trace bourbon, because we knew he liked to drink bourbon, and his wife was home, but not Richard. She told us to come back in 30 minutes, and we could meet him. We showed back up 30 minutes later, and he was there. He invited us into his home and talked to us for about half an hour. We decided that day we would

“Getting a publisher to pay you for your work is a big hurdle,” Foreman said. “I had been published a lot before in the journalistic world, but never in the book world. So, I did not know how we were going to make that transition to getting our work published. Ryan had done some writing on the Catholic Church and integration in Jackson, and he told me there was a publisher, the History Press, that publishes local history and had shown interest in publishing his master’s thesis. Ryan suggested we write and send them a book proposal about the hidden history of Jackson since we are both from the Jackson area. So, that’s what we did.”

The duo wrote their historical narrative book proposal about Jackson, and sent it to the History Press. The publisher liked the proposal and agreed to publish the work. Foreman and Starrett were excited to get started.

“We had a book contract with about a year to work on the book,” Foreman said. “We started digging into the history of Jackson, and Ryan wrote a little bit about the Catholic Church and integration, and integration more generally. We chose stories about Mississippi’s somewhat rough frontier past, race issues and slavery. We had never written anything together before, so we had to work on getting our voices to match. We were writing parts of chapters and trying to edit them together. We submitted it to the History Press. Thankfully, they liked it and published it in 2018.”

Mississippians embraced “Hidden History of Jackson,” and Jackson residents especially enjoyed reading it. Lemuria Books in Jackson held a book signing for the authors with a large turnout, and that support helped solidify the duo’s success.

“Lemuria promoted us.” explained Foreman. “They have been our biggest supporter aside from our publisher since

The History Press was pleased and told Foreman and Starrett they would consider publishing more of their work. The duo subsequently wrote a series of other “Hidden History” books, including “Hidden History of the Mississippi Sound” in 2019, “Hidden History of New Orleans” in 2020, “Hidden History of Natchez” in 2021, and “Hidden History of the Mississippi Delta” in 2023. Foreman and Starrett also wrote “Dallas Tough” in 2020 and “Death Along the Natchez Trace” in 2022.

“We’ve had a lot of success with our books,” Foreman said. “Unfortunately, the ‘Hidden History of New Orleans’ came out right as the pandemic began, so we did not get to complete our press tour for the book. It was disappointing, but it was out of our control.”

Writing with a partner creates interesting challenges. Foreman enjoys writing narratives, and Starrett likes to write about politics and history. To write with each other, they melded both interests into the narrative history genre.

“Finding a way to mesh our writing was challenging at first,” Foreman said. “After writing the first chapter, we realized that if we plan the chapters together and write separately, it was usually easier to have them fit together. So, for me, I love to write little personal stories with drama, so I will always look for a little personal story that might not be historically significant but is entertaining. Ryan has written a lot about politics in the early Gulf Coast colonial days. He likes to take well-known historical stories and find a unique and interesting angle to tell a more wellknown story.”

It’s not lost on Foreman that Mississippi often has been written about negatively. Writing about Mississippi’s history from a factual, historical perspective was important to him. He sees his writing as an important aspect of his professional growth and personal fulfillment. It also is important that their books build relationships with Mississippians and reflect positively on the state.

“We write about Mississippi. It’s a small state. It doesn’t get a lot of positive attention. We try to make our books as interesting as we can, and we believe that is a service to the state because no one else is doing it. If there is someone out there who is interested in learning about Mississippi and wants to know some interesting stories about Mississippi, we’re filling that niche. I’m a sixthgeneration Mississippian, and I love telling our stories,” Foreman said.

Foreman’s and Starrett’s forthcoming book, “Wicked Mississippi,” is a true crime book compiled with crime stories. According to Foreman, many in the book were well-known in their respective eras, but many Mississippians will be surprised to read about some of the crimes that have taken place and been forgotten about over time.

“With these crime stories, a lot of them, they kind of fade away, and people don’t remember them as much because they didn’t have a huge historical impact,” said Foreman. “I bet you could ask 1,000 Mississippians, and no one would have ever heard many of these stories.”

“Wicked Mississippi” is slated to release in summer 2024. l

Josh Foreman is a print and digital communication instructor in MSU’s Department of Communication and serves as the advisor of The Reflector. He is married to Melissa Hubley, whom he met while working in South Korea. The couple have three children––Keeland, Genevieve and Ulrich.

Ryan Starrett teaches at his high school alma mater, St. Joseph Catholic School in Madison. He and his wife Jackie have two children––Joseph and Penelope. Interestingly, Joseph, 10, was the photographer for several photos in two of Foreman’s and Starrett’s books.