Longtime Blues Preservation Organization Garners Prestigious Oakley Award

Mt. Zion Memorial Fund wins the Oakley Award 

from the Association for Gravestone Studies

The MZMF erected the marker for Charley Patton in 1991

The award winning work of the Mt. Zion Memorial Fund continues through the July 29 dedication of a memorial to eminent recording artist Armenter Chatmon (aka Bo Carter), of the Mississippi Sheiks, at the abandoned Nitta Yuma Cemetery in Nitta Yuma, Mississippi - To learn more and support this, please click HERE or GoFundMe

We are also currently working with St. John MB Church in Camden, MS to erect a memorial to Belton Sutherland, who folklorist Worth Long and Alan Lomax featured in the film The Land Where the Blues Began. To learn more, please click HERE or GoFundMe

Ruth and Moore first collaborated on the discovery of
the military marker of Son Simms in 2014, but Ruth's
coimetromania extends much farther back and connects
to his love for older photographic processes.

The Board of Trustees of the Association for Gravestone Studies (AGS) has unanimously approved the nomination to award Euphus Ruth a Fred Oakley Award both for your dedicated photographic investigation of the rural and abandoned graveyards throughout the Mississippi Delta. In addition, to your creative work, T. DeWayne Moore, who nominated you, convinced the board that your work with the Mount Zion Memorial Fund extends the necessity of this award. There you have provided important research, identification and preservation of prominent African American musicians' graves. The unearthed and restored markers and newly identified graves have helped to renew several African American burial grounds in your area. Indeed, you are an inspiration! 

We thank you for your work for and on such important historic and fragile cemeteries. Your award will be presented at the annual conference of the AGS at the University of Alabama this spring. 

With kind regards, 

Anne Tait Chair Awards Committee