Elise E. Morse-Gagné, James D. Johnson, Patricks D. Johnson, and Jarvis McInnis
 

Little or no research has been published on African American English (AAE) in Mississippi.  One stumbling block is the fact that the speech community is not well known to most linguists.  Informed sociolinguistic accounts rely on an awareness of the community’s shared experiences, knowledge, and values, and on an understanding of how the community defines itself and what linguistic features and boundaries are salient to group members.  As a step towards the description of Mississippi AAE, then, we need first to describe the speech community itself. 
            The current paper aims to present relevant information about the speech community that may not be readily identified or accessed by outsiders.  The lead author, as a white northerner, is such an outsider; the paper is accordingly co-authored by three undergraduates from a Mississippi HBCU.  One discusses integration and education from the perspective of a Gulf Coast resident; one presents information on the important Mississippi Delta region; and the third describes the enduring Mississippi-Chicago axis.  Each presenter also addresses topics of broad interest throughout the state, such as the role of the black church, dialect regions within Mississippi, family ties, and race relations.  The lead author, as well as providing the paper’s framework, gives the results of Preston-style perceptual dialectology surveys conducted among Mississippi African American undergraduates.
            We hope that this paper will not only provide important background information for future studies of Mississippi AAE, but will also stimulate Mississippi students to pursue sociolinguistic research in their region.