Organization
The Sweet Potato Queens concept has been explained and made popular by a series of books by Jill Conner Browne, born in Tupelo and raised in Jackson, who came up with the idea in 1982. (Browne is the author of a number of books which form the backbone of the Sweet Potato Queen "movement.") It involves a belief in a sisterhood that promotes self esteem and positive thinking, appealing to mostly middle-aged middle-class women. As John Ray, the ordering manager at Politics and Prose in Washington once said of the Sweet Potato Queen books, "they began to empower women." In 2005, almost ten thousand women dressed up in costumes and came to Jackson for the annual Hal and Mal's St. Patrick’s Day parade, proceeds from which benefited a local children’s hospital.
Each local chapter assumes its own theme and designs its own costumes. Some of the chapters participate in parades and fund-raisers in their local communities.
Read more about this topic: Sweet Potato Queens
Famous quotes containing the word organization:
“Politics, as a practise, whatever its professions, has always been the systematic organization of hatreds.”
—Henry Brooks Adams (1838–1918)
“To fight oppression, and to work as best we can for a sane organization of society, we do not have to abandon the state of mind of freedom. If we do that we are letting the same thuggery in by the back door that we are fighting off in front of the house.”
—John Dos Passos (1896–1970)
“Democracy is the wholesome and pure air without which a socialist public organization cannot live a full-blooded life.”
—Mikhail Gorbachev (b. 1931)