Restrictions to Access

This collection is not available for immediate or same day access. Please contact Research and Instructional Service staff at wilsonlibrary@unc.edu to discuss options for consulting this collection.

Access to audio and moving image materials may require production of listening or viewing copies.

Restrictions to Use

Permission to exhibit requires consent from the donor. Contact Rex Miller at rexpixfilm@earthlink.net.

Copyright Notice

Copyright is retained by the authors of items in these papers, or their descendants, as stipulated by United States copyright law.

Preferred Citation

[Identification of item], in the Rex Miller Collection #70001, Southern Folklife Collection, The Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Acquisitions Information

Received from Rex Miller in January 2020 (Acc. 20200131.2).

Sensitive Materials Statement

Manuscript collections and archival records may contain materials with sensitive or confidential information that is protected under federal or state right to privacy laws and regulations, the North Carolina Public Records Act (N.C.G.S. § 132 1 et seq.), and Article 7 of the North Carolina State Personnel Act (Privacy of State Employee Personnel Records, N.C.G.S. § 126-22 et seq.). Researchers are advised that the disclosure of certain information pertaining to identifiable living individuals represented in this collection without the consent of those individuals may have legal ramifications (e.g., a cause of action under common law for invasion of privacy may arise if facts concerning an individual's private life are published that would be deemed highly offensive to a reasonable person) for which the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill assumes no responsibility.

Encoded by: Dawne Howard Lucas, June 2021

Since August 2017, we have added ethnic and racial identities for individuals and families represented in collections. To determine identity, we rely on self-identification; other information supplied to the repository by collection creators or sources; public records, press accounts, and secondary sources; and contextual information in the collection materials. Omissions of ethnic and racial identities in finding aids created or updated after August 2017 are an indication of insufficient information to make an educated guess or an individual's preference for identity information to be excluded from description. When we have misidentified, please let us know at wilsonlibrary@unc.edu.

The following terms from Library of Congress Subject Headings suggest topics, persons, geography, etc. interspersed through the entire collection; the terms do not usually represent discrete and easily identifiable portions of the collection--such as folders or items.

Clicking on a subject heading below will take you into the University Library's online catalog.

• African American musicians.
• Blues (Music)--Mississippi.
• Mississippi State Penitentiary.
• Parchman (Miss.)

New York native Rex Miller is a director, photographer and cinematographer of Portuguese, African, Indian, and Jewish descent. Miller's works include All The Blues Gone, a book and CD documenting Mississippi blues culture; the documentaries ALTHEA, SOMAY KU: A Uganda Tennis Story, Ashe '68, Behind These Walls, I’m Walkin’: A Journey Through Parchman, Private Violence and The Loving Story, and the series A Chef's Life and Road to Race Day.

As of 2021, Miller was based in Durham, N.C.

Collection of Durham, N.C.-based photographer and cinematographer Rex Miller, focusing primarily on African American musicians, blues culture in the Mississippi Delta, and the conditions, culture, and lives of inmates and guards at Mississippi State Penitentiary. The materials relate to the creation of the documentary film I’m Walkin’: A Journey Through Parchman and the book and exhibit All the Blues Gone. Formats include: photographic materials (negatives, contact sheets, prints); audio (oral history interviews); video (production elements); papers (correspondence and writings by Parchman inmates, production files, transcripts, and notes), production files, transcripts, and notes. Born digital materials include hard drives and discs of production elements, including video, audio, and text.