Morgan Freeman

This from Arkansas Business' Sam Eifling:

Looking for a Southerner to embody the best of Southern culture — and to garner enough attention to fill $500 seats at a fund-raising gala — the Oxford American found its man in Morgan Freeman, who on April 3 will accept the magazine's inaugural award for Outstanding Contributions to Southern Culture.

 "This is a big day for the Oxford American and for Little Rock as well," OA publisher Warwick Sabin said Tuesday, Feb. 2, at the Capital Hotel, which will host the gala and its concomitant receptions.

 The announcement was timed to coincide with the release of this year's Oscar nominees. Freeman received his fifth nod for his portrayal of Nelson Mandela in Invictus. He won in 2005 for his supporting role in Million Dollar Baby.

Sabin, though, pointed to Freeman's ongoing presence in his home state of Mississippi as a larger factor in his selection. Freeman owns the Ground Zero Blues Club and the restaurant Madidi in Clarksdale, Miss., and in 2008, 11 years after he first offered, he financed the first integrated prom in his hometown Charleston, Miss.

With 200 seats available, Sabin said, the event could raise some 20 percent of the non-profit OA's annual operating budget, if successful.

He also announced that the magazine's Lifetime Achievement Award in Southern Literature, given just once previously, to Donald Harington in 2006, will, like the culture award, become an annual rite. The literature award will also be presented at the gala, and will carry with it a $10,000 cash prize, "which will make it one of the most prestigious literary awards in the nation," Sabin said.