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This photograph was taken on September 24, 2011 at the Mississippi Pecan Festival during the festival's mule pull competi- tion. The Mississippi Mule Puller's Associa- tion hosts the annual competition at the Pecan Festival, which is currently in its 25th year in Richton, Mississippi. It fea- tures around twenty teams of mules from across the state. The rules of the event are simple: heavy weights are loaded onto a sled, and as soon as the team of mules is attached to the sled and commanded by their teamster to pull, they have three tries to pull the weight a certain distance. The team that can pull the most weight within its division is the winner. As a cover image of the Southeastern Geographer, the image represents the mule as a forgotten symbol of the Southeast, but it also shows the re- spect that a crowd of 4,000 spectators had on this day for these four-legged cham- pions of the Southern farm.
The mythology of the mule has been built upon stories of poverty and strenuous work (Arnold 2008). Bred between a male donkey and a female horse, the mule has been continuously bred on...