Mississippi Delta
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Mississippi Delta is the distinct northwest section of the state of Mississippi that lies between the Mississippi and Yazoo Rivers. Technically not a delta but part of an alluvial plain, it has been said that The Delta "begins in the lobby of the Peabody Hotel (in Memphis) and ends on Catfish Row in Vicksburg" (various writers have been attributed with composing this memorable line, but most often David Cohn is credited with the saying). This region, created by regular flooding over thousands of years, is remarkably flat and contains some of the most fertile soil in the world. It includes Washington, DeSoto, Humphreys, Carroll, Issaquena, Panola, Quitman, Bolivar, Coahoma, Leflore, Sunflower, Sharkey, Tunica, Tallahatchie, Holmes, and Yazoo counties.
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[edit] Music
The Delta is strongly associated with the origins of several genres of popular music, including the Delta blues, jazz, and rock and roll, as well as with extreme levels of poverty [1] [2] [3].
Bluesman Robert Johnson's official grave site is at Mount Zion Baptist Church in Morgan City, but it is heavily debated if this is his actual final resting place. There are numerous towns and churches throughout the delta that claim to be the site of his grave.
[edit] Agriculture and the Delta economy
For over two centuries, agriculture has been the mainstay of the Delta economy. Sugar cane and rice were introduced to the region from the Caribbean in the eighteenth century. Sugar production was centered in southern Louisiana, along with rice, and later in the Arkansas Delta. Early agriculture also included limited tobacco production in the Natchez area and indigo in lower Mississippi. What began as back bending land clearing by yeoman farmers supported by their extensive families, quickly developed into a labor intensive plantation system based initially on Native American and later on African slave labor in the eighteenth century.
The emergence of the cotton gin revolutionized the production of cotton and by the early 19th century cotton had become the Delta’s premier crop, and would remain so until the American Civil War. Though cotton planters believed that the alluvial soils of the Mississippi Delta region would always renew, the agricultural boom from the 1830s to the late 1850s caused extensive soil exhaustion and erosion. Yet, lacking agricultural research, planters continued to raise cotton the same way after the Civil War.
Following the Civil War, sharecropping and tenant farming replaced the slave-dependent, labor intensive plantation system. This labor system inhibited the use of progressive agricultural techniques. In the late 19th century, the clearing and drainage of wetlands, especially in Arkansas and the Missouri Bootheel, increased lands available for tenant farming and sharecropping. Lower Delta agriculture evolved during the twentieth century into large farms owned by nonresident corporate entities. These heavily mechanized, low labor, and capital-intensive farm entities, consisting of hundreds and thousands of acres, produce market-driven crops such as cotton, sugar, rice, and soybeans.
During the 1920s and 1930s, in the aftermath of the increasing mechanization of Delta farms, displaced whites and African-Americans began to leave the land and move to towns and cities. It was not until the Great Depression years of the 1930s that large scale farm mechanization came to the region, but farm mechanization did not occur overnight in the Delta. The mechanization of agriculture and the availability of domestic work outside the Delta spurred the migration of Delta residents out of the region. Farming was unable to absorb the available labor force and entire families moved together.
From the late 1930s through the 1950s, the Delta experienced an agriculture boom, as wartime needs followed by reconstruction in Europe expanded the demand for the Delta region’s farm products. As the mechanization of agriculture continued, women continued to leave the fields and go into service work, while the men drove tractors and worked on the farms. From the 1960s through the 1990s, thousands of small farms and dwellings in the Delta region were absorbed by large corporate-owned agribusinesses, and the smallest Delta communities have stagnated.
Scattered remnants of the region’s agrarian heritage are scattered along the highways and byways of the lower Delta. Larger communities have survived by fostering economic development in education, government, and medicine. Other endeavors such as catfish, poultry, rice, corn, and soybean farming have assumed greater importance. Today, the monetary value of these crops rivals that of cotton production in the lower Mississippi Delta.
In recent years, due to the growth of the automobile industry in the South, many parts suppliers have opened facilities in the Delta (as well as on the Arkansas side of the Mississippi River, another area of high poverty). Moreover, the 1990s legalization of casino gambling in Mississippi has boosted the Delta's economy, particularly in the areas of Tunica and Vicksburg.
[edit] Principal towns
[edit] Famous Deltans
- Haley Barbour, Mississippi Governor and former RNC Chairman
- Fred Carl, Jr., Founder and CEO of Viking Range
- Sam Cooke, musician
- Dave “Boo” Ferriss, professional baseball player
- Shelby Foote, author and historian
- Morgan Freeman, Actor
- Jim Gallagher, Jr., professional golfer
- Lawrence Gordon, Movie Producer
- Jim Henson, Muppets creator
- Kent Hull, professional football player
- Robert Johnson, blues musician
- James Earl Jones, Actor
- B.B. King, blues musician
- Archie Manning, professional football player
- Willie Morris, author
- Leroy Percy, U.S. Senator
- William Alexander Percy, author
- John Walter Sharbrough, III, attorney
- Frederick W. Smith, CEO, FedEx
- Ike Turner, musician
- Muddy Waters, blues musician
- Eudora Welty, author and photographer
- Tennessee Williams, playwright
- Zig Ziglar, inspirational speaker
[edit] Festivals
Festivals are important to the Mississippi Delta region, allowing each town or community the opportunity to celebrate their unique heritage. Following is a list of various festivals in the Delta:
March
- Italian Festival of Mississippi (Cleveland)
April
- Rivergate Festival (Tunica)
- World Catfish Festival (Belzoni)
- Leland Crawfish Festival (Leland)
- Crosstie Arts & Jazz Festival (Cleveland)
May
- Deep Delta Blues Festival (Rolling Fork)
- River to the Rails Festival (Greenwood)
- Mainstream Arts & Crafts Festival (Greenville)
- Summerfest (Hollandale)
- Showfest (Greenville)
June
- B.B. King Homecoming Festival (Indianola)
- Highway 61 Blues Festival (Leland)
- Delta Jubilee (Clarksdale)
July
- First Friday Jazz Festival (Greenville)
August
- Sunflower River Blues Festival (Clarksdale)
September
- Delta Air and Balloon Festival (Greenville)
- Mississippi Delta Blues and Heritage Festival
October
- Great Delta Bear Affair [4]
- Octoberfest (Cleveland)
December
- Roy Martin Delta Band Festival (Greenwood)
[edit] Education
Universities
- University of Mississippi ([5])
- Delta State University ([6])
- Mississippi Valley State University ([7])
Community Colleges
[edit] Media and publishing
Newspapers, Magazines and Journals
- Belzoni Banner (published weekly) ([10])
- Delta Magazine (published bi-monthly) ([11])
- Delta Business Journal (published monthly) ([12])
- Clarksdale Press Register (published daily) ([13])
- Cleveland Bolivar Commercial (published daily) ([14])
- Greenville Delta Democrat Times (published daily) ([15])
- Greenwood Commonwealth (published daily) ([16])
- The Tunica Times (published weekly) ([17])
Television
- WABG (Greenwood)
- WXVT (Greenville)
Northern Delta served by Memphis TV Stations.
[edit] Transportation
Air Transportation
- Tunica Municipal Airport (Tunica) ([18])
- Mid Delta Regional Airport (Greenville)
- Greenwood-Leflore Airport (Greenwood)
- Cleveland Municipal Airport (Cleveland)
- Indianola Municipal Airport (Indianola)
- Yazoo County Airport (Yazoo City)
- Fletcher Field Airport (Clarksdale)
Highways
- U.S. Route 82 runs from Alamogordo, New Mexico to Brunswick, Georgia
- U.S. Route 49 runs from Piggott, Arkansas to Gulfport, Mississippi
- U.S. Route 61 runs from Wyoming, Minnesota to New Orleans, Louisiana
[edit] Appearance in culture
- The Mississippi Delta is the setting for several stories by William Faulkner, most notably The Bear from Go Down, Moses.
- The Paul Simon song "Graceland", from an album of the same name, memorably begins with the line "The Mississippi Delta was shining like a national guitar".
- Crossroads starring Ralph Macchio (The Karate Kid) is a movie that is loosely based on bluesman Robert Johnson.
- Down in the Delta was a 1998 film directed by Maya Angelou and starring Alfre Woodard about a woman from the city who moves with her children to the rural Delta.
[edit] Sources
- Nile of the New World, John Gunther, National Park Service
[edit] External links
- Mississippi Teacher Corps
- Documentary about the Delta
- Mississippi Delta Tourism Association
- Blues Highway Association
- Delta Center for Culture and Learning
- Delta Council
- Delta Regional Authority
- About Greenwood, Mississippi
- Mississippi Delta Blues Society of Indianola
