Examining the lives of individuals - freedmen, planters, and merchants - Willis explores the reciprocal interests of former slaves and former slaveholders. He shows how, in a cruel irony replicated in other areas of the South, the backbreaking work that African Americans did to clear, settle, and farm the land away from the river made the land ultimately too valuable for them to retain.
An immensely pleasurable book that unlocks the door to one of the most unusual and diverse regions in the United States, the culturally rich Delta flatland embraced by two rivers, the Mississippi and the Yazoo
This environmental history of the Yazoo-Mississippi Delta places the Delta's economic and cultural history in an environmental context. It reveals the human aspects of the region's natural history, including land reclamation, slave and sharecropper economies, ethnic and racial perceptions of land ownership and stewardship, and even blues music.
This first book to make a detailed exploration of the system of riverboat traffic of the Delta region, "Steamboats and the Cotton Economy" is also the first balanced study showing how steamboats in the early years of the republic performed essentially the same role that railroads would later perform in revolutionizing the interior of the nation. Today, the mention of steamboats conjures up romantic visions of cotton landings and mythological river traders. Some of the steamboats plying the Mississippi-Yazoo Delta waterways give form to the myth. Others call forth the true work-a-day world of steamers loaded with passengers, freight, and sacks of cotton seed. Such ubiquitous trade boats, cotton, gin boats, sawmills boats, as well as ice and mail boats, not only helped to build the Cotton Kingdom but also added rich texture and color to the history of the Delta. In discovering the role of steamboats in the everyday life of the Mississippi Delta, this book reveals the vital economic
"Cotton obsessed, Negro obsessed," Rupert Vance called it in 1935. "Nowhere but in the Mississippi Delta," he said, "are antebellum conditions so nearly preserved." This crescent of bottomlands between Memphis and Vicksburg, lined by the Yazoo and Mississippi rivers, remains in some ways what it was in 1860: a land of rich soil, wealthy planters, and desperate poverty--the blackest and poorest counties in all the South. And yet it is a cultural treasure house as well--the home of Muddy Waters, B.B. King, Charley Pride, Walker Percy, Elizabeth Spencer, and Shelby Foote. Painting a fascinating portrait of the development and survival of the Mississippi Delta, a society and economy that is often seen as the most extreme in all the South, James C. Cobb offers a comprehensive history of the Delta, from its first white settlement in the 1820s to the present. Exploring the rich black culture of the Delta, Cobb explains how it survived and evolved in the midst of poverty and oppression, beginning with the first settlers in the overgrown, disease-ridden Delta before the Civil War to the bitter battles and incomplete triumphs of the civil rights era. In this comprehensive account, Cobb offers new insight into "the most southern place on earth," untangling the enigma of grindingly poor but prolifically creative Mississippi Delta.
After six failed attempts to reach Vicksburg, General Ulysses S. Grant developed a plan. The Yazoo Pass Expedition was a Union army/navy operation meant to bypass Vicksburg by using the backwaters of the Mississippi Delta. Operations began on February 3, 1863, with a levee breach on the Mississippi River. The expedition was delayed as a result of natural obstacles and Confederate resistance, which allowed the Confederate army under Lieutenant General John Pemberton to block passage of the Federal fleet. The Confederates continued to rebuff the fleet and finally defeated it in the spring. Larry McCluney examines the expedition from start to finish in never-before-seen detail.
New Yorkers Grant and his girlfriend Mariah decided on a whim to buy an old plantation house in the Mississippi Delta. This is their journey of discovery to a remote, isolated strip of land, three miles beyond the tiny community of Pluto. They learn to hunt, grow their own food, and fend off alligators, snakes, and varmints galore. They befriend an array of unforgettable local characters, capture the rich, extraordinary culture of the Delta, and delve deeply into the Delta's lingering racial tensions. As the nomadic Grant learns to settle down, he falls not just for his girlfriend but for the beguiling place they now call home.
The Mississippi Delta is a complicated and fascinating place. Part travel guide, part cookbook, and part photo essay, Eat Drink Delta by veteran food journalist Susan Puckett (with photographs by Delta resident Langdon Clay) reveals a region shaped by slavery, civil rights, amazing wealth, abject deprivation, the Civil War, a flood of biblical proportions, and—above all—an overarching urge to get down and party with a full table and an open bar. There’s more to Delta dining than southern standards. Puckett uncovers the stories behind convenience stores where dill pickles marinate in Kool-Aid and diners where tabouli appears on plates with fried chicken. She celebrates the region’s hot tamale makers who follow the time-honored techniques that inspired many a blues lyric. And she introduces us to a new crop of Delta chefs who brine chicken in sweet tea and top stone-ground Mississippi grits with local pond-raised prawns and tomato confit. The guide also provides a taste of events such as Belzoni’s World Catfish Festival and Tunica’s Wild Game Cook-Off and offers dozens of tested recipes, including the Memphis barbecue pizza beloved by Elvis and a lemon ice-box pie inspired by Tennessee Williams. To William Faulkner’s suggestion, “To understand the world, you must first understand a place like Mississippi,” Susan Puckett adds this advice: Go to the Delta with an open mind and an empty stomach. Make your way southward in a journey measured in meals, not miles.
