Where I Was Born and Raised
by David Cohn (1948) nonfiction

Delta whites, hill whites, negroes. Chinese, Syrians, Jews, Italians, croppers, rednecks, peckerwoods and po’ white trash. Who are these disparate people and how did they function interdependently in early Greenville without overt warfare? As a child of the Delta, Cohn took the apparent peace for granted, but when he returned after two decades "up north" the question fascinated him. He began Part 1 of Where I Was Born and Raised as a separate book entitled God Shakes Creation, published in 1935. Part 2 was inspired by the many changes WWII brought with the influx of newcomers and a returning generation’s exposure to the world beyond the Delta. Where I Was Born and Raised  is a beautifully written compendium of observations and stories gleaned from Cohn’s many years of interviews with Deltans from all walks of life. Because he was both outsider and native, Cohn’s book is relatively unbiased yet insightful, filled with wit and wisdom. Here are the codes of conduct among the races and classes that are the foundation the Delta’s culture today, whether individuals observe or rebel against them, consciously or unconsciously. (OP $ varies)

The Mississippi Delta and the World: The Memoirs of David L. Cohn
edited by James Cobb (nonfiction)

Cohn began his memoir in 1953, but failed to finalize the drafts before his death in 1960. Historian James Cobb finished the task, publishing Cohn's memoir in 1995. Mississippi Delta and the World includes Cohn's narrative through 1934. Cobb continues Cohn's life story and analyzes his literary career. (cloth $34.95)
 

Trials of the Earth: The Autobiography of Mary Hamilton
by Mary Hamilton; forward by Ellen Douglas (1992)nonfiction/memoir

Popular southern mythology would have one believe the Delta frontier was tamed exclusively by the slaves of white planters. Mary Hamilton's memoir of pioneer life in the Delta calls attention to a forgotten group: poor white settlers. Trials of the Earth is an extraordinary account of courage and hardship. Born in 1867, and married at age 18 to a mysterious Englishman 12 years her senior, Hamilton faced mind numbing labor, terrifying floods and fires, and the tragic deaths of four of her ten children – often alone. As homesteaders, her family wasn’t chasing the horizon for a better life. They were simply surviving in the Delta’s virgin land, teeming with wild animals, thick with cane and old growth timber that had to be cleared. (OP cloth and softcover, $ varies)
 

Forgotten Time: The Yazoo-Mississippi Delta after the Civil War
by John C. Willis (nonfiction)

For most post Civil War Deltans, survival was less a matter of reconstruction than a matter of original construction, of breaking new ground, of claiming rather than reclaiming. According to Willis, the Delta was "Mississippi's Mississippi," and our strongest link to the rest of the South was not post-war trauma, but cotton production. While the handful of post-bellum Delta planters struggled with acute labor shortages and 750% to 1200% tax increases, an influx of regional migrants and international immigrants found unbounded opportunities. Willis writes that from 1865 t0 1920, "change was the clearest certainty" in the Delta. "If we are to tell about the [modern] South, we must first understand the Delta." Impressively researched and documented, Forgotten Time reflects Willis's stated philosophy of historical study: "rather than impose our contemporary perspectives on the men and women of the frontier Delta... we should approach their world as they encountered it." (cloth $55.00)
 

Worse Than Slavery: Parchman Farm and the Ordeal of Jim Crow Justice
by David M. Oshinsky (nonfiction)

Worse Than Slavery identifies and examines the roots of Southern racial distrust in general, through the history of Mississippi's penal system in particular. With an inmate population of black males always predominant, the state prison has periodically been a national model of reform as well as disgrace. In 1904,  the Parchman penal farm (a profitable 20,0000 acre Delta plantation) replaced a forced labor leasing system that had effectively extended slavery into the Reconstruction era and beyond. For the next half-century Parchman "was a powerful link to the past -  a place of racial discipline where blacks in striped clothing worked the cotton fields for the enrichment of others... until the civil rights movement methodically swept it away." Worse Than Slavery represents a full range of perspectives. The voices seem timeless, perhaps because many circumstances and resentments have changed little despite two centuries of social evolution. (paper $14.00 )
 

The Delta Italians:  Their Pursuit of "The Better Life" and Their Struggle Against Mosquitoes, Floods, and Prejudice
by Paul Canonici

Italian immigrants and their descendants have enriched the Arkansas and Mississippi Deltas for more than one hundred years. With sensitivity, respect and good humor, The Delta Italians chronicles the lives, culture and events of the remarkable people so many Deltans call family. Canonici’s extensive research includes both Italian and American historical documents and oral histories. Maps and family pictures further enhance the eloquent text that opens with Chico County’s Sunnyside Plantation east of Lake Village in 1895. Where and what Italian immigrants came from, how they arrived in the Delta and what their life was like in the "land of opportunity" carries the imagination through years of bitter hardship, discrimination, bare subsistence and exploitation. These resilient, industrious, pioneering families spread into plantations and towns beyond Chico County and into settlements throughout the Mississippi Delta, becoming an integral part of the region’s history. (cloth $50.00)
 

Where Main Street Meets the River: The Personal Testament of a Man Who Has Become the Spokesman for the New South
by Hodding Carter, Jr. (1953) nonfiction/memoir

Carter was publisher/editor of The Delta Democrat Times newspaper of Greenville when America was on the brink of the Civil Rights movement. He presents Greenville as an atypical oasis of relative tolerance in the days of Jim Crow, but Carter’s opinions on what was then called "the racial question" were considered radical enough to earn death threats. To the world press, rather than assuming the stance of apologist for the South, he committed the treason of acknowledging the region’s shortcomings. Never mind that at the same time he pointed out the hypocrisy of the South’s critics.  Ironically, those who would take his words out of the context of the era regard him today as moderate at best, yet many of this world-wise citizen’s observations of human nature and institutions remain true. Carter represents the transition from Old South to New South. (OP $ varies)

The Most Southern Place on Earth: The Mississippi Delta and the Roots of Regional Identity
by James C. Cobb (1992) nonfiction

The author pulls together Delta mythology, politics, literature, and historical facts to paint a vivid portrait of the area. Cobb contends that the Delta, rather than trailing the nation in social change, has actually been a microcosm of progress. Deltans have found so much truth and inspiration in this book that they've borrowed the title to promote the region. (softcover $25.95; cloth OP $ varies)
 

This Delta, This Land: An Environmental History of the Yazoo-Mississippi Floodplain
by Mikko Saikku (2005) nonfiction

The Delta’s unique environment seems to change little over a lifetime, but environmental historians think in terms of eras, not decades. Saikku explains how the prehistoric Delta’s land formed, how the terrain influenced life here, and how living things – including people – have affected the land. The terrain and life are too interdependent to study separately. Deltans have found this book fascinating as they rediscover a land they may have taken for granted. (softcover $22.95)
 

The Celestial Jukebox
by Cynthia Shearer (2004) fiction

The Delta has always been an ethnic melting pot. Shearer uses this reality to create the fictitious dying Delta community of Madagascar, Mississippi. The hamlet’s social hub is Celestial Grocery amid flat fields once yielding crops that surpassed all a planter's debts. The little country store is run by an aging Chinese immigrant who, along with his neighbors, face contemporary challenges. Shearer's finely nuanced characters defy Old South stereotypes. An essential, constant thread in the story is the music of the Delta – blues classics, tunes on the vintage Celestial Grocery jukebox, music of gospel meetings, and the sounds blasting along Highway 61 today. The Celestial Jukebox offers an unflinching but compassionate portrait of a legendary culture’s living spirit, today. (cloth $25.00; softcover $18.95)
 

Barefootin’: Life Lessons from the Road to Freedom
by Unita Blackwell with JoAnne Pritchard Morris (2006) nonfiction/memoir

In more ways than mere geography, Unita Blackwell has journeyed far from the Delta where she was born in 1933. Barefootin’ is not only one African American woman’s recollection of the people and events that nurtured and challenged her to break racial, economic and sexist barriers in the 1960's, it's also the story of the transformation of an entire generation of Deltans. Among her many accomplishments, the now legendary Blackwell became Mississippi’s first black female mayor in 1976, serving the Delta town of Mayersville for twenty years. She and co-writer JoAnne Prichard Morris have created a memoir with a voice as warm, direct, and as fascinating as the indomitable Unita Blackwell, herself. (OP cloth $23.00)
 

Rising Tide: The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 and How it Changed America
by John M. Barry (1997) nonfiction

Barry illustrates the historical significance of the Mississippi River to not only the South but to the United States. He dramatically describes human attempts to control the river, and vividly portrays the cultures that the river has nourished in the Delta and New Orleans. Considerable attention is devoted to Greenville, Washington County MS, and the role of the Percy family in the region’s politics of the day. While much of this material has been utilized for presentations about the 1927 flood and presented as irrefutable fact since the book’s publication, local historians have noted some discrepancies with primary sources and oral accounts of anecdotal incidents. The late William Alexander Percy continues to be a revered cultural figure in the Delta today, despite Barry's controversial portrayal of this key figure in Washington County's flood relief. (softcover $17.00; cloth OP, $ varies)
 

Blues From the Delta
by William Ferris (nonfiction)

For a window into real Delta blues culture, there’s no better source than Bill Ferris’ Blues From the Delta. This unpretentious volume goes beyond lyric, legend and discology formats to explore the continuum between everyday lives and the music of blues men and women. In the 1960's and 1970's, when juke houses, performers and patrons were ignored or barely tolerated by mainstream black and white Delta cultures, Ferris was visiting Sanctified churches, jukes, Blue Front cafes, and shotgun houses in towns and on turnrows. He carried a tape recorder, camera and respect for the artists he hoped to discover and reveal in his folklore dissertation. Published in its present form in 1978, Blues From the Delta grew from that 1970 academic submission. There are many fine biographies, photo essays and commemorative books on blues performers and regions, this is still the most authentic and vibrant portrait of the soul of traditional Delta blues available. That most of the artists have passed makes Blues From the Delta especially valuable. (softcover $16.50)

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