“With a black majority that has long remained susceptible to the all the ills that accompany abject poverty, the Mississippi Delta’s quality of life usually comes in at the bottom. Meanwhile, the few at the pinnacle of Delta society are rich, leisured, and cultured. With no middle class to speak of, its masses oppressed, its rich rolling-in-dough, the Mississippi Delta may qualify as “the most southern place on earth.” ~ James C. Cobb
For those that know it well, the Mississippi Delta has been described as the best place in the world. In the same breath, it is categorized as the worst place in the world. The Mississippi Delta is an oxymoron, a contradiction, a fascinating mix of possibility and hopelessness. Its geography is simple. It is the flood plain of the Yazoo and Mississippi Rivers, an abundantly fertile stretch of swamp that begins, in the words of local writer David Cohn, “in the lobby of the Peabody Hotel in Memphis and ends on Catfish Row in Vicksburg.”
That simple description illustrates the polarization that characterizes this region. It truly does begin in the ritzy hotel with the extremely wealthy and end in the shacks relegated to the poorest citizens of our nation. It begins with the white upper class and the poverty that surrounds blacks in the area. Racial segregation in the Delta is a daily reality, one that no one denies or protests. An Indianola teacher told me she prefers it that way- better the devil you know, better the racist you can see.
On the Black side of my town, houses burn down, and stay in piles of charred waste for months. One the way to school each morning I see one such house. If I take a different route home, I can see a different one. The walls have collapsed, the roof is non-existent and a gas tank sits in the front yard. It has been there for one month and counting.
Urban myth has it, that after Hurricane Katrina, Mississippi Senator Trent Lott took pictures of New Orleans and pictures of the Delta to Washington, asking his colleagues to determine which ones were caused by the hurricane and which ones were everyday life in the Delta. No one could tell the difference.
After growing up in an area where books were commodities instead of luxuries, where adequate health care was at the very least an option and where attending college was a possibility and not a fantasy, this place has affected me to my very core. It has forced me to consider my own preconceived notions, my own understanding of poverty, and my own views of this country I call home. The facts of the region are disheartening. It truly is (in the words of Jesse Jackson) “America’s Ethiopia”.
As of 2006- 19.8% of Mississippians live in poverty http://www.irp.wisc.edu/faqs/faq3/table2.htm the highest poverty rate in the country. In the Mississippi Delta, the population is 70% African American. The unemployment rate is 9.8% with a high school drop out rate of 43% http://www.ihl.state.ms.us/urc/drtf/drtf_report.pdf
In Sunflower County (where I teach), only 59% of adults 25 years and older have high school diplomas and only 12% have bachelor’s degrees or higher. 34.3% of Sunflower County residents live below the poverty level. Sunflower County has the ninth lowest per capita income in Mississippi and the 72nd lowest in the United States. http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/28/28133.html
While the world focuses on poverty in other countries, our own is suffering as well. There are people living without running water and electricity. Here, in the United States of America. There are schools that run out of toilet paper, teachers that kill rats in classrooms, students that have been denied access to an equal education. And yet, there are principals that work relentlessly to create a beautiful environment, even when the devastation of poverty is just across the street. There is a feeling that seems to mask the reality, a pull that caused me to fall in love with this place and its people.
There is a charm in the Delta, a beauty that overshadows what actually is. After traveling throughout Europe and seeing the most amazing architecture, sights that truly tantalize the senses, my favorite landscape is in a place no one wants to visit, a place that seems to belong in a different decade- here, in the Mississippi Delta.
As I drive along highway 82 on my to school each morning, there are acres of cotton fields. During harvest season, the cotton blooms and white blossoms seem to go on forever. For two weeks, the cotton is left undisturbed and “Mississippi Snow” decorates the area. For two weeks, this beauty is enjoyed in secret, while the rest of the country flocks to snow capped mountains and white sand beaches. Here in the Delta, we get to enjoy our own, homegrown beauty.
But eventually, the two weeks end. Huge cotton pickers strip the fields and package them into ugly white blocks that sit along the highways. The blossoms are compressed and carried out of the Delta, and those beautiful fields, are left brown and empty, seemingly barren and desolate. But its possibility for greatness and beauty remains.
Although it is a forgotten place, one most would like to shove under the rug and pretend doesn’t exist, the Delta’s possibility for greatness and beauty remains as well.
“If Mississippi is the heart of the Deep South, then the Mississippi Delta is the deep heart’s core”. The Mississippi Delta will always be in my deep heart’s core. I will never be the same.
I’m loving the experience and am happier here than at ASU. However, I now see how beneficial my time at ASU was for my career. I really was thrown into a mess and had to find my own way to dig myself, and our very youthful campus, out of. I learned more than I realized in a very short time, and even know some computer systems and processes that my older, wiser, and higher paid managers don’t know. That’s a cool feeling!
