Attorneys of Mississippi

The Most Southern Place on Earth: The Mississippi Delta and the Roots of Regional Identity

Description

"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.

Reviews

Rating: 4 / 5
Date: 2009-12-28
Summary: "delta 1."

full of information. invaluable research tool.
can't believe that this one got by me, previously.

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Rating: 5 / 5
Date: 2009-06-26
Summary: "Great Book!"

I really enjoyed this book. The type size is small, that was the only problem. The content is excellent. I am so glad I bought this book instead of reading a library copy because I expect to go back to refer to it many times. Highly recommended.

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Rating: 5 / 5
Date: 2009-06-17
Summary: "A social history of epic and literary proportions"

It's a very readable book with lots of information about The Yazoo-Mississippi Delta all the way from Reconstruction to our modern Welfare times. The intervention of the Federal government to allegedly improve the status of blacks, whether it was at the wake of the War or by means of the New Deal, and up to the latest impulses of liberal Big Government, has never done any good: only shifted the paternalistic role from the white man to the welfare state. It's curious to see how blacks have reacted to this paternalism through the times. Unlike the prodigal son, he has it both ways: comes home to cash his welfare check, then goes out rambling.

Most revealing to me was the terrible impact of the 1967 one-dollar-per-hour minimum wage, the dream of liberal social scientists and planners. It made the black workers poorer, so much so that they had to borrow from the planters, which increased their dependency.

The book is most interesting because it is life from the ground, from the plantation and street; and it's also a cultural history, the American way: made by the common man and for the common man to read. Therefore it includes a succint but juicy chapter on the Blues, and another or the density of literary figures in the area.

It reads smoothly, without any academic jargon, left mostly to the voices of the characters themselves, their laments, their ambitions, their joys of some and pains of others. It's definitely the description of the lives of these people, blacks and whites, and letting us hear their own testimonies or anecdotes that make this an important book.

The following excerpt -to me, at least- says it all about what meant to live in the Delta:

"Finding himself in an elevator and carrying a load of packages, Richard Wright was assisted by a white man who took his hat off for him and placed it upon his packages. Wright explained that 'to have said "thank you" would have made the white man think that you thought that you were receiving from him a personal service. For such an act I have seen Negroes take a blow in the mouth. Finding the first alternative distasteful, and the second dangerous, I hit upon an acceptable course ... pretended that my packages were about to spill and appeared deeply distressed ... In this fashion I evaded having to acknowledge his service ... and savaged a slender shred of personal pride."

If that isn't stuff for a classic, what is! Now figure thousands of possible situations in everyday life and what a panorama you get! Not material for teenage-minded Hollywood, for sure. No wonder so may artists and musicians nationwide got their inspiration from the South.

Here you get American History condensed in a few counties, like in a lab. History by the people and for the people. The history that counts.

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Rating: 4 / 5
Date: 2009-02-04
Summary: "Pure soil endlessly deep--dark and sweet"

I must give the author credit for capturing the physical ethos of the Delta land. Like Eudora Welty, I am a strong believer in a "sense of place" and the description of the soil, rivers,vines,cane brakes,and trees is superb. The rich and fecund soil--"in the passionate embrace of deep-rooted trees and close-clinging vines." One can feel the heat rising and the Kudzu groping its tendrils through the subtropical landscape. With entire banks of soil cleaving into the frothing flood swollen Mississippi--the Congo Basin of the South.

These are the rich bottom lands of William Faulkner's Bear novella and Percy's levee lanterns. Here black men and women developed a culture and even freedom that spawned much of the civil rights movement. Asians and Italians and Anglo-Saxon folks from the hill country all came together in a curious mix. The Delta is the most African part of America in many respects and remains a land of promise and despair--best illustrated in the music of the Delta Blues. And all the while the promise of the soil and the rich fecundity of the soil conjures up images of Antebellum Greek Revival homes next to sharecropper cottages. Less red clay and more black alluvium that was hardly a part of the historical Old South as it developed for the most part much later after the War. The book is but an introduction to a unique land.

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Rating: 5 / 5
Date: 2007-11-21
Summary: "Essential Reading for Blues Fans"

I grew up as a Northerner; I don't think I put the pieces together until I matured as a Southerner visiting the Mississippi Delta. My goal was to research the lives of Sonny Boy Williamson and Robert Lockwood Jr., Robert Johnson's best freind and stepson.
Along with Rising Tide which put a sharp edge or racism for me, this was my guide to the historical background among which these seminal bluesmen grew up. The delta and its history was as much of the history of the blues as the musicians.
Through this book and many visits with African-Americans living in poverty in the delta I began to understand the South in a way few Southerner will ever understand and/or be able to articulate.