Welcome to
The
Delta Center for Culture and Learning
at Delta State University
For information concerning the Mississippi Delta National Heritage Area, click here
|
Welcome to
The
Delta Center for Culture and Learning For information concerning the Mississippi Delta National Heritage Area, click here
|
|
| A portion of the Mississippi
River, showing its many present and past meanderings, oxbows and channels,
from the work of Harold Fisk, Geographical Investigations of the
Alluvial Valley of the Lower Mississippi, 1944. |
| For information on the Mississippi Geographic Alliance, click here. |
Click here for
the portfolio of the 2009 workshop. The Three R's of the Mississippi Delta: Roads, Rivers and Railways Workshop, click here. |
 |
For information about past and future NEH Landmarks Workshop,
click the link below.
The Most Southern Place on Earth Workshops,
click here. |
Become a Friend of the Delta Center at
our
Facebook site
Check out what happened
On This Day in Delta Heritage.
To see our newest Blues
project, supported by The History Channel, visit
www.birthplaceoftheblues.org.
For information about service
learning and volunteerism in the Delta, visit
The Office of Student and Community
Engagement. To see the 2009
Gear Up Camp portfolio,
click here. For
the portfolio and lesson plans from our most recent
Levee Board Workshop,
click here.
For information on current classes, tours, and
other items of interest, see the bottom of the page.
For information about
The Mississippi Delta National
Heritage Area, click on the link.
For information
concerning
Po' Monkey's Lounge, one of the last rural jooks, click on the link.
| The River bore the alluvial plain that is the Mississippi Delta, and the Delta bore fruit....... |
| The Blues, Faulkner, Welty, Wright, Civil Rights, The Great Flood, Bogues and Bayous, Plantations, The Great Migration, Soul Food, King Cotton, The Levee, Agribusiness, Catfish, Gospel, Immigrants' Stories, Highway 61, Quilts, Segregation, Integration, Freedom Songs, Freedom Summer, Folk Tales, Swamp Forests, Hunt Clubs, Oral Histories, and surprisingly, hot tamales......... |
| The Mississippi Delta has
a mystique of mythological proportions.
It
was virgin wilderness and swamp at the turn of the twentieth century,
cleared for cotton and plantation life by the 1930's, dominated by
politically powerful gentleman planters, peopled by Black sharecroppers,
Italian immigrants, Chinese, Lebanese and Jewish merchants. It is the
source of "The Great Migration" north, and thus the home of the
African American populations of many Northern cities, like Chicago and
Detroit. It is the home of the Blues, Gospel, soul food, the civil rights
movement. It was home to Tennessee Williams, Eudora Welty, Richard Wright,
Clifton Taulbert, Shelby Foote, and Hodding Carter. It is where Teddy
Roosevelt saved the original "Teddy Bear," and where Elvis
Presley learned to dance and sing and drive a Cadillac. It is the land
where Muddy Waters and Robert Johnson wrote the lyrics that eventually
made the Rolling Stones and Eric Clapton famous.
The Delta is the American story, shrunk in time and space. Faulkner said it was "deswamped and denuded and derivered in two generations." Shelby Foote claimed that one could see "a hundred years of history in twenty years in the Delta," and James Cobb wrote "When it comes to history, the Delta was clearly a region in a hurry."
Analysts from Howard Zinn to James Cobb have claimed that the Delta is the South's South, a place where American traits and experience are revealed with blinding clarity. Students of contemporary American culture will not find a better place to explore American history and culture in the field. Welcome to the Delta Center for Culture and Learning home of The Blues Highway Association , The Office of Student and Community Engagement. "Citizens kept ignorant of their history are robbed of the riches of their heritage." Bruce Cole, Chairman, National Endowment for the Humanities |
| Twelve Essays and some video links about the Mississippi Delta | Information about the THREE R's of the MISSISSIPPI DELTA: ROADS, RIVERS AND RAILWAYS |
Three
Icons of the Delta: |
The
River A Delta State University Course (Spring 2007) |
Exploring the Delta: The next class is not currently scheduled | Tourism Training for The Alluvian Hotel (an old link) |
2013 Blues festivals in Mississippi ALL NEW |
From the
Birthplace of America's Music: a workshopJune 17-23, 2007 |
A Bibliography of the Delta | History
and Culture of the Mississippi Delta A Delta State University Course |
Click here
for events that happened on this date in Delta Heritage
Click
Here for the most recent Blues Highway Association News
For a comprehensive listing of Blues activities and
opportunities in the
Delta, visit CatHead.biz
and
MississippiDeltaBluesInfo.com. For general information about the
Delta, see
www.visitthedelta.com.
And please visit the Mississippi Blues Commission
for information on the developing Blues Heritage Trail.
This site was last updated on July 22, 2013. For further information, contact Luther Brown at lbrown@deltastate.edu