The Year of Delta Heritage Celebrates the Delta in Literature and Film
The Delta has fascinated many who never considered it home. William Faulkner hunted here, and wrote about the conflicts between civilization and nature that the Delta revealed (e.g., The Bear), and also about the flood of 1927 and Parchman Farm (Old Man). His brother John, also a visitor, wrote one of the definitive Delta novels, Dollar Cotton. James Cobb and Mikko Saikku have written the definitive social and environmental histories of the place (The Most Southern Place on Earth, and This Land, This Delta: an Environmental History of the Yazoo-Mississippi Floodplain, respectively), yet neither lived in the Delta, and Saikku is Finnish. Others, like Bill Ferris (Blues from the Mississippi Delta), Charles Payne (I’ve Got the Light of Freedom), and John Barry (Rising Tide) have explored specific issues exemplified by the region. Still others like Steve Cheseborough (Blues Traveling) and Richard Knight (The Blues Highway) have written guide books about the Delta, while others like Cynthia Shearer have written wonderful works of fiction set in the Delta (The Celestial Jukebox).
Many authors have claimed the Delta as home or are claimed by the Delta as residents. In some cases (like Tennessee Williams and Richard Wright), they were actually born elsewhere, but spent much of their childhood in the region. A compilation of short biographies for these writers would be a book unto itself, and indeed, entire books, sometimes multiple books, have been written about certain individuals. A partial list includes these names ---
John Grisham, Walter Malone, Elizabeth Spencer, Stark Young, John Nixon Jr. , James Seay, Aaron Henry, Lerone Bennett, Sid Graves, Tennessee Williams, Sung Gay Chow , Dorothy Sample Shawhan , William Sullivan, Wirt Alfred Williams, Clifton Taulbert, William Attaway, Charles G. Bell, William Burt, Jim Henson, William Hodding Carter II, David Lewis Cohn, Ellen Douglas, Shelby Foote, Walt Grayson, Brooks Haxton, Angela Jackson, Michael Johnston, Bern Keating, Margaret Kent, Sinclair O. Lewis, Beverly Lowry, Walker Percy, William Alexander Percy, Jessie Schell, Frank Stanford, Benjamin Franklin Wasson, Richard Wright, Danny Collum, Jim Fraiser, Endesha Ida Mae Holland, Donna Tartt, Mildred Spurrier Topp, Rebecca Hood-Adams, Otis Williams, Elizabeth Spencer, Steve Yarbrough, Jerry Clower, Reuben G. Davis, Claire T. Feild, William C. Hall, Henry Clay Lewis, Willie Morris, Charlemae Rollins, Zig Ziglar, Malcolm Franklin, Robert Herring, Lewis Nordan, Rebecca Hood-Adams, M. Carl Holman, Medgar Evers, Myrlie Evers-Williams, Margaret Morgan Lawrence, besmilr brigham, Thomas Harris, John Milton Wesley, Eugene Dattel, Charles East, Craig Claiborne, Fanny Lou Hamer, Charlaine Harris, Jack Crocker, D. C. Berry, Charles Burnett, John Crews, Mart Crowley, Harris Dickson, Myrlie Evers-Williams, Ellen Gilchrist, Edwin King, Alexander G. McNutt , Margaret Morgan Lawrence.
Collectively, these authors cover virtually every written genre, from autobiography to journalism to documentary and history to film scripts, fiction and magical realism to non-fiction, poetry to prose.
The Delta has also been portrayed on film. Mississippi Burning is incorrectly thought to be about the Delta by many people. Oh Brother, Where Art Thou? is another standard, and it was largely filmed in the Delta and tells Delta stories. Baby Doll is a classic, written by Tennessee Williams and filmed largely in Benoit. Down in the Delta is Maya Angelou’s attempt to tell Delta tales. Mississippi Masala was filmed in Greenwood and brings an immigrants tale to the screen. Black Snake Moan concerns the struggle between the sacred and the profane, and begins and ends with archival footage of Son House talking about these issues. Of course actor Morgan Freeman calls the Delta home, and James Earl Jones was born in Tate County.
LaLee’s Kin: the Legacy of Cotton was filmed in Tallahatchie County and shown on HBO several times. Delta Jews is an eponymous documentary. There are several documentaries concerning the Blues (like Good Mornin’ Blues, featuring B.B. King, Deep Blues, and Last of the Mississippi Juke Joints), and also several feature films, including Can’t You Hear the Wind Howl?, Muddy Waters Can’t be Satisfied, and The Howlin’ Wolf Story. The great flood of 1927 is memorialized in two documentaries- Fatal Flood and River Out of Control, and there are two documentaries on the Emmett Till lynching (The Untold Story of Emmett Louis Till, and The Murder of Emmett Till) as well as archival film footage in several Civil Rights documentaries, including Eyes on the Prize. Goin’ to Chicago connects Greenville and the city “up south,” telling the story of the great migration. And numerous short documentaries concern everything from mule racing in Greenwood, to the unionization of catfish processing plants in Belzoni, to the Hip-Hop scene in Clarksdale.
The literary and film heritage of the Mississippi Delta is rich indeed. For more information about the Delta’s literary heritage, or about the DSU Year of Delta Heritage, contact the DSU Delta Center for Culture and Learning at 662-846-4311.