Prior to the Workshop, each participant should read:

First, read the twelve short essays available online.  Don't forget to look at the web resources that are linked to this page too.

Then read:

At least ONE of the following TWO books-

Barry, John M.  1988.  Rising Tide:  The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 and How It Changed America.  New York:  Touchstone.

Daniel, Pete.  1997.  Deep’n As It Come:  The 1927 Mississippi River Flood.  Oxford University Press.

At least ONE of the following FOUR books-

Cobb, James.  1992.  The Most Southern Place on Earth:  the Mississippi Delta and the Roots of Regional Identity.  New York:  Oxford University Press.

Ferris, William.  2009.  Give My Poor Heart Ease.  the University of North Carolina Press.  NOTE- this book comes with a CD of original field recordings and a DVD of documentary films, at least one of which we will watch during the workshop.  It's a valuable teaching resource. 

Willis, John C.  2000.  Forgotten Time:  The Yazoo-Mississippi Delta after the Civil War.  Virginia:  The University of Virginia Press.

Saikku, Mikko.  2005.  This Delta, This Land.  University of Georgia Press.

ONE of these FOUR  books-

Crowe, Chris.  2003.  Getting Away With Murder:  The True Story of the Emmett Till Case.  Dial Books.

Curry, Constance.  1995.  Silver Rights.  New York:  Harcourt Brace & Company.

Asch, Chris Myers.  2008.  The Senator and the Sharecropper: The Freedom Struggles of James O. Eastland and Fannie Lou Hamer.  New Press.

Lemann, Nicholas.  1991.  The Promised Land:  An Account of Sharecropping Families in Their Journey from the Mississippi Delta to Chicago.  Pan McMillan.

AND we also RECOMMEND these for anyone who is especially interested in the Mississippi Delta-

Dattel, Gene. 2009.  Cotton and Race in the Making of America:  the Human Costs of Economic Power.  Ivan R. Dee, Publisher.

Faulkner, John.  1942  Dollar Cotton.  A Hill Street Classics Book.

Ferris, William.  1978.  Blues from the Delta.  New York:  Da Capo Press

Taulbert, Clifton.  1995.  When We Were Colored.  New York:  Penguin Group.

And it you are really interested in the Delta, why not read ALL of the above books?  They are all excellent and make pretty exciting reading.  For a lengthy bibliography on the Delta, click here.

Our hope is that the choice you are allowed among the books will result in greater discussion.  At least some of the forty participants will choose each book, meaning that each of you will bring a different background to our meetings.  Please be ready to talk about the books you read.