On This Date in Delta Heritage

The 2007-2008 school year at Delta State University was The Year of Delta Heritage. In support of this annual theme, we have produced an online and a hard copy of the Delta Heritage Calendar. This version was prepared by John Guzek, a Robertson Scholar from Duke University who interned in the Delta Center during the summer of 2011. Please send any corrections or suggestions of other events and hyperlinks by contacting Luther Brown at lbrown@deltastate.edu.

January

January 1

Charles Capps, one of the longest serving state representatives in Mississippi, is born in 1925 in Merigold, MS. Capps was a powerful figure in the Mississippi Legislature until his death in 2005. More information available @deltastate.edu.

James Seay, author of four books of poetry, is born in 1939 in Panola County, MS. After receiving a bachelor’s degree from the University of Mississippi and a master’s degree from the University of Virginia, he went on to teach English at a number of colleges including the University of Alabama and Vanderbilt University. He currently teaches creative writing at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.  More information available @storysouth.com.

President Lincoln issues the final Emancipation Proclamation in 1863. An executive order issued during the American Civil War under Lincoln’s war powers, it proclaimed the freedom of 3.1 million of the nation’s 4 million slaves and immediately freed 50,000 of them. More information available @archives.gov.

January 2

Georgia votes to ratify the US Constitution, becoming the fourth state in the modern United States in 1788. More information available @usconstitution.net.

The Battle of Stones River concludes when the Union troops defeat Confederates at Murfreesboro, TN in 1863. In regard to the Civil War’s major battles, Stones River had the highest percentage of casualties on both sides. The battle dashed Confederate aspirations for control of Middle Tennessee. More information available @americancivilwar.com.

President Roosevelt shuts down the post office in Indianola for not accepting its first appointed postmistress in 1903. More information available @jstor.org.

Streetcars begin operating in Yazoo City in 1906. More information available @cityofyazoocity.org.

January 3

Mike Espy becomes the first African American to be elected to Congress in the Second District of Mississippi in 1993. He also served the Secretary of Agriculture from 1993 to 1994, becoming the first African American to do so. In December 1997, Tyson Foods pleaded guilty to giving Espy more than $12,000 in illegal gifts. Espy has never been formally convicted of any charges. More information available @mikespy.com.

Son House plays at the Gaslight Grill in Greenwich Village, NYC in 1965. A blues singer and guitarist from Riverton, MS, House pioneered an innovative style that incorporated elements of southern gospel and spiritual music with the aid of slide guitar. He was recorded for the Library of Congress in 1941 and 1942. More information available @slidingdelta.com.

Two weeks after South Carolina becomes the first state to secede from the Union, the state of Delaware is visited in 1861 by a commissioner from Mississippi who claims the southern states’ right to secede. Afterwards, a resolution is passed by the Delaware legislature expressing their disapproval with Mississippi’s decision to secede. More information available @nytimes.com.

January 4

Eddie Cusic, singer and bluesman, is born outside of Leland, MS in 1926. He formed the Rhythm Aces in the 1950s and attracted large crowds, urging them to explore the cultural history of the Mississippi Delta. More information available @arts.state.ms.us.  

During the 81^st session of the state Senate, Senator Theodor G. Bilbo introduces a bill to “prohibit the manufacture, sale, barter, and giving away of Coca-Cola” in 1910. Twice serving as governor of Mississippi, Bilbo was known for being an ardent white supremacist, defending segregation, and participating in the Ku Klux Klan. More information available @wikipedia.org.

Elvis Presley’s father, Vernon, is released from Parchman Farm, where he had served time for forgery in 1941. More information available @blurtit.com.

Mississippi Valley State University is founded in 1950. A historically black university located in Itta Bena, MS, MSVU was designed from fear after Brown v. Board of Education that African Americans might begin applying to Mississippi’s premier white-only institutions. More information available @mvsu.edu.

January 5

Sam Phillips, founder of Sun Records where many Delta greats recorded, is born in 1923. He played an important role in the musical careers of Johnny Cash, B. B. King, Jerry Lee Lewis, Elvis Presley, Howlin’ Wolf, and Carl Perkins.  More information available @sunrecord.com.

The Star of the West, a Union merchant vessel, leaves NY with supplies and 250 troops heading for Fort Sumter in 1861. The ship was later captured by the Confederacy, transporting millions in gold, silver, and paper currency to Vicksburg, MS and continuing to Yazoo City, MS. More information available @wikipedia.org.

January 6

Stark Young, MS Delta author, dies in 1963. Born in Como, MS on October 11, 1881, Stark was a teacher, painter, playwright, painter, novelist, essayist, and literary critic. In addition to writing weekly essays for The New Republic and a best-selling novel, So Red The Rose, he is seen as one of the most cosmopolitan and multi-talented of the state’s major literary figures. Throughout his career, however, he retained the characteristically Southern perspective he had acquired during his childhood in MS. More information available @olemiss.edu.

Mamie Carthan Till Mobley, born in Webb and mother of Emmett Till and important civil rights leader, dies in 2003. The murder of her son catapulted the quiet Chicago civil service employee into a lifetime of advocacy, starting with seeking justice for the death of her son. More information available @pbs.org.

January 7

America’s first Presidential Election is held in 1789. George Washington, enormously popular for his efforts in the Revolutionary War, ran unopposed and carried every state. John Adams, receiving the second greatest number of electoral votes, became the first Vice President. Before this election, the United States had no chief executive; instead, the Confederation Congress headed the government with a presiding officer. More information available @wikipedia.org.

January 8

Elvis Presley, the “King of Rock and Roll,” is born in a two-room house in Tupelo, MS in 1935. He was one of the first artists to perform rockabilly, a combination of blues and country music.  He also performed such other genres as gospel and pop and made thirty-three movies.  He is the only artist to have been inducted into three halls of fame: the Country Music Hall of Fame, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and the Gospel Music Hall of Fame.  More information available @elvis.com.

Mississippi becomes the first state to ratify the 18^th Amendment in 1918, an act prohibiting the manufacture, sale, and transportation of alcoholic beverages. The state was also the last to legalize alcohol once more, waiting until 1966 to do so. For the next twenty years, the drinking age was 18 (as it was in many states to mirror the lowering of the voting age to 18) until Congress passed the National Minimum Drinking Age Act, which pressured the Mississippi legislature to raise the age to 21 in 1986. More information regarding the 18^th amendment available @wikipedia.org.

Kate Adams No. 3, a mail carrier ship, burns in Memphis in 1927. Arson is suspected since “the Kate” appeared in the film version of Uncle Tom’s Cabin. More information available @memphismagazine.com.

January 9

Ishman Bracey, blues artist from Byram, MS, is born in 1901. He played in the 1920s with such local celebrities as Charlie McCoy and Tommy Johnson. After the second world war, he moved away from the music business to become a Baptist minister in Jackson. He died in Jackson in 1970 at the age of 69. More information available @msbluestrail.org.

Mississippi becomes the second state to secede from the Union in 1861. This followed the secession of South Carolina. The document enumerating the reasons for Mississippi’s secession can be found @sunsite.utk.edu.

For a few weeks in 1861, the old Bonnie Blue Flag of 1810 becomes the new Sovereign Republic of Mississippi’s national flag. This followed the passage of the Ordinance of Succession in Mississippi. Its lone star symbolized its claims for independence as it had in 1810 when Mississippi’s coastal counties formed the Republic of West Florida. More information available @ms.gov.

January 12

Hattie Ophelia Wyatt Caraway, a Democrat from Arkansas, becomes the first woman to be elected to the U.S. Senate in 1932. She started her political career when asked to fill in for her husband, Senator Thaddeus Caraway, after his death.  Aside from being the first woman elected to the Senate, she was also the first woman to preside over the Senate, chair a committee, and preside over a senate hearing.  Her political career lasted from 1932 until 1945.  More information available @encyclopediaofarkansas.net.

“Mississippi” Fred McDowell, a blues singer in the North Mississippi style, is born in Rossville, TN in 1904. While similar to the Delta Blues, his north hill country blues style is understood as closer in structure to its African roots. More info available @msbluestrail.org.

January 13

Kent Hull, who played center for the New Jersey Generals of the USFL and the Buffalo Bills of the NFL, is born in Greenwood, MS in 1960. A native of Pontohoc, MS, he attended Mississippi State and was eventually inducted into the Greater Buffalo Sports Hall of Fame in 1997  and the Mississippi State University Sports Hall of Fame in 2000.  He also received the Ralph C. Wilson Distinguished Service Award in 2001 and was the 19th inductee to the Wall of Fame at Ralph Wilson Stadium in Buffalo, New York in 2002.  More information available @buffalosportshallfame.com.

January 14

George Wallace, elected as Alabama’s governor on four occasions in 1963, 1971, 1975, and 1983, is inaugurated for the first time, promising his followers, “Segregation now, segregation tomorrow, and segregation forever.” Born in Clio, Alabama on August 25, 1919, his political career also led him to run for President of the United States of America in 1962, 1972, 1976, and 1968; however, he is best known for his Southern populist, pro-segregation attitudes during the American desegregation period. More information available @archives.alabama.gov.

January 15

Martin Luther King Jr., a Civil Rights leader, preacher, and orator, is born in Atlanta, Georgia in 1929.  Dr. King became an iconic figure in the African American Civil Rights Movement, and his work led to the Montgomery Bus Boycott, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, and the March on Washington in 1963. At the march, he delivered his famous “I Have a Dream” speech, expanding American values to include the vision of a color blind society. In 1964, he received a Noble Peace Prize for his non-violent endeavors to end racial discrimination.  After his assassination in 1968, he was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1977 and a Congressional Gold Medal in 2004.  More information available @martinlutherking.org.

Earl Hooker, blues artist from Clarksdale, MS, is born in 1930. A Chicago blues guitarist, Hooker never achieved the commercial success of his contemporaries because he rarely sang. However, B.B. King was an avid fan of his playing, calling Hooker “the best of modern guitarists.” He was also known as a flamboyant showman for his flashy clothes and guitar playing by his teeth and behind his back. He died in 1970 at the age of 41 from tuberculosis. More information available @wikipedia.org.

January 16

Hiram Revels, the first African American senator from MS, dies in Aberdeen, MS in 1901. Born in Fayetteville, North Carolina in 1822, he served as his brother’s apprentice in a barber shop as a teenager. After attending Knox College and seminary school, he represented Mississippi in the Senate from 1870 to 1871 and later served as the President of Alcorn College until 1882.  As of 2007, he is one of only five African Americans to serve on the Senate.  More information available @bioguide.congress.gov

January 17

James Earl Jones, Emmy and Tony award recipient, is born in Arkabutla, MS in 1931. While he spent the first five years of his life on a farm in Mississippi with his grandparents, their sudden relocation to Michigan when he was only five led him to develop a stutter.  Barely talking to his family and completely mute in school, he did not overcome the stutter until encouraged to recite his poetry by a high school teacher.  He has starred in several movies such as Coming to America, Roots, and Star Wars. He also has served as the voice of such animated characters as Mufasa in The Lion King.  More information available @achievement.org.

The Great March is held in Columbia, SC in 2000 to protest the Confederate Flag. Attended by almost 50,000 people, it was the largest protest to date in the South. More information available @nytimes.com.

January 18

Beth Jacks, a Cleveland author known for her poetry and short stories for children, is born in 1944. A graduate of Millsaps College and the University of Mississippi, she has had her work published in magazines such as the Delta Magazine, Pockets, Boys Quest, Kids' Highway, Working Writer, Lighthouse Story Collections, and several others. More information available @usadeepsouth.ms11.net.

Confederate General Robert E. Lee is born in Westmoreland County, VA in 1807. A top graduate of West Point, Lee distinguished himself as an exceptional officer and engineer in the US Army for 32 years before resigning to join the Confederate cause because of his loyalty to his home state of Virginia. The Confederate General soon emerged as the shrewdest battlefield tactician of the war, and he remains a Southern hero of the war and an icon figure of American military leadership today. More information available @wikipedia.org.

January 19

Willie Dixon, a native of Vicksburg, MS, is inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame at the ninth annual induction dinner in 1995. As a teenager, he hitchhiked to Chicago and later became a producer for Chess and Checker Records. Proficient on both the upright bass and the guitar in addition to his singing abilities, he was one of the most prolific songwriters of his time and is recognized as one of the founders of the Chicago blues sound. He worked with Chuck Berry, Muddy Waters, and several others.  More information available @bluesheaven.com.

January 20

Britain’s rising punk-rock stars The Clash start their first U.S. tour in 1979 with rock and roll pioneer Bo Diddley as their handpicked opening act. More info on the Clash @theclashonline.com. More info on Bo Diddley @bodiddley.com.

18 years after his assassination, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday is made a national holiday in 1986. He was assassinated in Memphis on his way to Marks, MS to kick off the state’s contingent of the Poor People's campaign, known as the Mule Train because it was lead by mule driven covered wagons.  More information available on Martin Luther King Day @http://www.timeanddate.com/holidays/us/martin-luther-king-day, and more information on the Mule Train available @bampfa.berkeley.edu.

Alcorn State University is founded in Lorman, MS in 1871. The university took it names from James L. Alcorn, then governor of Mississippi. While the school was first exclusively for black males, women were admitted in 1895 and now outnumber men 3:2. The student body has grown overall from 179 local students to more than 3,000 students from all over the world. More information is available @alcorn.edu.

January 21

William Alexander Percy, who is best known for his autobiography Lanterns on the Levee, dies in 1942. Born on May 14, 1885 in Greenville, MS, he was a lawyer, planter, and poet. He served in World War I and was in charge of the relief efforts during the flood of 1927.  More information available @mswritersandmusicians.com.

Muddy Waters, the American bluesman considered to be the father of modern Chicago blues, is inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame at the second annual induction dinner in 1987. Born in Issaquena County, Mississippi on April 4, 1915, he is largely credited with inspiring the British blues explosion in the 1960s. The Rolling Stones named themselves after his 1950 song “Rollin Stone”, a song that Jimi Hendrix also covered. More information available @pbs.org.

Bo Diddley, an American rhythm and blues vocalist from McComb, MS, is inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame at the second annual induction dinner in 1987. Born Otha Ellas Bates on December 28, 1928, he was a key player in the transition from blues to rock & roll, influencing such artists as Buddy Holly, Jimi Hendrix, The Rolling Stones, The Clash, and Eric Clapton. He was known in particular for his technical innovations, including his trademark rectangular guitar. More info available @bo-diddley.com.

January 22

Food writer, cookbook author, and critic Craig Claiborne from Indianola, MS dies in 2000. He is especially known for his role as an editor at the NY Times. To see his work at the Times, visit nytimes.com. More information available on Claiborne @wikipedia.org.

Sam Cooke, the famous soul, R&B, and gospel singer, is born in Clarksdale in 1931. He is considered to be one of the pioneers and founders of soul music and is commonly known as the King of Soul, having 29 top-40 hits in the U.S. between 1957 and 1964. Among the first modern black performers to attend to the business side of his musical career, he founded both a record label and a publishing company and took an active role in the Civil Rights Movement. More information available @wikipedia.org.

January 23

The second major New Madrid Earthquake strikes in 1812 near New Madrid Fault in Missouri.  Consequently, the course of the Mississippi River was changed, portions of the land sank, and new lakes were created.  More info available @geology.siu.edu.

Issaquena County is created in 1844. Just before the Civil War, the county had the highest concentration of slaves at 92.5% with 115 owners holding 7,224 slaves. As of 2010, the population was 1,406 with 33.20% of the population below the poverty line. Issaquena County has the second lowest per capita income in Mississippi. More information available @rootsweb.ancestry.com.

Sam Cooke, the famous soul, R&B, and gospel singer seen as a pioneer and founder of the former genre, is inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame at the first induction dinner in New York City in 1986. More information available @wikipedia.org.

Dr. James D. Hardy performs the world’s first heart transplant surgery at the University of Mississippi Medical Center in 1964. Serving as the chairman of the Department of Surgery for the University of Mississippi Medical Center from 1955 until 1987, he is known for performing the first human heart and lung transplant and  writing over 500 medical articles.  He took great pride in training surgeons in Mississippi.  More information available @umc.edu.

The 24th amendment of the US Constitution is ratified in 1964, abolishing the poll tax and thereby removing a major obstacle for low-income individuals.  Lyndon Johnson remarked as he signed the bill, “There can be no one too poor to vote.” More information available @americaslibrary.gov.

Robert Johnson, known as the “King of the Delta Blues”, is inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1986. Born in Hazlehurst, Mississippi on May 8, 1911, he was always interested in music as a child, playing the harp, harmonica, and guitar.  During his career, he wrote 29 songs, but only a few were recorded at the time of his death.  Despite being remembered well for his talented displays of singing, guitar playing, and songwriting, his personal life is poorly documented and has given rise to much legend. Eric Clapton has called Johnson “the most important blues singer that ever lived.” More information available @robertjohnsonbluesfoundation.org.

John Bright Russell, a popular comedian, country singer, and songwriter, is born in Moorhead in 1940. His most famous song, “Act Naturally”, was made more famous from its recording by both Buck Owens in 1963 and The Beatles in 1965. He was inducted into the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2001 and died later the same year.  More information available @mswritersandmusicians.com.

Kenyatta Cornelius Lucas is born in Cleveland, MS in 1979. After playing for East Side High School in Cleveland and for Ole Miss in college, he was drafted by the Seahawks in the second round of the 2001 NFL Draft. He has also played for the Carolina Panthers. More information available @wikipedia.org.

January 24

Look magazine publishes the confessions of J.W. Milam and Roy Bryant, two white men from the Delta who were acquitted in the 1955 kidnapping and murder of Emmett Louis Till, an African-American teenager from Chicago, in 1956. More information available @pbs.org.

January 26

The sovereign Republic of Mississippi adopts a new flag in 1861 with the Bonnie Blue Flag in its canton and a magnolia tree in its center field. More information regarding Mississippian flags available @mcsr.olemiss.edu.

January 27

Elmore James, the “King of the Slide Guitar”, is born in Richland, MS in 1918.  He began making music at the age of 12 using a simple one-string instrument strung up on a shack wall. During World War II, he served in the Navy and, upon his return, began playing the blues around Mississippi. He later moved to Chicago and formed the band, the Broomdusters, a group in which he was noted for his stirring voice and use of loud amplification.  More information available @nps.gov.

January 28

Bennie Thompson, an eight-term US Congressman for the Second Mississippi District, is born in Bolton, MS in 1948. He is both the first Democrat and the first African American to chair the Homeland Security Committee in the House. His district includes most of Jackson and the Delta and is the only majority-black district in the state. More information available @benniethompson.house.gov.

A group of black Mississippians, including Jake Ayers, files suit in 1975 against the governor of the state, the Board of the Trustees of State Institutions of Higher Learning, and all formerly white universities including Delta State. More information available @abcnews.go.com.

January 29

The International Blues Challenge is held in Memphis, TN in 2008. Presented by the Blues Foundation, the Challenge is the world’s largest gathering of blues bands where artists compete for cash, prizes, and industry recognition. More information available @blues.org.

Willie James Dixon, an American blues musicians from Vicksburg, MS, dies in 1992. He has been called the “poet laureate of the blues” and “the father of modern Chicago blues”.  A pre-eminent blues songwriter of his era, he is credited with writing more than 500 songs by the end of his career. More information is available @rockhall.com.

Eddie "Playboy" Taylor is born in Benoit, MS in 1923.  He migrated to Chicago where he died on December 25, 1985.  He had a distinguished career and has also been credited with teaching Jimmy Reed how to play the guitar. More information available @mswritersandmusicians.com.

January 30

Martin Luther King's house is bombed in 1956. The bombing inspired the MIA to file a federal suit directly attacking the laws establishing bus segregation. More information available @gale.cengage.com.

January 31

The US Congress approves the Thirteenth Amendment to abolish slavery in 1865. Although the Delta was sparsely settled prior to the 1870s, tens of thousands of slaves lived in the region when emancipation was enacted. More info available @ourdocuments.gov.

Blues artist Roosevelt Sykes, also known as the “Honeydripper” is born in Elmar, AR in 1906. His pounding piano boogie sand risqué lyrics characterize his contributons to the blues. He was responsible for influential blues songs such as “44 Blues,” “Driving Wheel,” and “Night Time Is the Right Time.” Dying from a heart attack in 1983, he was later inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame in 1999. More info @allaboutjazz.com.

Blues artist Charlie Musselwhite is born in Kosciusko, MS in 1944. A blues-harp player and bandleader and one of the non-black bluesmen who came to prominence in the early 1960s, he has released more than 20 albums over the course of his career beginning in 1967. He was also inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame in 2010. More information available @charliemusselwhite.com.

The Delta Blues Museum in Clarksdale opens its doors for the first time in 1979. More information is available @deltabluesmuseum.org.

February

February 1

Bessie Smith, known as the “Empress of the Blues”, records “Down Hearted Blues” in 1923, a song that is coupled with “Gulf Coast Blues” to become her first big hit. Born in Chattanooga, TN in 1892 or 1894 (sources report differently), she toured through the south and other northern cities in the 1920s as one of the highest paid black entertainers. She was killed in a car accident in Clarksdale, MS, leaving behind 160 recordings of her work.  More information available @pbs.org.

Amzie Moore, Civil Rights activist, WWII veteran, and businessman, dies in Cleveland in 1982. Upon his return from the war, he initially worked at the post office in Cleveland, MS but later owned his own gas station, beauty shop, and grocery store on Highway 61.  He was a member of the NAACP, helped start the Regional Council of Negro Leadership, organized a rally of 10,000 blacks, and founded the first black Boy Scout troop in Cleveland.  As a strong supporter of the Civil Rights Movement, he opened up his home for other activists like Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and John Lewis. More information available @fannielouhamer.com.

Black college students from North Carolina A & T University refuse to leave a Woolworth’s lunch counter in 1960. This began other sit-ins in college towns across the south. More information available @americanhistory.si.edu.

February 2

The Blues Foundation awards the Mississippi Blues Commission and Mississippi Tourism Authority a “Keeping the Blues Alive” award for the Mississippi Blues Heritage Trial in 2008. More information available @blues.org.

February 3

William Hodding Carter II, a writer associated with Greenville, MS, is born in Hammond, LA in 1907.  After completing college and graduate school, he worked as a reporter for the New Orleans Item-Tribune (1929), the United Press in New Orleans (1930), and the Associated Press in Jackson, MS (1931-32).  In 1932, he founded the Hammond Daily Courier, and, in 1939, he moved to Greenville, MS to start the Greenville Delta Democrat Times.  In 1946, he won a Pulitzer Prize for his editorials that lambasted the ill-treatment of Japanese-American soldiers returning from WWII. More information available @mswritersandmusicians.com.

Union forces blast the Mississippi River levee to enable a flotilla to use Moon Lake and the Yazoo Pass in a futile effort to reach Vicksburg by way of the Coldwater, Tallahatchie, and Yazoo rivers in 1863. More information regarding the role of the Yazooans in the Civil War available @yazoo.org.

The 15^th amendment, which gives all races the right to vote, is ratified in 1870. Although ratified on this date, the promise of the 15^th amendment would not fully realized for almost a century. Through the use of poll taxes, literacy tests, and other means, Southern states were able to effectively disenfranchise African Americans. More information available @loc.gov.

Sharecropper Luther Holbert murders planter James Eastland and field hand Albert Carr during a fight over a woman in Doddsville, MS in 1904. Despite their attempt to escape the subsequent mob that formed in response, they were captured, tied to trees, mutilated with knives, and burned. The audience of 600 spectators purportedly enjoyed treats in a festive atmosphere during the lynching. More information available @ferris.edu.

Tunica County is one of ten counties created from Chickasaw Indian Territory in 1836. More information available @rootsweb.ancestry.com.

February 4

Delegates from South Carolina, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, and Louisiana convene to establish the Confederate States of America in 1861. More information available @randyroberts.wordpress.com.  

February 5

Minnie M. Cox, the first black female postmaster in the United States, is born in Lexington, MS. She was appointed to the position in Indianola, MS by President Harrison in 1891, and Cox Street and Cox Park were later named in their honor.  She and her husband also opened up the largest black bank in Mississippi called Delta Penny Savings Bank in Indianola. More info available @postalmuseum.si.edu.

Byron de la Beckwith, a white supremacist and member of the Ku Klux Clan, is sentenced by Hinds County Circuit Judge L. Breland Hilburn to life in prison in 1994 for Medgar Ever’s assassination. While he had been tried for the murder, part of a violent campaign against racial integration and the Civil Rights movement, in the early 1960s, the all-white jury was repeatedly unable to reach a verdict. In 2001, he died in prison of heart problems.  More information available @time.com.

Medgar Evers was an African American civil rights activist from Decatur, MS involved in efforts to overturn segregation at the University of Mississippi. After returning from service in WWII, he became a field secretary for the NAACP and the president of the Regional Council of Negro Leadership. He was buried on June 19, 1963, in Arlington National Cemetery, receiving full military honors.  His murder and resulting trials inspired protests and numerous artistic pieces.

Director Mira Nair’s Mississippi Masala, partially filmed in Greenwood, MS, is released in 1992. Starring Denzel Washington, the film explores interracial romance between African Americans and Indian Americans and the prejudices that can result. More information available @wikipedia.org.

February 6

The first organized immigration of freed slaves to Africa from United States departs for Freetown, Sierra Leone in West Africa in 1792. The city had been founded 28 years prior and is the oldest capital to be founded by freed American slaves. More information available @wikipedia.org.

February 7

The third and biggest New Madrid earthquake strikes in 1812. Scientists believe it could have registered as high as an 8.5 on today’s Richter scale. The Mississippi River supposedly flowed backwards following the quake. More information available @geology.siu.edu.

A committee is formed to create the state flag of Mississippi in 1894. Many individuals, including Morgan Freeman, continue to advocate for the abandonment of the Confederate emblem from the flag. However, the referendum that would have scrapped the flag was defeated in 2001 by an overwhelming proportion of Mississippi’s white voters. More information regarding Mississippian flags available @mcsr.olemiss.edu.

February 8

John Grisham, an author born in Arkansas best known for his legal thrillers, is born in Jonesboro, AR in 1955. After practicing law for a decade, he served in Mississippi’s House of Representatives for six years. He has written several bestselling books including A Time to Kill, The Firm, The Pelican Brief, The Chamber, and The Partner.  Grisham is one of only three authors to sell two million copies on a first printing, the others being Tom Clancy and J.K. Rowling. More info @jgrisham.com.

Eddie “Guitar” Burns, a harmonica and guitar player, is born in Belzoni, MS in 1928. His career has spanned seven decades, and, in terms of Detroit bluesmen, Burns is deemed second only in stature to John Lee Hooker. More info available @wikipedia.org.

February 9

Tyrone Davis, known as “Chicago King of the Romantic Soul”, dies in 2005. Born May 4, 1938 in Greenville, MS, he was a leading American soul singer with a distinctive style, recording a long list of hit records over a period of more than 30 years. More information available @mswritersandmusicians.com.

The Confederate States of America is formed in 1861 with Jefferson Davis as President. A union of 11 Southern slave states that had declared secession from the US, the Confederacy governed from 1861 to 1865 when the fledgling nation ran out of men, supplies, and public support. More information available @civilwarhome.com.

The Great Ice Storm of 1994 hits the South. The storm produced over $3 billion in damages and cleanup costs, killing at least 9 and leaving thousands without power for days and some (particularly in the Delta) for several weeks.  More info available @alabamawx.com.

Bolivar, Coahoma, and Desoto counties are created in 1836. More information available @e-referencedesk.com.

February 10

Jefferson Davis learns that he has been selected as president of the Confederate States of America in 1861. He was unanimously elected at a constitutional convention in Montgomery, AL largely because he was a well-known moderate known to have a great deal of experience. Purportedly, Davis actually wanted to serve as a general in the Confederate States Army and not as the president. More information available @wikipedia.org.

Sam Cooke hits #2 on the R&B chart and #8 on the pop chart with “Young Blood” in 1959. More information available @rockhall.com.

February 12

The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) is founded by a multiracial group of activists in 1909. It was formed partly in response to the continuing horrific practice of lynching and the 1908 race riot in Springfield, IL. Today, it is the nation’s oldest, largest, and most widely recognized grassroots-based civil rights organization and has more than half of a million members worldwide. More information available @naacp.org.

The doors of the Taborian Hospital open in Mound Bayou in 1942, providing hospital care to African Americans in the community. Everyone on the staff, including doctors and nurses, were black, and operating costs came from an $8.40 membership due, an affordable cost for sharecroppers at the time that expanded membership to nearly fifty thousand in 1945. After losing its fraternal status in 1967, the hospital later closed in 1983. During the 1990s, the Knights and Daughters of Tabor began a continuing campaign to renovate original building; however, the hospital remains vacated and in disrepair today. More information available @misspreservation.com.

Big John Wrencher, a blues artist who became famous on Maxwell Street in Chicago, is born in Sunflower, MS in 1923. He played at house parties with such artists as Jimmy Rogers, Claude “Blue Smitty” Smith, and John Henry Barbee. He died of a heart attack in 1977 at the age of 54. More information available @allmusic.com.

Blues artist Ishman Bracey dies in Jackson, MS in 1970. He played in the 1920s with such local celebrities as Charlie McCoy and Tommy Johnson. After the second world war, he moved away from the music business to become a Baptist minister in Jackson. He died in Jackson in 1970 at the age of 69. More info available @msbluestrail.org.

The TN and MS Railroad opens a 12.5 mile stretch from Memphis to Horn Lake Depot in 1856. More information available @hornlake.org.

February 13

Sotheby’s, a premiere auction house, announces the discovery of a long-lost manuscript of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain in 1991. More info available @google.com.

February 14

James Wesley Broom is appointed Delta State Teachers College’s first President in 1925.  Previously, he had served as the assistant superintendent of education and a professor at Mississippi Normal School, (now the University of Southern Mississippi). He secured appropriations from the Senate for a girl’s dormitory called Cleveland Hall, housing for the president and dean of the school, a gymnasium, and a laundromat. He died in May of 1926.  More information available @deltastate.edu.

Steve McNair, a native of Mount Olive, MS who spent the majority of his NFL career playing quarterback for the Tennessee Titans, is born in 1973. Having played collegiately for Alcorn State University where he won the 1994 Walter Payton Award as the top player in the NCAA Division-AA. He played in Super Bowl XXXIV with the Titans, was the team’s all-time leading passer, and was All-Pro and Co-MVP in 2003. McNair died on July 4, 2009 when his 20-year-old mistress shot and killed him before turning the gun on herself.  More information available @officialstevemcnair.com.

Luther Holbert and his common law wife are burned to death in a violent lynching on the plantation outside of Doddsville, MS owned by the recently murdered James Easland. More information available @ferris.edu.

February 15

Sunflower County is created in 1844. It was named for the Sunflower River that flows through it. More information available @rootsweb.ancestry.com.

Ethel Wright Mohamed, Belzoni quilting artist, dies in 1992. More information available @mamasdreamworld.com.

Commerce, the first town in Tunica County, is incorporated with a population of 7000 in 1839. It was a river port that once rivaled Memphis as an economic center. However, it was destroyed more than 100 years ago when shifting river currents undermined parts of its downtown. More information available @tunicachamber.com.

February 16

The first train arrives in Leland, MS in 1885. The railroad auditor C.E. Armstrong named the town Leland in honor of his sweetheart Lela McCutcheon. More information available @lelandms.org.

Delta State Teachers College becomes Delta State College in 1955. More information available @wikipedia.org.

James “Super Chikan” Johnson, a blues musician famous for the guitars he makes out of gas cans, is born in Clarksdale, MS in 1951. Having spent his childhood moving from town to town in the Delta, he is best known for performing regularly at Morgan Freeman’s Ground Zero blues club. More information available @superchikan.com.

Margaret Wade, a basketball player and coach born in McCool, MS, dies in Cleveland, MS in 1995. After coaching the Cleveland High School basketball team for 25 seasons with a 453-89-6 record, she took a coaching position at Delta State in 1973 to restart their women’s basketball team, going on to win three consecutive national championships at the AIAW Women’s Basketball Tournament. She was inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame in 1985 and into the Women’s Basketball Hall of Fame in 1999. More information available @gostatesmen.com.

February 17

The Delta becomes part of the United States of America once more when Mississippi becomes the ninth state readmitted to the U.S. following the Civil War in 1870. More information available @usconstitution.net.

February 18

Ishmael Wadada Leo Smith, famed trumpeter and composer, is born in Leland, MS in 1941.  Having studied a variety of music cultures, he created a jazz and world music theory including a notation system called “Ankhrasmation.”  Currently, he is a professor of music at California Institute of the Arts.   More information available @adagio.calarts.edu.

Myrlie Evers-Williams becomes the first woman and Mississippian to be elected to chair the board of the NAACP in 1995. Married to Medgar Evers, she took it upon herself after his death to obtain a college degree, later becoming the Director of Consumer Affairs at Atlantic Richfield Company.  She was also the first African American woman to serve as the commissioner for the Los Angeles Board of Public Works.  More information available @olemiss.com.

February 19

Clifton Taulbert, author of nonfiction and children’s books, is born in Glen Allan, MS in 1945. He Best known for his book Once Upon A Time When We Were Colored, he is a recipient of the Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters Award for Nonfiction (1993) and the NAACP Image award for Literature (1996) and was named an Outstanding Black Entrepreneur by TIME Magazine for his efforts as president and founder of the Building Community Institute. More info available @olemiss.edu.

James Oliver Eastland, known as “Big Jim” and as a segregationist US Senator from Mississippi, dies in 1986. Born in Doddsville, MS and raised on a cotton farm, he briefly served in the US Senate in 1941 and again from 1943 until his resignation in 1978. He was most senior member of the Senate at the time of his retirement and is best known for his strong support of states’ rights and for his opposition to the civil rights movement.  More information available @senate.gov.  

Sam Myers, blues musician and songwriter, is born in Laurel, MS in 1936. Growing up with severe cataracts that impaired his vision, he found a passion that required nothing but deft fingers and an attuned ear: music. After receiving a scholarship and attending the American Conservatory School of Music in Chicago, he later joined Anson Funderburgh’s band, The Rockets, in 1986. He died on July 17, 2006 while recovering from surgery at home. More information available @sweetsamyers.com.

Senators W.B. Roberts and Arthur Marshall introduce Senate Bill 236, which creates Delta State Teachers College in 1924. More information available @wikipedia.org.

February 20

Writer Ellen Gilchrist is born in Vicksburg, MS in 1935. A writer of poems, short stories, novels, and nonfiction commentaries, she is best known for her short fiction, In the Land of Dreamy Dreams, and a collection of stories called Victory Over Japan, which won the 1984 American Book Award. More info available @olemiss.edu.

February 21

Vicksburg National Military Park is established in 1899 to honor the Battle of Vicksburg, a major battle of the Civil War. More information available @nps.gov.

CSA Major General William Loring begins construction of Fort Pemberton outside of Greenwood, MS in 1863. More information available @wikipedia.org.

An F4 Tornado strikes Inverness in 1971, destroying it and many other towns in Leflore County while killing 47 people. More information available @fema.gov.

February 22

Willie Dixon, American bluesman, songwriter, and record producer from Vicksburg, MS, wins a Grammy Award in 1989 for Best Traditional Blues Recording for his 1988 album Hidden Charms. As a teenager, he hitchhiked to Chicago and later became a producer for Chess and Checker Records. Proficient on both the upright bass and the guitar in addition to his singing abilities, he was one of the most prolific songwriters of his time and is recognized as one of the founders of the Chicago blues sound. He worked with Chuck Berry, Muddy Waters, and several others.  More information available @bluesheaven.org and @afgen.com.

February 23

Blues guitarist Johnny Winter is born in Beaumont, TX in 1944. He spent a small portion of his childhood in Leland, MS. Best known for his late 1960s and 1970s high-energy blues-rock albums and live performances, Winter also produced three Grammy Award-winning albums for blues legend Muddy Water. He was inducted into the Blues Foundation Hall of Fame in 1988 and is ranked among the greatest guitarists of all time by Rolling Stone. More information available @johnnywinter.net.

Mississippi reenters the Union, and Hiram Revels is sworn in as the first African American US Senator in 1870, representing Mississippi. He is one of only six African Americans ever to have served in the US Senate HE spoke for compromise and moderation as a senator, advocating for racial equality and reassuring his fellow senators about the capability of blacks. More info @bioguide.congress.gov.

February 24

Tennessee Williams, author from Columbus, MS who won Pulitzer Prizes for A Streetcar Named Desire and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, dies in New York City in 1983. He has written several plays and received a Pulitzer Prize for A Streetcar Named Desire.  Considered to be the most influential American playwright of the 20^th century, he won the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1980, and his plays remain among the most produced in the world. More information available @nytimes.com.

February 25

Hiram Rhoades Revels, a Republican from Natchez, MS and first African American ever to sit in Congress, is sworn into the US Senate in 1870. Born in Fayetteville, North Carolina on September 27, 1822, he represented Mississippi in the Senate from 1870 to 1871. He also served as the President of Alcorn College until 1882.  As of 2007, he is only one of five African Americans to serve on the Senate.  More information available @ncpedia.org.

February 26

Bukka White, musician and uncle to BB King, dies in 1977. Born on November 12, 1909 in Houston, MS, he began playing the fiddle at square dances at an early age. During his musical career, he was known for his blues singing and playing of the national steel guitar.  During the time he spent in Parchman Farm State prison, he recorded “Shake ‘Em on Down” and “Po’ Boy,” which became very well known.  More information available @nps.gov.

February 27

Wharlest Jackson, an NAACP activist, is killed in Natchez, MS after he receives a promotion to what was deemed a “white” job in 1967. An employee of Armstrong Rubber Company, he received a promotion that allowed him to mix chemicals as opposed to his previous job of simply making tires. More information available @coldcases.org.

Othar (Otha) Turner, a famous fife player, dies in 2003. Born in Gravel Springs, MS, he began playing the fife at the age of 16, making the instrument from sugarcane. His band, The Rising Star Fife and Drum Band, propelled him to become the recipient of such awards as the National Endowment for the Arts Heritage Award and the Smithsonian Lifetime Achievement Award. More information available @cascadeblues.org.

February 28

Jimmy Travis, member of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, is shot outside of Greenwood, MS in 1963.  On many occasions in the early 1960s, SNCC officers were sprayed with bullets or torched by local whites who opposed their efforts to register black voters. More information available @ibilio.org.

Yazoo-Mississippi Levee Board is created by the Mississippi Legislature in 1884. The Board has a long history of erecting, maintaining, and operating a system of levees to protect the people and property of the Delta from the damages caused by the elevated waters of the Mississippi River as well as interior rivers and streams. More information available @leveeboard.org.

February 29

Hattie McDaniel, Mammy from Gone With the Wind, wins an Oscar for best supporting actress in 1940. Despite not being allowed to attend the premiere of the movie in Atlanta because of George’s segregationist laws at the time, she did attend its Hollywood debut. She is also the first African American ever to win an Oscar. Born in Wichita, KS in 1895, she starred in such movies as The Golden West, Saratoga, and Since You Went Away and died in 1952.  More available @notablebiographies.com.

Bo Diddley receives the Lifetime Achievement Award in 1996 at the seventh annual Rhythm and Blues Foundation Pioneer Awards in Los Angeles, CA. More information available @bodiddley.com.

March

March 13

“Hoochie Coochie Man,” written by Willie Dixon and recorded by Muddy Waters (with Dixon playing bass) enters the R&B chart in 1954. It reached #3. More information available @wikipedia.org.

March 14

March 15

March 16

March 17

Blanche Kelso Bruce, the first African American to serve a full term in the Senate, dies in 1898. He represented Mississippi from 1875 to 1881.  His father owned a plantation in Virginia and his mother was a house slave. He was raised and educated with his half brother.   Before being elected to the Senate, he was the sheriff of Bolivar County and the tax assessor for Tallahatchie County.  More info available @bioguide.congress.gov.

Myrlie Evers-Williams, Civil Rights leader and author, is born in Vicksburg, MS in 1933. Married to Medgar Evers, she took it upon herself after his death to obtain a college degree, later becoming the Director of Consumer Affairs at Atlantic Richfield Company.  She was also the first African American woman to serve as the commissioner for the Los Angeles Board of Public Works.  More information available @olemiss.com.

Twenty-three blacks are shot to death in the Carrollton Courthouse during the “Carrollton Massacre” in 1886. More information available @vaiden.net.

March 18

Unita Blackwell, the first African American woman elected mayor in Mississippi, is born in Lula, MS in 1933. Blackwell was a project director for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and helped organize voter drives for African-Americans across Mississippi. She is also the founder of the US China People’s Friendship Association, a group dedicated to promoting cultural exchange between United States and China. Barefootin’, Blackwell’s autobiography, charts her activism and was published in 2006. More information available @blackpast.org.

Country music great Charlie Pride is born in Sledge in 1938. He was featured on 39 number-one hits on the Billboard Hot Country Songs charts. His greatest success came in the early to mid-1970s when he became the best-selling performer of RCA Records since Elvis Presley. Pride is one of the few black country musicians to have had considerable success in the largely white country music industry. More information available @cmt.com.

March 19

George A. Morris, American football player MS Sports Hall of Fame inductee, is born in Vicksburg in 1931. He played college football for the Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets and professionally for the San Francisco 49ers for only one season in 1956. He was elected to the College Football Hall of Fame in 1981 and died in 2007. More information available @sports.espn.go.com.

March 21

Eddie J. “Son” House Jr., blues musician, is born in Riverton, MS in 1902. A young Baptist preacher before becoming a bluesman, he played with Robert Johnson, Charley Payton, and Willie Brown.  He recorded with Paramount Records and the Library of Congress.  More information available @nps.gov.

Bo Carter, popular bluesman and member of the Mississippi Shieks Armenter, is born in Bolton, MS in 1893. One of the most popular blues musicians during the 1930s, he continued to play music even as his vision started to deteriorate. While known to compose sensitive, introspective songs, he added such tracks as “Banana in Your Fruit Basket” and “Please Warm My Weiner” to his final record that lost him appeal with the public in the 1940s. He died in poverty in 1964. More info @wikipedia.org.

Otis Spann, a “Chicago Blues” artist, is born in Jackson, MS in 1930. He is considered Chicago’s leading postwar blues pianist and studied under Pinetop Perkins of Belzoni, MS. Posthumously inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame in 1980, he is remembered for his distinct piano style. More information available @rhythmandtheblues.org.uk.

Collier’s Weekly describes Leland, MS in 1908 as the “Hellhole of the Delta” due to the availability of gambling, alcohol, and cocaine. More informatoin available @lelandms.org.

DJ Alan Freed hosts the Moondog Coronation Ball, the first “rock n’ roll” concert, in Cleveland, OH in 1952. Authorities shut it down halfway through the first song officially because the stadium was grossly overfilled. However, it’s suspected that the concert’s racially mixed audience was a contributing factor. More information available @wikipedia.org.

March 22

Martin Luther King Jr. is accused of heading up an illegal boycott in 1956. When Rosa Parks was arrested for refusing to give up her seat in a city bus in Montgomery, AL, the Montgomery Bus Boycott followed for 385 days, led by E.D. Nixon and Dr. King. Instead of bringing him to jail, King’s trial resulted in the US District Court ruling that ended racial segregation on all Montgomery public buses. More information available @watson.org.

Mississippi becomes the last state to ratify the 19^th amendment to the US Constitution, which gives women the right to vote, in 1984. Federal law trumped Mississippi’s equivocation so women could still vote after the amendment’s passage; however, most states had ratified the amendment more than 60 years earlier. Chief among politician’s fears regarding women’s right to vote was that they would make it impossible to repeal the 18^th amendment, which prohibited the sale of liquor. More information available @guardian.co.uk.

March 23

George “Boomer” Scott, Boston Red Sox baseball player and manager and MS Sports Hall of Fame inductee, is born in Greenville, MS in 1944. A three-time All-Star player for the Red Sox, Boomer won the A.L. home-run and runs batted-in titles in 1975 (sharing the former title with Reggie Jackson). He finished his 14-season career eight hits shy of 2,000 with 251 home runs and 1,051 runs batted in. More information available @top100redsox.blogspot.com.

March 24

Elvis Presley, the “King of Rock and Roll,” is inducted into the Army in 1958. Presley enlisted as a private at Fort Chaffee, AR; his wish was to be treated no differently than anyone else. At the time, Presley was convinced his musical career had come to its end. He was introduced to both amphetamines and karate in the Army, both of which he continued to use after his departure from the service. Because of the amount of unreleased material his producer had held onto, Presley had ten top 40 hits while he served. More information available @elvis.com.

March 25

Charles Banks, a black businessman and founder of Mound Bayou, is born in Clarksdale in 1873. Among many successes, Banks was head of the first bank in Mound Bayou, opened in 1904. More information available @thefreelibrary.com.

Ida B. Wells, an African American civil rights advocate and women’s rights activist, who documented numerous lynchings, dies in 1931. Born in 1862, she quit high school to take care of her brothers and sisters after her parents died of yellow fever. She was a strong supporter of women’s rights and helped lead a campaign against segregation on trains after she herself was thrown off for not giving up her seat. More information available @duke.edu.

Lawrence Gordon, producer of such films as the Die Hard series, Predator, and Lara Croft: Tomb Raider, is born in Yazoo City, MS in 1936. Growing up in Belzoni, MS, he served as the president of 20^th Century Fox from 1984 to 1986. Afterwards, he formed the Largo Entertainment, producing Field of Dreams in 1989, which received an Academy Award nomination for Best Picture. More info available @nytimes.com.

March 26

Author Tennessee Williams, who won Pulitzer Prizes for A Streetcar Named Desire and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, is born in Columbus MS in 1911. Having summered in Clarksdale, MS as a boy, he grew up in a variety of difficult family situations that forever shaped the content and characters of his prose. Acknowledged as one of the most accomplished playwrights in the history of the English speaking theater, Williams wrote classics for the American stage that remain among the most produced in the world. More information available @pbs.org.

Stax recording artist Rufus Thomas is born in Cayce, MS in 1917. He was one of the long-standing personalities on WDIA in Memphis, one of the first radio stations in the US geared toward blacks; however, he is also known for his recording career in the 1960s and 1970s when he recorded numerous soul songs that made it in the Hot 100’s top 10. He was inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame in 2001. More information available @seguerecords.com.

Missionaries organized the first Christian church in the Choctaw Nation in 1819. More information available @choctawnation.com.

March 27

Robert Lockwood, blues guitarist from Helena, AR is born in Tukey Scratch, AR in 1915. Recording for Chess Records among other Chicago labels in the 1950s and 1960s, he is best known as a longtime collaborator of Sonny Boy Williamson II and Little Walter Jacobs. More information available @robertlockwood.com.

The short-lived Magnolia flag was replaced by the Confederacy’s flag in 1861. More information available @mcsr.olemiss.edu.

March 28

W.C. Handy, the “Father of the Blues,” dies in 1958. Born in Florence, AL in 1873, he is credited with giving the blues its contemporary form. Also, he is thought to have taken the blues from a regional music style with a limited audience to one of the dominant national forces in American music. because he introduced blues to the world.  He performed at such places as Carnegie Hall in 1928, the Chicago World’s Fair in 1933, and on an NBC broadcast in 1940. In 1969, the US Postal Service issued a commemorative stamp in his honor, and the most prestigious award for blues artists is named after him in addition to a city park on Beale Street in Memphis, TN and a block of West 52^nd Street in Manhattan. More information available @una.edu.

The Confederate Constitution is formally ratified by Mississippi in 1861 only two weeks after its introduction and adoption by the Confederacy. This is understood as one of the more expedited ratifications in Mississippi’s history (as compared to the 65 years it took the Mississippi legislature to ratify the 19^th amendment [women’s suffrage] and 130 years for the 13^th amendment [prohibition of slavery]). More information available @constitution.org.

March 29

The Port Gibson Main Street Heritage Festival is put on for the first time in 1992, celebrating the history of Port Gibson’s downtown district, the third oldest city in Mississippi. More information available @portgibsonmainstreet.com.

The Mississippi legislature creates the State Sovereignty Commission in 1956 with the mission “to protect the sovereignty of Mississippi from encroachment from thereon by the federal government.” In reality, the state was trying to protect against federal enforcement of civil rights laws. Its initial budget of $250,000 was spent trying to identify those citizens in Mississippi associated with the civil rights movement, communists, and any individual who did not adhere to segregationist norms. While the commission officially closed in 1977, state lawmakers ordered the files sealed until 2027. However, a federal court order opened the records in 1998 to reveal more than 87,000 names about whom the state had collected information in addition to the state’s complicity in the murders of three civil rights workers at Philadelphia, MS. More information available @mdcbowen.org.

Sharkey County is created in 1876. Named for Judge William L. Sharkey, provisional governor of the state in 1865, it was originally carved from territory belonging to the counties of Warren, Washington, and Issaquena. As of 2010, the population was 4,916, and 38.3% of the population is below the poverty line including 50% of those under age 18. Sharkey county has the tenth lowest per capita income in Mississippi. More information available @rootsweb.ancestry.com.

March 30

The Mississippi legislature establishes Casino Road Fund and permits Hwy 61 to be expanded into four lanes in 1994. More info available @tunicacountynaacp.com.

March 31

Greenwood Lefore’s magnificent Carroll County home, Malmaison, burns down in 1942. Leflore was a Choctaw who became a prosperous land owner, farmer, representative, and senator. Chief of the Choctaw tribe before the Treaty of Dancing Rabbit Creek, he had many connections in the state and local governments and used them to help secure the largest amount of Indian territory land for any removed tribe. Greenwood and Leflore County in Mississippi are named after him. More information available @aboutgreenwoodms.com.

North Carrollton is chartered in 1899. As of 2000, there were 499 people, 33.5% of which were below the poverty line. More information available @wikipedia.org.

Charley Patton, founder of the Delta Blues, is born in 1891. Having lived most of his life in Sunflower County, MS, his family moved in 1900 to the legendary Dockery Plantation where both John Lee Hooker and Howlin’ Wolf were inspired by him. He is known for his harsh, loud voice with which he sang about African American life in the south. Patton’s race remains a subject of debate, and it’s suspected he was a mix of black, white, and Cherokee. His song, “Pony Blues,” was included in the Library of Congress’ National Recording Registry in 2006.  More info available @nps.gov.

April

April 2

Ponce de Leon, Spanish explorer, discovers Florida in 1513 and becomes the first European to do so. Born in Spain in 1474, he accompanied Christopher Columbus on his expedition to the Americas in 1492.  He discovered the Gulf Stream and founded one of the oldest European colonies in Puerto Rico.  While searching for the Fountain of Youth, he was injured by an arrow during an attack by Native Americans that led to his death.  More information available @fcit.usf.edu.

April 3

The Pony Express, a mail delivery system of the 19^th century, begins operating in 1860. It was responsible for communicating important events and carrying mail from Missouri to California.  Today, the stables continue to stand as a tribute to the mail system of old and are available for view in MO by the public. More info available @ponyexpress.org.

April 4

William Hodding Carter II, a writer and reporter from Greenville, MS, dies there in 1972. Born in Hammond, LA in 1907, he worked as a reporter for the New Orleans Item-Tribune (1929), the United Press in New Orleans (1930), and the Associated Press in Jackson, MS (1931-32).  In 1932, he founded the Hammond Daily Courier, and, in 1939, he moved to Greenville, MS to start the Greenville Delta Democrat Times.  In 1946, he won a Pulitzer Prize for his editorials that lambasted the poor treatment Japanese-American soldiers received when they returned from WWII. More information available @mswritersandmusicians.com.

Martin Luther King Jr. is shot and killed on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis in 1967. Rooming there during his stay in Memphis to support the strike of black sanitary public works employees, King delivered his “I’ve Been to the Mountaintop” address at the Mason Temple only the night before, saying, “I’ve seen the promised land. I may not get there with you, but I want you to know that we as a people will get there. I’m not fearing any man. Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.” More information available @history1900s.about.com.

Muddy Waters, the father of modern Chicago blues, is born in Rolling Fork, MS in 1915. A major inspiration for the British blues explosion of the 1960s, he is ranked #17 in Rolling Stone magazine’s list of 100 Greatest Artists of All Time. More information available @muddywaters.com.

April 5

The Battle at Fort Pemberton begins with the scuttling of the Star of the West in the Yazoo River at Greenwood, MS in 1863. More information available @wikipedia.org.

April 6

The Battle of Shiloh begins in 1862. A major battle in the Western Theater of the American Civil War, Shiloh pitted Union General Grant and Confederate Generals Johnston and Beauregard against each other in southwestern Tennessee. The Confederates were forces to retreat from the bloodiest battle in United States history up to that time, ending their hopes that they could block the Union advance into northern Mississippi. More information available @civilwar.org.

April 7

The Mississippi Territory is organized from land ceded by Georgia and South Carolina in 1798. It existed until December 10, 1817, when the final extent of the territory was admitted to the Union as the state of Mississippi. More info available @wikipedia.org.

Winterville Mounds is officially recognized as a National Historic Landmark in 2001. The site consists of flat-topped, rectangular ceremonial mounds of various sizes that were constructed during the Mississippian period, between 1200 and 1250 AD. More information @nps.gov.

Hodding Carter III is born in New Orleans, LA in 1935. A journalist and politician best known for his role as Assistant Secretary of State for Public Affairs in the Jimmy Carter administration, he was born to journalist and publisher William Hodding Carter II and grew up in Greenville, MS. More information available @americanpressinstitute.org.

April 8

Roosevelt "Booba" Barnes, known for playing the guitar with his teeth and tongue, dies from lung cancer in 1996 in Chicago. Born in Longwood, MS in 1936. Beginning to play at juke joints with his harmonica at the age of sixteen, he did not form his own band, called the Swinging Gold Coasters, until 1956. He was largely inspired by Howlin’ Wolf, and Howlin’ Wolf even called him “little wolf.” More info available @cascadeblues.org.

April 9

Rene-Robert Cavalier, Seiur de La Salle, arrives at the mouth of the Mississippi and claims the entire Mississippi River Valley (including the Delta) for France in 1862, naming it “Louisiana” after King Louis XIV of France. Born in 1643 in Normandy, France, La Salle explored the Great Lakes region of the US and Canada, the Gulf of Mexico, and the Mississippi River. More information available @knowla.org.

Robert E. Lee surrenders, and the Civil War ends in 1865. The Confederate commander won battles in VA, but his northward advance was turned back with heavy casualties at the Battle of Gettysburg. To the west, the Union gained control of the Mississippi River after their capture of Vicksburg, MS. Split in two and outmatched in men and wartime resources, the Confederacy was soon fatally wounded with the loss of Atlanta, and Lee surrendered to Union General Ulysses S. Grant in 1865. More information available @us-civilwar.com.

April 10

Congress passes the Civil Rights Act in 1964, a landmark piece of legislation that outlaws major forms of discrimination against blacks and women, including racial segregation. It ended unequal application of voter registration requirements and racial segregation in schools, at the workplace, and at public facilities. More information available @archives.gov.

One day after surrendering to Union General Ulysses S. Grant, General Robert E. Lee addresses his army for the last time in 1865. More information available @wikipedia.org.

The US Justice Department, in conjunction with the district attorneys for Sunflower, Leflore, and Washington Counties, announce a new investigation into the murder of Emmett Till in 2004. After completing a thorough DNA and anthropological analysis of the body, they found too little evidence to substantiate any of the accusations that had been made. More information available @nytimes.com.

April 11

Johnnie Billington, guitarist from Crowder, MS, is born in 1935. Beginning to play guitar at the age of ten, he was playing at clubs throughout the Delta by thirteen. He reunited with his band members in Chicago in 1959 while working as automotive repair mechanic during the day. Returning to Clarksdale, MS in 1977, he began to teach under-privileged children blues music in his repair shop at night, eventually expanding his effort to receive grants from the MS Arts Commission and establish the Delta Blues Education Fund. He has received numerous awards in the Delta for his efforts. More info available @pbs.org.

Luther Johnson, a Chicago blues singer and guitarist known as “Guitar Junior,” is born in Itta Bena, MS in 1939. After performing with Magic Sam and Muddy Waters in the 1960s and 1970s, Johnson fronted his own band and won a Grammy Award in 1985 for Best Traditional Blues Album for his part in Blues Explosion. He now lives in New Hampshire. More information available @mswritersandmusicians.com.

Samuel Reeves Keesler, World War I hero, is born in Greenwood, MS in 1896. Keesler Air Force Base in Biloxi, MS is named in his honor. Posted to the 24^th Aero Squadron in the Verdun, France sector of the Western Front, he was unexpectedly attacked by four enemy fighters during a reconnaissance mission. When he lost control of his plane due to enemy fire, he continued to fend off the attackers with machine gun fire even as it fell. He was posthumously awarded the Silver Star in 1919. More info @militarytimes.com.

Country music artist Steve Azar is born in Greenville, MS in 1964. He released his debut album in 1996 but left the music industry until 2002 when he released his biggest hit, the #2 “I Don’t Have to Be Me (‘Til Monday).” In 2008, he formed his own label, Dang Records, and released Indianola in 2008 and Slide On Over Here in 2009. More information available @steveazar.com.

April 12

The Civil War begins in 1861. Hostilities began when Confederate forces attacked a US military installation at Fort Sumter in South Carolina. President Lincoln responded by calling for a volunteer army from each state to recapture federal property. This led to declarations of secession by four more slave states. For the next two years, the Confederacy successfully beat back Union efforts to capture its capital, Richmond, VA, until the Battle of Gettysburg turned the tide of war in favor of the Union. More information available @historyplace.com.

George “Boomer” Scott, a professional baseball player from Greenville, MS, makes his professional debut in 1966. He eventually played for the Boston Red Sox, the Kansas City Royals, the New York Yankees, and the Milwaukee Brewers. More information available @georgeboomerscott.com.

April 13

Civil rights activist Sam Block, born in Cleveland, dies in 2000. Remembered for his work with SNCC in Greenwood, he was repeatedly beaten and imprisoned as he fought for voting rights for blacks in his native Mississippi Delta during the 1960s. More information available @nytimes.com.

Author Eudora Welty, American author, is born in Jackson, MS in 1909. She was best known for her short stories and novels regarding the American South. Her book, The Optimist’s Daughter, won the Pulitzer prize in 1973. Welty was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, among numerous awards. Her house in Jackson is a National Historic Landmark and is open to the public as a museum. More information available @eudorawelty.org.

Bennie Thompson assumes office in 1993 as Congressman for the second Congressional District of Mississippi, representing the Delta. He currently serves and has chaired the Homeland Security Committee in the House, becoming both the first Democrat and the first African American to do so. More info available @benniethompson.house.gov.

Walter Sillers, a powerful member of the state legislature, prominent lawyer, planter, plantation owner, statesman, and politician, is born in 1888 in Rosedale, MS. An ardent segregationist, he was part of the splinter Dixiecrat movement of 1948. More information available @http://mshistory.k12.ms.us.

Roosevelt Townes and “Bootjack” McDaniels, two black men charged with murdering a white businessman, are publically tortured to death in Duck Hill, MS in 1937. The two men were transported by school bus to the lynching site, where they were tied to pine trees. Before a mob of about 500 white men, women, and children, both Townes and McDaniels were repeatedly burned in the chest with a blow torch; the mob then finished McDaniels off with intense gunfire and Townes off in a gasoline-soaked pyre. No one was ever arrested, and the condemnation the lynching drew only served to drive lynching underground. More information available @time.com.

April 14

Abraham Lincoln, sixteenth president of the United States, is assassinated by John Wilkes Booth at Ford’s Theatre in 1865. The assassination occurred five days after Confederate General Robert E. Lee surrendered to General Grant. The assassination was part of a larger conspiracy to kill the Secretary of State and Vice President as well in order to rally the remaining Confederate troops to continue fighting.  While that part of the plot failed, Lincoln died the next morning from the gunshot wound. More information available @memory.loc.gov.

April 15

Bessie Smith, “Empress of the Blues”, is born in Chattanooga, TN in 1894. Born in Chattanooga, TN in 1892 or 1894 (sources report differently), she toured through the south and other northern cities in the 1920s as one of the highest paid black entertainers. She was killed in a car accident in Clarksdale, MS, leaving behind 160 recordings of her work.  More information available @pbs.org.

Frank Frost, one of the foremost delta blues harmonica players of the 1960s and 70s, is born in Auvergne, AR in 1936. He learned to play harmonica from Sonny Boy Williamson and recorded with Sam Phillips, founder of Sun Records. More information available @cascadeblues.org.

April 16

US Admiral David Dixon Porter leads 12 ships past the heavy barrage of Confederate artillery at Vicksburg in 1863. From 1862 to 1863, the Confederates attempted to blockade the Mississippi River by planting heavy batteries on bluffs at Vicksburg and Port Hudson. Grant, however, lost only one ship, and the operation advanced General Ulysses S. Grant’s movement against Vicksburg in 1863. More information available @sonofthesouth.net.

April 17

Musician Sam Carr of the Jelly Roll Kings is born in Friars Point in 1926. Widely acclaimed as one of the best drummers in the blues, he worked with Frank Frost for almost the entirety of his musical career and backed such greats as Sonny Boy Williamson II. In his last ten years, he received annual nominations for Best Drummer in the Blues Music Awards. He was presented with the Heritage Award by Governor Barbour in 2007 and died in 2009 of congestive heart failure. More information available @www.arts.state.ms.us.

The Mississippi Territory, with Natchez as its capital, is surveyed out of the State of Georgia in 1798. At that time it included what became the state of Alabama but did not yet include the Gulf Coast region. More information available @mshistory.k12.ms.us.

April 18

The Hollywood Reporter states in 1932 that William Faulkner, a “writer from the South,” has been hired to write scripts for MGM. Born in Oxford, MS, Faulkner was heavily influenced by his home state as well as by the history and culture of the entire American South. He is considered one of the most important writers of Southern literature. Faulkner was relatively unknown until receiving the 1949 Nobel Prize in Literature. Two of his works, A Fable and The Reivers, won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. He died on July 6, 1962.  More information available @olemiss.edu.

April 19

The first Choctaw school at Eliot Mission officially commences in 1819. More information available @choctaw.org.

The first blood of the American Civil War is shed in 1861 when a secessionist mob in Baltimore attacks Massachusetts troops. More information available @wikipedia.org.

April 20

Coach Sank Powe is born in Elizabeth, near Leland, MS in 1942. After a brief stint with the St. Louis Cardinals that ended in an injury, Sank returned to Cleveland, MS to receive a job as one of the first black teachers to instruct at the town’s all-white Cleveland High when the schools were integrated in 1970. Within two years, the integrated baseball team he led had won the state championship, and within seven years, he was named Mississippi Baseball Coach of the Year. He has been presented numerous state and national awards for his contributions to sports and race relations. More information available @coachpowefoundation.com.

Blues artist Earl Zebedee Hooker, born in Clarksdale, MS dies in Chicago, IL in 1970. A Chicago blues artist who rarely sang, his own commercial success was limited; however, he was known to possess a tremendous talent with the guitar and was considered the “best of modern guitarists” by B.B. King. More information available @wikipedia.org.

April 21

The Mississippi River crevassed at its levee at Mounds Landing, near Scott, precipitating the Great Flood of 1927 and destroying the Delta. As the most destructive river flood in the history of the United States, the Great Flood submerged 27,000 square miles with river water, causing $400 million in damages and killing 246 people in seven states. Arkansas was the hardest hit with 14% of its total land covered in floodwaters. More information available @news.nationalgeographic.com.

Mark Twain dies in 1910. Best known for his novels, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Twain grew up in Hannibal, MO, a frontier setting that provided much of the inspiration for his later novels. He is lauded as the “greatest American humorist of his age” and even the “father of American literature” by William Faulkner. More information available @cmgww.com.

April 22

Downtown Greenville is covered in 10 feet of water following the levee break near Scott, MS in 1927. During the Great Flood of 1927, the Mississippi River broke out of its levee system in 145 places and flooded 27,000 square miles. The flood caused over $400 million in damages and killed 246 people in seven states. More information available @news.nationalgeographic.com.

The first train arrives in Hernando, MS in 1856. More info available @livingplaces.com.

April 23

James Earl Ray, convicted murderer of civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr., dies in 1998. A few months before Dr. King was assassinated, Ray had escaped from the Missouri State Penitentiary. He had also been on the FBI’s Most Wanted Fugitives List twice.  He later recanted his confession and tried unsuccessfully to gain a trial. More information available @notablebiographies.com.

The Natchez Rhythm Club, festooned with dried Spanish moss, catches fire and burns in 1940. Trapped inside the one-story steel-clad wooden building, 203 African Americans lose their lives and many more are injured. At the time, it was the second most deadly building fire in the history of the nation; today, it is ranked as the second deadliest club in US history. More information available @wikipedia.org.

April 24

J. F. H. Claiborne, the “father of Mississippi history,” is born in Natchez in 1807.  A planter, politician, and popular journalist, he wrote in the style of the Southwestern Humorists, but his most notable achievement stems from his interest in his native state’s history. This passion led him to amass an important collection of historical papers, documents, and memorabilia upon which he largely based the first significant historical account of Mississippi. More information available @olemiss.edu.

Otis Spann, a “Chicago Blues” artist dies in Chicago, IL in 1900. Born in Jackson, MS in 1930, he is considered Chicago’s leading postwar blues pianist and studied under Pinetop Perkins of Belzoni, MS. Posthumously inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame in 1980, he is remembered for his distinct piano style. More information available @rhythmandtheblues.org.uk.

April 25

Lynn Hamilton, an African American actress best known as “Donna Harris” on the sitcom Sanford and Son, is born in Yazoo City, MS in 1930. She also had a recurring role on The Waltons and made numerous appearances on many other sitcoms, soap operas, and miniseries. More information available @imdb.com.

Mack Charles Parker, an African American accused of rape, is lynched in Poplarville, MS in 1958. He was accused of raping a pregnant white woman in northern Pearl River County. Three days before he was to stand trial, he was kidnapped from his jail cell by a mob, beaten, and shot. His body was found in the Pearl River ten days later. Despite evidence compiled by the FBI, and indictment by a federal grand jury, the men who killed him were released. Moreover, his murder trial was repeatedly postponed by Jams P. Coleman, governor of Mississippi. More information available @picayuneitem.com.

Albert King, one of the “Three Kings of the Blues Guitar,” is born in Indianola, MS in 1923. By signing onto Stax Records in 1966, King was one of the first blues guitarist to cross over into modern soul, helping to nurture a white interest in blues when the music had fallen out of popularity. He was inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame in 1983 and continued touring throughout the 1980s. He died of a heart attack in 1992. More information available @cascadeblues.org.

April 26

The Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDB) is formally founded in Jackson, MS in 1964. Founded during the civil rights movement, the political party was organized by black and white Mississippians to challenge the legitimacy of the white-only US Democratic Party. Prevented from casting their votes in the MS primary election in 1963, African Americans cast “freedom ballots,” an alternative organized by the MFDB to dramatize denial of their voting rights. In 1964, the MFDB sent 68 delegates to the 1964 Democratic National Convention to challenge the right of the Mississippi Democratic Party’s delegation to participate in the convention because of their election by a segregated process. While they failed in this, they did succeed in dramatizing the violence and injustice by which Mississippi’s governing structure disenfranchised black citizens. More information available @ibiblio.org.

Johnny Shines, a blues singer and guitarist, is born in Frayser, TN in 1915. Inspired by Charley Patton and Howlin’ Wolf, he eventually worked with Robert Johnson and toured the South with him. He played from the 1940s into the 1970s and returned with an album in 1991 that won a W.C. Handy Award. He was inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame in 1992. More information available @wikipedia.org.

Barry Lyons becomes the first former DSU Statesman to hit a major league homerun in 1987. More information available @wikipedia.org.

April 27

The worst maritime disaster in American history occurs when the steamboat Sultana explodes and sinks in the Mississippi River in 1865. An estimated 1800 of the boat’s 2400 passengers were killed when three of the ship’s four boilers exploded. More information available @coax.net.

April 28

Charley Patton, known as the “Father of the Delta Blues,” dies in 1934 at the age of 42 in Indianola. Having lived most of his life in Sunflower County, MS, his family moved in 1900 to the legendary Dockery Plantation where both John Lee Hooker and Howlin’ Wolf were inspired by him. He is known for his harsh, loud voice with which he sang about African American life in the south. Patton’s race remains a subject of debate, and it’s suspected he was a mix of black, white, and Cherokee. His song, “Pony Blues,” was included in the Library of Congress’ National Recording Registry in 2006.  More information available @nps.gov.

April 29

John Luther “Casey” Jones leaves Memphis bound for Canton but wrecks near Vaughn in 1900. A locomotive engineer for Illinois Central, Casey stayed aboard, trying to slow the train down and lessen the impact of the crash as he told others to jump off.  As a result of his efforts, he was the only one who died. Wallace Saunders, an African American worker for Illinois Central and a good friend of Casey’s, wrote a song in tribute to Casey Jones following his death. More information available @watervalley.net.

Otis Rush, blues guitarist from Philadelphia, MS, is born in 1935. His sound became known as West Side Chicago blues and became an influence on many musicians including Michael Bloomfield and Eric Clapton. More info available @otisrush.net.

April 30

Muddy Waters, blues legend from Rolling Fork, MS, dies in 1983. Born in Issaquena County, Mississippi on April 4, 1915, he is largely credited with inspiring the British blues explosion in the 1960s. The Rolling Stones named themselves after his 1950 song “Rollin Stone”, a song that Jimi Hendrix also covered. More info @muddywaters.com.

The Louisiana Purchase is concluded in 1803, and America expands west of the Mississippi. The US paid the French a total sum of $15 million for the Louisiana Territory, a purchase that President Thomas Jefferson saw as vital in order to secure America’s trade access via the port of New Orleans. It doubled the size of the United States and opened the continent to westward expansion. More info @wikipedia.org.

May

May 1

Charley Patton, the “Father of the Delta Blues,” is born in 1891. Having lived most of his life in Sunflower County, MS, his family moved in 1900 to the legendary Dockery Plantation where both John Lee Hooker and Howlin’ Wolf were inspired by him. He is known for his harsh, loud voice with which he sang about African American life in the south. Patton’s race remains a subject of debate, and it’s suspected he was a mix of black, white, and Cherokee. His song, “Pony Blues,” was included in the Library of Congress’ National Recording Registry in 2006.  More information available @nps.gov.

T.R.M. Howard, African American civil rights activist and surgeon, dies in 1976. He was one of the mentors to activists such as Medgar Evers, Charles Evers, Fannie Lou Hamer, Amzie Moore, Aaron Henry, and Jesse Jackson, founded Mississippi’s leading civil rights organization in the 1950s, the Regional Council of Negro leadership, and played a prominent role in the investigation of the kidnapping and murder of Emmet Till. He was also president of the National Medical Association and chairman of the board of the National Negro Business League. More information available @trmhoward.com.

Glen Ballard, producer and songwriter, is born in Natchez, MS in 1953. Best known as the producer of Alanis Morissette’s Jagged Little Pill, is born in Natchez in 1953. The album won the Grammy Award for “Best Rock Album” and “Album of the Year” amongst others. Before founding Java Records, he was involved in the recording and writing of Michael Jackson’s Thriller and Bad. More information available @mswritersandmusicians.com.

May 2

Charles Eddie Moore and Henry Hezekiah Dee are murdered by the Klan in 1964 based on evidence of the FBI. Because they suspected the two of civil rights activism, the Ku Klux Klan kidnapped and murdered the two. Their bodies were found in the Mississippi River on July 12. James Ford Sealing and nine other Klansmen were put on trial in 1966, and despite many accusations by FBI investigators, they were released. However, the case was reopened in 2005 by one of the victims’ brothers, and Seale was later sentenced to three life terms in 2007. More information available @crime.about.com.

May 4

Tyrone Davis, an American soul singer with a long list of hit records over a period of more than 30 years, is born in 1938. He was known as the “Chicago King of the Romantic Soul.” More information available @mswritersandmusicians.com.

May 5

Hazel Smith, the owner and editor of four weekly newspapers in Lexington, MS, wins a Pulitzer Prize for her editorial writing in 1964, becoming the first woman to do so. Focusing on unpopular causes, political corruption, and social injustice in Mississippi, her opposition to the White Citizens’ Council brought her the prize for her “steadfast adherence to her editorial duty in the face of great pressure and opposition.” More information available @mshistory.k12.ms.us.

May 7

NAACP leader Rev. George Wesley Lee is assassinated in Belzoni, MS in 1955. He was a vice president of the Regional Council of Negro Leadership and head of the Belzoni branch of the NAACP. As the pastor of four churches and the owner of a grocery store, he quickly became a community leader and pushed for blacks’ voting rights. No charges were ever brought against his assailants, but the open-coffin ceremony that was held exposed the national audience to the oppressive nature of Mississippi Jim Crow. More information available @beejae.com.

The Great Natchez Tornado hits Natchez, MS in 1840. It was the second deadliest single tornado in United States history, killing 317 people. Most of the deal toll was from individuals who sank in flatboats on the river. More info @underthehillsaloon.com.

Hodding Carter Jr. of the Delta Democrat Times wins the Pulitzer Prize in 1946 for editorials on racial, religious, and economic intolerance. Born in Hammond, LA in 1907, he was a prominent southern progressive journalist and author whose articles dealing with racism in the South won him the Pulitzer for Editorial Writing. More information available @mswritersandmusicians.com.

May 8

Dean Acheson announces the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, the International Monetary Fund, and the creation of the World Bank in Whitfield Gym on the DSU campus in 1947. Under the Secretary of State during Truman’s administration, Acheson was essentially unveiling the outline of the Marshall Plan, a program that sent monetary support to help rebuild European economies after the end of World War II in order to combat the spread of communism. More information available @archives.gov.

Hernando de Soto, Spanish explorer, reaches the Mississippi River with his conquistadors in 1541, possibly at Sunflower Landing west of Clarksdale. Understanding the river as an obstacle, he did not cross it until one month later at or near Memphis and continued his travel westwards through modern-day AR, OK, and TX. More information available @wikipedia.org.

Robert Johnson, the “King of the Delta Blues,” is born in Hazlehurst, MS in 1911. During his career, he wrote 29 songs, but only a few were recorded at the time of his death.  Despite being remembered well for his talented displays of singing, guitar playing, and songwriting, his personal life is poorly documented and has given rise to much legend. Eric Clapton has called Johnson “the most important blues singer that ever lived.” More information available @robertjohnsonbluesfoundation.org.

May 9

Kermit the frog makes his first debut in Leland, MS in 1955 on the five-minute puppet show WRC-TV’s Sam and Friends. From humble beginnings “as a tadpole in the swamp with 3,625 brothers and sisters,” Kermit has since risen to great fame through his courage in being the first of his siblings to depart the family swamp and through his diligence in becoming one of the first frogs to talk to humans. Since finding his break in 1955, he has played a central role in all of the Muppet movies and in The Muppet Show television series. Furthermore, he has been awarded an honorary doctorate of Amphibious Letters at Southampton College in New York, where he also gave a commencement speech in 1996. He has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, and, on his 50^th birthday, the US Postal Service released a set of new stamps featuring him and some of his fellow Muppets. More information available @wikipedia.org.

May 10

Walker Percy, cousin of William Alexander Percy and Greenville writer, dies in 1990. Born in 1916 in Birmingham, AL, he was raised by Perry after both of his parents and his grandfather committed suicide, setting a pattern of emotional struggle that would haunt Percy throughout his life. After receiving his medical degree from Columbia in 1941, he contracted TB and spent several years confined to a bed. Influenced by the existentialist writers he read, he took to writing, and, in 1962, he won the National Fiction Award for The Moviegoer.  He died in 1990 of prostate cancer.  More info available @ibiblio.org.

Treasure Bay Casino opens in Tunica, MS in 1994. At one time, eleven different casinos operated in the community; currently, Treasure Bay Casino is now closed, and the Isle of Capri (originally the first of three Harrah’s locations in the area) was bought by neighboring Sam’s Town and used only for its hotel tower and parking garage. More information available @wikipedia.org.

May 11

National Guardsmen open fire at Jackson State University during a protest in 1967, killing Benjamin Brown, a civil rights worker. His death prompted criticism from civil rights leaders and set off a series of protests and demonstrations in the Jackson area. More information available @crdl.usg.edu.

May 14

Greenville author William Alexander Percy is born in 1885. William Alexander Percy, lawyer, poet, and planter, is born in 1885 in Greenville, MS.  He served as a captain in World War I and was in charge of the relief efforts in Greenville during the flood of 1927.  His autobiography, Lanterns on the Levee, became a bestseller. More information available @pbs.org.

The Mule Train departs Marks, MS for Washington, DC in 1968 protesting poverty in the US. The Mule Train was part of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference’s Poor People’s Campaign, which brought thousands of African Americans to DC to petition the government for what Martin Luther King called an “economic bill of rights.” More information available @bampfa.berkeley.edu.

Robert Owen is born in Newtown, Montgomeryshire, Wales in 1771. As a founder of socialism and the cooperative movement, his philosophy played a large role in shaping the values upon which Mound Bayou was founded. More information available @spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk.

The Memphis newspaper, Commercial Appeal, wins a Pulitzer Prize for public in 1923 because of its campaign against the Ku Klux Klan. More info available @wikipedia.org.

May 16

Jim Henson, creator of the Muppets, dies in 1990. Born in Greenville, MS in 1936, he performed in various television programs such as The Muppet Show, films such as The Muppet Movie and The Great Muppet Caper. He was nominated for an Oscar and won three Emmy Awards for his television production, Sesame Street.  He founded the Jim Henson Company, the Henson Foundation, and the Jim Henson Creature Shop.  On May 16, 1990, he died from organ failure caused by a bacterial infection.  More information available @jimhensonlegacy.com.

The Association of Citizens’ Councils of Mississippi formally opposes the integration of Veteran’s Affairs hospitals in 1957.

May 17

J.F.H. Claiborne, called the “father of Mississippi history,” dies in 1884. A planter, politician, and popular journalist, he wrote in the style of the Southwestern Humorists, but his most notable achievement stems from his interest in his native state’s history. This passion led him to amass an important collection of historical papers, documents, and memorabilia upon which he largely based the first significant historical account of Mississippi. More information available @olemiss.edu.

Delta State President Broom dies, and Governor Whitfield appoints Dean Zeigal as acting President in 1926 until the selection of William Marion Kethley in July. During Kethley’s term, the Delta Council was established, and the college became members of the American Association of Teachers’ Colleges and the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools.More information available @deltastate.edu.

The Supreme Court rules that segregated schools are inherently unequal and unconstitutional in 1954. This decision, known as Brown v. Board of Education, overturned the Plessy v. Ferguson decision of 1896. The unanimous decision from the Court paved the way for integration and the Civil Rights movement. More information available @watson.org.

May 18

William Alexander Percy, lawyer, poet, and planter, is born in 1885 in Greenville, MS.  He served as a captain in World War I and was in charge of the relief efforts in Greenville during the flood of 1927.  His autobiography, Lanterns on the Levee, became a bestseller. More information available @pbs.org.

George Washington Carver, born an American slave and later a member of the Royal Society of Great Britain and an internationally respected scientist, botanist, educator, and inventor, presents a public lecture on Delta State’s campus in 1932. The Bolivar Commercial describes the speech as “one of the most enlightening lectures ever given in the Broom Memorial Auditorium.” More information available @nps.gov.

Big Joe Turner, a blues artist from Kansas City, MO, is born in 1911. Although he came to his greatest fame in the 1950s with his pioneering rock and roll recordings, Turner’s career as a performer stretched from the 1920s into the 1980s. More information available @cascadeblues.org.

May 19

Aaron Henry, famed civil rights leader and Clarksdale author, dies in 1997. Born in 1922 in MS, he joined the NAACP in 1954, becoming president in 1959.  He was very successful in uniting blacks throughout Mississippi.  He was one of the founders of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party which tried to seat their delegation at the 1964 Democratic National Convention. He was elected to the MS House of Representatives in 1982 and held the seat until 1996. More information available @mshistory.k12.ms.us.

Football great Archie Manning is born in Drew, MS in 1949.  As quarterback, he played for the New Orleans Saints from 1971 to 1982, then for the Houston Oilers and Minnesota Vikings. He is the father of Peyton and Eli Manning, both starting quarterbacks in the NFL, in addition to former Ole Miss receiver Cooper Manning. More information available @wikipedia.org.

May 20

Bluesman Willie Foster, born in Leland, MS, dies in 2001. More information available @mswritersandmusicians.com.

USS Mississippi becomes the first and only first class battleship to visit an inland city when it navigates up the Mississippi River to Natchez, MS in 1909.

May 21

Hernando de Soto, Spanish explorer, dies of fever in the village of Guachoya, near McArthur, AR in 1542. His body is buried in the Mississippi River. On his expedition through the territory of what is now the southeastern United States, he became the first European to cross the Mississippi River. More information available @wikipedia.org.

One of Mound Bayou’s founders, Isaiah T. Montgomery, is born as a slave near Vicksburg in 1847. Receiving an excellent education at the plantation he grew up on, he developed a dream to build the “largest Negro town,” and in 1887, he and his cousin Benjamin T. Green founded Mound Bayou.  In 1890, he was the only African American delegate to be appointed to the Mississippi Constitutional Convention.  In 1892, he was appointed by President Theodore Roosevelt to be the receiver of public money for the United States Land Office.  More information available @mshistory.k12.ms.us.

May 24

Elmore James, the “King of the Slide Guitar,” dies in 1963. He began making music at the age of 12 using a simple one-string instrument strung up on a shack wall. During World War II, he served in the Navy and, upon his return, began playing the blues around Mississippi. He later moved to Chicago and formed the band, the Broomdusters, a group in which he was noted for his stirring voice and use of loud amplification.  More information available @nps.gov.

The first bus load of Freedom Riders arrives in Jackson, MS, attempting to integrate the interstate transportation network. They are arrested and taken to Parchman in 1961. Accused of trespassing, they were sentenced to 60 days in the state penitentiary but would have their convictions later overturned with NAACP support. More information available @mlk-kpp01.stanford.edu.

May 25

John Crews, author of poetry and plays set in the South, is born in Monroe, Michigan in 1926 but grew up in Vicksburg from the age of six months. Six of his poems have been published, and he has written four plays, one of which won second place in the New Orleans Contemporary Arts Center’s contest for Southern playwrights. More information available @olemiss.edu.

Vernon Presley, father of Elvis, is sentenced to three years imprisonment at Parchman Penitentiary for forgery in 1937. For the next 30 months, Elvis visited his father at Parchman every weekend. More information available @members.tripod.com.

A fire sweeps through Yazoo City in 1904, destroying most of the town. According to local folklore and Willie Morris’s Good Old Boy, the “Witch of Yazoo,” claimed she would break out her grave and burn the town on this date, the day of her death in 1884. More information available @cityofyazoocity.org.

May 27

MS Musician Hall of Fame Inductee Junior Parker is born in Clarksdale in 1932. Singing as a child in gospel groups, he joined the Beale Streeters as a harmonica player in the later 1940s. In 1951, he started his own band called the Blue Flames. He is best remembered for his unique voice, which has been described as “honeyed” and “velvet-smooth.” He was posthumously inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame in 2001. More information available @wikipedia.org.

May 28

Walker Percy, cousin of William Alexander Percy and well known writer, is born in Birmingham, AL in 1916. He was raised by Perry after both of his parents and his grandfather committed suicide, setting a pattern of emotional struggle that would haunt Percy throughout his life. After receiving his medical degree from Columbia in 1941, he contracted TB and spent several years confined to a bed. Influenced by the existentialist writers he read, he took to writing, and in 1962, he won the National Fiction Award for The Moviegoer.  He died in 1990 of prostate cancer.  More info available @ibiblio.org

May 29

Harold “Hardface” Clanton is born in 1916. Called “Tunica’s First Black Millionaire,” he ran a flourishing operation that offered games of chance, bootleg liquor, and the best in blues music. His efforts helped pave the way for Tunica County to legalize casino gambling in 1991. More information available @msbluestrail.org.

May 30

The Board of Police of Bolivar County meets for the first time in 1836. More information available @co.bolivar.ms.us.

May 31

The Supreme Court orders schools to be integrated “with all deliberate speed” in 1955. Despite the Brown v. Board of Education ruling in 1954 that required all schools to desegregate, many Southern schools continued to refuse. The aforementioned phrase in this second decision was construed as extremely ambiguous, however, providing the South with an indefinite amount of time to desegregate. By 1964, it was declared by the Justices that “the time for mere deliberate speed” had out. More info available @blogs.dickinson.edu.

June

June 1

Morgan Freeman is born in Memphis, TN in 1937. An actor, film director, and narrator from Memphis, TN, he is known for his reserved demeanor and authoritative speaking voice. He has received Academy Award nominations for his performances in Street Smart, Driving Miss Daisy, The Shawshank Redemption, and Invictus and won in 2005 for Million Dollar Baby. He lived in Charleston and Greenwood, MS for part of his childhood and currently owns a home in Charleston in addition to Ground Zero, a blues club in Clarksdale, MS. More information available @wikipedia.org.

Robert Johnson, known as the “King of the Delta Blues,” has his second and final recording session in the Brunswick Recording Building in 1937. Born in Hazlehurst, MS on May 8, 1911, he was always interested in music as a child, playing the harp, harmonica, and guitar.  During his career, he wrote 29 songs, but only a few were recorded at the time of his death.  Despite being remembered well for his talented displays of singing, guitar playing, and songwriting, his personal life is poorly documented and has given rise to much legend. Eric Clapton has called Johnson “the most important blues singer that ever lived.” More information available @robertjohnsonbluesfoundation.org.

June 2

Othar (Otha) Turner, famous fife player, is born in Rankin County in 1908. Born in Gravel Springs, MS, he began playing the fife at the age of 16, making the instrument from sugarcane. His band, The Rising Star Fife and Drum Band, propelled him to become the recipient of such awards as the National Endowment for the Arts Heritage Award and the Smithsonian Lifetime Achievement Award. More information available @cascadeblues.org.

WROX in Clarksdale goes on the air in 1944. Announcer Early Wright joined WROX in 1947 as the first black DJ in Mississippi and continued on air for the next 52 years. More information available @wroxradio.com.

June 3

Greenwood Leflore, Choctaw leader, cotton farmer, and Mississippi representative and senator, is born in 1800. Chief of the Choctaw tribe before the Treaty of Dancing Rabbit Creek, he had many connections in the state and local governments and used them to help secure the largest amount of Indian territory land for any removed tribe. Greenwood and Leflore County in Mississippi are named after him. More information available @aboutgreenwoodms.com.

Memphis Minnie is born in Algiers, LA in 1897. A blues guitarist, vocalist, and songwriter, she was the only female blues artist considered a match to male contemporaries as both a singer and an instrumentalist. She was one of the first musicians to use the electric guitar to create her style of country blues and was honored for her talent and contributions when she was inducted into the Blues Foundation’s Hall of Fame in 1980. Her song, “When the Levee Breaks,” was later covered by Led Zeppelin and Bob Dylan. More information available @nps.gov.

Barry Lyons, DSU baseball alumni and New York Mets player, is born in Biloxi, MS in 1960. A right-handed hitting catcher, he spent most of his career as the backup catcher to Baseball Hall of Famer Gary Carter. More information available @wikipedia.org.

June 4

Mississippi Valley State University is founded in 1950. A historically black university located in Itta Bena, MS, MSVU was designed from fear after Brown v. Board of Education that African Americans might begin applying to Mississippi’s premier white-only institutions. More information available @mvsu.edu.

June 5

Conway Twitty, a famed country music artist born in Friars Point, MS, dies in 1993. Born Harold Jenkins in 1933, he received an offer to play for the Philadelphia Phillies once he left high school, but he was drafted into the US Army. Upon returning and hearing Elvis Presley, he headed to Sun Studios in Memphis, TN and worked with Sam Phillips to get the “right sound.” It was not until the 1970s when he took to country music that success came, and he received a string of CMA awards for duets with Loretta Lynn during those years. He was inducted into both the Country Music and the Rockabilly Halls of Fame. More information available @cmt.com.

June 6

James Meredith, an American civil rights figure from Kosciusko, MS, is shot in a drive-by shooting while on his “March Against Fear” from Memphis to Jackson. Born in 1933, he was the first African American student to attend University of Mississippi, an event that was a flashpoint in the civil rights movement. His “March Against Fear” was his attempt to draw attention to black voting rights in the South and to help blacks overcome fear of violence. There is considerable enmity between Meredith and the organized Civil Rights Movement because of the distance he placed between himself and it. More information available @spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk.

Catherine Anne Warfield, a Southern writer of poetry and fiction, is born in Natchez, MS in 1816. Raised in Philadelphia, she did not return to Natchez until her adulthood. Her gothic fiction novel, The Household of Bouverie, achieved great popular success for its Shakespearean style. Other notable novels of hers include Ferne Fleming and its sequel, The Cardinal’s Daughter. More information available @olemiss.edu.

Marian Wright Edelman, born in Bennettsville, SC, becomes the first African American woman admitted to the Mississippi bar in 1965.  After graduating from Spellman College and Yale Law School, she worked as the director of the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund and founded the Washington Research Project, which later became the Children’s Defense Fund.  She was also the first African American woman to serve on the board of directors for Yale University. More info available @childrensdefense.org.

June 7

Delta State Teachers College opens its doors for summer school in its first session in 1925. More information available @wikipedia.org.

The New York Times announces the word “Negro” will be spelled with a capital “N” in 1930. More information available @query.nytimes.com.

June 9

Fanny Lou Hamer and six other black Mississippians are arrested and brutally beaten by police in Winona, MS in 1962. On their way from a literacy workshop in Charleston, SC, the group was arrested on false charges and jailed. Though the incident had profound physical and psychological effects, Hamer returned to Mississippi to organize voter registration drives. This was only a year after she had been unknowingly sterilized by a doctor as part of the state of Mississippi’s plan to reduce the number of poor blacks in the state. More information available americanradioworks.publicradio.org.

Skip James, a delta blues singer and musician, is born in Bentonia, MS in 1902. His guitar playing is noted for its dark, minor sound with intricate finger-picking. He first recorded for Paramount Records in 1931 but drifted into obscurity until his rediscovery in 1964 by blues and folk music enthusiasts. His song influenced such musicians as Robert Johnson, Cream, and Kansas Joe McCoy. More information available @nps.gov.

June 10

Chester Arthur Burnett, known as Howlin’ Wolf, is born in White Station, MS in 1910. A blues guitarist, singer, and harmonica player, he is known for his booming voice and looming physical presence. He is commonly ranked among the leading performers in electric blues, and his rough-edged, slightly fearsome musical style is often contrasted with his less edgy contemporary, Muddy Waters. He was ranked #51 on Rolling Stone’s list of the “100 Greatest Artists of All Time.”  More info available @howlinwolf.com.

June 11

Henry Clay Anderson, an African American photographer from Greenville, MS, is born in 1911. He established Anderson Photo Service in 1948, where he stayed in business for over thirty years. Because of the “separate but equal” ruling, his shop was designed for African Americans, capturing many aspects of his relatively prosperous black community such as weddings, funerals, sports events, and proms. More information available @stevenkasher.com.

June 12

In the case of Loving v. Virginia, the US Supreme Court declares the state’s anti-miscegenation statute, the “Racial Integrity Act of 1924,” unconstitutional in 1967, thereby ending all race-based legal restrictions on marriage in the United States. More information available @wikipedia.org.

NAACP Field Secretary Medgar Evers is murdered outside of his home in Jackson, MS in 1963. An African American civil rights activist from Decatur, MS, he was involved in efforts to overturn segregation at the University of Mississippi. After returning from service in WWII, he became a field secretary for the NAACP and the president of the Regional Council of Negro Leadership. He was buried on Jun 19, 1963 in Arlington National Cemetery, receiving full military honors  His murder and resulting trials inspired protests and numerous artistic pieces. More information available @wikipedia.org.

June 14

Eddie Tucker, DSU alumni born in 1966 in Greenville, MS, breaks into the major leagues in 1992. He played catcher for the Houston Astros in 1992, 1993, and 1995. He also played for the Cleveland Indians in 1995.  More information available @thebaseballpage.com.

June 16

A call is sounded at Prentiss, MS to form a military company from Bolivar County to enter the Civil War in 1861. However, the vast majority of the county’s pre-Civil War populace was made up of slaves. Bolivar County suffered numerous assaults by Union troops during the war, and the county’s first brick courthouse was burned. All of this brought a temporary end to what had been a period of tremendous material progress in Bolivar County. More information available @co.bolivar.ms.us.

June 17

Stokely Carmichael, SNCC Chairman, coins the phrase “black power” while giving a speech in Greenwood in 1966. Born in Trinidad in 1941, he moved to the US in 1952. After attending Howard University, he joined the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, becoming chairman in 1966. His reference to “black power” was made during James Meredith’s March Against Fear.  More info available @interchange.org.

June 18

Hernando de Soto crosses the Mississippi River in what is now Tunica County in 1541. Despite seeing the river as an obstruction to his journey through what is now the Mid-south, he was the first European to do so. More information available @wikipedia.org.

Tougaloo College is founded in 1869. The American Missionary Association of New York purchased one of the largest former plantations in central Mississippi to build Tougaloo, a college designed for recently freed slaves. A private, liberal arts institution in Madison County, MS, Tougaloo is currently ranked as one of the top 20 black colleges by U.S. New and World report. More information available @tougaloo.edu.

June 19

African Americans in Galviston, TX hear word that the Civil War has ended and that emancipation has been proclaimed. Today, Emancipation Day or “Juneteenth,” is a holiday in the United States commemorating the announcement of the abolition of slavery. More information available @wikipedia.org.

The Mule Train, which left Marks on May 14, arrives on Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, DC in 1968. The Mule Train was part of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference’s Poor People’s Campaign, which brought thousands of African Americans to DC to petition the government for what Martin Luther King called an “economic bill of rights.” More information available @bampfa.berkeley.edu.

June 20

Ben Peters, MS Musician Hall of Fame Inductee, is born in Greenville, MS in 1933. A native of Hollandale who picked cotton as a child, a University of Southern Mississippi graduate, and a Navy pilot, Ben Peters went on to become a Nashville songwriting legend, penning 14 number-one hits, including three of the most performed songs in the country. In 1972, he received a Grammy Award for writing “Kiss an Angel Goodbye for Charley Pride,” and he was inducted into the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1980. More information available @visitmississippi.org.

June 21

Civil rights workers James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner are murdered in Neshoba County, MS in 1964. Goodman and Schwerner were Jewish students from New York City. Arrested for a traffic violation while working for the Congress of Racial Equality, they were taken to a jail in Neshoba County. Upon their release and return home, Klu Klux Klan members, lead by the Baptist preacher Edgar Ray Killen, shot and killed them from two cars. On the forty-first anniversary of the crime in 2005, Killen was found guilty of three counts of manslaughter and sentenced to three times 20 years in prison. More information available @wikipedia.org.

John Lee Hooker, blues singer, songwriter, and guitarist, dies in 2001. Born near Clarksdale, MS in 1917, he’s seen as one of the last links to the blues of the deep South. He moved to Detroit in the early 1940s, and by 1948, he had scored his first number-one jukebox hit and million-seller, “Boogie Chillun.” He continues to contribute to a booming interest in the blues and, notably, its acceptance by the music industry as commercially viable. Hooker was inducted into the Rock n’ Roll Hall of Fame in 1991, and, in 1997, he received his third and fourth Grammy Awards for Best Traditional Blues Recording and Best Pop Collaboration. More information available @johnleehooker.com

June 23

Milt Hinton, MS Musician Hall of Fame Inductee and Jazz Great, is born in Vicksburg, MS in 1910. Known as “The Judge” and the “Dean of Jazz Bass Players,” he played the double bass and was also a photographer.  During his career, he took several pictures that documented the careers of other well know jazz musicians.  More info @milthinton.com.

June 25

James Meredith, the first African American student to attend the University of Mississippi, is born in Kosciusko, MS in 1933. He was the first African American student to attend University of Mississippi, an event that was a flashpoint in the civil rights movement. His “March Against Fear” was his attempt to draw attention to black voting rights in the South and to help blacks overcome fear of violence. There is considerable enmity between Meredith and the organized Civil Rights Movement because of the distance he placed between himself and it. More information available @spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk.

June 26

William Lee Conley “Big Bill” Broonzy is born in Scott, MS in 1893. A combination of ragtime, country and hokum blues, his musical style made him one o the leading figures of the emerging American folk music revival in the 1950s. His autobiography, Big Bill Blues, was published in 1955, and in 1980, he was inducted into the Blues Foundation of Hall of Fame.  He died of throat and lung cancer in 1958. More info @broonzy.com.

June 27

Shelby Foote, Greenville author and Civil War historian, dies in 2005. Born in 1916, Foote’s life and writing paralleled the radical shift from the agrarian planter system of the Old South to the Civil Rights era of the New South. He is best known for The Civil War: A Narrative, a three-volume history of the war, but published several other novels including: Shiloh, Tournament, and Follow me Down. He died in 2005 of a heart attack.   More information available @nytimes.com.

June 28

David “Honeyboy" Edwards, Delta blues singer and guitarist, is born in Shaw, MS in 1915. One of the last living links to Robert Johnson and one the last original acoustic Blues players, he was recorded in Clarksdale, MS in 1942 for the Library of Congress. Having published an autobiography in 1997, he still tours the world well into his 90s. His awards include induction into the Blues Hall of Fame in 1996, Acoustic Blues Artist of the Year in 2005, and Acoustic Artist of the Year at the Blues Music Awards in 2007.  More information available @davidhoneyboyedwards.com.

June 29

Jo Bailey, Delta artist, dies in 2002. Born in 1918 in Corinth, MS, she was raised in the Mississippi Delta and Oxford.  Painter of oils and watercolors, her work is seen all over the Mississippi Gulf Coast. More information available @jobaileyportraits.com.

July

July 1

Willie Dixon, a native of Vicksburg, MS, is born in Vicksburg, MS in 1915. As a teenager, he hitchhiked to Chicago and later became a producer for Chess and Checker Records. Proficient on both the upright bass and the guitar in addition to his singing abilities, he was one of the most prolific songwriters of his time and is recognized as one of the founders of the Chicago blues sound. He worked with Chuck Berry, Muddy Waters, and several others.  More information available @bluesheaven.com.

Lucy Somerville Howorth, “Judge Lucy,” is born in Greenville, MS in 1895. She served in the State legislature from Hinds Co. from 1932 to 1934 and was appointed to the Board of Appeals of the Veteran’s Administration by Franklin Roosevelt in 1935. More information available @mshistory.k12.ms.us.

James Cotton, a bluesman, is born in Tunica, MS in 1935. One of the most popular and dynamic blues harmonica players of his day, he apprenticed with Sonny Boy Williamson and spent twelve years in Muddy Water’s band in Chicago. While touring with Muddy, he continued to record single and assort album tracks on his own. He is the recipient of several Blues Music Awards, winning the 1996 Grammy for Best Traditional Blues Album with Deep in the Blues. He was inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame in 2006. More information available @msbluestrail.org.

Lloyd Bryant Clark, a native of Drew, MS, becomes the sixth head coach in the DSU Lady Statesmen’s program in 1983. Believing in defense, ball control, and smart play, he was inducted into the MS Sports Hall of Fame for his efforts. More information available @gostatesmen.com.

Dr. Lester C. Newman becomes the fifth president of Mississippi Valley State University (MVSU) in 1998.  Under his leadership, student enrollment increased, and, in 1999, he began a $25 million fundraising program with the purpose of improving the campus and creating scholarships.  His is a recipient of several local awards including “Educator of the Year” from the Greenwood-Leflore Retired Teachers Association. He resigned on July 15, 2007. More information available @biography.com & @ihl.state.com.

July 2

“Mississippi” John Hurt, a country blues singer and guitarist, is born in Teoc, MS in 1893. Growing up in Avalon, MS, he learned to play the guitar when he was nine years old. Though he recorded for the first time in the 1920s and 30s, it was not until his rediscovery in the 1960s blues and folk revival that he returned to touring and recording. He died in Grenada, MS in 1966, but his songs continued to be covered after his death by Bob Dylan, Jerry Garcia, and Beck.  More information available @msjohnhurtmuseum.com & @mindspring.com.

Aaron Henry, famed civil rights leader, pharmacist, and Delta author, is born in Dublin, MS in 1922 to sharecroppers. After attending Xavier University, he joined the NAACP in 1954, becoming the president of the Mississippi branch five years later. He founded the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, which tried to seat their delegation at the 1964 Democratic National Convention, and held a seat in the Mississippi House of Representatives from 1982 to 1996.  More information available @mshistory.k12.ms.us.

Medgar Ever, Civil Rights leader, NAACP organizer, citizen of Mound Bayou, and martyr, is born in Decatur, MS in 1925. He was involved in efforts to overturn segregation at the University of Mississippi. After returning from service in WWII, he became a field secretary for the NAACP and the president of the Regional Council of Negro Leadership. He was buried on June 19, 1963 in Arlington National Cemetery, receiving full military honors.  His murder and resulting trials inspired protests and numerous artistic pieces @africawithin.com and npr.org.

President Lyndon Johnson signs the Civil Rights Act of 1964. It was a landmark piece of legislation in the United States that outlawed major forms of discrimination against blacks and women, including racial segregation. It ended unequal application of voter registration requirements and racial segregation in schools, at the workplace, and by facilities that served the general public. More information available @archives.gov.

July 3

“Mississippi” Fred McDowell, blues artist, dies and is buried between Como and Senatobia in 1972. Born in Rossville, TN in 1904, he was a blues singer in the North Mississippi style. While similar to the Delta Blues, his north hill country blues style is understood as closer in structure to its African roots. More information available @msbluestrail.org.

Confederate troops surrender at Vicksburg, MS at 10:00 a.m. in 1863. When Port Hurdson surrendered to Major General Banks on July 9, the entire Mississippi River belonged to the Union. Grant’s Vicksburg Campaign is considered one of the masterpieces of American military history, and these events are considered the turning point of the war. More information available @americancivilwar.com.

July 4

Jo Bailey, a Delta oil painter, is born in 1918 in Corinth, MS. Raised in the Mississippi Delta and Oxford, she paints with watercolors and oils and her work is displayed all over the country.  More information available @jobaileyportraits.com.

Delta State baseball player Eli Whiteside joins the Baltimore Orioles as a catcher in 2005. He currently plays for the San Francisco Giants and is known for his completely gray hair despite his young age. More information available @baseball-almanac.com.

July 5

July 6

William Faulkner, poet and novelist, dies of a heart attack in 1962. Born in Oxford, MS, Faulkner was heavily influenced by his home state as well as by the history and culture of the entire American South. He is considered one of the most important writers of Southern literature. Faulkner was relatively unknown until receiving the 1949 Nobel Prize in Literature. Two of his works, A Fable and The Reivers, won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. He died on July 6, 1962. More information available @olemiss.edu & @nobelprize.org.

July 7

Margaret Walker Alexander, African American poet and writer, is born in Birmingham, AL in 1915. After receiving her doctorate from the University of Iowa, she began work with the Federal Writers’ Project under the Roosevelt’s WPA in 1936. While teaching at Jackson State University from 1947 to 1979, she wrote the critically acclaimed novel, Jubilee. She is also well known for poem, For My People. She died of breast cancer in Chicago in 1998. More info available @olemiss.edu & @mswritersandmusicians.com.

Pinetop Perkins, a legendary bluesman, is born in Belzoni, MS in 1913. Specializing in piano music, he played with such greats as Earl Jooker, Muddy Waters, and Jimmy Rogers. He received numerous honors during his lifetime including a Grammy Award for Best Traditional Blues Album in 2008 (at the age of 95), a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 2005, and induction into the Blues Hall of Fame. He lived in Austin, TX until his death in March of 2011; at the time, he had more than twenty performances booked for the upcoming year. He was one of the last two original Mississippi Delta blues musicians, the other being David “Honeyboy” Edwards. More information available @pinetopperkins.com.

William Hodding Carter II draws an outline for his new paper, and, with help from Greenville author William Alexander Percy, the Delta Star is created in 1936. A writer associated with Greenville, MS, he was born in Hammond, LA in 1907.  After completing college and graduate school, he worked as a reporter for the New Orleans Item-Tribune (1929), the United Press in New Orleans (1930), and the Associated Press in Jackson, MS (1931-32).  In 1932, he founded the Hammond Daily Courier, and, in 1939, he moved to Greenville, MS to start the Greenville Delta Democrat Times.  In 1946, he won a Pulitzer Prize for his editorials that lambasted the ill-treatment of Japanese-American soldiers returning from WWII. More information available @mswritersandmusicians.com.

July 8

Lloyd Bryant Clark, coach of the Lady Statesmen and inductee of the MS Sports Hall of Fame, is born in Memphis, TN in 1940. More information available @gostatesmen.com.

July 10

Ben Chester White is killed in Natchez, MS by the Klan in an effort to lure Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. to the area to assassinate him.  White was not a civil rights workers or even registered to vote but was lured into the woods under the pretense of a lost dog and shot seventeen times. Ernest Avants, one of the three men charged, escaped charges in 1966 but was found guilty in 2003 of the crime and sentenced to life in prison, where he died in 2004. More information available @natchezdemocrat.com & nytimes.com.

Sarah Mary Taylor, nationally acclaimed folk artist known for her vibrant appliqué quilts, dies in 2000. Born in 1916 in Anding, MS, she continues to exhibit her work in museums and galleries across the country. One of her most famous quilt designs was used in the movie, The Color Purple.  More information available @yazoo.org.

July 11

The White Citizens’ Council is founded in Indianola, MS in 1954 by Robert “Tut” Paterson. An American white supremacist group with 60,000 members in the South at one time, the group was well known for its opposition to racial integration. By the 1970s, the influence of the WCC had waned considerably, and the modern successor to it is the Council of Conservative Citizens, founded in 1988. Mississippi is the only state that has major politicians who are open CofCC members, including State Senators and State Representatives. More information available @usm.edu & @wikipedia.org.

City Hospital of Cleveland opens its door in 1938. More info available @google.com.

July 12

Beah Richards, actress, poet, and playwright, is born in Vicksburg, MS in 1920. Her career started to take off in 1955 when she portrayed an eighty-four-year-old grandmother in the off-Broadway show Take a Giant Step. She was nominated for a Tony award for her 1965 performance in The Amen Corner and for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her performance in the 1967 film, Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner. She made numerous television appearances and won two Emmy Awards, one in 1988 and another in 2000. She died from emphysema in her hometown at the age of 80. More information available @wikipedia.org.

Mound Bayou is founded by Isaiah T. Montgomery and his cousin, both former slaves, in 1887. Founded as an independent black community with a socialist cooperative philosophy, Mound Bayou was originally known as Davis Bend and was owned by the brother of Jefferson Davis until he sold it to his former slave, Isaiah Montgomery’s father. More information available @wikipedia.org.

July 13

Edward Riley Boyd, a musician from Clarksdale, MS, dies in Melilahti Hospital in Helsinki, Finland in 1994. Born in 1914, he initially made a living by playing in juke joints around Mississippi but later moved to Memphis in 1936 where he played with his band, Dixie Rhythm Boys.  In 1941, he moved to Chicago and worked with Muddy Waters and Sonny Boy Williamson but didn’t achieve commercial acclaim until 1952 when he released three hit songs.  During the “Blues Boom” of the 1960s, he moved to Europe and, in 1970, settled in Finland, marrying there in 1980. More information available @mswritersandmusicians.com.

July 14

Riley Smith, Washington Redskin and MS Sports Hall of Fame inductee, is born in Greenwood, MS in 1911. He joined the Washington Redskins during the very first pro draft in 1936; however, an injury ended his playing career, and he became a assistant and head coach at Washington and Lee. He raised $1.65 million for the University of Alabama, his alma mater, setting a record for funds raised for the American Heart Association. More information available @collegefootball.org.

Actress Carie Nye, wife of Dick Cavett and native of Greenwood, MS, dies in 2006. She made her debut on Broadway in 1960 in the play A Second String. She was nominated for a Tony Award in 1965 and for an Emmy Award in 1980. She was married to Dick Cavett until her death in 2006 from lung cancer. More info available @nytimes.com.

July 15

William Marion Kethley is appointed the second president of Delta State University in 1926, becoming the youngest college president of his time.  During his presidency, the Delta Council was established, and the college became members of the American Association of Teachers Colleges and the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools.  He also beautified the scenery of the campus by planting oak and dogwood trees.  More information available @deltastate.edu.

Big John Wrencher, a blues harmonica player and singer well known for playing on Maxwell Street Market in Chicago, dies in Clarksdale, MS in 1977. Born in Sunflower, MS in 1923, he arrived in Chicago in the 1940s and played with such artists as Jimmy Rogers, Blue Smitty, and John Henry Barbee. Wrencher toured Europe in the early 1970s but died suddenly of a heart attack during a trip back home to visit his family. More information available @wikipedia.org.

Martin Luther King Jr., a Civil Rights leader, preacher, and orator, is born in 1929 in Atlanta, GA. Dr. King became an iconic figure in the African American Civil Rights Movement, and his work led to the Montgomery Bus Boycott, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, and the March on Washington in 1963. At the march, he delivered his famous “I Have a Dream” speech, expanding American values to include the vision of a color blind society. In 1964, he received a Noble Peace Prize for his non-violent endeavors to end racial discrimination.  After his assassination in 1968, he was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1977 and a Congressional Gold Medal in 2004.  More information available @martinlutherking.org.

Dr. Roy C. Hudson is named interim president of Mississippi Valley State University in 2007. More information available @ihl.state.ms.us.

July 16

Ida B. Wells, an African American Civil Rights advocate and women’s rights activist who documented hundreds of lynchings, is born in Holly Springs, MS in 1862. , she quit high school to take care of her brothers and sisters after her parents died of yellow fever. She was a strong supporter of women’s rights and helped lead a campaign against segregation on trains after she herself was thrown off for not giving up her seat. More information available @duke.edu.

Dorothy Shawhan, Delta author and college professor, is born in Tupelo, MS in 1942. She is the author of Lizzie, On The Way Home, Lucy Somerville Howorth, New Deal Lawyer, Politician, and Feminist from the South.  She currently resides in Cleveland, MS, where she is an English and Journalism professor at Delta State University. More information available @mswritersandmusicians.com

Denise LaSalle, an R&B/soul singer, songwriter, and record producer, is born outside of Belzoni, MS in 1936. is also a producer and songwriter. Singing and writing throughout the 1960s, she achieved her first major success in 1971 with “Trapped By A Thing Called Love,” which reached #1 on the national R&B chart. She continued to make the R&B Top Ten through the 1970s and released several critically acclaimed albums in the 1980s and 90s. In 2011, she was inducted to the Blues Hall of Fame. More information available @msbluestrail.org & wikipedia.org.

Evelyn Preer, African American stage and screen actress and accomplished blues singer, is born in Vicksburg, MS in 1896. Known within the black community as “the First Lady of the Screen,” she was the first black actress to receive notoriety and popularity with both blacks and whites because of the fact that she would not accept roles that belittled African Americans.  In 1920, she joined the Lafayette Players, a theatrical stock company, later gaining more recognition for David Belasco’s production of Lulu Belle in 1926 and Somerset Maugham’s Rain in 1928.  More info available @aaregistry.org.

July 17

Sam Myers, Chicago blues musician and songwriter, dies in Dallas, TX in 2006 while recovering from surgery at home. Born in Laurel, MS in 1936, he is best known as an accompanist on dozens of recordings for blues artists over the past five decades and as the vocalist for Anderson Funderburgh & The Rockets. Myers was in high demand not only for his drumming ability and vocals but also for his authentic delta blues sound. More information available @sammyers.com.

Blues artist Roosevelt Sykes, also known as the “Honeydripper” dies in New Orleans, LA in 1983. Born in Elmar, AR in 1906, he is known for his pounding piano boogies and risqué lyrics, his contributions to the blues. He was responsible for such influential blues songs as “44 Blues,” “Driving Wheel,” and “Night Time Is the Right Time.” He was later inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame in 1999. More info @allaboutjazz.com.

July 18

Elvis Presley drops by the Memphis Recording Service, home of Sun Records, to privately record two song, “My Happiness” and “That’s When Your Heartaches Begin.” Elvis was one of the first artists to perform rockabilly, a combination of blues and country music.  He also performed such other genres as gospel and pop and made thirty-three movies.  He is the only artist to have been inducted into three halls of fame: the Country Music Hall of Fame, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and the Gospel Music Hall of Fame.  More information available @elvis.com

July 19

Elizabeth Spencer, Delta author, is born in Carrollton, MS in 1921. Spencer's first novel, Fire in the Morning, was published in 1948. She has written a total of nine novels, seven collections of short stories, a memoir (Landscapes of the Heart, 1998), and a play (For Lease or Sale, 1989). Her novella, The Light in the Piazza, (1960) was adapted for the screen in 1962 and transformed into a Broadway musical of the same name in 2005. She is a five-time recipient of the O. Henry Award for short fiction. Until her retirement, she taught creative writing at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. More information available @elizabethspencerwriter.com.

Walter Turnbull, African American musician and writer, is born in Greenville, MS in 1944. A graduate of Tougaloo College, he moved to New York City in 1968 to continue studying music while performing as a tenor with the New York Philharmonic. He also began teaching music at a Harlem church where he started a popular city choir that eventually became the internationally renowned Boys Choir of Harlem. Turnbull is a recipient of several awards including the International Citation of Merit Award, Intrepid Freedom Award, Chase Manhattan Humanitarian Recognition Award, and Brooklyn Conservatory of Music Award.  More information available @nytimes.com and @mswritersandmusicians.com.

Sun Records releases That’s All Right and Blue Moon of Kentucky by Elvis Presley in 1954. Elvis was one of the first artists to perform rockabilly, a combination of blues and country music.  He also performed such other genres as gospel and pop and made thirty-three movies.  He is the only artist to have been inducted into three halls of fame: the Country Music Hall of Fame, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and the Gospel Music Hall of Fame. More information available @wikipedia.org.

July 20

Kiwanis Club in Greenville, MS is created in 1920. The organization continues to serve the community today by revitalizing neighborhoods, organizing youth sports programs, tutoring, building playgrounds, and performing other community-oriented projects. More information available @greenwoodkiwanisclub.org.

Alan Lomax, American folklorist and ethnomusicologist, dies in 2002. Born in January of 1915, he was the first record Muddy Waters and Mississippi Fred McDowell among other blues musicians. Primarily a collector of folk music of the 20^th century, he also produced television and radio shows and wrote books.  He received the National Medal of Arts from President Reagan in 1986, a Library of Congress Living Legend Award in 2000, in addition to a National Book Critics Circle Award and the Ralph J. Gleason Music Book Award in 1993 for his book, The Land Where The Blues Began. More information available @loc.gov & @culturalequity.org.

July 22

Bobbie Gentry, former country singer-songwriter, is born Roberta Lee Streeter in Chickasaw County, MS in 1944. She is notable as one of the first female country artists to write and produce her own material,and her songs typically drew on her Mississippi roots. She rose to international fame with the Southern Gothic narrative, “Ode to Billie Joe” in 1967. She charted eleven more singles on the Billboard Hot 100 and won Grammy awards for Best New Artist and Best Female Pop Vocal Performance in 1968. More information available @wikipedia.org.

July 23

Percy Strother, bluesman from Vicksburg, MS, is born in 1946. Inspired by the likes of Muddy Waters, Little Walter, and Howlin’ Wolf, Percy is known for his unique mixture of blues, R&B, and soul. He began recording during the 1960s but did not receive wide acclaim until the release of “A Good Woman Is Hard To Find,” which was selected as Best Blues Song of 1992 in the Living Blues magazine Readers’ Award category. More information available @blogs.citypages.com.