THE ROADS OF BR OKEN DREAMS 7
6 THE R OADS OF B ROKEN D REAMS
bracing the black man’s music. Calling itself “the real thing,” it has become a magnet for Blues tourists, luring people back downtown to join the party. Marks, launching pad for the Poor People’s March on Washington in the 1960s, now has black and white leaders working together on Christmas parades, unity celebrations and special church meetings. There is talk of an Amtrak stop, of a museum or souvenir shop built around Dr. Martin Luther King’s famous Mule Train. Sumner, having apologized for the acquittal of Emmett Till’s killers, has a biracial committee working to restore its decrepit courthouse and create an Emmett Till museum and civil rights trail to attract tourists. The town that hosted one of America’s most outrageous denials of justice now promotes that very history in a quest for survival. Lambert. Sledge. Indianola. Greenwood. Town after town, big and small, is rising up and fighting to remake itself. They know it will not be easy. But they do not lack for determination. Nor dreams. Nor hope. The hope depends on the quality of people born of this hardscrabble existence. They wrested the farms from impenetrable wilderness, leaving the Delta the most altered landscape in America. The most impoverished among them ignited the flame of American music. They battled and bled for race, class and, now, survival. Deltans are nothing if not fighters. The present conflict, the one for survival, is something unprecedented. In the past, residents haggled, often violently, over rights and recognition in a land of privilege. Now it’s a tooth-and-nail war not against one another but against death and desperation, against a bitter civil rights history, crippling poverty and unemployment, poor health and failing schools. A new wilderness of some of the most depressing, discouraging circumstances in the country has grown up around those who remain. “How do you rebuild a nation that has been totally destroyed?” asks Pete Johnson, the former state auditor who until this summer headed the Delta Regional Authority by appointment of President George Bush. Johnson said the Delta, in size and uniqueness, is not unlike a small nation within a nation.“And when you look at this region and the history of this region, it’s had one calamity after another.” He begins to list the calamities, assessing
Jo seph Will iam s
Some of the nation’s worst poverty strangles many small Delta towns.
Joseph Wi ll iam s
The streets of too many rural towns offer little hope for young people. the enemy: Slavery. Civil War. Ensuing anarchy. Sharecropping. Mechanization of agriculture and the subsequent loss of jobs. Civil Rights strife. NAFTA-era desertion of manufacturing. Widespread unemployment and poverty. Poor health and education. Mass depopulation. His organization, a funnel for federal and state grants and a platform for Delta leadership to unite, enumerated these challenges, their historical context and their present
F L E E IN G T H E D E L T A The Delta’s population has been shrinking for decades. Along the Roads of Broken Dreams, it’s dropping fast. Percent County 1980 1990 2000 2008 change Coahoma 36,919 31,655 30,622 27,272 -25.8 Quitman 12,636 10,490 10,115 8,724 -31.0 Tallahatchie 17,157 15,210 14,903 13,027 -24.0 Source : U. S . Ce nsus
incarnations, and devised a strategy. “We’re addressing it from every angle you possibly can. Can we beat it? You bet we can,” Johnson said.
His list of problems centers on one fact: the Delta was built on an underclass. Time was, the Mississippi Delta was nothing more than a tangle of hardwood, vine and mystery. At the beginning of the 19th century, it was a no-man’s-land, the last American frontier. When fertile soil was found under the woody tangle, settlers vigorously flattened the rich alluvial plain. The area was 90 percent virgin wilderness in 1870, the province of panther, bear, bobcat and cottonmouth moccasins. By 1890, every Deltan lived within five miles of a railroad. Slaves cleared all that undergrowth for their cotton-farming bosses. The Civil War uprooted this status quo, and afterward,