Delta Jewels
By Sha’ Simpson
A
Alysia Burton Steele
20 MEEK SCHOOL
rriving in the South, Alysia Burton Steele had every stereotypical reservation imaginable. Building a career in photojournalism in Texas, Georgia and Ohio, Steele landed in Oxford, Mississippi, after being hired as a professional-in-residence at the University of Mississippi in 2012. “Quite frankly, I was afraid to come down here. My vision of the South was “Mississippi Burning.” After settling in the city of Oxford, Steele and her husband Bobby began to venture out, traveling Mississippi roads. Riding Highway 6 and Interstate 55 for the first time, Steele was surrounded by cotton, one of the economic staples of the Mississippi Delta. Pulling over on the side of the road, Steele meandered through the cotton fields taking photos. Seeing and feeling the soft, white, fibrous substance and reminiscing about its history left her intrigued. Overwhelming questions about her ancestors’ pasts began to flood her mind. “I began to wonder about my grandmother’s life growing up in South Carolina, the struggle, the pain, what she would think of me being in the South.” More than 20 years after Steele’s grandmother Althenia Burton died of colon cancer, her new found home in the South brought about a swarm of unanswered questions that stung. “Immediately after graduating, my grandmother moved north to Pennsylvania,” Steele said. “I wondered why, and I realized I couldn’t
pick up the phone and call her, and that hurt me.” With the painful lack of knowledge and unanswered questions about her grandmother in her heart and mind, Steele embarked on a journey to find peace and comfort. Far beyond the white thickets of cotton that kept the towns of the Delta alive, lived people who provided the ultimate form of sustenance for the community. At the beginning of her journey, one of the first places Steele stopped was Mound Bayou, Mississippi. Freed slaves founded the town of roughly 2,000 people in 1887 as an independent African American community. Many significant civil rights leaders and evangelists such as Medgar Evers, Fannie Lou Hamer, Harold Robert Perry and Myrlie Evers-Williams worked within Mound Bayou to create a social refuge amongst a violently segregated Mississippi. However, once those movers and shakers of social equality migrated elsewhere, a powerful group was left behind to carry on. In the small churches of rural Delta communities lived church mothers. They could be found in the kitchens of fellowship halls feeding congregations, in the pews adjusting their dainty hats, waving fans to stifle the sticky Delta heat and prodding young children to pay attention during Sunday school. In search of her grandmother’s wisdom, Steele sought out these church mothers in hopes of finding solace. One of the first people Steele reached out to was the Rev. Andrew Hawkins of Mount Olive Missionary Baptist Church in Mound Bayou. Hawkins was instrumental in aiding Steele with several contacts and providing invaluable knowledge about the Delta and its jewels, the church mothers. “I’ve grown up around these church mothers, and they play a very important role, not only in the church, but also in the community,” Hawkins said. “They are well-respected, dignified, virtuous women that provide a wealth of spiritual knowledge and history.” After conversations with Hawkins, Steele was eager and ready to not only photograph the contemporaries of her grandmother, but also interview and retell their powerful stories. “I wanted a group of women who had lived through picking that cotton in the sweltering heat, sipped from the colored-only fountain, lived through the Jim Crow era. I wanted them to share insight and history that would never be found in history books,” said Steele. Venturing down Delta highways 49, 82 and 278, Steele spent countless hours photographing and listening to the stories of her elders over a span of nine months. Though many were excited to be photographed, Steele had to coerce a handful.
