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We are looking into a late summer or sometime next year trip to the Mississippi Delta for a few days. Fans of Blues music as well as American history, we want to visit some of the museums and historical sites where blues music started.
Have some questions and want to hear everyone's opinion.
Here at the big Cat's house (not the cathouse) in Florida, we have a huge emphasis on the arts, both of the sons are into creative arts One is a pro photographer, the other a budding screenwriter. Both like blues/jazz as well. SOthe intrest as well as the creative opportunity appeals to us.
I have a friend who is a pastor at a predominantly black Missionary Baptist church. (I am a white cat)
One of the deacons mentioned that his wife is from Clarksdale When I mentioned my trip idea, he immediately blamed the poverty on the casinos. Now understand, a older deacon in a conservative baptist congregation will likely subscribe to the idea of gambling as a sin but he did insist that gambling addictions have wrecked the area.
Now personally, I care ittle about gambling. I am a cheapskate when it comes to risking money, I go to Vegas and play very little, and avoid the local casino here altogether. Gambling does not offend me, but I do not enjoy it.
SO I wonder first, if the casinos have had such a truly negative impact on society, or if I am hearing Missionary Baptist bias?
Second, there appears to be a very strong religious identity in the deep south. Here, as a whitey who is friends with a black minister and occasional volunteer at his church, I have never been anything less than welcomed there. Are Mississippi churches really as racially segregated as some people have rumored? Would I be welcome to visit a historical church (I love photographing religious architecture) if the congregation is all African-American?
Third, I have concerns that soon enough, the historical places will fall victim to poverty and disinterest. Not sure why I believe that or why it may happen, but I do know that many small towns in my travels have lost an identity to the cookie cutter progress of chain stores and restaurants. While investors may see this as progress, it harms the identity of the smaller towns and serves to remove the uniqueness, even the Americana from the collective rural mind and with that, all that is individual and special to that town.
If I cannot go in late summer, well, there is always the fall as I am semi retired. I cannot go right now as I am recovering from surgery, but once healed, I will be well ready to hit the road again.
We are looking into a late summer or sometime next year trip to the Mississippi Delta for a few days. Fans of Blues music as well as American history, we want to visit some of the museums and historical sites where blues music started.
Have some questions and want to hear everyone's opinion.
Here at the big Cat's house (not the cathouse) in Florida, we have a huge emphasis on the arts, both of the sons are into creative arts One is a pro photographer, the other a budding screenwriter. Both like blues/jazz as well. SOthe intrest as well as the creative opportunity appeals to us.
I have a friend who is a pastor at a predominantly black Missionary Baptist church. (I am a white cat)
One of the deacons mentioned that his wife is from Clarksdale When I mentioned my trip idea, he immediately blamed the poverty on the casinos. Now understand, a older deacon in a conservative baptist congregation will likely subscribe to the idea of gambling as a sin but he did insist that gambling addictions have wrecked the area.
Now personally, I care ittle about gambling. I am a cheapskate when it comes to risking money, I go to Vegas and play very little, and avoid the local casino here altogether. Gambling does not offend me, but I do not enjoy it.
SO I wonder first, if the casinos have had such a truly negative impact on society, or if I am hearing Missionary Baptist bias?
I'm almost 60 and grew up in the Delta, it's been a third world country for as long as I've been alive. Farming dominates the Delta, when it mechanized in the 40s/50s/60s, jobs that took dozens of laborers now took two or three. When their jobs dried up, too many stayed (rather than migrate somewhere there was work). A more recent issue was NAFTA, there were small factories scattered around the Delta (relying on cheap labor) that provided decent jobs for low skilled labor, but NAFTA killed off many of those jobs.
Second, there appears to be a very strong religious identity in the deep south. Here, as a whitey who is friends with a black minister and occasional volunteer at his church, I have never been anything less than welcomed there. Are Mississippi churches really as racially segregated as some people have rumored? Would I be welcome to visit a historical church (I love photographing religious architecture) if the congregation is all African-American?
Usually the smaller and more the rural church the more segregated. Larger churches are less segregated. Any race is welcome in the other though (this is a change from 30 years ago).
Third, I have concerns that soon enough, the historical places will fall victim to poverty and disinterest. Not sure why I believe that or why it may happen, but I do know that many small towns in my travels have lost an identity to the cookie cutter progress of chain stores and restaurants. While investors may see this as progress, it harms the identity of the smaller towns and serves to remove the uniqueness, even the Americana from the collective rural mind and with that, all that is individual and special to that town.
Other than Dollar Generals, there's not much development in most of the Delta, so no worries.
If I cannot go in late summer, well, there is always the fall as I am semi retired. I cannot go right now as I am recovering from surgery, but once healed, I will be well ready to hit the road again.
We are looking into a late summer or sometime next year trip to the Mississippi Delta for a few days. Fans of Blues music as well as American history, we want to visit some of the museums and historical sites where blues music started.
Have some questions and want to hear everyone's opinion.
Here at the big Cat's house (not the cathouse) in Florida, we have a huge emphasis on the arts, both of the sons are into creative arts One is a pro photographer, the other a budding screenwriter. Both like blues/jazz as well. SOthe intrest as well as the creative opportunity appeals to us.
I have a friend who is a pastor at a predominantly black Missionary Baptist church. (I am a white cat)
One of the deacons mentioned that his wife is from Clarksdale When I mentioned my trip idea, he immediately blamed the poverty on the casinos. Now understand, a older deacon in a conservative baptist congregation will likely subscribe to the idea of gambling as a sin but he did insist that gambling addictions have wrecked the area.
Now personally, I care ittle about gambling. I am a cheapskate when it comes to risking money, I go to Vegas and play very little, and avoid the local casino here altogether. Gambling does not offend me, but I do not enjoy it.
SO I wonder first, if the casinos have had such a truly negative impact on society, or if I am hearing Missionary Baptist bias? I don't think they have had much impact. They are here, but they are mostly dying.
Second, there appears to be a very strong religious identity in the deep south. Here, as a whitey who is friends with a black minister and occasional volunteer at his church, I have never been anything less than welcomed there. Are Mississippi churches really as racially segregated as some people have rumored? Would I be welcome to visit a historical church (I love photographing religious architecture) if the congregation is all African-American? I would not hesitate to walk into any church on Sunday morning. Churches are generally either Black or White, but if I - a white man - walked in I would expect to be greeted enthusiastically by the members around me. I would expect a Black person to find the same greeting in a White church.
Third, I have concerns that soon enough, the historical places will fall victim to poverty and disinterest. Not sure why I believe that or why it may happen, but I do know that many small towns in my travels have lost an identity to the cookie cutter progress of chain stores and restaurants. While investors may see this as progress, it harms the identity of the smaller towns and serves to remove the uniqueness, even the Americana from the collective rural mind and with that, all that is individual and special to that town. The man who owns The Shack Up Inn in Clarksdale told me Marriott wanted to buy him out, but if he sold they'd "just screw it up". Said he'll get old and die before he'd see that happen. You may want to stay there.
If I cannot go in late summer, well, there is always the fall as I am semi retired. I cannot go right now as I am recovering from surgery, but once healed, I will be well ready to hit the road again.
Your interest is in the Delta and its blues, but try to visit Natchez, too. The history student in you will be glad you did.
In the current millennium, the Baptists have done NOTHING (apart from some strategic chest-thumping) to combat vice in Mississippi. Neither the White Baptists nor the Black Baptists...
The days when Mississippians used to have to go to New Orleans, in order to drink or have sex, are long-gone. Used to be, Mississippi's wayward menfolk had to go to "The Coast", to gamble or select from a decent-sized array of prostitutes. Now, you can do all that, and WORSE - way worse, in Jackson.
Baptist politicians (mostly the White ones) have basically laid the state down, and thrown-it-open, for being raped by the purveyors of vice.
During the "Pandemic", the state's "leaders" shut down the gyms, but kept the liquor stores open. (it is well-known, that physical fitness fights disease, while alcohol renders the body defenseless against disease) But Mississippi's predominantly-Baptist "leaders" helped get CANNED MIXED DRINKS into hotels and motels, as a convenience for those who were "quarantining". (the carbs in those sugary CANNED MIXED DRINKS, are nearly as bad as the alcohol, where immunosuppression is concerned - and there are plenty of Baptist docs and researchers who know this. Nobody "Stepped up to the Plate" and warned people. Nobody was a hero.) Big Booze is still owned by the same criminal families who arose during Prohibition. The state's mostly-Baptist leaders, at-minimum, did nothing to resist that gambit by the liquor distributors. In fact, they seem to have worked with them, to get that harmful product into the hands of people in hotel rooms.
In a move reminiscent of Russia's disastrous selling-off of state-owned utilities (at greatly-discounted prices) to cronies, Mississippi stands ready to hand-off its excellent state-run liquor distribution system, to a private distributor. I'm wondering who'll be getting "considerations", and what form they'll take.
A Mississippi architect, whose wife I remember as a big, loud, gum-smackin' Baptist former cheerleader, designed a palace for the operating head of one of those liquor distribution families. This was in another state. They bulldozed that city's historic commission and zoning authorities, then bulldozed an iconic apartment building, on an iconic avenue, in order to build that palace. That Architect, at one point, had a house in our gated community, and an office in the same office condo where we owned. One of my 'little birds' was telling me about a big party at the architect's house, thrown to impress 'The Magazine People', who'd flown-down from Yankeeland, to shoot one of his houses.
The wife's "daaaaaaayyyiiiiiid", a big Baptist professor at one of the state's big football jokeschools, was there. There was drinking. The Architect's wife was smoking. "Dayyyyiiiiiiiiiiid" was mute about those two scientifically-proven deleterious vices. However, someone made the mistake of uttering the phrase, "...tigers evolved to...". Big mistake! Daaaaayyyyyiiiiiid launched into a condescending lecture about Evolution, ending, after ten minutes, with a triumphant, "And you know, they've never found The Missing Link."
My informant stood there, letting this deranged White Trash parvenu harangue her - thinking - but not saying - "Well, actually, at this point, they've found a whole string of "Missing Links", and we now know that Modern Humans arose from an amalgam of archaic hominid species. But I'm going to just stand here and let you "win", because I want to keep my job."
Someone who appointed himself as an intellectual mentor for my husband and me, was describing having to deal with MED STUDENTS - future doctors (every one of them 'Evangelical' of one sort or another) who'd get up in his face, challenging the existence of Evolution. This mentor was a professor at Jackson's campus for the state's medical school. He was a brilliant scientist, from a family who'd been primary participants in the greatest intellectual flowering which ever happened in any Baltic nation. His cranium was enormous. My husband soaked-up his scientific knowledge, while the Professor and I chattered-away in our people's mother tongue, peppered with Italian, German, and Russian. The Professor was the first to notice that whenever there was something quantifiable under discussion, I was isolating and crunching the numbers as we talked, and had the totals ready. DH would get the breaking molecular research data from UCLA, and I'd get to read Primo Levi and Victor Klemperer in-tandem with the brilliant Professor. It was Heaven, for all three of us.
And yet this transcendent individual, had to cope with Mississippi's future doctors telling HIM what was and what wasn't. He was having to defend provable reality, against ideology.
That's where I'm going with this. It was long-ago established as fact, that gambling causes far greater harm than good. It was long-ago established as fact, that consumption of alcohol, causes far greater harm than good. It was long-ago established that consumption of tobacco products, is entirely harmful, with many victims and no beneficiaries. It was long-ago established that stupefying drugs have precisely the predictable long-term effect upon individuals. And yet, Mississippi's Baptists (regardless of race) do not seem to have done much (in the current Millennium, at least), to have fought or resisted these vices. Most recently, they were oddly-silent, while two of these vices were legalized.
Maybe because these vices are (at least initially) "fun". Maybe it's because they're profitable for powerful interests. Maybe it's because those susceptible to religion, tend to be conformists, and hucksters know how to make conformists want to jump on their bandwagons. Probably, it's all three. It's all about conforming to the orthodoxy which consensus holds to be the most powerful and popular. 'Right', 'Wrong', and true values, have nothing to do with anything, for most people in Mississippi.
Get it? The weak and vulnerable are persecuted, while the powerful are lionized.
Reproductive rights for women, are not profitable for "powerful interests". There are no quasi-criminal enterprises standing to make money off Gay Rights. There is ZERO money to be made from Mississippi's nonexistent gender-reassignment nonindustry (but much money/publicity to be gained from opposing it - even though it does not even exist) There is no profit for any mobsters, in acknowledging Evolution. There is less profit for mobsters, in cammers' creating content for the various free Internet erotica venues. The Mob wants you to pay ridiculous prices, for its dismal and disgusting erotica. The Mob does not want you to be able to view, for-free, wholesome amateur content generated by Pamela Anderson or Calum Von Moger or Vince Sant (in his cammer days, before he became a Keto guru multimillionaire).
So, women can't get abortions, in Mississippi, anymore. Donald's unfortunate choices for The Supremes, stand poised to reinstate Mississippi's anti-Gay laws. You will have to go through elaborate procedures, if you're in Missississippi, and want to get-off via some Internet venue (unless you don't mind giving your personal information to Organized Crime, who'd LOVE to sell your name, address, and IP to their cronies). But you can drink, smoke, gamble, and drug-yourself-into-oblivion, in Mississippi, apparently with the blessings of Mississippi's mostly-Baptist leadership.
Mississippi's children are "safe" from going into libraries, and running across books which might allow them to discover that they are OK. Heaven forbid tomboys or "sissies" should discover that they're not the only ones, and that they are not committing some sort of crime, by simply BEING. Heaven forbid that some kid might grow up without fear or guilt.
Oh, and as for Mississippi's smaller towns... those dried-up, as soon as there were roadworthy cars, and roads to drive them on. That happened in the 1920s.
Casinos: Delta poverty existed well before the casinos. The poverty has too many reasons to list, but key reasons include history dating back to Jim Crow and the fact it's a chemical-coated, dusty agricultural region with no hills where few people want to live.
Gotta visit the Muppet museum in Leland, home of Jim Henson.
If you have any interest in the Civil War, definitely drive through the battlefield at Vicksburg.
Greenville and Greenwood have history. Greenville was a nest of great writers and journalists. Greenwood is famous for civil rights history. Stokely Carmichael basically became famous because of his appearance in Greenwood after being imprisoned.
Greenville and Greenwood have history. Greenville was a nest of great writers and journalists. Greenwood is famous for civil rights history. Stokely Carmichael basically became famous because of his appearance in Greenwood after being imprisoned.
I don't know how much civil rights history (as far as memorials, places to visit, etc.) you'll find in Greenwood. Byron De La Beckwith, convicted murderer of Medgar Evers and all around bad guy, spent much of his life in Greenwood. I had uncles who knew him, they said everyone (including whites) was scared of him, and most tried to keep their distance. Behind his back, they called him "de-lay" because they didn't think he was smart. Additionally, Emmit Till was tragically killed in nearby Money and there is a plaque commemorating him.
Greenwood is also home to one of the 'Sip's great resturants, the historic Crystal Grill, but the owner is getting older and I wouldn't be surprised to soon hear of its closing.
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