Touring through the different sections of Cleveland, Mississippi was seeing houses and living conditions like night and day. The night we got to the hotel a few of us were watching TV in the lobby with the girl who worked behind the desk. She told us about her town Shaw which we actually got to drive through and see the high school she went to. The school history was interesting because it went from being completely white to Italian to African American. It was the first school in Mississippi to have integrated teachers and as Luther Brown pointed out the first teacher received more problems from other teachers and administration than parents because the parents were mostly Italian and directly understood the effects of segregation.

Lunch at the Hoover grocery store was really good except the Kool-Aid pickles that most of us regretted trying. Mr. Hoover then showed us the neighborhood which is where Robert Johnson used to live and play jazz out on the street corner. We went into a house and Mr. Hoover explained how life was like during the time of the explosion of blues. There was one bed, one mirror, no running water, and no electricity for a large family. They used kerosene lamps, bathed in the back yard, and the children slept on blankets on the floor. Being in the cramped house on such a hot day made us realize how blues was inspired. Mr. Hoover told us how Robert Johnson would draw the whole neighborhood outside when he played but parents discouraged their children from listening. He said that if he even started to sing blues his mother would immediately hit him to stop since it was “devil’s music.”

We continued our tour to Money, Mississippi and passed the railroad tracks where Emmit Till rode the train and the store where whistled at the white employee to trigger his murder. The contrast of the run down homes (which a bunch actually had Direct TV dishes but no windows or fully enacted roofs) to the neighborhood approaching the Alluvian hotel was very drastic. It was such a short drive from houses that looked more like shacks to houses that would fit in on Stratford. The shops surrounding the hotel were very upscale and the hotel was ridiculously luxurious. It was hard to see such poverty and then wealth.

Dinner at the Senators Place was incredibly good. I was so full from lunch at Hoover’s that I did not think I could possibly eat another bite but ended up stuffing my face with catfish, hush puppies, green beans, cole slaw, and of course banana pudding. Dr. Rosen’s passion for blues was so apparent which made his lecture during dinner really interesting because he was so excited about it. Senator Willie Simmons was very generous for keeping the restaurant open later and cooking for us and showed us even more hospitality later that night at Po’ Monkeys.

Po’ Monkey’s juke joint was clearly the highlight of the trip! Having gotten so close on the trip everyone had a great time with each other dancing, playing pool, and hanging out. The blues and that played was great and it was fun to be out with locals and not feel out of place as we often did walking around in such a large group. Not much to blog about the evening but for sure memories from Po’ Monkeys will last forever.

Today was a very long but interesting day filled with information about the Mississippi delta. We woke up nice and early and went to Delta State University where we met with Dr. Luther Brown, a professor there who spoke to us and led us on a bus tour of the region. This tour brought us to various towns and cities and featured several stops of importance. We learned a lot about the history of the delta, along with the importance of agriculture to the area. Dr. Brown was a specialist on blues, so we heard a lot about the lives of some of the pioneers of blues, and made a couple stops to learn more. My favorite stop was in Greenwood, Mississippi, where we saw two very different parts of the town. First we went to a part called Baptist town, which is the African American part of town, is very poor, and is also where blues legend Robert Johnson lived, played, and was murdered. It was really neat to see this small community and really be able to get a feel for the atmosphere surrounding blues when it was at its height. We ate lunch at a small convenience store with a kitchen, where we were able to get some southern fried chicken and fried okra. The food was great, but all this fried food is killing me! We had a guest speaker at lunch who spoke some more about blues, and afterwards we walked around the neighborhood a bit to see where Robert Johnson lived, and tour a house preserved from that time. That house and the community really made it easier to see why blues were so popular because they provided an outlet for people to express their dissatisfaction with the social and economic environments in which they lived. As our tour guide said: “If we were depressed, we sang the blues. If we were happy, we sang the blues.”

After visiting Baptist town, we visited the other part of Greenwood, where the downtown is undergoing a revival. We had a nice break from the bus while seeing some of the Alluvian hotel, which was absolutely beautiful. If I ever return to Greenwood, I will certainly be staying there. We also stopped into the Viking kitchen supplies store, where beautiful (but expensive) supplies are sold, and cooking classes are taught. We tried to convince somebody that our class should get a cooking tutorial, but that didn’t happen. This was followed by hearing Senator David Jordan talk about living in the area during the murder of Emmet Till and the trial in which his killers were acquitted. It was really powerful to hear him tell this story and know that he was a little younger than I am now when it all happened. His speech had even more impact when we got on the bus and drove to Money, Mississippi, where we stopped in front of the store where Emmet got in trouble for whistling at a white woman.

After driving around the delta and learning even more about its history, we stopped at Senators restaurant for an early dinner. The restaurant stayed open just for us, and we were treated to a fried catfish dinner made especially for us by Senator Willie Simmons himself. Dinner was delicious, catfish officially became my favorite southern dish, and we heard a bit more about some of the history of blues our special guest for the day, Dr. Rosen. Dinner was great but we were all ready to get back to the hotel after a long day, and we especially could not wait to go to Po’ Monkey’s to really take in the blues/juke joint experience that we had been hearing about all day.

The whole class pulled up to Po’ Monkey’s around 8pm, ready to hear some good music and have fun. I really couldn’t wait to see what it looked like inside, because it seemed so tiny from the outside. The interior did not disappoint, it was decorated with Christmas lights, a disco ball, and had all sorts of dolls and monkeys hanging from the walls and ceiling. There was a stage for the band to play on, a bunch of tables for people to enjoy the music from, and a pool table off to the side. I know that I had a great time listening to the music, playing pool, and enjoying a beer or two. Mr. Monkey also really added to the experience, as he promenaded around the place with a cigar in once hand, a drink in the other, and wore a variety of fancy and colorful suits throughout the night. I believe he wore five different suits: orangish/brownish, red, blue, white, and dark green. I’m pretty sure that everybody really enjoyed this night, and it has definitely been the highlight of the trip for me.

Today was really relaxing and we didn’t do too much, but during reflection time we talked about what aspect of the trip was most difficult to confront, and what it means now. I think the hardest part for me was going to Baptist Town and the heading across the street to the rest of Greenwood which hides the reality of the poverty in the area. Four tourists who drive through Greenwood, they will never see the poverty across the train tracks and the poor living conditions many of the people in the community live under. I don’t really know what the mean now, but I guess I have realized that where you come from ultimately shapes where you go in life for the majority of people. I also realized that the poverty we hear about in third world countries also exists in this country. We need to realize that there are issues that need to be addressed in our own country before we begin to help those in other countries.

Later that day we stayed at the Shack Up Inn, a hotel located in small shacks where the sharecroppers used to live. The Inn is located on an old plantation so it felt like we really lived as sharecroppers. The area was awesome, minus the millions of bugs and chiggers surrounding us.

Now we are in the Delta, the part of Mississippi where everything seems backwards. We got a tour of the area that included many towns from Merigold to Money, but each town seemed to confront the same problem: poverty. If you drive around this area as we did, you will see fields and fields of cotton, soybeans, corn, etc. It is a beautiful area, flat and green, with side roads taking you to small towns. But in these towns you realize that nothing seems to have changed for the past 50 years. We started the day by going to see a cotton ginnery, then we toured around small towns that reminded me of those on the Native American Reservations in Arizona. The one that stands out the most in my mind was Greenwood and the area called Baptist Town. When we entered this area, all we saw was small, run down houses and old, worn down cars. We ate at a small cafe/grocery store in the neighborhood and the people were extremely welcoming. (We tried kool-aid pickles, they were interesting). Anyways, the first thing I noticed was how cheap the food is. It was also homemade and I could tell that this was the main source (if not the only) of revenue coming into this community. I immediately thought of the Native American towns because they are very similar to this one. We learned that many people do not have running water or electricity in the Delta, and this is also true on the reservation. While the houses are older in this neighborhood, most Natives live in trailers, so I felt like these two accommodations evened each other out.

Dr. Hattery talked to us about rural vs. urban poverty and how different they are because in rural poverty there is a lack of resources. I thought about Baptist Town and how it feels like rural poverty. In some ways it is rural, but it is also next door to the entire Greenwood community, which is more economically developed. On the reservation, there is not even a neighboring community with resources because nobody has those resources on this land which spans over a hundred mile radius. Both African-Americans and Native Americans are being exploited and there are many similarities and differences between the two groups. We learned today that education in these areas is very poor and that many of the schools have been on probation because of low test scores. This is also a problem on the reservation. My mom used to work at Tiis Nas Pas, a few miles from Four Corners, at an elementary school. This school had very poor test scores and the government had threatened to shut it down. This exact same thing happened at the school that LaLee’s grandchildren went to in the movie we watched. Obviously the last thing a poor area needs is a shut down school; both areas desperately need much more funding for their school system.

Another similarity between both subgroups is the tendency to eat bad food. Native Americans actually used to eat very healthy, but when they were colonized they learned to make fried foods such as fry bread and Navajo tacos. The South also has unhealthy, bad food although I am not sure about the historical context for that.

There also seems to be a loss of culture in both communities. We learned that the younger generations in the South do not know of or understand the historical importance behind the Blues music. It is only up to the elders to understand that Blues music comes from a long history of suffering. Similarly, Native Americans have lost their culture because of the colonizers, and today the younger generations do not even know their native language.

Since we have been in the Delta I have wondered how exactly these two oppressed groups come together and how they are also separate. In some ways the Native Americans have a slight advantage over the African-Americans because they have a government organization (the BIA) to help them out. On the other hand, these communities are so set apart from the rest of American civilization that they cannot even benefit from a close by community of the middle and upper classes. Because the disparities between African-Americans and whites are very obvious because they are close in proximity to each other, Native Americans’ issues are less apparent because those communities are isolated. Yet I also feel like Americans have a general awareness about the poverty on reservations, where most have no idea how impoverished the South still is.

Later in the night we went to Po’ Monkeys to listen to Blues music and dance. Every Monday night the strippers from Memphis make an appearance, so you could say that there was a diverse crowd there. There were other tourists, some locals, our entire class, and the strippers. The tourist industry surrounding the Blues music is obviously bringing in a lot of money and people to the Delta.

Day 10 & 11: Cleveland, Mississippi

On the bus, we watched the Darryl Hunt video, which I have seen before but never fails to shake me every time. This case is probably one of the most horrific, modern examples of what racism can cause. Darryl had his entire life trashed, yet committed no wrongdoing whatsoever.

We also took our tour of the most rural cities we have been into on our trip. I definitely learned a lot about how important the Blues are to Mississippi in particular and how it still remains a major form of music in this area. Also, we went to Greenwood, where I fell in love with their Alluvian Hotel and the Viking Cooking Center. I definitely would like to return and spend a weekend there. It was amazing to learn how when Viking began, it revolutionized the entire city, particularly the downtown, and began more of the tourist, upper end part of the city. It was quite a weird feeling to go from the simplistic Hoover’s Grocery to the immaculate hotel and spa; it seemed as we couldn’t possibly be in the same vicinity of the country.

At night, we went to Po Monkey’s jook joint, by far one of my favorite experiences of the trip. It was amazing to experience how lively such a small place could be. I definitely found out I have a love for blues music. Po Monkey himself was astounding in all of his suit changes, and was extremely welcoming to all who came. It was a good time getting to go out and bond with the entire group. We definitely have all gotten extremely close on the trip, which is one thing I value the most and will take away from this experience.

Day 12: Parchman Penitentiary

I have been somewhat nervous though excited about this day. I made sure to not put on any makeup or do my hair because I wanted to appear as least feminine to the convicts we were about to see as possible. In reality, we were in very contained areas so this didn’t really matter. It was a good thing for me that the convicts we spoke with were not domestic abusers or rapists because due to my personal passions with these issues, I would have had an extremely hard time being in the same room with them, let alone listening to anything they had to say. I had no idea that much of our tour would actually be led by convicts, not to say that it was scary at all, I just was surprised at the levels of freedom they would give those who were close to leaving and had not committed violent crimes. It definitely made much more of an impact that we were able to talk candidly to convicts as to how their life was before and in prison. It is scary to see how normal some of these people’s lives were before they wound up getting involved with drugs to make extra money, and where they are now. It is so said to hear the people say all they want in life is to be altogether with their family for once, and be able to watch their children grow up. They will never get their children’s early years back, something that shapes both the prisones and their children’s lives forever.

There were quite a number of things that stunned me about Parchman that I feel are pretty characteristic of prisons in general. One was the obvious amount of corruption in numerous phases of the prison system, such as the lack of emotional wellness programs to get convicts recovered and in a state of consciousness that they can be readmitted into society and know how to be socially proper. Prison officials when asked note that the corruption exists, yet seemed to delay it off as the responsibility of another department to handle. In the end, the problem is too big that it simply is not handled for the most part. Also, the small metal animal cages that were considered the exercise area seem quite a joke to me. All you can really do in one of them is walk around in a four by four foot square. No person can stay fit and healthy on that minimal amount of exercise. Also, the horrible food and lack of any help for convicts during brawls within areas is appalling and inhumane in my mind. Above all, I am infuriated to meet with the convicts we did who are serving forty years, and even some who are serving life sentences for drug charges. Not to minimize the problem of the existence of drugs in society, but I don’t think anyone can argue that drugs are worse than child molesters, murders, and rapists in society. I was looking at a chart when we first walked in that showed how many years was typical for each offense. For rape, the charge was only five years. This is startling and irritating to say the least particularly being a woman, but also that there is just no comparison between drugs and rape. Rape tears apart the victim’s life, not just temporarily, but in most cases, for the rest of their life, yet we only give perpetrators five years in prison? Seriously what are we thinking?

Day 13: Clarksdale, Mississippi

I got up early this morning to finish working on my paper. I was mad again as I tried to walk to get breakfast at a place in our hotel on the other side of the casino that I got yelled at just trying to get something to eat. Like the last casino, I can’t even walk through the casino to go to the bathroom or the restaurant.

We took a short drive to the quaint little downtown of Clarksdale. It was so nice to have some free time to just look around and shop. We went in a bunch of stores, and I got a few souvenirs for some of my friends and family. We talked with a few people in the stores about how long they had lived in Clarksdale, what the rest of the town was like, and they told us a little about the hotel we are staying in for the night. The downtown was very quiet and the outside of stores and buildings appeared rundown, but inside all of the stores were very upscale. All of the stores were really neat, and their pride in blues music was evident in many of the stores. A few of us got to play with one of the store’s mascots which was a cute little pug dog. Next, we had an amazing lunch at Ground Zero Blues Club, and got to sign their wall. Now we are on the way to the much anticipated Shack Up Inn where we are staying tonight. I am very excited to see how authentic this place really is.

Shack Up Inn is awesome!! I absolutely love it! It is the coolest place I have ever stayed. I love cute little old timey places like this. It’s been nice to unwind and be able to walk from house to house to see everyone. I’m definitely glad we decided to trust that the place we were staying would be ok because it was worth it, without a doubt, in my mind.

Monday marked the day I count as the most itinerary intensive one of the trip. We met up with Dr. Luther Brown at Delta State University and he spent the day (and evening) escorting us all over the region. Dr. Brown is with the Delta Center for Culture and Learning. I agree with Kendra, the farmland is endless. The little towns, for me, were most easily recognized by the water towers that proclaimed their name.

Over the course of the day, we went to so many different destinations, each with its own unique story, that I felt like we had created the squares for a patchwork quilt. Lots of pieces, not yet sewn together in my mind - Mound Bayou, Po’ Monkey, Shaw, catfish farms, Charley Patton, Blues Heritage Trail, Indianola, Cleveland, Greenwood, Baptist Town, Yazoo River, Viking, Emmet Till, Robert Johnson, and on…..It was too much for me to assimilate all in one day. I hope to be able to go back after I get home and research many of the towns, topics and people more so that I can gain a better understanding of how it all fits together.

The most striking contrast for me today was the one between Baptist Town and the Viking Range Corporation’s vision for Greenwood. Two worlds at the opposite ends of the spectrum, only a short distance away from each other. It’s hard to fathom how the town can reconcile having a corporation build an opulent tourist/business destination while there is such poverty a stone’s throw away. That’s not to say I think it’s a bad idea to try to create a new image to bring people back to downtown Greenwood, but surely that could be accomplished in a less ostentatious way that would include a plan to address the poverty? It couldn’t be that Baptist Town prefers to remain in its current state?

Alluvian Hotel

Hoover’s Grocery in Baptist Town

We got a full dose of southern country cooking today with the highlights being Kool Aid Pickles (not as good as they look) at Hoover’s and fried catfish at The Senator’s Place.

By the time we finished dinner, we had 45 minutes to go back to the hotel and get “all gussied up” to go to the famous Jook Joint, Po’ Monkey’s. We had been treated to meeting Mr. Monkey earlier in the day when we drove by his place. I know others will give better accounts of the evening than I can. But for those who know me, I’ll just say I never imagined this picture: Two librarians (Lynn and me), listening to great live blues music, sipping beer in a Mississippi Jook Joint on a Monday evening.

An event filled day, to say the least.