Author: Williard B. Gatewood Jr.
Publisher: University of Arkansas Press
ISBN: 1610750322
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 336
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Book Description
Winner of the 1994 Virginia C. Ledbetter Prize, this collection of wide-ranging essays is the first collaborative work to focus exclusively on the living and historical contradictions of the Arkansas portion of the Mississippi River delta. Individual chapters deal with the French and Spanish colonial experience; the impact of the Civil War, the roles of African Americans, women, and various ethnic groups; and the changes that have occurred in towns, in social life, and in agriculture. What emerges is a rich tapestry—a land of black and white, of wealth and poverty, of progress and stasis, f despair and hope—through which all that is dear and terrible about this often overlooked region of the South is revealed.
Author: Eugene Richards
Publisher: MIT Press (MA)
ISBN:
Category : Photography
Languages : en
Pages : 136
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Book Description
Eugene Richards first came to the southeastern part of Arkansas--the so-called Delta--in 1968 as a VISTA volunteer. After nearly two years in that organization working to set up a daycare center and recreation programs, he and some of his associates in it left to found RESPECT Inc., a private social-action program providing paralegal services, publishing a community newspaper, and distributing food and clothing in West Memphis (across the Mississippi River from Memphis, Tennessee).As he lived and became increasingly involved in the black community, Richards, a skilled photographer, began to use his camera to record what he observed--not only the poverty and suffering of these people but also their laughter, contemplation, and triumphs. His subjects range from children at play to an African-style wedding to scenes of work and home life. Death, religion, and imprisonment are major elements of Delta existence, and so of these photos.The 110 photographs collected here express the quality of life in a part of the South where 60 percent of the black families barely earn $2000 a year, and 70 percent of the dwellings are deteriorated and without plumbing. Richards' camera catches the cotton compresses, the cement mill, the broken fields and small cafes, Logan the mortician, the two blind brothers Willy and Isaiah McCowan, and the Reverend Ezra Greer at the state capitol in Little Rock, while his few but carefully chosen words complement these images. Together they hold the people and the place in a world that Richards feels "slipping by, while I merely observed its disappearance."I feared being only eyes, only a cameraman," he says, but through his camera his eyes become ours, and the power of his feelings, ours too.
Author: Janelle Collins
Publisher: University of Arkansas Press
ISBN: 1557286876
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 319
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Book Description
Inspired by the Arkansas Review’s “What Is the Delta?” series of articles, Defining the Delta collects fifteen essays from scholars in the sciences, social sciences, and humanities to describe and define this important region. Here are essays examining the Delta’s physical properties, boundaries, and climate from a geologist, archeologist, and environmental historian. The Delta is also viewed through the lens of the social sciences and humanities—historians, folklorists, and others studying the connection between the land and its people, in particular the importance of agriculture and the culture of the area, especially music, literature, and food. Every turn of the page reveals another way of seeing the seven-state region that is bisected by and dependent on the Mississippi River, suggesting ultimately that there are myriad ways of looking at, and defining, the Delta.
Author: D. Antonio Cantu
Publisher: Arcadia Publishing
ISBN: 9780738508184
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 134
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Book Description
Containing some of the most fertile soil in the world, the Arkansas Delta is predominantly an agricultural region. In the early 19th century, however, while the land remained extremely rich, the Delta's inhabitants were suffering from severe poverty. Showcased here in over 200 vintage images with corresponding commentary are the historic efforts in the education of the Delta for the past 150 years, documenting the region's rise in national education standards. Settled in part by the Native American tribes of the Mississippi Delta and later French explorers, the area was always an agricultural gold-mine. As seen in many farm reliant communities, education fell second to tilling the fields. As the rest of the world began its rapid ascension from agriculture to industrialization, the farmers of the Delta, poor and uneducated, were left behind the rest of the nation. This new book, featuring remarkable images of the one-room schoolhouses, teachers, and students of the many communities of the Delta, spans over two centuries, as the authors trace the history of education in the Arkansas Delta from its roots in the mid-19th century to its current state in the dawn of the 21st century.
Author: Kat Robinson
Publisher: Arcadia Publishing
ISBN: 1625853033
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 265
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Book Description
The Arkansas Delta is fertile ground for delicious food and iconic restaurants. It's a thickly layered culinary landscape built on generations of immigrants, farmers and cooks. Savor Delta tamales at Pasquale's Tamales, Rhoda's Famous Hot Tamales and Smokehouse BBQ. Meet the masters of barbecue like Harold Jones at the James Beard American classic Jones Barbecue Diner in Marianna. Dine where Elvis Presley ate, travel to Bill Clinton's favorite burger joint and cross the roads where Johnny Cash grew up. From legendary catfish havens such as Murry's Restaurant in Hazen to divine drive-ins like the Polar Freeze in Walnut Ridge, author Kat Robinson and photographer Grav Weldon explore more than one hundred classic joints, superb steakhouses, pie places and decadent doughnut palaces in this tasty travelogue.
Author: Cindy Grisham
Publisher: Arcadia Publishing
ISBN: 1625840489
Category : Photography
Languages : en
Pages : 131
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Book Description
Up and down the Arkansas Delta, food tells a story. Whether the time Bill Clinton nearly died on the way to a coon dinner or the connections made over biscuits and gravy or the more common chicken and dumpling feuds, the area is no stranger to history. One of America's last frontiers, it was settled in the late nineteenth century by a rough-and-tumble collection of timber men, sharecroppers and entrepreneurs from all over the world who embraced the traditional foodways and added their own twists. Today, the Arkansas Delta is the nation's largest producer of rice and adds other crops like catfish and sweet potatoes. Join author Cindy Grisham for this delicious look into Delta cuisine.
Author: David A. Jolliffe
Publisher: Syracuse University Press
ISBN: 9780815634669
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 0
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Book Description
In rural America, perhaps more than other areas, high school students have the ability to contribute to the revitalization and sustainability of their home communities by engaging in oral history projects designed to highlight the values that are revered and worth saving in their region. The Arkansas Delta Oral History Project, a multiyear collaboration between the University of Arkansas and several public high schools in small, rural Arkansas towns, gives students that opportunity. Through the project, trained University of Arkansas studentmentors work with high school students on in-depth writing projects that grow out of oral history interviews. The Delta, a region where the religious roots of southern culture run deep and the traditions of cooking, farming, and hunting are passed from generation to generation, provides the ideal subject for oral history projects. In this detailed exploration of the project, the authors draw on theories of cultural studies and critical pedagogy of place to show how students’ work on religion, food, and race exemplifies the use of community literacy to revitalize a distressed economic region. Advancing the discussion of place-based education, The Arkansas Delta Oral History Project is both inspirational and instructive in offering a successful model of an authentic literacy program.
Author: David A. Jolliffe
Publisher: Syracuse University Press
ISBN: 0815653786
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 294
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Book Description
In rural America, perhaps more than other areas, high school students have the ability to contribute to the revitalization and sustainability of their home communities by engaging in oral history projects designed to highlight the values that are revered and worth saving in their region. The Arkansas Delta Oral History Project, a multiyear collaboration between the University of Arkansas and several public high schools in small, rural Arkansas towns, gives students that opportunity. Through the project, trained University of Arkansas studentmentors work with high school students on in-depth writing projects that grow out of oral history interviews. The Delta, a region where the religious roots of southern culture run deep and the traditions of cooking, farming, and hunting are passed from generation to generation, provides the ideal subject for oral history projects. In this detailed exploration of the project, the authors draw on theories of cultural studies and critical pedagogy of place to show how students’ work on religion, food, and race exemplifies the use of community literacy to revitalize a distressed economic region. Advancing the discussion of place-based education, The Arkansas Delta Oral History Project is both inspirational and instructive in offering a successful model of an authentic literacy program.
Author: Jeannie Whayne
Publisher: LSU Press
ISBN: 080713855X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 322
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Book Description
In Delta Empire: Lee Wilson and the Transformation of Agriculture in the New South Jeannie Whayne employs the fascinating history of a powerful plantation owner in the Arkansas delta to recount the evolution of southern agriculture from the late nineteenth century through World War II. After his father’s death in 1870, Robert E. “Lee” Wilson inherited 400 acres of land in Mississippi County, Arkansas. Over his lifetime, he transformed that inheritance into a 50,000-acre lumber operation and cotton plantation. Early on, Wilson saw an opportunity in the swampy local terrain, which sold for as little as fifty cents an acre, to satisfy an expanding national market for Arkansas forest reserves. He also led the fundamental transformation of the landscape, involving the drainage of tens of thousands of acres of land, in order to create the vast agricultural empire he envisioned. A consummate manager, Wilson employed the tenancy and sharecropping system to his advantage while earning a reputation for fair treatment of laborers, a reputation—Whayne suggests—not entirely deserved. He cultivated a cadre of relatives and employees from whom he expected absolute devotion. Leveraging every asset during his life and often deeply in debt, Wilson saved his company from bankruptcy several times, leaving it to the next generation to successfully steer the business through the challenges of the 1930s and World War II. Delta Empire traces the transition from the labor-intensive sharecropping and tenancy system to the capital-intensive neo-plantations of the post–World War II era to the portfolio plantation model. Through Wilson’s story Whayne provides a compelling case study of strategic innovation and the changing economy of the South in the late nineteenth century.
Author: Denise Parkinson
Publisher: Arcadia Publishing
ISBN: 1625840136
Category : True Crime
Languages : en
Pages : 173
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Book Description
The tragic, true story of Helen Spence, the teenager who murdered her father’s killers in the insulated lower White River area of Arkansas in 1931. The once-thriving houseboat communities along Arkansas’s White River are long gone, and few remember the sensational murder story that set local darling Helen Spence on a tragic path. In 1931, Spence shocked Arkansas when she avenged her father’s murder in a DeWitt courtroom. The state soon discovered that no prison could hold her. For the first time, prison records are unveiled to provide an essential portrait. Join author Denise Parkinson for an intimate look at a Depression-era tragedy. The legend of Helen Spence refuses to be forgotten—despite her unmarked grave. “Most memorably, Parkinson evokes the natural beauty of the White River itself. But more importantly, she’s given Helen Spence, daughter of the river, a sympathetic hearing—something in its pulp version of events Daring Detective did not.”—Memphis Flyer “Denise details Helen’s life, from the murder of her father to the horrific treatment she received at the hands of the law, including how prison officials seemed to entice her to escape a final time, with the attempt culminating in her murder.”—Only in Arkansas
