“Growing up here in the Mississippi Delta was different,” Hoover said. “...I didn’t realize I was a human being till ‘70.” 

In Hoover’s youth, everything he did was policed. As a teenager, he could not so much as purchase a ticket to Chicago, for the station would contact Hoover’s boss for permission that he would never give. Hoover explained: “If you was [sic] a black person living in Greenwood, you couldn’t buy a ticket to get out.”

The same was true for “Honeyboy” Edwards, the last musician to play with Robert Johnson. Back then, said Hoover, Edwards and Johnson would perform the blues on what is now Johnson Street, for which they would earn around $1.25. After that, the two of them would “hop the train” to Beale Street, in Memphis, where they would each earn another $5. In this way––illicitly, improbably, and through great resilience––the blues coursed out of the Delta and into the lifeblood of America. 

In 1970, Barbara Lipman, a teacher from Philadelphia, PA, moved to the Mississippi with her husband, David Lipman, who was a civil rights lawyer. While she taught at the Black school that Hoover attended, her husband worked under the Mississippi Center for Justice on a series of cases relating to school desegregation, voting rights, and prison reform. 

Many in the unincorporated community of Money, MS –– the location of Emmett Till’s fateful encounter at Bryant Grocery Store –– disliked Lipman because of her husband’s work on civil rights. Until he met Lipman, Hoover and his peers had “never looked at a white lady in her face.” 

“When she came to the school, she taught us, she respected us, and she said, ‘you could do my job.’” Hoover said, with a note of sincere reverence. “She told us we were a human being [sic] and that’s when we learned we was [sic] a human being.” 

Not long after, in 1971, a tornado tore through Money Road, obliterating all 49 shacks on Whittington Plantation. 600 Black sharecroppers lost their homes overnight. As a result, the federal government provided them with mobile homes for three years, free-of-charge. That was the first time, Hoover reported, that his family had bathrooms in their living quarters. They also received money to purchase new clothes. 

“It was the best thing that ever happened to us,” Hoover said. Along with the shacks, the tornado had blown away many of the constraints tethering him and his family to their old life. 

But progress is slow to come. While the Delta has changed over the decades, much of it, according to Hoover, remains inert. 

Since the 1960s, Hoover pointed out, over 90% of the region has been owned by the same eight white families. Money is power, and with the money concentrated in unchanging hands, the power, too, stays out of reach for the Black people of the Mississippi Delta. 

“That’s why Stokely Carmichael [later Kwame Ture] was saying ‘Black Power,” Hoover said, eyes glinting with significance. (The seminal speech that brought Black Power to the U.S. took place at Broad Street Park in Greenwood, MS in 1966.) “He wanted money…Without that money, you got no power.” What was the point of a seat at the lunch counter, a right for which Dr. King so fervently advocated, if one could not afford a meal? 

In discussing the issues that plague the Delta, from racism to economic inequality, Hoover emphasized that they were by no means limited to the region. Said Hoover: “It’s pretty much the same song everywhere you go.” 

There is much to be learned from Greenwood and its history, just as there is of the wider Delta region. Having toured students from around the U.S. in his hometown, Hoover argued that all of it––the civil rights, the blues, the spirit of resistance and struggle––should be in the curriculum. In our conversation, it is clear that Hoover loves Greenwood; that he loves the life he has chosen. 

“I didn’t have to stay here, I could’ve left,” he said. “Went to Chicago, went anywhere…but I wanted to stay here because I like it. It’s my home.”