Pre-arrival meal in Memphis: Baby-back ribs, turnip greens, onion rings, the sweetest lemonade I've ever had in my life (my teeth hurt just thinking about it.)
When trying to write a summary of my experiences during my seven days in the Mississippi Delta I keep coming up short. I've been excitedly telling friends and family little vignettes about my trip but have failed to weave the whole story together. I tried breaking it down by topic, days events, themes from the readings but no one way seemed best. There is just so much to absorb from the food, music, readings, speakers, films, all the fine threads are hard to separate. Though I could write pages upon pages of how the Delta workshop effected me, will help my teaching or enabled me to reflect upon how our current political culture mirrors events of the Delta's past, I shall make this a much briefer entry.
As a librarian I am always on the lookout for resources that will aid my colleagues and students in personal or school related research. I will take inspiration from the topics and events which I may smoothly incorporate into colleagues existing lesson plans: Fannie Lou Hamer, regional information, religion and immigration, King Cotton and Emmett Till. I will give a quick impression of the workshop topic then list appropriate resources. This is far from exhaustive but will be helpful for me and other teachers. Over time I shall add more information and amend some of the entries as I go along as this will be a living document to which I will refer often.
Voter Registration--Fannie Lou Hamer
"Sometimes it seem like to tell the truth today is to run the risk of being killed. But if I fall, I'll fall five feet four inches forward in the fight for freedom. I'm not backing off that and no one will have to cover the ground I walk as far as freedom is concerned."
I'm embarrassed to write how little I knew of Ms. Hamer until the readings for this trip. She was an incredible figure in the civil rights movement. Articulate, driven and fearless in her fight for her rights even knowing the ramifications of such actions. The voter registration pieces symbolize the lengths that those in power will go to to keep the powerless oppressed and fearful. She persevered.
I also took the piece of voter registration to remember Dr. Edgar Smith. His connection to Fannie Lou Hamer, the letter he shared with us and his own story about being a sharecropper as a child, his realization the knowledge and education are real power when dealing with your "enemies", was one of the most powerful things I heard. I have shared his story about "you owe me a nickel" numerous times. Dr. Smith's story is something I will definitely share with my students. (And I scored a hug from him which was awesome.)
Books
Voice
of Freedom : Fannie Lou Hamer, Spirit of the Civil Rights
Movement
For
Freedom’s Sake: the Life of Fanny Lou Hamer
Voice
of Freedom : Fannie Lou Hamer, Spirit of the Civil Rights
Movement
Stranger
at the Gates A Summer in Mississippi
A
Voice That Could Stir an Army : Fannie Lou Hamer and the Rhetoric of the Black
Freedom Movement
Fannie
Lou Hamer : the Life of a Civil Rights Icon
Fannie
Lou Hamer : A Voice for Freedom
The
Senator and the Sharecropper: The Freedom Struggles of James O. Eastland and
Fannie Lou Hamer
Let
the People Decide: Black Freedom and White Resistance Movements in
Sunflower County, Mississippi, 1945-1986.
For
Freedom’s Sake: the Life of Fanny Lou Hamer
Websites
http://americanradioworks.publicradio.org/features/sayitplain/flhamer.html
(testimony)
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/biography/freedomsummer-hamer/
http://blueshighway.org/nehvoterreg.htm (voter registration)
http://www.blackpast.org/aah/mississippi-freedom-democratic-party
http://www.blackpast.org/aah/mississippi-freedom-democratic-party
http://www.fannielouhamer.info/mclaurin.html
Databases
Biography in Context
African American Experience
US History in Context
NY Times Online
Boston Globe Online
DVD
The Black American Experience. : Fannie Lou Hamer Voting Rights Activist & Civil Rights Leader
DVD
The Black American Experience. : Fannie Lou Hamer Voting Rights Activist & Civil Rights Leader
Regional History--The Mississippi
The life-blood of the area, the river and it's mud. The flood plain that
created the rich soil and the already wealthy richer. Former swamp land. This
was the base for everything in this area...supported and enslaved peoples. The
levees built to hold back the river. The levees that were breached and where
people were stranded during the flood of 1927. Everywhere we drove here I would
look around and see land for miles all I could think was "this was all under
water."
Books (Historic and Earth Science related)
Rising Tide: The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 and How It Changed America
Deep’n As It Come: The 1927 Mississippi River Flood
Flood: Mississippi, 1927 (Survivors) (Fiction, grade school)
Delta Waters : Research to Support Integrated Water and Environmental Management in the Lower Mississippi River
This Delta, this Land : An Environmental History of the Yazoo-Mississippi Floodplain
The Evolution of Place: Patterns of Environmental Change in the Yazoo-Mississippi Delta from the Ice Age to the New Deal
The Mighty Mississippi
Rising Tide: The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 and How It Changed America
Deep’n As It Come: The 1927 Mississippi River Flood
Flood: Mississippi, 1927 (Survivors) (Fiction, grade school)
Delta Waters : Research to Support Integrated Water and Environmental Management in the Lower Mississippi River
This Delta, this Land : An Environmental History of the Yazoo-Mississippi Floodplain
The Evolution of Place: Patterns of Environmental Change in the Yazoo-Mississippi Delta from the Ice Age to the New Deal
The Mighty Mississippi
Websites
http://www.southernspaces.org/2010/bioregional-approach-southern-history-yazoo-mississippi-delta
https://www.nwf.org/Wildlife/Wild-Places/Mississippi-River-Delta.aspx
http://mshistory.k12.ms.us/articles/94/making-the-mississippi-river-over-again
https://www.classzone.com/books/earth_science/terc/content/investigations/es1308/es1308page05.cfm
http://www.npr.org/2011/05/18/136427246/when-the-levee-breaks-ripples-of-the-great-flood
http://www.nwf.org/Wildlife/Wild-Places/Mississippi-River-Delta.aspx
https://archive.org/details/mississippi_flood_1927
http://www.eoearth.org/view/article/51cbed8b7896bb431f692c04/
Databases
DVDs
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/films/flood/
The Mighty Mississippi with Trevor McDonald
https://www.classzone.com/books/earth_science/terc/content/investigations/es1308/es1308page05.cfm
http://www.npr.org/2011/05/18/136427246/when-the-levee-breaks-ripples-of-the-great-flood
http://www.nwf.org/Wildlife/Wild-Places/Mississippi-River-Delta.aspx
https://archive.org/details/mississippi_flood_1927
http://www.eoearth.org/view/article/51cbed8b7896bb431f692c04/
Databases
Britannica Online
ABC-CLIO African American Experience
ABC-CLIO African American Experience
US History in Context
Historic NY Times
Historic Boston Globe
Science in Context
Science in Context
DVDs
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/films/flood/
The Mighty Mississippi with Trevor McDonald
Religion/Immigration
For the Chinese and Jews of the Delta, their own fights and struggles to settle and fit into the Delta. When I thought of the deep south and the people who lived there all I thought of were the African Americans and the whites. Deeply rooted cultures with in the Delta demonstrate a broader cultural and religious mosaic to this area.
The presentation by Charles Wilson deepened my understanding the types of religions in the Delta but how communities and group identity revolved around these belief systems to this day.
Books
King Cotton: Then and Now
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Websites
http://mshistorynow.mdah.state.ms.us/articles/161/cotton-in-a-global-economy-mississippi-1800-1860
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/till/peopleevents/e_sharecrop.html
Databases
Grolier Online
Britannica Online
US History in Context
ABC-CLIO African American Experience, American
History, Daily Life in History
JStor
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Books
Getting Away with Murder : The True Story of the Emmett Till Case
DVD
For the Chinese and Jews of the Delta, their own fights and struggles to settle and fit into the Delta. When I thought of the deep south and the people who lived there all I thought of were the African Americans and the whites. Deeply rooted cultures with in the Delta demonstrate a broader cultural and religious mosaic to this area.
The presentation by Charles Wilson deepened my understanding the types of religions in the Delta but how communities and group identity revolved around these belief systems to this day.
Books
The Jews of New Orleans and the
Mississippi Delta A History of Life and Community Along the
Bayou
Southern Fried Rice
Sacred Space
Southern Fried Rice
Sacred Space
Websites
http://mshistorynow.mdah.state.ms.us/articles/90/jews-in-mississippi
http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-25430384
http://www.isjl.org/mississippi-encyclopedia.html
http://mshistorynow.mdah.state.ms.us/articles/86/mississippi-chinese-an-ethnic-people-in-a-biracial-society
http://mississippideltachinese.webs.com/
http://www.deltastate.edu/academics/libraries/university-archives-museum/ms-delta-chinese-heritage/
http://blog.preservationnation.org/2013/05/06/an-american-story-on-display-at-the-mississippi-delta-chinese-heritage-museum/#.VcDhDZNViko
http://www.blueshighway.org/religion.htm
https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/275/78/case.html
Databases
US History in Context
ABC-CLIO American History, Daily Life Through History
JStor
DVDs
Delta Jews
King Cotton: Then and Now
Cotton is what brought all people to the Delta either directly or
indirectly. When the dried cotton plant was passed around I noticed how sharp
the edges of the boll were. All I could think of were the hands and fingers of
the old and young getting cut and scraped as they were trying to pull the
fibers off the plant. The success or failure of a crop, the fluctuation
in cotton prices, the people who worked the field shaped the area into what it
is today.
Books
The
Most Southern Place on Earth: The Mississippi Delta and the Roots of Regional
Identity
The
Emergence of the Cotton Kingdom in the Old Southwest: Mississippi,
1770--1860
Cotton:
The Biography of a Revolutionary Fiber
The
Cotton Plantation South Since the Civil War
Cotton
and Race in the Making of America: the Human Costs of Economic
Power
Dollar
Cotton
Empire
of Cotton: A Global History
Slavery
by Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to
World War II
The
Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American
Capitalism
Cotton
and Race in the Making of America: the Human Costs of Economic
Power
King
Cotton’s Advocate: Oscar Johnston and the New Deal
DVDs
Lalee's Kin: The Legacy of Cotton
Emmett Till--Civil Rights Movement.
The panel discussion in the courthouse where two of the men involved in the
murder of this 14 year old boy were exonerated is an experience I will not soon
forget. Hearing his cousin talk about what happened and his own personal fear
and experiences around this event was mesmerizing.
Visiting the site where the events unfolded was moving. All I could think
about were all the 14 year old I work with on a daily basis. Just kids. Kids
who do stupid things but don't pay for those mistakes with their lives. Emmett
Till was just a kid. A kid whose brutal murder kicked off the modern civil
rights movement.
I shall also share Charles McLaurin's stories: how he got into the Civil
Rights movement and his story about witnessing the birth "Black Power" gave me
goose bumps. It was an honor and a privilege to meet this man.
Books
Getting Away with Murder : The True Story of the Emmett Till Case
The Murder of
Emmett Till
Speak Now Against
the Day: The Generation Before the Civil Rights Movement in the
South.
The Lynching of
Emmett Till: A Documentary Narrative
Let the People
Decide: Black Freedom and White Resistance Movements in Sunflower County,
Mississippi, 1945-1986
Ghosts of
Mississippi: The Murder of Medgar Evers, the Trials of Byron De La Beckwith and
the Haunting of the New South
Freedom
Summer
A Death in the
Delta: The Story of Emmett Till
Black Power
The Montgomery Bus
Boycott : Milestone of the Civil Rights Movement
To the
Mountaintop! : My Journey Through the Civil Rights Movement
Websites
http://www.amistadresource.org/civil_rights_era/emmett_till.html
http://www.eisenhower.utexas.edu/research/online_documents/civil_rights_emmett_till_case.html
http://spartacus-educational.com/USAtillE.htm
http://iipdigital.usembassy.gov/st/english/publication/2009/01/20090105184725jmnamdeirf0.9051935.html#axzz3CSdQDCwv
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/the-freedom-riders-then-and-now-45351758/?no-ist=
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/freedomriders/
Databases
Biography in Context
African American Experience
US History in Context
NY Times Online
Boston Globe Online
DVD
The Murder of Emmett Till
Eyes on the Prize: America's Civil Rights Movement 1954-1985
American Experience: Freedom Riders
to be continued
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