The majority-Black Mississippi Delta region is shrouded in both magic and myth for many outsiders, writer and essayist W. Ralph Eubanks says.
Dubbed the “Most Southern Place on Earth,” the Delta’s rich culture and blues music brings millions of tourists to the region every year. The Magnolia State broke records in 2024 when about 44 million people visited the state, spending nearly $12 billion. Yet, the economic benefits haven’t seemed to materialize for the people native to and living on the rich, Delta land.
They endure high levels of poverty, food insecurity, and a lack of jobs. Between 2002 to 2022, employment grew in surrounding areas and the nation while it consistently declined in the Lower Mississippi Delta region. For decades, those in power have chosen to ignore the realities of this place, Mississippi native Eubanks said. He set out to find out why in his new book, When It’s Darkness on the Delta.
He says that “America Is the South,” and the Delta isn’t a silo. The country can no longer turn a blind eye to the region when the nation is reeling from policies implemented by the White House to chip away at rights and resources to help communities, he said.
“The one thing that is difficult for people to grapple with now is that we are all living with one foot in the South, whether we want to believe it or not. The South has come to the rest of the nation,” the writer told Capital B. “I’m trying to get them to look at an American issue through the lens of the Delta. I don’t want them to once again think of the Delta as this regional ‘other.’”
By reckoning with the story of the Delta, only then will the country begin to confront similar challenges in other places, he said.
Below is an excerpt from the conversation between Eubanks and Capital B. It has been lightly edited for clarity and length.
Capital B: Why is America the South?
Ralph Eubanks: I want them to remember that this is not just a book about the Delta. It’s a book about America. The original subtitle was An American Reckoning because every day I went out, I knew that I was writing about the Delta, but I also reminded myself that I was writing about America. When I went to Appalachia, I saw the Delta. Photographer LaToya Ruby Frazier talks about her hometown of Braddock, Pennsylvania. She says, “I go to other places and I see Braddock.” I go to other places and I see the Delta. I go to Anacostia in D.C., I see the Delta. I don’t want them to once again think of the Delta as this regional other as in “the most Southern place on earth.” Is it the most American place on Earth? Yes, absolutely because we’re all living in the South now.
What will it take to move the needle to push these communities forward?
We’ve had a one-size-fits-all for the Delta. It has to be local. It has to be the state [government]. It has to be philanthropy, all of these different monetary policies. It needs to be this real coordinated effort. Maybe it is this feeling that if we call attention to this, we’re going to have even fewer resources than we have now. There is that fear, and somehow we have to confront what that fear is that’s keeping us from moving forward. I think we [residents] have believed our own mythology about the place for so long, too. We think that “Oh, it’s hopeless. The only thing you can do is leave.” But, they also said, “Why should I leave this place that my ancestors built?” We have to understand the historical underpinnings, and we are in this moment right now where we want to erase all of that. That’s not going to help us move forward. Retreating to things that make us feel good or make us look at the horrible things less — that’s not going to help us either. There’s this veil over the Delta. Let’s take the veil off the mirror. Let’s look deeply into it. And what do you see there? You see the rest of America kind of staring back at you, too. The ideas coming up from this place are out there in the rest of the world, and now they’re really at the highest levels of government in this country. That’s scary.
You talk about removing the veil on what people think the Delta is. Why is it important we go beyond the narrative that the Delta represents “sins of the South?”
We talk about nothing can save the Delta. No, you can see Hope Federal Credit Union has had an impact in Moorhead, Mississippi. I meet people like Tyler Yarbrough [a local organizer who works in food justice and helped bring the film Sinners to Clarksdale]. Marquitrice Mangham [who opened grocery stores in food deserts] with Farmacy Marketplace. Gloria Carter Dickerson [youth nonprofit and food justice leader] and Tim Lampkin [who is building a state of the art hub to improve economic opportunity]. These are young people, for the most part, who are doing this work. That’s the really important thing. They see a future there, and they’re trying to create a future for other people they felt that they didn’t have. We should be paying more attention to that. I don’t think we’re paying nearly enough attention to the work of people. How do we help kind of foster that along even more?
You also mention this ongoing resistance. Can you talk more about the Delta as this place of radical imagination?
That’s the thing that people forget about, that this is a radical space. It always has been, and that goes back to the blues. The blues is something radical because they’re saying things in very coded ways about the people in power. Big Boss Man is not about a big boss man. It’s about the white man. A lot of times you’re talking about the devil. It’s not the devil. It’s a white man. The devil is the white man. These are very radical ways of dealing with very difficult issues, and so that’s why you have people like Amzie Moore, Fannie Lou Hamer come out of the Delta. Think about the people at Mileston [the only Black resettlement community in the state] and them going to register to vote … and then what do they do? They don’t register Hartman Turnbow to vote, but they set his house on fire and frame him for arson. I often joke that I’m a nonfiction writer because I’m bad at making shit up. But, no. It’s that I’m from Mississippi, and I don’t have to make up a goddamn thing. I want to try to excavate the truth rather because the stories are there and people, and if you ask them, and you talk to them long enough, they’ll tell you.
How do you get to a place of investment or moving the Delta forward, if folks still carry a negative mentality or don’t even acknowledge what is ailing the Delta?
That is the great challenge. They don’t want to talk about these things, and once again, they believe the mythology. Robert Kennedy said when he came to the Delta, “Unless you see it, you don’t know the circumstances that people are confronting.” I wanted to change the way people see the place. I’m looking out at Sam’s Town in Tunica, the casino that’s now closed. I began to dig into how those casinos got there. I didn’t know until I started researching this, that most of that’s on leased land, and that’s why there are farms all around because people are getting subsidies from the government to farm that land. They’re getting the lease payments from the casinos. Poor people are employed in those casinos. They’re the working poor now. It was, “This is going to bring wealth to Tunica.” Who did it bring wealth to? The people who already had it. Did it get some people out of deep poverty? Yes. Did it change some of the infrastructure of Tunica? They did get an upgrade in the infrastructure. They did get better schools and better school buildings. But at the core of it, did it really dramatically alter the circumstances of Tunica? The answer is no. It’s not America’s Ethiopia anymore, but it is not a paradise.
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