This Is Why Visiting Historic Places Is so Important

Ron Eisenman along the Mississippi, summer 2014.

One of the perks of being a teacher is having the time to travel abroad and experience different cultures during summer vacation. Last summer I was not able to cross any oceans, but I, nevertheless, explored a region within the U.S. that had a very different way of life than that found in my home state of Vermont. Recently on NPR, I heard the phrase “Vermont exceptionalism” which refers to Vermont’s distinction of being near the top of many social and economic indicators. In contrast, this summer I went to Mississippi which is near the bottom of these same indicators. Actually, I went to a specific part of Mississippi, the Delta region, which, according to that state’s former governor, Haley Barbour, is responsible for dragging down the entire state’s statistics. As a geographic region, the Delta covers the Northwestern 1/6 of the state along the Mississippi River and ends in Memphis, Tennessee, its commercial hub. Paradoxically, while the culture of the Mississippi Delta was indeed quite different from Vermont, I discovered deep roots of the American experience in this fertile region. It seems that its fertile soil not only nourishes cotton and other cash crops bringing great wealth to the few, but it also spawns creativity and depth of feeling in the culture as well. Described by scholars as “the most southern place on earth,” the Delta crystallizes the main trends which exist widely throughout the southern U.S.

I came to the Delta as a participant in the National Endowment for the Humanities’ Most Southern Place on Earth Teacher Workshop hosted by the Delta Center for Culture and Learning at Delta State University. The aim of the workshop was to educate teachers from all over the country about the heritage of the Delta, including blues music, the cotton kingdom, the Mississippi River’s impact on the region, migrations in and out of the region, civil rights legacy, and modern economic/cultural empowerment initiatives. As a Vermont history teacher I was hoping to gain a deeper understanding of the South so that I could teach my students about the South beyond the crude Vermont characterizations of it being a solid “red” region, enemy during the Civil War, and a haven for racists during the Civil Rights Movement.

One of the themes of the seminar was that there are countless things people know about Mississippi, but do not know that what they know, in fact, is Mississippi. For example, Kermit the Frog is a worldwide icon, but it was only after seeing Jim Henson’s childhood house in Leland that I realized the influence that geography played in his creation. We also learned about an extraordinary former slave named Holt Collier. Some recognize him as the only known slave to have fought in the Confederate Army during the Civil War. He is buried in a black cemetery, where it also possible to see the graves of former slaves who fought in the Union Army as infantry and cavalry. Yet, while Collier’s background is unique, he is perhaps even more well-known as the man responsible for the Teddy Bear. Having killed over 300 bears in the region, he was charged with making sure that then President Theodore Roosevelt would be the first person to successfully hunt a bear on a Presidential hunting expedition in the Delta. Collier captured an old bear, which he chained to a tree. When the hunting party led the President to the site, Roosevelt refused to kill this defenseless creature. Soon thereafter, people began making "Teddy Bears" in honor of the President's sportsmanship.

The seminar also fulfilled a lifelong dream of visiting blues related sites in the Delta. Since I was a young boy exploring the roots of rock and roll music, I have always been drawn to the emotional intensity of artists like Robert Johnson, John Lee Hooker, and Muddy Waters. It is truly mind boggling that so many world famous recording artists came from such a small region of the country. The “Fathers” of the Delta blues (Charlie Patton), country music (Jimmie Rogers), and rock and roll (Ike Turner) were born there, as well as the “Kings” of Rock and Roll (Elvis Presley) and the blues (Albert King and B.B. King). In Memphis (a/k/a Soulsville, USA), Stax records recorded many musicians from the Delta and forged a new Memphis Soul sound.

To feel and see the geography out of which this music was born by visiting places like Dockery Farms, the plantation from which blues originated, and Po Monkey’s, the last authentic, rural juke joint, adds to the music’s power. While the music is rooted in the sharecropping experience, blues has become a worldwide phenomenon as people appreciate its direct authenticity which contrasts with the disconnectedness many feel in the modern world.

When one visits the Delta, civil rights is the proverbial elephant in the room. Even if unspoken, it permeates everything. I appreciate even more Delta novelist William Faulkner’s comment that “The past is never dead. It's not even past.” On our journey through the Delta, we were constantly reminded how the history of this region constantly changes, but still stays the same. As a history student, I have learned about life under Jim Crow and the civil rights struggle. Yet, listening to people who experienced this way of life made these lessons more concrete. As a current state senator sadly joked, “even deer had laws to protect them from being killed during certain seasons, but black people didn’t even have that.”

The most intense day of the seminar focused on the Emmett Till case, which I now understand to be one of the main catalysts for the Civil Rights Movement. We explored many aspects of the case by visiting places where significant events took place and listening to a panel discussion with people directly connected to the case such as Till’s cousin Wheeler Parker, who was at the store when Till whistled and at the home when he was abducted. We compared the case to To Kill a Mockingbird and to even the more recent Trayvon Martin case.

At the end of the workshop, we made a mojo to help us remember all of the experiences we encountered. A mojo is a magical charm bag used in traditional rural black magic tradition. Some of the contents of my mojo include Muddy Water, blues records, bricks from Dockery Farms, matzo, Peabody Hotel water, cotton, Fannie Lou Hamer’s voter registration form, Martin Luther King’s “To the Mountaintop” Speech, material from Bryant’s store where Emmett Till whistled at a white woman, and “double strength come back” juice. I’m going to keep my mojo working.