Back on Episode One, I told you about Hurricane Plantation on Davis Bend south of Vicksburg, a plantation owned by the brother of the President of the Confederacy. I told you then that the story of Hurricane Bend has another chapter. This episode is that chapter, the next chapter in the story of Davis Bend. Mississippi: the establishment of pioneering all-Black settlement in the Mississippi Delta. Join us as we stop in Mound Bayou, learn about how white people co-opted and sentimentalized a landmark of Black independence, and how its visionary founder ultimately contributed to the vengeful return of white supremacy to Mississippi law in 1890. This is The DETOURIST.

This week’s episode features a special excerpt from my forthcoming book, A DEEPER SOUTH: The Beauty, Mystery, and Sorrow of the Southern Road. Available for pre-order now!

[00:00:00] Didn’t See That One Coming: How Jefferson Davis’s Brother Influenced The Foundation of an All-Black Town

[00:03:06] Mississippi 1890: We Don’t Like Equality After All

[00:06:02] An Experiment in Eccentricity

[00:08:36] Here Come the Whites

[00:11:04] The Crowe’s Nest: The Signs Don’t Say Everything

[00:12:53] Mound Bayou Hitches Its Wagon to the Booker T. Washington Express Train

[00:14:32] “A Noble Speech” Has Disastrous Results

[00:20:00] Frederick Douglass Would Like a Word

[00:22:49] The Delta Is Ready When You Are

An inconspicuous address in the heart of the Mississippi Delta turns out to have enormous significance for American politics and history. This is the story of 626 East Lafayette St. in Ruleville and what it means for us. Join me as we explore Sunflower County, Mississippi, a region rife with contradictions, with villains and saints—home to Mississippi's notorious state penitentiary, site of the until-recently erased site of Emmett Till's final moments, the home of one of America's most prominent voices for white supremacy and segregation, and also the home of one of the nation’s most powerful voices for freedom. This is the DETOURIST.

[00:00:00] An Inconspicuous Address

[00:02:00] Same Street, Different Worlds: Fannie Lou Hamer and James O. Eastland

[00:04:00] A Revolution Begins in a Brick Church in Ruleville

[00:06:37] A Simple Song Lights a Flame

[00:09:29] Misruleville: Sunflower County

[00:11:17] A Procession to a Barn

[00:15:58] A Tale of Two High Schools

[00:17:57] Chinese Groceries, Tamales, Italian Beef Sandwiches: The Delta’s Micro-cultures

[00:21:49] The Civil Rights Movement Hobbles into Atlantic City

[00:24:17] The President is Getting Antsy

[00:29:41] A Black Sharecropper Helps Capsize 20th Century American Party Politics

[00:33:21] You Are Warmly Invited to a National Crisis of Conscience

In this dispatch from our virtual road trip through the American South, we travel north from Greenwood into Leflore County, once the most violent county in Mississippi. We encounter overlooked and forgotten stories, including the history of African American emigration, memory and willful amnesia on Money Road, and how a forgotten massacre in the 19th century and generations of anti-Black violence in Leflore County helped to create the culture that enabled the 1955 lynching of Emmett Till. Join us as we run up against the persistent genie-souls of the Mississippi Delta, who continue to turn everything upside-down.

[0:00] Two Roads Diverged in Greenwood

[0:43] The Evacuation of Leflore County

[1:59] Losing it All on the Money Road

[3:34] Choosing What to Remember and What to Forget in Money

[7:20] The Most Violent County in Mississippi

[8:06] Why We Need to Remember Emmett Till

[9:34] The Forgotten Massacre of Leflore County

[18:15] The Power of Memory and the Danger of Forgetfulness

[22:46] A Hall of Injustice Becomes a House of Praise

In this episode, we continue our captivating journey through the Mississippi Delta, a land steeped in blues music, cultural heritage, and the unexpected. From meeting the blues in person in Leland, to an unexpected encounter with the world’s most famous frog, to an accidentally famous restaurant in Greenwood and its courageous waiter, to the spiritual birthplace of Stokely Carmichael’s calls for “Black power,” and the last nights of Robert Johnson and Emmett Till, prepare to have your perceptions screwed up for good. As we navigate east along US 278 from Greenville to Greenwood, I invite you to join me as we explore the profound stories the Delta has to tell. Welcome to “The Detourist.”

[0:00] Leland, Mississippi: The Land of Blues

[1:20] It’s Not Easy Being Green in The Mississippi Delta

[2:13] The Muppets Take Mississippi

[4:36] All the Blues Come About on Account of Cotton

[7:14] The Troubling Beauty of the Mississippi Delta

[8:14] Greenwood: Capital of the Cotton Kingdom

[10:38] Southern Restaurants are Never Just about the Food: Lusco’s

[12:04] Booker Wright: “Double Consciousness” In the Flesh

[15:25] “Black Power” Hits Primetime

[20:34] The Delta, Land of Unlearning

[22:02] The Last Nights of Robert Johnson and Emmett Till

In this episode of our road trip through the landscape of memory in the American South, we stumble into Greenville, Mississippi, a town with a surprisingly rich past and a unique relationship with the Mississippi River. We will explore the impact of the devastating 1927 flood, how it shaped American culture, and how it occasioned in the Percy family an internecine conflict of Shakespearean magnitude. We will look at the impact of the flood and of Southern aristocratic stoicism on Will Percy, who both upheld and defied societal norms in the region, and became a godfather to a generation of Southern writers, including his cousin Walker. This one has it all: pathos, drama, virtue, vice, and gambling. Welcome to “The Detourist.”

[0:00] Introduction and Journey Begins[1:03] They Said It’d be Daft to Build a Town on the Mississippi River[2:21] Dead Mules in the Foyer: The Great Flood of 1927[4:55] Tumblin’ Dice on the Other Side of the Levee[5:44] Greenville, Fiefdom of the Cotton Kingdom[6:56] The Percys of Greenville[8:27] LeRoy Percy: Doomed Flight of the Silver Eagle[10:21] “The Rout of the Aristocrats: The Percys and the Bilbos”[15:14] Will Percy: Episcopalian Melancholic[19:27] An Unlikely “Center of Cultural Dissent”[26:14] High and Dry on the Levee[35:06] The Mississippi Delta is America

Our road trip through the Mississippi Delta continues north from Vicksburg, into the little hamlet of Glen Allan. In this episode, we dive into the legacy of Stark Young, a forgotten but not inconsequential figure in Mississippi literature. Discover what Stark Young’s work has to do with the ruins of St. John’s Episcopal Church in Glen Allan. Get ready for a thought-provoking journey through history and culture in the Mississippi Delta. Welcome to THE DETOURIST.

[0:00] Only Faulkner Survives[3:21] Stark Takes a Stand[8:01] What Do You Mean “We,” White Man?[13:59] Mississippi Coventry: Glen Allan[20:55] Breaking the Spell of Southern Sentimentalism[28:07] The Heights of the Mississippi Bottoms

“Vicksburg, Mississippi, used to be a riverfront town, but it’s not anymore.”

One of the Mississippi River’s most prominent nineteenth century steamboat hubs was by the middle of the twentieth a shadow of its former self. Learn how a massive flood altered the city’s fortunes and gave us one of the most extraordinary map series of the century, and how modern technology is adding a new dimension to those old maps. We will also learn about oxbow lakes, bodies of water orphaned by the ever-shifting river, and how some historical events, like the Vicksburg massacre, become like ‘oxbow lakes’ of history, removed from the main thoroughfare of American memory.

[00:00] The Historical Significance of Vicksburg[01:41] A Riverfront Town No More[04:05 Every river has a story[05:00 Where Would You Like Me to Put this River, Sir?[06:13] God Said, “Out on Highway 61”[07:44] Harold Fisk and the Mississippi River Commission[10:33] Oxbow Lakes & The Interstate of American MemorySubscribe to the DETOURIST: 

Order my photography collection, THE ROAD TO UNFORGETTING: Detours in the American South 1997 - 2022 (Horse & Buggy Press 2022)

Pre-order my forthcoming book, A DEEPER SOUTH: The Beauty, Mystery and Sorrow of the Southern Road (University of South Carolina Press 2024)About the Show:You've been listening to THE DETOURIST, which belongs to the ecosystem of A DEEPER SOUTH. My name is Pete Candler, and I’m responsible for what you see and hear here. A DEEPER SOUTH emerges from the particular experience of traveling the American South for over 25 years, and coming to unlearn the myths of history and self with which I was raised. I really hope that what you hear and experience at THE DETOURIST will open up some cracks in the received versions of American history and of the American landscape. And within those cracks, I hope that you will find a more interesting, richer and fuller version of the story of this country in this region, and also maybe even an understanding of your own role within that story. Thank you so much for being here.

 The first time I didn’t see the Mississippi Delta was in 1997. My friend John and I were on the first of what became multiple tours of the southeast. We had very little in the way of a plan of where we were going, except we knew that we wanted to make it to New Orleans. We weren’t sure how we were going to get there, but when we did get there, we headed due south on Louisiana Highway 23.

We launch The DETOURIST from Vicksburg, Mississippi. And the first thing we do is—that’s right—take a detour. On the way we encounter the rarely-told story of how a racial massacre in 1874 brought a former Union General back to center stage, and the story of an unlikely experiment in Black self-government in antebellum Mississippi.

[00:00:00] That’s Not It

[00:03:58] The Delta Proper

[00:04:57] The Spinal Cord of American Music

[00:09:17] Not Quite Finding a Story of the South, or Myself

[00:12:55] The WPA Guides are the Best Travel Guides Ever Written about the U.S.

[00:16:21] The Vicksburg Massacre

[00:22:37] South on US 61

[00:27:20] Joseph Davis’s More Famous Brother