Mississippi Delta region- U.S. EPA map Okay, so my very first Vintage Delta Images blog entry does not have a vintage Delta image. Shoot me (with a water gun, that is), but I just had to start with this map for reasons you'll understand in this mini-sermon. Anyway, ask people to define the Mississippi Delta and you'll get as many responses as a stray dog has fleas. For most folks outside of the region, they have a vague notion of the Delta being somewhere in Mississippi with a bunch of dusty roads and a sense that slavery may have ended there during the 1960s. By the way, these are also the same people who eat fried chicken with a fork and who would never dare mix peach cobbler with ice cream. Ask them what they know of the Arkansas or Louisiana portion of the Delta and you get, well,..............crickets.
The problem wouldn't be so bad if you could go to the Delta itself and get a straight answer from home-grown residents. Unfortunately, YOU CAN'T! Mississippians, while having a firm sense of the Delta's geographic boundaries within the state, still treat cities on the fringes of the region, like Yazoo City, as if they are an artificial section of the Delta much like a a press-on nail. They have a hierarchy which includes the "REAL Delta" closest to the Mississippi River and the "kinda-sorta-but-not-really Delta" closer to hill country. Go to Arkansas and it gets worse. The state has no true consensus of its Delta's boundaries with more maps of the region than there are mosquitos in a Stuttgart rice field. I went to the Delta Cultural Center in Helena, AR about a year ago and asked one of the workers where the exhibits were related to my hometown of Pine Bluff and he proceeded to tell me that Pine Bluff was not in the region! After a short standoff between the two of us politely firing verbal buckshot back and forth, he finally pointed me in the direction of the Pine Bluff images in the museum. WHY DIDN'T HE JUST POINT ME TO THE FRIGGIN IMAGES WHEN I ASKED HIM IN THE FIRST PLACE! And let's not even talk about the poor ol' Louisiana Delta. With all the state's emphasis on the southern part of Louisiana with its eclectic Creole and Cajun influences, the Delta of the northeastern region is often forgotten and ignored. It may as well be called Rodney Dangerfieldiana cause it gets no respect nor love. Why the Louisiana Delta doesn't even have a Wikipedia page! Even my cousins whose only claim to fame is that they can belch louder than the television's highest volume level have a Wikipedia page.
So let me set the record straight. The Delta is defined by land first. It is an alluvial plain (kinda fancy soundin' huh?) defined by the U.S. Geological Survey illustrated in the map provided above. Actually, the Delta extends into Missouri, a small piece of Kentucky and southern Illinois. However, the area that is identified with the vast cultural richness expressed in blues, gospel, country music, rockabilly, and other fields is that glowing region in the map of eastern Arkansas, western Mississippi, and northeastern Louisiana. This is the area where all the vintage images I will be highlighting on this site come from. And yes, Pine Bluff, Arkansas, Yazoo City, Mississippi, and all of the Louisiana Delta are included in this map's reach. Before posting any vintage images, I just felt like you and I needed to get on one accord with where the Delta is before we started trading verbal buckshot! Now, let's get to these old classic pictures and stories.
Jimmy
The problem wouldn't be so bad if you could go to the Delta itself and get a straight answer from home-grown residents. Unfortunately, YOU CAN'T! Mississippians, while having a firm sense of the Delta's geographic boundaries within the state, still treat cities on the fringes of the region, like Yazoo City, as if they are an artificial section of the Delta much like a a press-on nail. They have a hierarchy which includes the "REAL Delta" closest to the Mississippi River and the "kinda-sorta-but-not-really Delta" closer to hill country. Go to Arkansas and it gets worse. The state has no true consensus of its Delta's boundaries with more maps of the region than there are mosquitos in a Stuttgart rice field. I went to the Delta Cultural Center in Helena, AR about a year ago and asked one of the workers where the exhibits were related to my hometown of Pine Bluff and he proceeded to tell me that Pine Bluff was not in the region! After a short standoff between the two of us politely firing verbal buckshot back and forth, he finally pointed me in the direction of the Pine Bluff images in the museum. WHY DIDN'T HE JUST POINT ME TO THE FRIGGIN IMAGES WHEN I ASKED HIM IN THE FIRST PLACE! And let's not even talk about the poor ol' Louisiana Delta. With all the state's emphasis on the southern part of Louisiana with its eclectic Creole and Cajun influences, the Delta of the northeastern region is often forgotten and ignored. It may as well be called Rodney Dangerfieldiana cause it gets no respect nor love. Why the Louisiana Delta doesn't even have a Wikipedia page! Even my cousins whose only claim to fame is that they can belch louder than the television's highest volume level have a Wikipedia page.
So let me set the record straight. The Delta is defined by land first. It is an alluvial plain (kinda fancy soundin' huh?) defined by the U.S. Geological Survey illustrated in the map provided above. Actually, the Delta extends into Missouri, a small piece of Kentucky and southern Illinois. However, the area that is identified with the vast cultural richness expressed in blues, gospel, country music, rockabilly, and other fields is that glowing region in the map of eastern Arkansas, western Mississippi, and northeastern Louisiana. This is the area where all the vintage images I will be highlighting on this site come from. And yes, Pine Bluff, Arkansas, Yazoo City, Mississippi, and all of the Louisiana Delta are included in this map's reach. Before posting any vintage images, I just felt like you and I needed to get on one accord with where the Delta is before we started trading verbal buckshot! Now, let's get to these old classic pictures and stories.
Jimmy
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