Mississippi Delta Literary Tour

The organizers of the Mississippi Delta Literary Tour have already begun scheduling the March 22–26, 2009, event that will travel across the Delta countryside exploring the region’s rich literary, culinary, and musical heritage. Planned excursions to Delta destinations include traveling to the towns of Greenville, Clarksdale, and Indianola, with stops along the way in the communities of Money, Tutwiler, and Merigold.

The 2008 schedule included historical and literary tours of Greenville, with programs at McCormick Book Inn, the Delta’s—and Mississippi’s—oldest independent bookstore, and at the Hebrew Union Temple, the religious home of David L. Cohn, author of the 1948 classic Where I Was Born and Raised and nine other books. In Clarksdale, the group visited the Cutrer Mansion, a landmark house significant for its place in the works of Tennessee Williams, and St. George’s Episcopal Church, where the playwright’s beloved grandfather was rector from 1915 to 1933 and where Tennessee Williams and his sister, Rose, lived as children. In Merigold, the group visited the world-famous McCartys Pottery and Po’ Monkey’s, one of the last surviving bona-fide country juke joints in the South. Based at the luxurious Alluvian Hotel in downtown Greenwood, the tour featured readings and lectures at Turnrow Book Company and meals at Giardina’s Restaurant and at Lusco’s, one of the Mississippi’s most famous restaurants.

The 2009 tour will explore the Delta’s cultural heritage, beginning in Indianola and returning to Greenville and Clarksdale. In Indianola, the group will take an excursion through the new B. B. King Museum, see an exhibition celebrating the life and work of New York Times food editor and Indianola native Craig Claiborne, and experience down-home Delta music in Club Ebony, the famed blues club. Author and former English professor Marion Barnwell will accompany the group all three days and talk at length about her hometown’s literary history.

In Greenville, Hodding Carter III, author and former publisher of the newspaper his father began in 1938, the Delta Democrat-Times, will discuss his father’s lasting influence and legacy in his hometown. Using his newspaper as his platform, Hodding Carter Jr. publicly tackled the hot-button Southern issue of racial equality, and in 1946 he won the Pulitzer Prize for his outspoken editorial work, writings that eventually earned him the moniker “Spokesman for the New South.” Joining the discussion on Hodding Carter Jr. will be University of Mississippi journalism professor Curtis Wilkie and author and journalist Julia Reed, both of whom are natives of Greenville. The tour will once again visit McCormick Book Inn, where local authors will gather to sign their work.

En route to Clarksdale, Delta State University professor Henry Outlaw and director of the Delta Center for Culture and Learning Luther Brown will talk about the region, and the group will stop at Robert Johnson’s gravesite, see the remains of the store in Money where Emmett Till allegedly made his tragic whistle, and visit with local quilters and gospel singers at the Tutwiler Community Education Center. Clarksdale sites will include the Cutrer Mansion and St. George’s Episcopal Church, where literary scholar W. Kenneth Holditch will speak on the town’s influence on Tennessee Williams’s work; Cathead Records, a center for blues recordings and folk art; and the Delta Blues Museum. The day will end in Merigold, with visits to McCartys Pottery and Po’ Monkey’s juke joint, where the group will experience barbecue and the blues in true Mississippi Delta fashion.

The Mississippi Delta Literary Tour will be based in Greenwood with accommodations at the Alluvian Hotel
available on a first-come, first-served basis. While in Greenwood, Mississippi, artists Bill Dunlap and Maude Schuyler Clay will discuss the Alluvian Hotel’s extensive collection of state and local artwork.