To get there, drive Interstate 40E to Highway 49S to Highway 61N, through the flat, rich plain in Mississippi. Start your immersion at Tunica’s Gateway to the Blues Visitor Center, built in a circa-1895 train depot.
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My introduction to chitlins was at the The Big Dinner sponsored by Washington County Sheriff Harvey Tackett. A friend later…
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“Twenty years ago, there were only five cars on this street — and they belonged to store owners,” said Bubba…
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I hopped off the Southern Crescent from UVA, hurried to my Great Aunt Bolling Spalding’s funeral and fell in with…
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My seventh grade English teacher’s homework assignment was one sentence by William Faulkner. Simple, right? It carried on for five…
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Thanks to B.B. King’s relentless touring schedule – appearing in 342 shows in 1956 – he was known worldwide as “The King of the Blues.” He reworked a 1951 blues song, “The Thrill is Gone,” lifting it to a Grammy award in 1970.
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The first blues song I heard growing up on Atlanta college radio was “Cross Road Blues,” 1936, by genre progenitor Robert…
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Opened in 1945 when there were not many other African-American-owned businesses in Indianola, Club Ebony has succeeded through three owners…
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Before 1895, Dockery Plantation was, like much of the Delta at the time, a swampy tangle of gum and cypress…
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When the Grammy board searched for the most appropriate location to build its first museum outside L.A., they could have…
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Listen carefully in the juke joints, restaurants or the impressive interactive museums in Tunica, Cleveland, Clarksdale and Indianola, and you’re…
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The U.S. Civil Rights Trail stops in 15 states, few as chilling as Mississippi. Just driving along the miles of Delta…
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In my first newspaper reporting job, each morning I’d stop by the office of Greenville, Mississippi, Police Chief Robert Skinner,…
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As a child, I thought the Confederate flag was cool. I didn’t know it meant anything. On my first day…
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Now is the time to think about 2019.