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17 Sad Song in the Delta The Potential for Historical Archaeology in the I-69 Corridor Amy L. Young Introduction The Mississippi Delta has historically been, and continues to be, one of the most tormented regions in the South. John Emmerich, former editor and publisher of the Greenwood Commonwealth, noted in 1991 in a Time magazine article that the Delta has“the highest rate of everything bad, like teen pregnancy, and the lowest rate of everything good, like income” (Sidey 1991). In the 1960s, from Memphis to Vicksburg, this area was one of the deadliest battlegrounds in the Civil Rights movement, and one of the poorest and blackest parts of this country. Blacks who had not left Delta cotton plantations to migrate to Northern cities suffered horrible poverty and, in some cases, near-starvation. When Robert F. Kennedy visited the Delta in 1967, he expressed (cited in Sidey 1991) his shock at the living conditions there, saying, “My God, I didn’t know this kind of thing existed. How can a country like this allow it?” The poverty and harsh segregation that Kennedy witnessed were preceded by the oppression associated with the rise of King Cotton in the Delta. This chapter considers the historical archaeology that has been accomplished in the region, or more accurately, the near-lack of historical archaeology in the Delta, but most significantly, the potential that historical archaeology in this area has to address some critically important questions similar to the one asked by Bobby Kennedy:“How could a country like this allow it?”I am interested in examining the historical processes that led up to the characterization of the Delta today as having the most of everything bad and the least of everything good. In this, I unabashedly view the culture of the Delta in the Historic period as a consequence of blackness and so tend to emphasize African-American sites. But blackness is meaningless without whiteness, and so I do not advocate ignoring white sites. In fact, to fully understand the black experience, because it took place largely in the context of white hegemony we absolutely must examine planter homes, white-owned mercantile establishments, and towns 396 / Amy L. Young where both whites and blacks lived, albeit in segregation, for most of the Historic period. Furthermore, since two cities just outside the Mississippi Delta, Memphis and Jackson, tended to dominate the area economically and politically , historical archaeologists must be aware of the important archaeological work conducted there. I think historical archaeology in the Delta, as well as in Jackson and Memphis, has a tremendous potential to help us understand the historical processes of the Delta. A Brief Historical Sketch The Delta was Indian territory until the 1830s; therefore, the archaeological material considered “Historic” for this region dates predominantly from after this period. European explorers visited the region earlier, though the precise locations of their stops and the nature of their interactions with Indian groups remain largely speculative (Brown, this volume). Therefore, prior to the Delta opening for European/American settlement in the 1820s and 1830s, it is much more fruitful, I think, for archaeologists working on the Protohistoric period to focus predominantly on the European impact on aboriginal societies. For most of the Historic period between circa 1830 and circa 1960, the Delta was largely agricultural and focused primarily on cotton production driven by black labor. There is a common misperception that during the antebellum era, the Delta was the social capital of the Old South, a place of gracefully columned Greek Revival mansions and simpering Scarlett O’Hara–like belles in crinolines. In reality, as historian and novelist Shelby Foote (Sidey 1991) noted, those so-called mansions were not well furnished, and the Delta isn’t really the Old South. A quick look at census data at 20-year intervals reveals population trends. It was not until after 1880 that the total population (black and white) topped 200,000 people and cotton plantations began to grow rapidly. Antebellum plantations, though present in the Delta, were quite rare until the end of slavery times. One reason the Delta, with its incredibly rich soils, was slow to develop agriculturally is that it was Indian territory. Secondly, the region to the south, known as the Natchez District, also with incredibly rich soils suitable for cotton agriculture, had been settled since the mid-1700s and was ready for cotton plantations when the viable and hardy strains needed in this part of the South were finally developed...

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