The Field Is Empty, The Drums Silent
A friend of mine in Senatobia had heard that there might be fife and drum going on at a party on the Compress Road between …
Abandoned
The Marianna Cut-Off: Singing the Blues in Hughes
The St. Francis County, Arkansas town of Hughes looms large in the blues world. Alan Lomax visited in 1959, recording musicians like William Brown, Roland …
The Marianna Cut-Off: What’s Left of Chatfield
Ghost towns are generally places where it is evident that a town was located at the spot, but in parts of the Arkansas Delta, there …
A Delta Afternoon: The Ghosts of Earle
On September 10, 1970, the Rev. Ezra Greer and his wife, Jackie, who was a candidate for mayor of Earle, Arkansas, led a march from …
A Delta Afternoon: The Sad Death of Parkin
The Cross County, Arkansas town of Parkin is yet another rural town ravaged by Arkansas’s forced school consolidation law. The loss of its local schools …
A Delta Afternoon: Wynne’s Abandoned Childress High School
I had been told that Wynne, Arkansas once had a number of juke joints in its northwestern section, which was the town’s Black community. But …
In Search of Harlem Alley
In the spring of 1983, I was going to Central Baptist School in the Bartlett area, and I rode with our basketball team to Forrest …
The Forgotten Town of Madison, Arkansas
Madison, Arkansas likely seems just a small crossroads to those who travel down Highway 70, and does not even register at all to those on …
The Fading Ruins of Turrell, Arkansas
Turrell, Arkansas, about ten miles north of Marion, is like a number of East Arkansas Delta towns. Once dependent on agricultural, it is fading away …
Remembering West Memphis’s South Eighth Street
While Memphis’s Beale Street is far better known, and has been restored as a tourist attraction, South Eighth Street across the river in West Memphis, …