A Delta Journey: How People Got A New Start in Crew Lake
On old Highway 80, heading west from Rayville toward Monroe, one comes to a community with a most unusual name—Start, Louisiana. It’s not an incorporated …
Education
A Delta Journey: Lake Chicot and Old Juke Joints in Eudora
Across the Mississippi River Bridge from Greenville, Mississippi, a traveler immediately gets a view of a beautiful blue lake to the northwest. This long lake, …
A Void in Vaiden
Vaiden, Mississippi is a town on Highway 51 in Carroll County, and since 1873, the county seat of the second judicial district of that county. …
The Remnants of Hulbert, Arkansas
Crittenden County, Arkansas, despite being across the river from Memphis, has struggled to develop over the years. Although there were frequent attempts to develop a …
A Tour of Dyersburg’s Bruce Neighborhood
After a late lunch in Halls, I drove on to Dyersburg. One of the reasons was that a few years ago, I had seen a …
The Tennessee Delta IV: Tipton County
On a beautiful Sunday afternoon in June, I decided to head out around some of the backroads in Tipton County in search of things to …
The Tennessee Delta IV: Ruins of George Ellis High School in Munford
Abandoned schools in the South always depress me. There is hardly a region of the country that needs education more than ours, and I can …
Celebrating West Tennessee’s Lost Fife and Drum Tradition
Last summer, the Tennessee Arts Commission began a Folklife Apprenticeship program to preserve endangered folkways in the state, and one of the areas of interest …
Fayette County Easter Sunday
In my ongoing research on West Tennessee fife and drum music, I have focused a great deal on Fayette County, largely because of its demographics …
Remembering the Legacy of Bartlett’s Shadowlawn High School
Back in 1979, I had attended Shadowlawn Middle School in a rural area along Shadowlawn Road north of Ellendale. I was in the sixth grade …