The Jewel Of The Delta

Mound Bayou, Mississippi, Jewel Of The Delta is the oldest independent “all” black community in the United States.. and I mean “ALL” black. The sun doesn’t even shine there… okay.. yes it does… but it wears a dashiki. The pre-emancipation history of this very vibrant community is as dark as its citizens. Back in the 1820’s Joseph “You Can Shine My Other Shoes Tomorrow”, Davis, elder brother of Confederate President, Jefferson “Naw He Gonna Shine My Shoes Today” Davis, started the Hurricane Plantation at Davis Bend Mississippi. He owned thousands of acres of land and was among the nine men in Mississippi who had enslaved more than three hundred people on their plantations. Now as far as slave owners were concerned, Joseph Davis on a scale of one to five, with five being the meanest, was a four and a half… Joseph Davis: “You can put some alcohol on that knot I put on your head…” Okay, he wasn’t that bad… but I will give him a solid four, especially considering what a five meant… Five: “And you bedda not bleed on my floor!! Anyways, Joseph did provide a marginally better environment than his peers. He allowed enslaved persons a semblance of self-government and provided skills training and health care. To him, it was cheaper and more profitable to take care of a slave than to buy another one. In today’s money, the average cost of an enslaved human in 1820 was $25,000. That also speaks to the enormous wealth slave owners possessed and why it took a civil war to break that shat up. The younger Davis had over $7 million dollars worth of enslaved people! After the Civil War Davis mortgaged the plantation to a former slave named Benjamin Montgomery for $300,000 or around $8 million in today’s money. It was to be a long-term loan. Montgomery planned on turning the plantation into a self-sufficient community for former slaves. Before the war Montgomery had been in charge of a store on the plantation and Davis was so impressed with the managerial skills that he put him in charge of the purchasing and shipping operations for the entire plantation. In 1862 the Davis family left the plantation as the war encroached on the area and Montgomery was left in charge. Despite attacks from both the North and the South, the plantation continued operations… but with much difficulty. You didn’t think them racist was gonna let a black man run a thousand-acre plantation without being threatened with a life-ending situation at least once a day did you? Racist: Boy what are you doing wearing a clean white man’s shirt..? I ought to hang you!!” How he did it I will never know, but I’ll tell you right now, that shat required some extremely high-quality azz kissing…
Racist: “Well… How I look nigra?”
Black Man: “Well suh, I think there’s a little bit of lint on yo hood… let me get that for you… Yes, Suh!!, I’d be scared to death and beg you not hang my lazy, worthless, no-good black azz from the tallest tree you could find…”
Racist: “Yousa good un…”
I mean “High Quality,” I said…. anywho.. so yeah they let him continue to run the plantation and when the war was over Davis sold it to him. Unfortunately in 1876 catastrophic floods ruined the crops and cut a channel across the peninsula turning Davis Bend into an island. When Montgomery failed to make a payment on the loan, it automatically reverted back to the Davis family per the contract agreement. Losing the plantation destroyed Montgomery and he died the following year. He had a son named Isaiah and after his father’s death, he vowed to make his father’s dream of a self-sufficient former slaves community a reality. In July of 1887, he purchased 840 acres between the Vicksburg and Memphis railroad lines in northwest Mississippi. Along with other former slaves, he established the town of Mount Bayou and developed it as an all African American community.

The Delta

So Mound Bayou is in what Mississippians call the Delta. It is also called the “Most Southern Place On Earth, not because of its geographical location but because of its cultural history. The Delta was on 7000 square miles of alluvial floodplains. Alluvial means that the ground is made from loose clay or sand and other types of small gravelly material that is deposited by runoff river water. It was perfect for growing cotton and some of the biggest cotton plantations in the country were located there. Now where you had cotton growing, you had slaves… and since some of the largest plantations were in the Delta, you also had the largest slave populations there. There were twice as many slaves in the Delta as there were whites. I often wonder with that numerical advantage why they just didn’t revolt. I mean I would have been talking about “naw boss I ain’t doing it…,” but I guess it was a little like being in a symbiotic relationship. Being fed, clothed, and housed was a better outcome than being stripped, beaten, and hung. Still…
Massa: “Beethoven go over yonder and climb that tall tree and get me that fresh peach at the top with the butterflies flying around it..”
Beethoven: “Naw I ain’t… you got two feet… go get it yourself…”
Massa: “Boy If I don’t see some cheeks at the top of that tree in the next five minutes then Ima have a new female slave that can bench press 300lbs and run the hundred in unda 10…”
Beethoven: “Look Massa!! I’za got the peach.. here it is.!! I’za got the butterfly too… Ima tie him to this string so he can fly around it…”
Massa: “Boy dat butterfly ain’t smiling… Why did you git me a butterfly dat ain’t smiling!!??”
Beethoven: “Massa he was smiling when I got him… let me go git anothen…”
Massa: “I just saw one go into dat hornet’s nest ova der… go see if he smiling…”
Yes, siree… you never say naw to the Massa, because then they gonna start faquing with you… anyways… The Delta was a woodland before all that cotton picking began and those woodlands had to be cleared first to make way for those plantations. Even so, after clearing the woodlands of the Delta to plant cotton, the majority of the Delta still remained woodland. After the Civil War, it was the clearing of the Delta for the subsequent towns, farms, and railroads that provided the financial means for African Americans to purchase large tracts of lands for personal use and to sell. That’s how Isaiah and his companions were able to raise the money to buy the land where Mound Bayou would eventually be located. So Mound Bayou is located in the Bottoms of the Delta. That just means its elevation was lower than the sea levels of the lands surrounding it. These areas were the last to be developed and African Americans were using the money they made clearing other parts of the Delta to purchase land in the bottoms. By the early 1900s, two-thirds of the owners of land in the bottoms were black.

Thou Shalt Not Be Black

So although in the early 1900s, two-thirds of the landowners in the Delta were black, we are just talking about the early 1900s, like 1901 thru 1905. After the Great Betrayal in 1877 when all the federal troops were pulled out of the south, they started enacting laws to disenfranchise African Americans both politically and economically. These laws came to be known collectively as Jim Crow. By 1920 black farmers had lost most of their lands because of racism, high debt, and other problems associated with farming large acres of land. With no other means of support, they turned to sharecropping on the very land they once owned. Now sharecropping was an insidious mechanism that kept blacks in economic slavery instead of chained slavery. You would plant the Massa’s field with whatever crop he was growing and he would give you a portion of what was grown. You could then sell your portion at the market and keep the profit. What they didn’t tell you was the Massa charged you for everything you needed to grow the crops except for the breath of life. You paid for the seed to plant your portion of the field and you paid rent for the cabin you lived in… windows were extra. You paid for the tools you used and you paid to have your portion trucked to the market with his. A few uppity black men thought they weren’t going to pay the Massa to take their cotton to the market figuring the Massa was cheating them. I mean he comes back with a few dollars and takes half of it for the seeds he sold you and rent… So they started taking their own product to market… but a lot of times it didn’t work out…
Sharecropper: “Suh I’m here to sell my cotton..”
Merchant: “I see boy.. is that black cotton or is it white cotton? Looks like black cotton to me..”
Sharecropper: “Suh, this here cotton came from Massa Cheatus farm.. it be the same kinda cotton he sold you just a few minutes ago.”
Merchant: “I don’t know boy… Rebel come ova heh and take a look at this…”
Rebel: “Yeah that’s black cotton…”
Merchant: “I’ll give you fifty cents a bale for it…”
Sharecropper: “Sir I don’t mean no harm.. but you gave Massa Cheatus three dollars a bale!!”
Merchant: “BOY!! You bedda take some of that bass out yo mouth!! Now do you want it or not!!”
Sharecropper: “Ain’t got much choice.. I’ll take it… Suh, I need some cotton seeds too…”
Merchant: “Will that be black cotton seeds or white cotton seeds?”
Sharecropper: Wait.. what!?? What’s the difference?
Merchant: ” How much you got?”
Sharecropper: “I got uh.. $5.00.”
Merchant: “For a 10lb bag of white cotton seeds, that will be $5.01, and for a 1/4lb bag of black cotton seeds it’s $4.99..”
Sharecropper: “Man faque this shat… just put me back in da damn chains!
Merchant: “Chains is $5.20”
Yes, siree, they had them folks by them… anywho… sometime in the 1920’s the price of cotton started dropping. The town went into a severe economic decline for the next 15 years. In those years it also suffered a catastrophic fire that destroyed most of its business district. Fortune started smiling on Mound Bayou in 1942 with the opening of the Taborian Hospital. For more than twenty years under the leadership of Perry M. Smith, the hospital provided low-cost health care to thousands of blacks living in and around the Mississippi Delta. Because of the racism of that time, it was conceivable that you could die right in front of a fricking hospital because they didn’t admit black people to hospitals where whites were treated. The Chief Surgeon of Taborian was a man named T.R.M Howard. Howard’s understated position as a civil rights leader is one that should be brought to the forefront, as his achievements in that area are monumental. He mentored activists such as Medgar Evers, Charles Evers, Fannie Lou Hamer, Amzie Moore, Aaron Henry, and Jesse Jackson. Most of these civil rights leaders are known to us, but I just wanted to touch on two who may not be as familiar. Aaron Henry was the leader of the NAACP Mississippi chapter. In the 1940’s being leader of the NAACP in Mississippi meant there was a picture of you right over the shotgun in every Ford pickup that traveled the dirt roads of Good Ole Boy City, USA. He was also one of the members of the delegation that tried to be seated at the 1964 Democratic National Convention. I wrote a little bit about that in the article Fannie Lou Hamer Townsend. Amzie Moore became active in civil rights after returning home from WWII and finding out that racists had started what they called “home guards,” to protect themselves against returning African American veterans. Remember African American soldiers returning from the war possessed military training in weapons, hand-to-hand combat, demolitions, and counter-surveillance to name just a few skills. You just weren’t going to break into someone’s house and start smacking folks around and taking them to the nearest tree because that’s what you do… because if you tried it… it was going to be some azz kicking and lead flying around a moe. Anyways.. he was also a leader in the fight to desegregate public schools in Mississippi. Man those racists down there did not want black children and white children attending schools together. Segregation of Mississippi public schools was one of the main impetus for organizing the White Citizens Councils…
White Citizens Council Charter Rules and Bylaws:
1. Faque them nigg@rs.
2. On Mamma.
Oh, I see you thought there were more rules and bylaws huh… nope that was it. Anyways in 1960, it was Moore who worked with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) in Mississippi to focus on voter registration. During this time there were countless murders in Mississippi for people refusing to take their names off the voter lists. With the SNCC’s help, Moore secured the voter registration for thousands of African American Mississippians.

Not All Of Them Wear Capes

Mamie Till and T.R.M Howard (center)

So before we continue, I just want to finish up with T.R.M Howard’s accomplishments. To refresh your memory, he was the Chief Surgeon at Taborian Hospital which provided low-cost health care for African Americans in and around the Delta. Howard eventually became one of the richest men in Mississippi. His home was built on more than 1000 acres. He owned a construction firm. Had a zoo on his property and built the first swimming pool in Mississippi for blacks. Medgar Evers lived in Mound Bayou for a time and worked for Howard’s Magnolia Mutual Life Insurance Company. Howard introduced Evers to civil rights through the Regional Council of Negro Leadership (RCNL) whose annual rallies in Mound Bayou drew thousands. Evers died in a shooting in front of his family on June 12, 1963. The perpetrator, Byron De La Beckwith wasn’t charged and convicted in Evers’s death until 1994, thirty-one years after his death. Beckwith died in prison in 2001 from several gunshots to the ass… okay no he didn’t. He died from heart failure at the age of 80. Can’t fault a dude for wishing… huh? Anywho…. it was the RCNL that desegregated gas station restrooms in Mississippi. I’m using the word desegregated very loosely here. The fact of the matter was you couldn’t use a restroom at a gas station in Mississippi if you were black. They only had one and that was for white folks. That shat must be generational because a lot of us still stop the car and do our business behind the nearest bush or tree.. for real I’ve seen people that don’t even give a one and do it where they are standing… anywho.. so yeah, it was the RCNL that fought for that freedom. Now I don’t know how many of you have seen the movie “Till,” but the next thing I’m going to describe was depicted in the movie. During Emmett Till’s trial, black reporters and journalists stayed at Howard’s home in Mound Bayou and it was Howard that provided them with armed escorts to and from the courthouse in Sumner. I think Mamie Till stayed there too, but I’d have to recheck that. I do know that he provided her with security also during the trial. Yes folks he was a giant. He was a past president of the National Association of Medicine and the National Negro Business League. His impact on our community is inestimable. T.R.M Howard died in Chicago on May 1, 1976. The Reverend Jesse Jackson officiated at the funeral. The Taborian hospital closed in 1983 due to budgetary concerns. In 2012 work began to restore the hospital in collaboration with the University of Mississippi Medical Center.

If It Wasn’t For Them

So I read a story in the black newspaper called the Mississippi Center For Investigative Reporting (MCIR). The article was by a journalist named Ann Marie Cunningham…
“When I first got here in 1947, the whole town was hopping! Music, cafes, people strolling up and down the main street. This place was a sanctuary. If anyone wanted to lynch you, you could come here and you’d be safe. Once the Klan planned to ride into town. People heard about it. They got up on their roofs with their rifles. The Klan rode away. There was no Jim Crow here. You went in any place by the front door, not the back. School was tough. All the teachers wanted you to do well, and they helped you.”
This year Mound Bayou, Mississippi will celebrate its 136th year anniversary on July 12th. Although most of the lions of Mound Bayou have passed away into history… their courage and deeds live on. Mound Bayou remains the beacon in a past that saw a people rise out of slavery unafraid and unbowed…

“Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds and shall find me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
We are the masters of our fate,
We are the captains of our souls.”
William Ernest Henley – Invictus (1875)

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