In memory of Pulitzer Prize Nominee and Mississippi Writer Robert Hitt Neil, who passed away April 21, 2024. With Compliments to Bud Trout on trumpet and our producer, Zach Smith.

Standing Point - ep. 5 : Robert Hitt Neill

WHERE TO BUY
Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0DR38BQNH
Audiobooks: https://www.audiobooks.com/audiobook/when-its-darkness-on-the-delta-how-americas-richest-soil-became-its-poorest-land/855830
Barnes & Noble: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/when-its-darkness-on-the-delta-w-ralph-eubanks/1146996065?ean=2940194484393
Libro.fm: https://libro.fm/audiobooks/9780807022368-when-it-s-darkness-on-the-delta

ABOUT
For readers of The Sum of Us and South to America, an essential new look at the roots of American inequality—and the seeds of its transformation

Once the powerhouse of a fledgling country’s economy, the Mississippi Delta has been consigned to a narrative of destitution. It is often faulted for the sins of the South, portrayed as a regional backwater that willfully cleaved itself from the modern world. But buried beneath the weight of good ol’ boy politics and whitewashed histories lies the Delta’s true story.

Mississippi native and award-winning writer W. Ralph Eubanks digs through this loamy topsoil, revealing a microcosm of economic oppression in the US. He traverses the Delta, examining its bellwether efforts to combat income inequality, and introduces people like

*Theodore G. Bilbo and William Whittington, segregationist congressmen who sabotaged federal reparations for former sharecroppers in the 1940s and ’50s
*Gloria Carter Dickerson, founder of the Emmett Till Academy, whose parents were instrumental in desegregating schools in Drew, MS, where Till was murdered
*Calvin Head, a community organizer who runs a farming co-op in Mileston, who revived the legacy of his hometown, the only Black resettlement community in Mississippi

With clear-eyed analysis and heart-rending prose, Eubanks exhumes a rich seedbed of racist political machinations and economic turmoil. Yet scattered within, yearning for transformation and reinvention, are the undying seeds of the oppressed. Their thirst, Eubanks argues, is one that can be quenched by thoughtful policymaking—and by investing in the very people whose ancestors tilled such fertile land.

A Selection from "When It's Darkness on the Delta: How America's Richest Soil Became Its Poorest Land"

Standing Point is a repository of stories from Americans afield. Operated as a division of Trout Valley Quail Preserve, from quail hunting Mississippi to offshore fishing in the Gulf; whitetail hunting in Texas to the grouse woods of Pennsylvania, if you've got a good story, we want to help you tell it.

New tracks tagged #MississippiDelta