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Jimmy Thomas Talks about the
Mississippi Delta Literary Tour

Jimmy Thomas grew up in the towns of Leland and Greenville in the Mississippi Delta, studied literature and philosophy at the University of Mississippi, and worked for Guideposts magazine in New York before returning to Oxford in 2003 as managing editor of The New Encyclopedia of Southern Culture. He is coordinator of the Mississippi Delta Literary Tour sponsored by the Center for the Study of Southern Culture.

The Mississippi Delta is a place that we study pretty closely here at the Center, in part because of our geographical proximity to the region but more so because it is just so rich with what folks think about when they consider “Southern culture.” I mean, the food in the Delta includes some really iconic Southern fare, such as barbecue, soul food, catfish, and hot tamales, as well as some foods that might not immediately leap to someone’s mind who’s not from Mississippi, including a lot of ethnic foods, like Italian, Chinese, and Lebanese cuisine. These ethnic groups have been in the Delta for generations, and they’ve been living and cooking there so long that they’re really a part of the fabric of the Delta. In addition to the food there’s, of course, the blues and gospel music. One can’t talk about the Mississippi Delta without mentioning the blues. The blues is certainly one of the region’s biggest contributions to Southern culture, and the feeling you get when you listen to the blues is almost palpable in the Delta. Then there’s the literature. Mississippi is arguably the nation’s most prolific state in terms of producing great literature, and it shouldn’t be surprising that a large number of authors come from the Delta. A place so rich in history and culture almost couldn’t help but inspire such creativity. Greenville, in particular, has produced—and continues to produce—an impressive number of talented writers, including everyone from William Alexander Percy, David Cohn, and Shelby Foote to Julia Reed and Gayden Metcalfe.

By 2003, folks here at the Center had been thinking for some time about how we could promote and bring people from far away to the Delta, to have them interact with the culture and the people, and in turn step into a place that they had perhaps only read about or seen in the movies. Back in early 2003, after the Southern Foodways Alliance began its successful “eating” tour of the Delta before SFA’s annual symposium in Oxford, Ann Abadie, the associate director here at the Center, approached me and Amy Evans, who has done a lot of great work by conducting interviews and gathering oral histories of Delta restaurant owners, cooks, and tamale makers, about putting together a literary tour of the area. We based the tour out of Greenwood since it was easy to get to and was home of the new Alluvian Hotel, developed by Viking Range, an early sponsor of SFA and the Center. The first literary tour was in 2004 and included the towns of Greenwood, Greenville, and Clarksdale. We’ve returned to all three towns each year since, but we’ve also traveled to Cleveland, Carrollton, Yazoo City, Indianola, Merigold, and Tutwiler in various years. We always focus on writers from each town and, naturally, libraries and bookstores, such as McCormick Book Inn, are ideal destinations for a literary tour. But we’ve also visited a number of blues sites, such as the Delta Blues Museum in Clarksdale, Club Ebony in Indianola, and Robert Johnson’s gravesite outside of Money. And we always go to Tutwiler for gospel music. The central focus is always the literature of the place we’re visiting, but we spend a lot of time talking about—and sampling—music and food, as well as Delta history. At this point we could almost rename the tour something like the Mississippi Delta Cultural Tour, but it has gotten so popular that we’d hate to confuse things. And really, the focus does remain on the literature. Like William Faulkner wrote in his novel Absalom, Absalom!, “Tell about the South. What’s it like there. What do they do there. Why do they live there. Why do they live at all.” I think that’s what Delta writers do best, and I think that’s what we’re trying to do by conducting this tour—tell about the Delta. What it’s like there, what folks do there, and even give a glimpse into what’s like to live there.

We generally have between 20 and 30 folks sign up for the tour, and they come from across the U.S. to attend—from San Francisco to Connecticut to North Carolina and Georgia. We always encourage the public to attend the lectures, which are open without charge. I think that even the locals who attend the talks stand to learn a little something about where they live, because the sharing of ideas and knowledge is what the tour is really based on. That’s the central notion regarding scholarship, I think—the gathering, interpretation, and sharing of facts and ideas—and that’s something we’re trying to do with the tour. But it’s not so scholarly that it’s not also “fun.” We Delta folks have a unique sense of community and hospitality, and there’s a lot of visiting that goes on between Deltans and our guests on the tour. In that way, I think those who come to the Delta get to experience something that they wouldn’t be able to do by reading a book. It’s pretty special, but then again, the Delta is a pretty special place.

JIMMY THOMAS