Life and Death in the Delta: African American Narratives of Violence, Resilience, and Social Change
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Contents |
Background
Life and Death in the Delta: African American Narratives of Violence, Resilience, and Social Change was written by Kim Lacy Rogers and a product of The Delta Oral History Project. It was published in 2006 by Palgrave Macmillan and edited by Linda Shopes and Bruce Stave as part of the Palgrave Oral History Series. This project was funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities 1995 Collaborative Projects Grant.1
Summary
Life and Death in the Delta depicts the life stories of African American civil rights activists in five different counties in the Mississippi Delta from the 1930s to the 1990s. These stories document the social suffering and collective trauma experienced by African Americans leaders in the civil rights movement. This project was designed to create a connective between historical events and modern perceptions of those events. Life and Death in the Delta also relates to the reader the sentiments of the interviewee, if they saw positive change occurring, or if they felt that many of their dreams had not been realized.
The book explores two sets of narrators: the landless poor and the property-owning residents in the counties of Bolivar, Sunflower, Coahoma, and Washington. Life and Death in the Delta is broken into five chapters, in which each chapter examines the life experiences and opportunities (or lack there of) for African Americans living in the Delta. Each chapter explores the struggle for survival under segregation and poverty, the individual and collective struggles for education and improvement. Contrasts in experience and reflection highlight class distinctions within the African American communities. It becomes quite clear that social and economic class and where a person lived had a great impact on that person's perception of life as well as the memories and reflections that are shared. A picture of the structural violence that has created many of the problems of the delta is woven throughout the entire text.
Chapter One, “Conditions of Life and Death” details the social suffering and collective trauma experienced by the poorest African American families in the Delta - the landless day laborers and sharecroppers.
Chapter Two, “Change and Movement Among the Poor” describes the terror, risks, and achievements of the civil rights movement in the Mississippi Delta.
Chapter Three, “Achieving in the Rural Independence and Leadership in Bolivar County" centers on the women and men who emerged as community leaders after WWII.
Chapter Four, “The Wilderness of Social Change: The Movement and Head Start” focuses on the activist women and how the Head Start program (one of the War on Poverty Programs) offered a new avenue for change and activism.
Chapter Five, “The Limits of Political Power” offers a post-movement assessment of gains and losses felt by activists and community leaders of the Delta in the 1990s.
Reviews
"A rich study of African American lives and struggles as seen through the eyes of people who lived through the terror of white supremacy, the hopes for a better future raised by the Civil Rights Movement, the temporary empowerment that came through participation in antipoverty initiatives such as Head Start, and the disillusionment that resulted when black elected officials proved unable (or unwilling) to address effectively the region's social and economic problems.“ --The Journal of African American History
"Kim Lacy Rogers has been a moving force in the US and international oral history movement for years, and her work on the history and memory of the Civil Rights movement has gained her universal respect. This book is a work of first-class scholarship, deep sensitivity, clear and effective writing: oral history and social conscience at its best. It will be essential reading for a long time.” --Alessandro Portelli, prize-winning author of The Order Has Been Carried Out: History, Memory, and Meaning of a Nazi Massacre in Rome
"Life and Death in the Delta is a stunning collective memoir of African American life in the twentieth century Mississippi Delta. Through oral histories, Kim Lacy Rogers provides us with an important account of the struggles and triumphs of grassroots activists and of the forces that shaped their lives. These are stories of suffering and resilience in the face of overwhelming poverty, illness, terror, and oppression, and they remind us of the sacrifice and courage that produced the civil rights movement. But these tales of sorrow and uplift also caution against an overly triumphal narrative of the civil rights struggle, providing us with a sobering reminder of how much more remains to be done in the struggle for freedom in the USA.“ --Nan Elizabeth Woodruff, author of American Congo: The African American
Awards
Winner of the 2007 Oral History Association Book Award
Finalist, 2008 National Council on Public History Book Award
Quotations
"Unlike most studies of the civil rights movement, Rogers uses oral history not so much as a record of fact but as a means of gaining insight into the preceptions or consciousness of historical actors."2
Cora Fleming lived in fear growing up and stated that she hated white folk, "with a passion. But I later on learned that everybody wasn't the same, and I learned that you can't get anywhere by hating people anyway. We've got to meet on some common ground somewhere. I can dislike your ways but love you the same."3
Velma Bartley’s comment on taking credit for the Head Start program shows an awakening in a way of thinking among African American activists. Bartley felt that it was important to understand that it was the “uneducated people: that cold take credit for creating Head Start in Bolivar County, people who were the “qualified, unqualified, disqualified… uneducated people” who did their work “out of their hearts, the interest of their nature.”4
Education was an important avenue to independence to the poor African American’s in the Delta. L. C. Dorsey found out as an adult what her father meant by getting an education. Dorsey said her father would say, “If you get an education, you don’t have to stoop…,” meaning one gains independence through education.5
Many of the narrators had a feeling of despair and grief in the 1990s because they felt the communities were worse off then they were in the 1960s. Kermit Stanton said, “We fought for it [freedom], and got it, but we had so many people that wasn’t ready, and they’re not getting ready. That’s what’s so bad about it. It seems like the people that wasn’t ready in 1965 ought to be ready now, but they’re still not. They’re just worse off now that they was in 1965.”6
Dr. L.C. Dorsey’s reflections introduce and affirm the oppressive violence conducted by white society that induced widespread and inherited fear among the black population of Sunflower County and the Mississippi Delta. Her testimony also reveals the results of stressful, intensive work. She also speaks about an issue which is underdeveloped, admittedly by Rogers, in the text: the struggle of black men in South. Reflecting on this violence, which often took itself out on black men and boys, Dorsey remembers, “And the feeling that it evoked that I can remember from my earliest memories is fear”.7 Dorsey asks the question of survivors of violence, “How do you not hate the man who’s doing that to your family.”8
Alice Giles, an early and important community organizer as well as a storeowner, succinctly captivated the interconnectedness of white society and depth of racism when she spoke about a bomb attack on her home. Her husband advised her, “Honey, don’t call no fire trucks. They’re not coming. They’re not coming, don’t call them. They was all in it. They was all in it. They all knew they wasn’t coming… They knew it was going to happen. The insurance even canceled our insurance. They had already canceled it. They canceled our insurance.” This brief narrative also illustrates the use of repetition that Rogers discovered in many of the narratives.9
A section of narrative from Milburn Crowe develops Rogers’ theory that landowning or property owning blacks experience racism and structural violence differently from the landless, powerless poor blacks. He says that he “realized there was tension between white and black. We just didn’t have the day-to-day experience with them [whites]. We grew up with a feeling of freedom and happiness…” While his reflection may not be universally felt the same way or experienced in the same manner by all property owning blacks, it is reflective of the ability of property owners to engage with whites on their on accord. This division surfaces within the movements of the 1960s as well as the politics of the 1990s as some narrators bitterly reveal that they feel middle-class and educated blacks do not truly represent the working class and poor blacks. (see discussion on the philosophy of Amzie Moore on page 115 that states he felt these educated, middle-class blacks were “not interested in the freedom of the common Negro in Mississippi.”)10
These passages demonstrate the sense of hope and passion that Rogers’ detected in the stories of narrators of the early movement years and the feelings of grief and despair at the state of blacks in the Mississippi Delta in the 1990s. Robert Gray states, "We lost all our businesses. We lost the schools, the control of schools. So while it might appear from the surface that we made progress, when you add up all of the intangibles into the situation, we've retrogressed."11 The Reverend Sammie Rash expresses the belief that “We had Hope. Even though we were getting some whippings on one side, there was some joy on the other side.”12 Flossie Vance, commenting on the 1990s, states that now, “They don’t even register to vote.”13
Discussion Questions
The stories in the book reveal a complex view of the way African Americans remember and consider their struggle, progress, and contribution to social change. Some take pride in the impact that they made and the legacy that they left, but some mourn a time of great community collaboration, solidarity, and a lost culture. Through all of this, Rogers examines the way memories differ based on social class and how they change with the passage of time.
Rogers draws attention to the physical and mental effects of the systematic, long-term oppression experienced by the narrators of this book. Do you think this work could be a jumping-off point for studies and projects in other disciplines? If so, why?
History is often done best through interdisciplinary methods. The narrators' stories can be best understood and contextualized when looked at through lenses of psychology, economics, and sociology, rather than confining them to a box. Part of the story is missed when the narrators' words are compartmentalized and limited in the way they are studied.
Sometimes in oral history the narrator's memory does not always correspond with fact. In what instances does this happen in Life and Death in the Delta, and how does Lacy address these situations in the text?
References
(1) Rogers, Kim Lacy. Life and Death in the Delta: African American Narratives of Violence, Resilience, and Social Change. New York:Palgrave Macmillian, 2006, pg. viii.
(2) Ibid, ix.
(3)Ibid, 51
(4) Ibid, 148
(5) Ibid, 53
(6) Ibid, 168
(7) Ibid, 37
(8) Ibid, 38
(9) Ibid, 54
(10) Ibid, 81
(11) Ibid, 166
(12) Ibid, 127
(13) Ibid, 172
