What do you think?
Rate this book
Delta Epiphany: Robert F. Kennedy in Mississippi
In April 1967, a year before his run for president, Senator Robert F. Kennedy knelt in a crumbling shack in Mississippi trying to coax a response from a listless child. The toddler sat picking at dried rice and beans spilled over the dirt floor as Kennedy, former US attorney general and brother to a president, touched the boy's distended stomach and stroked his face and hair. After several minutes with little response, the senator walked out the back door, wiping away tears.
In Delta Epiphany: Robert F. Kennedy in Mississippi, Ellen B. Meacham tells the story of Kennedy's visit to the Delta, while also examining the forces of history, economics, and politics that shaped the lives of the children he met in Mississippi in 1967 and the decades that followed. The book includes thirty-seven powerful photographs, a dozen published here for the first time. Kennedy's visit to the Mississippi Delta as part of a Senate subcommittee investigation of poverty programs lasted only a few hours, but Kennedy, the people he encountered, Mississippi, and the nation felt the impact of that journey for much longer. His visit and its aftermath crystallized many of the domestic issues that later moved Kennedy toward his candidacy for the presidency. Upon his return to Washington, Kennedy immediately began seeking ways to help the children he met on his visit; however, his efforts were frustrated by institutional obstacles and blocked by powerful men who were indifferent and, at times, hostile to the plight of poor black children.
Sadly, we know what happened to Kennedy, but this book also introduces us to three of the children he met on his visit, including the baby on the floor, and finishes their stories. Kennedy talked about what he had seen in Mississippi for the remaining fourteen months of his life. His vision for America was shaped by the plight of the hungry children he encountered there.
In Delta Epiphany: Robert F. Kennedy in Mississippi, Ellen B. Meacham tells the story of Kennedy's visit to the Delta, while also examining the forces of history, economics, and politics that shaped the lives of the children he met in Mississippi in 1967 and the decades that followed. The book includes thirty-seven powerful photographs, a dozen published here for the first time. Kennedy's visit to the Mississippi Delta as part of a Senate subcommittee investigation of poverty programs lasted only a few hours, but Kennedy, the people he encountered, Mississippi, and the nation felt the impact of that journey for much longer. His visit and its aftermath crystallized many of the domestic issues that later moved Kennedy toward his candidacy for the presidency. Upon his return to Washington, Kennedy immediately began seeking ways to help the children he met on his visit; however, his efforts were frustrated by institutional obstacles and blocked by powerful men who were indifferent and, at times, hostile to the plight of poor black children.
Sadly, we know what happened to Kennedy, but this book also introduces us to three of the children he met on his visit, including the baby on the floor, and finishes their stories. Kennedy talked about what he had seen in Mississippi for the remaining fourteen months of his life. His vision for America was shaped by the plight of the hungry children he encountered there.
304 pages, Hardcover
Published April 2, 2018
16 people are currently reading
213 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews
July 13, 2018
Politicians have in the past, present, and future pandered to constituencies that will keep them in power. Be it drug companies, agriculture conglomerates, tech companies, or any one of thousands of others. Occasionally politicians and parties will advocate for something or someone simply because it is the morally correct thing to do. Civil rights, marriage equality, affordable health care, or immigration are recent examples of this. Yet of all the pressing issues America has faced and continues to face, how often do we hear about poverty? Not the middle class tax cuts that both parties seem so fond of extolling, but actually doing something about those in America who can barely feed their families.
LBJ set out to do this with the Great Society programs and certainly made some positive impact in the lives of many people before Vietnam siphoned off its financial and spiritual energy. Martin Luther King attempted to organize the Poor People’s March on Washington before being cut down by an assassin. It was barely spoken of again until the early 2000’s with John Edwards and his “Two Americas” speech before he too was silenced via scandal. If politicians or people of influence in America have seemingly learned any lesson, it’s that there is little career advancement or financial gain in advocating for the poor. Rather it is likely to lead you into oblivion or death.
Among the rare exceptions however, is the case of Robert Kennedy and his trip through the Mississippi Delta in 1967.
He had been told that there was a problem in this impoverished region so he led a fact finding mission with a fellow senator and a handful of journalists. What he saw there over a few days shocked him. As Meacham writes, Kennedy spent the better part of these days visiting the residents of the Delta, talking with them, going into their homes. Seeing malnourished babies with distended stomachs, diseases like rickets and beri beri that were nearly unheard of in 1967, and hearing from young children that their main meal was a slice of bread and molasses, Kennedy decided at that moment that this was what he needed to devote the rest of his life to. This scale of poverty and death in the wealthiest nation on earth was as he muttered on several occasions during the trip, “Unacceptable. Simply unacceptable”.
Actually doing things to improve the lives of people in the Delta was far more difficult than Kennedy had hoped however. He believed that once politicians knew about this disgrace, they would try to alleviate the suffering as soon as possible. What he found instead was that politicians, particularly those from Mississippi who controlled funds to the Delta, were uninterested in helping poor black people. In particular Mississippi’s Senators John Stennis and James Eastland (these two men pop up all the time in my reading about this era and I have to say they are two of the most unlikable, borderline evil people I’ve come across.
They at times feel like caricatures of cartoon villains. Who denies kids access to food?!) did everything they could to prevent any money or food reaching the Delta that didn’t pass through their control. They would trot out tropes about “state sovereignty”, “welfare leading to laziness”, and “personal responsibility” that sound eerily familiar in 2018.
Kennedy was in the end able to help raise awareness about this issue enough to force funding emergency funding through and give some amelioration to the people of the Delta (it would take one year from the time of Kennedy’s trip for the funding to finally reach Mississippi).
Kennedy’s assassination in 1968 was a major blow to the cause of eradicating poverty as it lost its most visible and charismatic leader. As we have seen, serious national discussions about it wouldn’t be heard again until more than 30 years later, and not for very long even then.
What I took away most from this book was the remarkable empathy Kennedy seemed to feel for these people. There is a story here about him entering a dilapidated shack where an infant is lying listlessly on the ground. Kennedy got down on the ground to engage him but the infant was so transfixed by hunger that it could only focus on isolated grains of rice on the floor, picking them up one by one and putting them in his mouth. Reading this was beyond heartbreaking and I can only imagine what it did to Kennedy or how he felt when a prominent White Mississippian confronted him after exiting that shack saying that poverty didn’t exist in Mississippi. How did he not snap and punch this person in the face?
This is not an easy read but it is certainly an important one that sheds light on a dark and shameful time in America’s history that has yet in 2018 to ever be fully addressed.
LBJ set out to do this with the Great Society programs and certainly made some positive impact in the lives of many people before Vietnam siphoned off its financial and spiritual energy. Martin Luther King attempted to organize the Poor People’s March on Washington before being cut down by an assassin. It was barely spoken of again until the early 2000’s with John Edwards and his “Two Americas” speech before he too was silenced via scandal. If politicians or people of influence in America have seemingly learned any lesson, it’s that there is little career advancement or financial gain in advocating for the poor. Rather it is likely to lead you into oblivion or death.
Among the rare exceptions however, is the case of Robert Kennedy and his trip through the Mississippi Delta in 1967.
He had been told that there was a problem in this impoverished region so he led a fact finding mission with a fellow senator and a handful of journalists. What he saw there over a few days shocked him. As Meacham writes, Kennedy spent the better part of these days visiting the residents of the Delta, talking with them, going into their homes. Seeing malnourished babies with distended stomachs, diseases like rickets and beri beri that were nearly unheard of in 1967, and hearing from young children that their main meal was a slice of bread and molasses, Kennedy decided at that moment that this was what he needed to devote the rest of his life to. This scale of poverty and death in the wealthiest nation on earth was as he muttered on several occasions during the trip, “Unacceptable. Simply unacceptable”.
Actually doing things to improve the lives of people in the Delta was far more difficult than Kennedy had hoped however. He believed that once politicians knew about this disgrace, they would try to alleviate the suffering as soon as possible. What he found instead was that politicians, particularly those from Mississippi who controlled funds to the Delta, were uninterested in helping poor black people. In particular Mississippi’s Senators John Stennis and James Eastland (these two men pop up all the time in my reading about this era and I have to say they are two of the most unlikable, borderline evil people I’ve come across.
They at times feel like caricatures of cartoon villains. Who denies kids access to food?!) did everything they could to prevent any money or food reaching the Delta that didn’t pass through their control. They would trot out tropes about “state sovereignty”, “welfare leading to laziness”, and “personal responsibility” that sound eerily familiar in 2018.
Kennedy was in the end able to help raise awareness about this issue enough to force funding emergency funding through and give some amelioration to the people of the Delta (it would take one year from the time of Kennedy’s trip for the funding to finally reach Mississippi).
Kennedy’s assassination in 1968 was a major blow to the cause of eradicating poverty as it lost its most visible and charismatic leader. As we have seen, serious national discussions about it wouldn’t be heard again until more than 30 years later, and not for very long even then.
What I took away most from this book was the remarkable empathy Kennedy seemed to feel for these people. There is a story here about him entering a dilapidated shack where an infant is lying listlessly on the ground. Kennedy got down on the ground to engage him but the infant was so transfixed by hunger that it could only focus on isolated grains of rice on the floor, picking them up one by one and putting them in his mouth. Reading this was beyond heartbreaking and I can only imagine what it did to Kennedy or how he felt when a prominent White Mississippian confronted him after exiting that shack saying that poverty didn’t exist in Mississippi. How did he not snap and punch this person in the face?
This is not an easy read but it is certainly an important one that sheds light on a dark and shameful time in America’s history that has yet in 2018 to ever be fully addressed.
January 14, 2024
“And if you had seen him…he was just so wounded by the pain of others.”
“You don’t know what I saw! I have done nothing with my life! Everything I’ve done was a waste!” -RFK
He talked differently than he did after Mississippi than he did before about people, pain, and suffering.
“You don’t know what I saw! I have done nothing with my life! Everything I’ve done was a waste!” -RFK
He talked differently than he did after Mississippi than he did before about people, pain, and suffering.
July 2, 2021
In the interest of full disclosure, I should preface this review by mentioning that I had the pleasure of meeting the author when our school debate team toured Ole Miss in 2017. Ms Meacham described her project then, and immediately I was enthralled. She revisits the 1967 Kennedy/Clark tour of Mississippi and breathes new life into the unfinished conversation about poverty in the United States. She places Marian Wright and Peter Edelman at the heart of the narrative and conjoins the local and national arcs for discussing systemic injustice. Robert Kennedy's conversion experience during his visit to the Delta presages his zealous embrace of a new vision for America ("We need to make an effort together") Most illuminating are the interviews that Ms Meacham stitches together over decades to place a spotlight on the journey from blissful ignorance, strategic manipulation, authentic encounter and faithful reckoning that characterized Kennedy spiritual growth. My favorite episodes were the ones that went backstage to describe the unlikely forces that made Coahoma Opportunities such a force in Clarksdale, Kennedy's visit to Sacred Heart School in Greenville, the unexpected warm welcome in Oxford, the pointed challenge at Millsaps. I was surprised by Meacham's assertion that starvation and neglect were part a strategy to spark greater African-American migration as mechanization made chattel labor less necessary. Her analysis of Representative Whitten's outsized role is directing federal funds to this dastardly project is a triumph of investigative longform journalism.
October 30, 2024
As a long time admirer of Bobby Kennedy, this well-researched book on the way he witnessed hunger in the Delta caught my attention. It turns out it was a profound experience for him, so much so he began to understand our humanity and patriotism go hand in hand. I noticed that many of the arguments against helping the poor that were used in the 1967 are still around today. Meacham approached this material in a personal way and used imagery to make settings come alive. I am not likely to forget the journey I went on through reading this book.
December 29, 2018
What a beautifully written portrait of a moment in time. I feel like I really got to know RFK; to find out what he was like as a man (brother, father, AG, campaigner.)
The book skillfully builds up to one single, moment in a dirt floor cabin in the Delta of Mississippi... and when it comes it is emotionally devastating.
The context surrounding the “epiphany” is presented in beautiful prose. The brutal history of how we got here; the sociological and political causes of the history and ongoing scourge of Mississippi poverty will break your hear and piss you off. You’ll empathize along with Kennedy as he begins the fight he never got to finish and wonder: What if?
There are many other captivating characters you’ll get to meet along the way, but pay special attention to Marian Wright; a real life American hero who deserves to be widely recognized as such.
Seriously, read this book!
The book skillfully builds up to one single, moment in a dirt floor cabin in the Delta of Mississippi... and when it comes it is emotionally devastating.
The context surrounding the “epiphany” is presented in beautiful prose. The brutal history of how we got here; the sociological and political causes of the history and ongoing scourge of Mississippi poverty will break your hear and piss you off. You’ll empathize along with Kennedy as he begins the fight he never got to finish and wonder: What if?
There are many other captivating characters you’ll get to meet along the way, but pay special attention to Marian Wright; a real life American hero who deserves to be widely recognized as such.
Seriously, read this book!
April 29, 2018
This book is a well researched accont of Robert Kennedy's visit to the Mississippi Delta 50 years ago. As I read this book, it made me realize that a lot of the issues we are seeing today, was seen back then, Delta Epiphany was a good read and very eye opening.Thanks to NetGalley, the author and the publisher for the ARC of this book in return for my honest review.
July 22, 2021
A good portrait of Robert Kennedy and his fight against poverty in 1967. The book has a brief biography of Kennedy and a more detailed telling of his visit to the Mississippi Delta. There is a balanced accounting of how Kennedy as attorney general acquiesced to Mississippi’s blatant violation of the riders’ civil rights, made ambivalent public statements, and conducted back-channel negotiations with segregationists during the freedom riders crisis. The story continues to show how he became more painfully aware of the plight of the poor during his years in the Senate and a shift to what could be construed as a more vigilant ally of the poor. His activism in this area increased after his visit to the delta, and culminated with his run for the Democratic nomination in 1967. The book makes you wonder what could have been, but brings the reader to the present day to show what’s changed and what’s stayed the same. Today the legislators in Mississippi still resist federal aid and seem to go out of their way to hurt the poor people living in that state. This book shows you how much progress has occurred since Kennedy’s visit to the delta, but also how entrenched the problem seems to be.
November 16, 2018
I’ve always been a history buff, particularly a Mississippi history buff. It’s only because my mom took me to every museum in the state practically, but I’d never fully understood key moments in the Civil Rights era like: the Great Migration; how Reconstruction failed African Americans; how wealthy landowners imprisoned sharecropping families in poverty.
I also didn’t realize that Mississippi/Dixiecrats not only didn’t recognize the starvation, but the extent they went to keep aid from helping anyone. I knew they were incredibly racist but I didn’t know they’d deny children emergency food relief.
This book is a deeply intellectual study of the politics of poverty, yet is engaging and highly readable.
I have already ordered two more copies for gifts.
I also didn’t realize that Mississippi/Dixiecrats not only didn’t recognize the starvation, but the extent they went to keep aid from helping anyone. I knew they were incredibly racist but I didn’t know they’d deny children emergency food relief.
This book is a deeply intellectual study of the politics of poverty, yet is engaging and highly readable.
I have already ordered two more copies for gifts.
June 19, 2020
Thank you Ellen Meacham! This was a rare treat. I grew up in Washington County and never knew about Kennedy’s visit or the impact my corner of the world had on him. The in-depth look at state and local politics from that era gave clarity to the names and vague recollections I have as a kid. Eastland, Stennis, Carter. Jamie Whitten. You also explained some of the oddities I encountered with Miss people who lived outside the Delta. They seemed to have a particular contempt for us, and I never knew why.
December 16, 2025
Though a bit dry at times, this account of Robert F. Kennedy’s work to combat poverty and hunger in Mississippi and other rural areas was a worthwhile read. I can’t help but imagine how different our country might be today I’d RFK had won election to the Presidency in 1968.
May 25, 2024
Incredible storytelling and historical narrative. Illuminates a lot of untold history within our own country. Would recommend to anyone interested in public policy or mid-20th US history.
July 10, 2025
This book highlights the idea that our leaders need to see the hardship of others to understand the urgency of the situation. Lifting up stories of the poor is key to making change
November 6, 2025
Not terrible, but limited in imagination. Cool stuff on the origins of Head Start.
Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews