The Most Southern Place on Earth: The Mississippi Delta and the Roots of Regional Identity

by James C. Cobb

"Cotton obsessed, Negro obsessed," Rupert Vance called it in 1935. "Nowhere but in the Mississippi Delta," he said, "are antebellum conditions so nearly preserved." This crescent of bottomlands between Memphis and Vicksburg, lined by the Yazoo and Mississippi rivers, remains in some ways what it was in 1860: a land of rich soil, wealthy planters, and desperate poverty--the blackest and poorest counties in all the South. And yet it is a cultural treasure house as well--the home of Muddy Waters, B.B. King, Charley Pride, Walker Percy, Elizabeth Spencer, and Shelby Foote. Painting a fascinating portrait of the development and survival of the Mississippi Delta, a society and economy that is often seen as the most extreme in all the South, James C. Cobb offers a comprehensive history of the Delta, from its first white settlement in the 1820s to the present. Exploring the rich black culture of the Delta, Cobb explains how it survived and evolved in the midst of poverty and oppression,
beginning with the first settlers in the overgrown, disease-ridden Delta before the Civil War to the bitter battles and incomplete triumphs of the civil rights era.
In this comprehensive account, Cobb offers new insight into "the most southern place on earth," untangling the enigma of grindingly poor but prolifically creative Mississippi Delta.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, American History, American, Politics, Southern, African American

416 pages, Paperback

First published October 29, 1992

About the author

James C. Cobb is Spalding distinguished professor of history emeritus at the University of Georgia.

Reviews

[David · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book chronicles the most shameful behavior that humans are capable of, in our race for comfort, power, prestige and privilege. All on the backs and broken bodies of others, those with the least, those who continue to come up on the short end of the stick.

[Cooper Word · Rating 5 out of 5]

Incredibly well-researched. This book gives the Delta the academic respect and attention that it deserves as a region not isolated from the historical currents that have shaped American history, but rather one that has been defined by (and itself helps to define) national social and economic trends just as strongly as anywhere else.

The writing is bone-chilling just because of how in his academic, neutral tone he will casually quote a graphic first-hand account of some horrific racial violence in the middle of his analysis of something like how mechanization decreased white planters’ reliance on black labor.

I really, really love how he ends the book arguing that it is much more productive to view the Delta not as some exception to America but rather that is itself the deepest microcosm of America and its darker, more sinister sides.

Here’s a couple long quotes from that ending—typing them helps me remember:

“…as the ‘South’s South’ the Delta actually functioned as a mirror within a mirror, capturing not just the South’s but the nation’s most controversial traits in mercilessly sharp detail. Hence when one looked closely at the Delta’s polarities of self-indulgence and suffering, what seemed at first glance to be a regional legacy that refused to fade began to suggest instead the bittersweet fruits of a larger, even more powerful and enduring national obsession with wealth, status, power, and pleasure. [In the Delta], the American Dream had been not so much perverted as simply pursued to its ultimate realization.”

“The economic and social polarization that is synonymous with the Mississippi Delta may be observed wherever and whenever the pursuit of wealth, pleasure and power overwhelms the ideals of equality, justice, and compassion and reduces the American Dream to a self-indulgent fantasy.”

[JoséMaría BlancoWhite · Rating 4 out of 5]

A social history of epic and literary proportions.

It's a very readable book with lots of information about The Yazoo-Mississippi Delta all the way from Reconstruction to our modern Welfare times. The intervention of the Federal government to allegedly improve the status of blacks, whether it was at the wake of the War or by means of the New Deal, and up to the latest impulses of liberal Big Government, has never done any good: only shifted the paternalistic role from the white man to the welfare state. It's curious to see how blacks have reacted to this paternalism through the times. Unlike the prodigal son, he has it both ways: comes home to cash his welfare check, then goes out rambling.

Most revealing to me was the terrible impact of the 1967 one-dollar-per-hour minimum wage, the dream of liberal social scientists and planners. It made the black workers poorer, so much so that they had to borrow from the planters, which increased their dependency.

The book is most interesting because it is life from the ground, from the plantation and street; and it's also a cultural history, the American way: made by the common man and for the common man to read. Therefore it includes a pithy but juicy chapter on the Blues, and another or the density of literary figures in the area.

It reads smoothly, without any academic jargon, left mostly to the voices of the characters themselves, their laments, their ambitions, their joys of some and pains of others. It's definitely the description of the lives of these people, blacks and whites, and letting us hear their own testimonies or anecdotes that make this an important book.

The following excerpt -to me, at least- says it all about what meant to live in the Delta:

“Finding himself in an elevator and carrying a load of packages, Richard Wright was assisted by a white man who took his hat off for him and placed it upon his packages. Wright explained that 'to have said “thank you” would have made the white man think that you thought that you were receiving from him a personal service. For such an act I have seen Negroes take a blow in the mouth. Finding the first alternative distasteful, and the second dangerous, I hit upon an acceptable course … pretended that my packages were about to spill and appeared deeply distressed … In this fashion I evaded having to acknowledge his service … and savaged a slender shred of personal pride.”

If that isn't stuff for a classic, what is then! Now figure thousands of possible situations in everyday life and what a panorama you get! Not material for teenage-minded Hollywood, for sure. No wonder so may artists and musicians nationwide got their inspiration from the South.

Here you get American History condensed in a few counties, like in a lab. History by the people and for the people. The history that counts.

[Clay · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not a fast or easy read, but a definitive source on the MS Delta.

[Debbie Howell · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very comprehensive history of the Mississippi Delta. Interesting to read about the early days--who settled there and why, and just how hard it was to "tame" the land for farming. Excellent research, well-documented in unobtrusive footnotes. One area the author did a nice job on was describing the socioeconomic impact of Federal programs on the Delta from the Depression onward. Good "micro" perspective on the Civil Rights movement within the Delta, without rehashing a lot of familiar information or giving too much detail about what was going on elsewhere in the South at that time. The last couple of chapters covered Blues music and Delta writers--really interesting, but felt a bit tacked on, rather than flowing with the book as a whole. Don't know how else he would have done that, though. I think this would be the go-to book for Delta history, and Cobb certainly did an excellent job of conveying how the personality of a unique place was molded.

[Michael · Rating 3 out of 5]

If you think Mississippi sucks now, you would have really hated it in the 19th and 20th centuries.

[Rhuff · Rating 4 out of 5]

Professor James Cobb's take on Mississippi Delta history is a comprehensive analysis since its earliest days as part of the US. First, he surprises readers by not emphasizing the Delta of the Mississippi, but the Delta region *of* Mississippi - more properly, the ridiculously fertile deep-loam soil between said river and the Yazoo, or more properly the Mississippi-Yazoo Delta.

His focus is on the convergence of class, race and power. There is little romantic legend or folklore here, except as they relate to his central themes. This may be a disappointment to some, who prefer to see this region as backward and quaint Americana, albeit with a sinister KKK side - which is part of the theatrics. To Cobb, however, this region is far from an isolated, provincial backwater. The center of power in the state, and in much of the surrounding South, its leaders have always incorporated the leading trends of economics and politics to preserve their way of life, all the way to Washington.

Hegemonic aristocrats these elites they are, but they have embraced capitalism, Reconstruction and the New South, the New Deal, and finally racial integration into their power structure, impacting these much more than the reverse. A good example is the turn-about of the Republican Party. In a state where Republicans were once gunned down like stray dogs, white elites abandoned their Democratic shell after LBJ, totally transforming the Party of Lincoln into a conservative southern stronghold that sees nothing amiss with Confederate memorials in public places.

In racial politics they absorbed the lesson of northern capitalism: segregation by race is not really necessary, as long as the majority is kept poor and dependent on favors over welfare. They even learned to do without their old labor supply, more than glad to ship off the excess population to northern slums and the tax burden with them.

Mississippi and its Delta may no longer be that land of dark mystery, where civil rights workers disappear on night country roads to be excavated from swamps. But Cobb's thesis is that it never really was. The state's Delta elite prefer operating in broad, hot daylight because - as masters of the land - they felt no need to hide the truths they created. We see them here not only as they really are, but as they see themselves. And there is little contradiction.

[Ross · Rating 3 out of 5]

A carefully rendered political, social, and economic history of the Yazoo-Mississippi Delta, The Most Southern Place on Earth elucidates all the nuances and subtleties of one of the most notorious and arcane regions of the United States. In spite of sometimes tedious and redundant statistical figures to bolster his point, Cobb expertly creates a linear narrative that parses out the stories and opinions (both erroneous and astute) of planters, scholars, politicians, and workers. I was really impressed with how he negotiated the unenviable task of wading through murky and tortuous historical accounts of the Delta, a place that seemingly epitomizes social apathy and ambivalence; where people could consider themselves kind, neighborly, and courteous, while simultaneously perpetuating a caste system that operates on the principles of paternalism, cruelty, and intimidation. By integrating statistical data, first person accounts, and a little bit of necessary historical revisionism, the myth of the Delta as a region sequestered by the past and untouched by modernity is untangled, leaving a society that may indeed have merely been a hyperbolized version of modern America.

Cobb’s argument indicates that where money can be made utilizing unchecked or encouraged exploitation, the social culmination will look something like the Yazoo Delta. He builds his argument by continually illustrating the federal government’s involvement in, and perpetuation of, the economic and social situation in the Delta, occasionally even implicating the global market as complicit to its construction. Factually, his position is reinforced by citing legislation on both state and federal levels, recounting unabashed admissions by planters and politicians of manipulation and exploitation of federal programs, as well as appealing to news reports of either federal inaction or, in some cases, compliance regarding regional abuse of labor and funds. In addition to planter testimony, black sharecroppers’ and day laborers’ testimony is included, as well as accounts given by civil rights workers and those that covered the racial situation in the Delta during the mid-twentieth century. Cobb synthesizes this material well, using all of them in concert to draw the Delta out of its mythical status as an American singularity into a more modern position as quite dependent on external forces to maintain its status quo.

In spite of his plethora of sources, Cobb’s attempts at interdisciplinary scholarship seem a little forced at best. After extensive social and historical scholarship, two concluding chapters on the arts of the Delta seem like a coda in a different key. Not to devalue their informational wealth, but their effectiveness is undermined by their placement as an addendum at the end of a cohesive narrative. I was left wishing that the final chapters had been integrated in the main body of the book, enriching already fantastic information. Additionally, I would have liked to have known how Southern religion played into this region’s history. It seems that the religious beliefs of both workers and planters in the Delta would have surely affected their views of the Delta and its sociological ills. My final qualm with the book was that, while poor whites in the Delta were occasionally included in the overall discussion of the region’s sociology, I would have liked to read more about their position as outside of, or even below, the planter/black labor dichotomy. That is, until their racism became a useful tool of the planter elite, at which time they were raised from their status as “poor white trash,” maligned by both planter and black worker alike, to a status of poor white trash with a useful purpose—that of maintaining the racial status quo through violence and intimidation.

Cobb’s most powerful observation occurs in the concluding paragraph of his epilogue, in which he warns that “wherever and whenever the pursuit of wealth, pleasure, and power overwhelms the ideals of equality, justice, and compassion,” the American Dream becomes a “self-indulgent fantasy." This image of the American Dream corrupted into self-indulgence and delusion served as a strong one for me. Not only does this passage serve to reaffirm his main thesis of the Delta as a potential microcosm of American corruption, but it also appears to presage corruption and exploitation in other aspects of American society. This passage also takes the scope of the book out of history and into contemporary sociology. No longer merely a rendering of life in the Delta, the book becomes a warning to all readers of the very real possibility for, or even existence of, Delta-like situations elsewhere in the United States. Anything that illustrates the undeniable American truth that those with power, typically derived from wealth, seek to perpetuate and reinforce that power at all costs, even to the gross detriment of human welfare, environmental protection, and individual morality, is a welcome change from typically accepted notions of idealism and progressivism as the main impetus of change in American society. The entire book illustrates that, no matter the political affiliation or ideological platform, money and power broker many of the deals that gets made in the United States. This truth was expanded into a sickening caricature in the Yazoo-Mississippi Delta, and in spite of national disgust and revolution, the federal government simply claimed to have their hands tied as far as the matter was concerned. Cobb seeks to condemn and warn of the consequences of such attitudes, however unlikely his presentiment will be heeded.

[Paul Narvaez · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a hugely comprehensive history of the Mississippi Delta. I spent a week or so travelling through this truly special region of the country. I found this book fascinating. It moves through time, noting events, big and small, to capture what feels like a true snapsnot. It runs the gamut covering food history, blues history, cultural history. Excellent stuff.

[Ellen Morris Prewitt · Rating 5 out of 5]

I found this book very helpful in understanding a region I have deep familial roots in. I will never again look the same way at a place that has been mythologized beyond recognition. The title, by the way, is ironic, a jab at how federal dollars have propped up this region for decades.

[Klaas Jan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great book, giving a lot of insight in the history, culture and social conflict in the Mississippi Delta. It's sometimes difficult to stay on the main track with so many details and digressions but despite this it's an absolute must-read before travelling to this area.

[Jakob Wasserhoevel · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great work of cultural and social history.

[Patrick Cook · Rating 4 out of 5]

Cobb makes a compelling case that understanding the Mississippi Delta is important to not only understand the American South but to understand the USA as a whole.

[Taylar · Rating 5 out of 5]

Mississippi is a state with very rich history that deserves people to know.

[Bill Berry · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great historic look at what the Yazoo delta is, and possibly why it is the way it is today. Highly recommend

[Whitney Frasier · Rating 2 out of 5]

Read for a political science class at university. Good book for the purpose of the class. Don’t read it for enjoyment. Definitely helps explain the culture and economics of the southern states.

[Caleb Foster · Rating 5 out of 5]

Absolutely terrific book. I hope to never understand or identify with humanity’s obsession with wealth at the expense of other people.

[Aaron Boer · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not many books better than this one if you’re into this sort of thing.

[Diane · Rating 4 out of 5]

This interesting history focuses on the Mississippi Delta, an area of fertile land and wealthy cotton plantations surrounded by rural poverty. This is one of those books that makes me wish Goodreads would allow half stars, because I'd like to give it three and a half stars. The beginning, which is a history of the settlement of the Delta in the 1820s - 1840s, the antebellum boom years, the Civil War and Reconstruction, is excellent. Most histories of the south that focus on this period mostly cover Virginia and the other coastal states, so this book's focus on the Delta region is welcome. It provides the best history I've ever read of conditions in the south between the end of the Civil War and the civil rights movement on the 1960s. However, the book peters out near the end. Maybe, the fact that it was written nearly 20 years ago is the reason I found the ending unsatisfying. The author does a good job of describing economic conditions in the Delta through the mid-1960s, but after that, all he talks about it race relations. While definitely an important topic in this region, I thought he shouldn't have abandoned other facets of the region's identity. Also, in the afterward, the author tries to make the case that the problems of the Delta are really the problems of all of America writ large, but I don't think he is very effective in making this case.

[Alana Cash · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is not a quick read - it's written by an academic and has that style. However, it's immensely interesting. It focuses on the Mississippi Delta region of the State of Mississippi (mainly) and the time-frame of post-Civil Reconstruction to 1960s. If you want to understand the effect of Emancipation had on the South, this is the book to read. I am so much more aware of the experiences of African Americans and the molding of racial relations and tension in this country. There was terrible injustice, withholding of government monies, betrayal, and outright cheating, that maintained the sharecroppers in poverty. And that consistent experience led to a sense of futility that isn't easily overcome. You can train someone into apathy. As for the violence, there is a Chinese saying: Kill one, frighten 10,000.

This is a book worth reading.

[Allan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Considering that the topics are so much dreary economics and the long history of abominable injustice, Cobb's book is engrossing and highly informative. The development of culture in the Delta is surveyed from antebellum times through the Civil War, Reconstruction and the first half of the 20th century (which in this locale can barely be distinguished from each other) through the civil rights movement.

[Deven Black · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a detailed history of Mississippi's Yazoo delta starting before human settlers arrived and continuing forward to the 1970s. It is a rich history full of ego, intrigue, slavery, bravery, brutality, and music. Cobb conveys some of the flavors of the various periods in this history, but he does get bogged down in excessive detail from time to time.

[Zeb Larson · Rating 4 out of 5]

A nice book to acquaint yourself with the history of the region. The book shines in discussing the Planter class and the African-Americans, as well as the relationship between the Delta and the Piedmont.

[zoë · Rating 3 out of 5]

picked up in oxford, ms as we drove through the delta

[Glitter · Rating 4 out of 5]

[Amy Merkley · Rating 4 out of 5]

A must read. But don't read it in the winter. It's depressing enough. Definitely a book of mosts, good and gawd awful.

[Amy Merkley · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not only the most southern... The most fascinating, the most magical, the most miserable, the most depressing...

[Greg · Rating 4 out of 5]

A really good book but very dense.