Word: delta
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James Cobb of the University of Tennessee has studied the culture and economics of the Delta as much as anyone. He summarizes the melancholy story of the area as "a scary and fascinating pursuit of the American Dream" by a small group of bright, tough people who, unrestrained by conscience or government, ruthlessly exploited other people and resources even as they cloaked themselves in courtliness. Cobb has documented the manipulation of the modern political system by the likes of the late Senator James Eastland, who poured millions of tax dollars into the pockets of the planters and let the little...
...days of reckoning are upon the Delta. A lot of the old family landowners have sold out to corporate interests. The Prudential Insurance Co. is one of the huge Delta operators. Low prices for cotton, soybeans and rice and climbing production costs have squeezed farmers. "Nobody in the Delta is worth more than $10 million," says Billy Percy, one of an enlightened family of statesmen, writers and planters. "Maybe one," he corrects. "He made it in Holiday Inns. I used to be able to have four bad crop years before I would be in financial trouble. Now if I have...
Last week the Delta was drying out after the wettest April and May on record. The giant Deere tractors with their 12-row cultivators left tails of dust as they stirred the baking fields. Ed Scott of Minter City was up at 5 a.m. to tend his eight catfish ponds. If all goes well, the black entrepreneur this year will sell nearly half a million pounds of catfish, the Delta's second biggest crop after cotton. In Arcola, Billy Percy was in a battered pickup as crop dusters in their yellow Air Tractors swooped around him, spraying rice and cotton...
...bottom are homogenized, will the Delta lose its special fervor? Maybe. Maybe not. On the edge of Clarksdale, bluesman Johnson told of his days learning music from his sharecropper father. "Folks ain't so bad off now," he said. "It ain't as low down as it used to be. Blues ain't as sad." Then the Oil Man lifted his head and sang a few lines -- about the Persian Gulf...
NATION: The Delta Blues...