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Greenville, Clarksdale, Greenwood, Tutwiler, Merigold, Indianola & Belzoni...

The Mississippi Delta Literary Tour, an event of Trailfest 2011, is organized by the Center for the Study of Southern Culture at the University of Mississippi (Ole Miss) in Oxford. For all tour information, call tour organizer Jimmy Thomas, also Mississippi Co-Director of the Southern Literary Trail, at 662.915.5993 or via email at jgthomas@olemiss.edu.

Sunday, March 20, through Wednesday, March 23, 2011
THE MISSISSIPPI DELTA LITERARY TOUR

Beginning this year on the first day of spring, this tour focuses on the Mississippi Delta’s legendary blues, writers, and food, along with the region’s tumultuous history. Limited to 40 registrants, the tour is based in Greenwood with day trips to Trail towns Greenville and Clarksdale, among others towns and communities along the way. Literary scholars and writers give talks to tour members at some of the most unique locations in the United States, and authors Marion Barnwell, Mary Dayle McCormick, W. Kenneth Holditch, Franke Keating, Gayden Metcalfe, Teresa Nicholas, Gerry Helferich, Curtis Wilkie, and Gene Dattel will join the tour in various places to read from their work, sign books, and visit with members of the tour.

	Mary Dayle McCormick (pictured) and Hugh McCormick opened McCormick Book Inn in 1965 (courtesy, Nicholas A. Basbanes).		Delta Tour participants gather at the entrance of the B. S. Ricks Memorial Library.		Luther Brown at Robert Johnson's gravesite.

In Greenville, at the Hebrew Union Temple, Stuart Rockoff of the Goldring/Woldenberg Institute of Southern Jewish Life will lecture on the Jewish experience in the Mississippi Delta. In Clarksdale and Greenville, Kenneth Holditch will speak about his friend Tennessee Williams and about Greenville writer David L. Cohn, author of Where I was Born and Raised, a meditation on race in the Delta during the 1930s and 1940s. En route to Clarksdale, Dr. Henry Outlaw, a professor at Delta State University and font of Delta knowledge, and Dr. Luther Brown, a Southern Literary Trail board member and the director of Delta State University’s Delta Center for Culture and Learning, will join the tour to expound upon the region’s cultural and civil rights history. They will also lead the tour to Robert Johnson’s gravesite and to the remains of the store in Money where Emmett Till allegedly made his tragic whistle. The tour will then visit with the nationally known Tutwiler Quilters, who piece and quilt using the African American quilting style, and the Tutwiler gospel singers, called the TCEC Spiritualettes, at the Tutwiler Community Education Center.

	Angel Statue, Tennessee Williams Park		Ken Holditch speaks at Cutrer Mansion		Blues Bar, Greenville, Mississippi		Author Lewis Nordan at McCormick Book Inn

Other stops include the B.B. King Museum and Delta Interpretive Center in Indianola, Club Ebony in Indianola, Ethel Wright Mohamed Stitchery Museum in Belzoni, Turnrow Book Co. in Greenwood, McCormick Book Inn in Greenville, and the Cutrer Mansion in Clarksdale, where literary scholar W. Kenneth Holditch will hold forth on the town’s influence on Tennessee Williams’s work. Panny Mayfield, the director of public relations at Coahoma Community College, will lead a tour through Clarksdale to visit various other sites associated with Tennessee Williams, including St. George’s Episcopal Church, where Tom “Tennessee” Williams spent a great deal of his impressionable early childhood and where his maternal grandfather, the Rev. Walter E. Dakin, was rector for 16 years (1917–33). A very special early-evening stop, courtesy of Drs. Luther Brown and Henry Outlaw, will be made at Po’ Monkey’s Juke Joint outside of Merigold, where the tour will get to experience southern barbecue and the blues at one of the last remaining rural juke joints in Mississippi.

	Proprietor of TurnRow Book Company, Jamie Kornegay, welcomes the Delta Tour to the Delta.		Clarksdale's Cutrer Mansion is considered the inspiration for Belle-Reve in Streetcar Named Desire.		Bus Driver Jim Miles with author Nicholas Basbanes (courtesy, Nicholas A. Basbanes).

The Delta Tour fee, per person, includes all programs, eight meals and local transportation. The fee does not include lodging at the Alluvian Hotel in downtown Greenwood, but rooms at the Alluvian are available at a discounted rate of $170.00 nightly, plus tax. Call 866.600.5201 and request the “Literary Tour” rate.

Places: Greenville, Clarksdale, Greenwood, Tutwiler, Merigold, Indianola, and Belzoni
Times: Daily Tours
Admission: $575.00 per person. Call the Center and Jimmy Thomas at 662.915.5993.

 
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