20 Photos of Life in the Mississippi Delta
The Mississippi Delta has long been considered the cradle of American blues and a vivid lens through which we can view the struggles, culture, and resilience of the South.
From dusty cotton fields to church gatherings, and from the hardships of sharecropping to the soul-stirring rise of blues musicians, the Delta tells stories that are as deep as the soil itself.
These 20 photos capture everyday life, hardship, joy, and resistance in a region that has shaped American music, culture, and history more than almost any other.
1. Plantation overseer and his field hands, photo by Dorothea Lange, Mississippi Delta, near Clarksdale, Mississippi June 1936
2. Oyster shuckers of the Pass Packing Co. Mississippi, 1911
3. St. Charles Parish, Louisiana. “The Rookery, Trepagnier House. Norco vicinity. Abandoned plantation house now occupied by Negroes.” by Frances Benjamin Johnston
4. Creole girls, Plaquemines Parish, Louisiana, 1935
5. “Vicksburg Negroes and Shop Front, Mississippi, 1936” – photographed by Walker Evans
6. Hitchhikers near Vicksburg, Mississippi – 1936
7. Children of the Mississippi Delta, 1936
8. A sharecropper grabbing a bite in Clarksdale, Mississippi in 1937
9. Rex Theatre for Colored People in Leland, 1937, by Dorothea Lange
10. 1939: Juke joint in Clarksdale, Mississippi
11. Port Gibson, Mississippi 1940
12. BB King in the 1950s
13. Flooded Farmland in the Delta During the 1927 Mississippi Flood
14. Police. Mississippi, Clarksdale. (1963)
15. A ‘freedom library’ in Clarksdale, Mississippi, 1964
16. Train depot in Drew, 1976
17. Civil Rights Rally in Greenwood, MS (1966)
18. Great shot of Po Monkey, the man who ran the last great Mississippi Juke Joint
19. Jimmy “Duck” Holmes and one of the last juke joints in America
20. “Some of the young workers (not the youngest) in the Kosciusko Mississippi Cotton Mills.” (November 1913)
