Delta History
DELTA TIME LINE
5/8/1541
Hernando de Soto reaches the Mississippi River with his conquistadors, possibly at Sunflower Landing west of Clarksdale. This is the first time Europeans viewed the Mississippi.
4/9/1682
Rene-Robert Cavalier, Sieur de La Salle, arrives at the mouth of the Mississippi and claims the entire Mississippi River Valley (including the Delta) for France, naming it "Louisiana" in honor of his king.
9/27/1830
The Treaty of Dancing Rabbit Creek is signed, turning over much Choctaw land and most of the Delta to the State of Mississippi.
3/1/1841
Blanche Kelso Bruce, long-time resident of Rosedale and the first African-American to serve a full term in the US Senate; is born into slavery near Farmville, Prince Edward County, VA.
1/9/1861
Mississippi becomes the second state to secede from the Union.
2/3/1863
Union forces blast the Mississippi River levee to enable a flotilla to use Moon Lake and the Yazoo Pass in a futile effort to reach Vicksburg by way of the Coldwater, Tallahatchie, and Yazoo rivers. Thousands of Union troops and several ironclad and tinclad gunboats move across the Delta towards Greenwood's cotton bale Fort Pemberton.
7/12/1887
Mound Bayou, "The Oldest All Black Municipality Founded by Ex-Slaves" is founded by Isaiah T. Montgomery and his cousin Benjamin T. Green, formerly slaves of Joseph and Jefferson Davis.
3/31/1891
Founder of the Delta Blues Charley Patton is born. Patton lived his early life at Dockery Plantation where his family sharecropped.
1894
Joseph A. Biedenharn, a druggist in Vicksburg, decides to put Coca Cola in bottles. Prior to this time, Coke was strictly a fountain drink. Unfortunately, the bottling technology of the day left the drink with a rubbery taste. Fortunately, planters in the Delta preferred to mix their Coke with whiskey anyway, and the bottled beverage caught on.
4/29/1900
John Luther "Casey" Jones leaves Memphis bound for Canton, but wrecks his train near Vaughn. The wreck is remembered ever since in song.
1901
Charles Peabody, excavating prehistoric mounds on the Stoval plantation near Clarksdale, writes in his diary about the singing of his black laborers "weird in interval and strange in rhythm; peculiarly beautiful." This is the first written reference to the Blues.
1/2/1903
President Theodore Roosevelt shuts down the post office in Indianola for not accepting its first appointed postmistress, Minnie M. Cox, because she is black.
1903
W.C. Handy, waiting for a train in Tutwiler, hears the Blues for the first time. He writes in his journal "A lean, loose-jointed Negro had commenced plunking a guitar beside me while I slept. His clothes were rags; his feet peeped out of his shoes. His face had on it some of the sadness of the ages. As he played, he pressed a knife on the strings of the guitar in a manner popularized by Hawaiian guitarists who used steel bars. The effect was unforgettable."
9/4/1908
Noted African American writer Richard Wright is born on a plantation near Natchez. His life in the Delta is remembered in several of his stories.
5/8/1911
Delta Blues Musician Robert Johnson is born in Hazlehurst. He sold his soul to the Devil at a crossroads in the Delta, and wrote songs that have been coveted by many musicans.
12/13/1913
Light Heavyweight boxer Archie Moore is born in Benoit, and went on to knock out more victims than any other boxer in history- 141. He became Heavy Weight Champion of the World in 1952, and was the only man to have fought both Rocky Marciano and Muhammad Ali.
4/4/1915
Bluesman McKinley Morganfield, better known as Muddy Waters, is born in Rolling Fork.
3/1/1922
Leroy Percy, iconic plantation owner and former US Senator, challenges the KKK to leave Greenville in a public debate. The daily papers declare him the winner of the debate.
9/16/1925
B.B. King, "The King of The Blues," is born in Itta Bena.
4/21/1927
The Mississippi River crevasses its levee at Mounds Landing, near Scott, precipitating the Great Flood of 1927 and destroying the Delta.
3/18/1933
Unita Blackwell, the first African American woman elected mayor in Mississippi, is born in Lula.
8/9/1936
Delta Democrat Times, of Greenville, publishes a photograph of black Olympic Athlete Jesse Owens, winner of four gold medals, on the front page.
10/2/1944
The mechanical cotton picker is publicly demonstrated at Hopson Plantation, in Clarksdale. The demonstration is a great success, making it clear that picking cotton by hand is no longer economically feasible. This begins the "emancipation" or "termination" of hundreds of thousands of farm workers.
5/7/1946
Hodding Carter, Jr., of the Delta Democrat Times in Greenville, wins the Pulitzer Prize for editorials on racial, religious, and economic intolerance.
3/3/1951
"Jackie Brentson and His Delta Cats" record Rocket 88 at Sam Phillip's Sun Studios. Brentson was the singer for Ike Turner's band, out of Clarksdale. Rocket 88 was recognized as the very first rock 'n' roll song by the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
7/11/1954
Robert "Tut" Paterson founds the White Citizen's Council in Indianola, MS.
5/7/1955
NAACP leader Rev. George Wesley Lee is assassinated in Belzoni after trying to vote.
5/9/1955
Kermit the frog is "born" in Leland. Muppets creator Jim Henson was born and raised in Leland and created Kermit this day.
8/28/1955
Emmett Lewis Till, a 14 year old African American boy from Chicago is kidnapped and murdered in Money for allegedly whistling at shopkeeper Carolyn Bryant.
1/24/1956
Look Magazine publishes the confessions of J.W. Milam and Roy Bryant, two white men from the Delta who were acquitted in the 1955 kidnapping and murder of Emmett Till. In the Article, "The Shocking Story of Approved Killing in Mississippi," the men detailed how they beat Till with a gun, shot him and threw his body in the Tallahatchie River with a heavy cotton-gin fan attached with barbed wire to his neck to weigh him down. They were paid a reported $4,000 for their participation in the article.
12/18/1956
Elia Kazan's Southern Gothic film Baby Doll is released. It is a steamy story of racial prejudice and the decline of white power, and is widely condemned for its "decadence." It was filmed in Benoit, and features the historic Burrus House (the only standing antibellum house in this part of the Delta) as a character, along with Karl Maldin, Eli Wallach, and Carroll Baker.
8/31/1962
Mrs. Fanny Lou Hamer attempts unsuccessfully to register to vote in the Sunflower County Courthouse in Indianola. She is subsequently evicted from her share cropper's home and loses her job, but goes on to become one of the great leaders of the Delta's civil rights movement.
6/17/1966
Stokely Carmichael, SNCC Chairman, coins the phrase "Black Power" while giving a speech in Greenwood's Broad Street Park.
3/16/1971
Muddy Waters receives his first Grammy Award ("Best Ethnic or Traditional Recording") for the album They Call Me Muddy Waters.
1/3/1993
Mike Espy becomes the first African American to be elected to Congress in the Second District of Mississippi.
10/4/2000
Charley Pride, born in 1938 to sharecroppers in Sledge, and first black member of the Grand Ole Opry, is inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame.
Source: Compiled by Luther Brown, Associate Dean for Delta Regional Development, and Director, The Delta Center for Culture and Learning at Delta State University |
