14 posts from May 2006 (page 2)

“That Mississippi sound, that Delta sound is in them old records. You can hear it all the way through.”
Muddy Waters

Hollandale is slowly shrinking, dying really, from lack of industry. The population in 1983 is estimated by Burford and Sanders to be about 5,500. The population in 1990 was 3,576. In 2000 it was 3,437. In 2004, it was 3,202. In 14 years more than a tenth of the population has left. In 21 years 42% of the population has left.

83% of the current population is African-American, 16.5% is White, and .5% is Other. 56% of the population is female, 44% is male.

The per capita income is $9,251. 39% of the residents live below the poverty line, including 54% of the people under the age of 18. 9.7% of the population is unemployed. 40% of the population makes less than $15,000 a year. 70% of the population makes less than $35,000 a year.

About 10% of the adult population has less than a 5th grade education. More than 50% of people over the age of 25 have not graduated high school. About 10% of residents over the age of 25 have graduated from a four-year college. Four people, all women, have a Ph.D.

“The condition of the water and sewer facilities is desperate,” said Mr. Burford. “Roads are in terrible condition. There is no room in the budget for anything more than filling in a pothole.”

“The streets are deplorable,” said Mr. Sanders. “Pretty soon we’ll have problems with the sewers.”

The train tracks are completely grown over and, at this point, probably unusable. There is a small municipal airport, used mostly for crop dusters. The closest shipping port is Greenville (30 miles). Highway 61 and Highway 12 both run through Hollandale.

There are few, if any, cultural resources. The most popular events are high school sports. Simmons High School is particularly good in basketball and has won two state championships in the past five years.

There are several juke joints, known as “Blue Front,” located by the train tracks.

“What is there to do? For a young person? Walk the around the streets and play ball at the center,” said Ms. Richmond. “That’s it.” The center is an outdoor basketball court...

“What economy? I’m dead serious. What economy?”
Ashley Richmond, 17 Years Old.

Annual Income in Hollandale:

6%=$75,000+
4%=$50,000-$75,000
17%=$35,000-$50,000
10%=$25,000-$35,000
20%=$15,000-$25,000
16%=$10,000-$15,000
25%=$0-$10,000

At the center of town is a huge, rusting, metal factory, the remnants of a cottonseed oil plant. The history of trade and economics in Hollandale is the same throughout the Mississippi Delta: cotton. All aspects of the cotton industry, from the fieldwork to the gin to the huge, cottonseed oil plant provided work. The train tracks run alongside the plant. In 1983 the plant was closed and, soon after, the trains stopped running through Hollandale.

In the 1980’s and 1990’s cotton production became much more mechanized in the region. “One tractor equals 150 men,” said Mr. Sanders. At this point the catfish processing plant became the main industry in town. The plant closed in 2002, laying off 200 people or almost a tenth of the town’s population. The biggest employer is now the school district.

“Hollandale is in a desperate situation. A city should set the majority of its revenue from two places: sales tax and property tax,” said Mr. Larry Burford, the mayor of Hollandale from 2001 to 2005. “Because of the loss of industry and the proximity of Greenville we have very little sales tax. Because most of our homeowners are elderly they receive an exemption from the property tax. We have no money. We can’t repair the roads or the sewers. With the price of gas rising and the price of health insurance sky-rocketing we won’t be able to pay the police officers.”


“The city is living month to month,” said Mr. Sanders.

Downtown is now completely boarded up with the exception of Jane’s (the white café) and a storefront church, The Powerhouse Apostolic Deliverance Church or, as the people in town call it, “The Powerhouse.”

“Wal-Mart put the final nail in the coffin,” said Mr. Sanders. A Super Wal-Mart opened in Greenville, 28 miles away, in 2002. “The last few shops that were hanging on were gone after that. When churches start moving into your downtown district that’s the end.”

The decline of the cotton industry and the closing of the cottonseed oil and catfish plants, has choked off most of the available revenue. This, in turn, has lead to some stark numbers...

In the past few years some middle-class blacks have moved across the tracks, living alongside middle-class white families. The wealthy white families, however, live on the other side of the creek. There are only two bridges in the town and these bridges (and the creek itself) set apart the wealthier white community from the rest of the town.

But the centerpiece of the Delta is the Mississippi River. Really, it is the centerpiece of the United States of America. The Great River created, among other things, rock and roll, American Literature, and, of course, the Civil War.

Millions of Africans were brought over to pick the cotton (with millions more dying on the way), bringing customs, music, and culture from West Africa. Jazz, the blues, and juke joints all have their roots in West Africa. The word “juke” means “wicked” in many West African dialects. Elvis Presley, as a young, impressionable man would drive over to the Delta from his hometown of Tupelo, MS and take in the music at these juke joints. This was the spark of rock and roll.

Growing up on the river Mark Twain based many of his stories around its waters. The river is the central narrative of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, the novel that, according to Earnest Hemingway, “all American literature came from.”

Slavery is the lasting impact though. Slavery, the Civil War, and our tortured history of race in this country all originated with the river. Walk through Hollandale and look at the faces. You are looking at the great grandchildren of slaves and slave owners.

“Emory R. Simmons, a former slave, started the first black school in Hollandale in 1890,” said Mr. Howard Sanders, the retired Superintendent of the Hollandale School District.

The cotton fields in the Delta hold our history in the soil. Rock and roll, American literature, and the Civil War. It all started right here...

“With each spring thaw for thousands of years the Mississippi River carried off the rich topsoil of the Midwest. Then, just south of Memphis, the river predictably bulged out over its banks, hurling water and purloined silt onto a low-lying alluvial basin nearly 200 miles long and up to 70 miles across at its widest point…. Centuries of annual inundation and departure thus deposited a thick, rock-free, and fecund soil upon the Yazoo-Mississippi Delta – conditions fit for a king. King Cotton, that is.” John Wilis, Forgotten Time

The landscape of Hollandale, like most of the Mississippi Delta, is as flat as an uncluttered desktop. But the land itself is as fertile as any in the world, a gift of Mississippi River.

The source of the Mississippi River is Lake Itasca in Minnesota. It is the longest river in the United States, about 2,320 miles, stretching from Lake Itasca to New Orleans, LA and then emptying in the Gulf of Mexico. A drop of water in Lake Itasca takes about 90 days to reach the Gulf.

The river has drained about 41% of the United States over the past 15,000 years. The endless flooding and changing of the river deposited an enormous amount of sediment throughout the Delta. Stand in the Mississippi Delta and you are standing on the remains of the Rocky Mountains. This alluvium deposit created the most fertile land in the world, perfect for growing the labor-intensive cash crop of cotton.

The Mississippi River is located 12 miles to the West of Hollandale, but a tributary, Deer Creek, runs alongside, and sometimes through, the town. Because of the fertile land and of its proximity to Deer Creek, Hollandale, historically, had access to good resources and trade. As cotton production became more mechanized and as the country shifted from rivers and trains to trucks and planes as the primary means of transportation, these benefits faded.

The train tracks are, perhaps, the most important geographical feature of Hollandale because they literally divide the town. For most of the town’s existence blacks have lived on one side of the tracks and whites on the other. “Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd.” runs through the black section of town and then becomes “Bee Bee Street” on the other side of the tracks. On one side of the tracks there is a black café, Marie’s. On the other side, a white café, Jane’s.

“They are what separates us,” said Ashley Richmond, a 17 year old black female, referring to the tracks...