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The Mississippi Delta is blessed with some of the most fertile soil in the U.S.
GREENVILLE, Mississippi -- The attributes of the Delta and the challenges it faces are inevitably linked.
The latter have, in the past, included devastation by flood, by fire and by yellow fever. Now, they include poverty and a dwindling population as jobs for many remain elusive.
Yet, the Delta is the birthplace of America's music, principally the blues that have, and continue to, eloquently and painfully acknowledge the suffering Deltans have known, and, too, rock 'n' roll, the blues' irrepressible, raucous little brother.
It is home as well to a disproportionate number of playwrights and authors, to artists and poets.
The Delta is a bread basket, covered with the most fertile soil in the nation. And everything a sportsman could desire.
The Delta is a melting pot, peopled with immigrants, both those who came of free will and those who came in chains, a place where Jews and Chinese, Italians and Africans, Anglo-Saxons and Germans, some of whom, too, were brought here against their will, having been captured in World War II -- all of whom, together, have carved a home from a once abject wilderness.
And, now, the Delta is a national treasure.
It officially has been federally designated the Mississippi Delta National Heritage Area, one of fewer than 50 such treasures spread across the United States, from frigid Alaska to sunny Florida.
"The National Heritage Area program was created specifically to highlight the multifarious culture that we call America," said former Delta State University President John Hilpert, whom Gov. Phil Bryant in 2012 appointed chairman of the Mississippi Delta National Heritage Area's 15-member board of directors, prior to its clearing a final hurdle.
A decade in the making
The U.S. Department of the Interior this month formally approved the Mississippi Delta National Heritage Area Partnership's exhaustive management plan.
Work on the steering document began in November 2011 with a meeting at the Alluvian Hotel in Greenwood, in which 150 people representing academia, economic development, tourism, historic preservation and governments, large and small, worked in conjunction with the National Trust for Historic Preservation in an advisory role.
The comprehensive plan the group developed over the course of nearly two years -- and more than a dozen planning sessions conducted throughout the 18-county Delta -- weighs in at 296 pages, with some 600 pages of supporting data appended.
The Department of the Interior, in signing off on the management plan July 8, brought to fruition a process that began more than a decade ago with an informal conversation between the newly named president of Delta State University and a professor there, a Chicago-area native who had held a fascination with the Delta long before moving here, Luther Brown.
By chance, 2003 had been proclaimed, by Congress and Mississippi's governor, alike, the Year of the Blues.
"I was named president of Delta State University in 2003, and Luther" -- who by then was the founding director of the school's Delta Center for Culture and Learning -- "came into my office not long after to tell me about the National Heritage Area program," Hilpert recounted. "It didn't take him long to convince me as to its advantages for the Delta."
Funding in place
Over the next six years, Brown worked with groups vested in the Delta, either through its culture, its economic potential or its scenic beauty and natural resources.
"The Mississippi Delta National Heritage Area has happened because of the efforts of lots and lots of people attending dozens and dozens of meetings," Brown said. "We had anywhere from 50 to 100 people typically at each of them. We didn't have to pull any teeth. There is a very widespread belief this will help the Delta thrive."
National Heritage Areas require an act of Congress.
The creation of the Mississippi Delta National Heritage Area -- though it would still require the Department of the Interior's sign-off on the comprehensive management plan -- came about in March 2009 when President Barack Obama signed into law the enabling legislation, included in that year's Omnibus Federal Land Management Act.
The legislation had been sponsored in the Senate by
and Roger Wicker and in the House by Rep. Bennie Thompson.
"I was able to help shepherd the legislation ... and I look forward to working with the heritage area in the future," Thompson told the Delta Democrat-Times in an email. "I'd like to see the National Heritage Area highlight the Delta as the home of the blues, a critical agricultural producer, a focal point during the civil rights movement and a geographic treasure full of natural beauty and abundant wildlife."
Dollar-for-dollar match
Obama's signature allowed the National Park Service to help fund the inchoate National Heritage Area.
Those funds require a dollar-for-dollar match from non-federal sources.
The Mississippi Delta National Heritage Area -- which is organized as a 501c(3) nonprofit -- has received just shy of $600,000 the past four fiscal years through the National Park Service pro- gram.
Matching funds have come from the Mississippi Legislature, which has given the effort $150,000 annually, and the City of Cleveland, which has contributed $25,000 a year.
Other financial help has come from donated services and related contributions, much of it from Delta State's Delta Center for Culture and Learning, from which Brown will officially retire at the end of this month.
"Luther was the primary mover behind this and should get all the credit," said Hilpert, who expects Brown will continue to play a leading role with the National Heritage Area, although a precise role has yet to be defined. "He's a resource we certainly don't want to lose."
A bounty of benefits
The Delta, it is no secret, suffers from more poverty than the rest of the nation, with the possible exception of certain parts of Appalachia and certain Native-American reservations.
In the Delta -- which, Greenville author David Cohn in 1935 famously wrote, "begins in the lobby of the Peabody Hotel and ends on Catfish Row in Vicksburg" -- nearly a third of the population lives below the poverty line.
The federal heritage area designation could help alleviate at least some of that.
"I don't want people to get false hopes," Brown said, but is convinced, nevertheless that the designation, and this month's final approval, "will increase the number of tourists who will be spending money here on food and lodging, and they'll want to consume local entertainment, and it will create demand for products produced in the Delta.
"What we're talking about is a gradual increase in the economy."
A private-sector study commissioned by the National Parks Service and conducted in February 2013 supports the contention.
The study found that National Heritage Areas, combined, produce a $12.9 billion annual economic benefit on a $9 million-a-year federal investment.
Moreover, Hilpert said, "it will bring additional visibility to the Mississippi Delta, particularly with cultural tourism.
"And it's a way to preserve historic sites. It's an opportunity to catalog those historic sites and how they fit into the story of the Delta and of the nation.
"It's an opportunity to highlight the contributions that have been made in the Delta in the arts, in music, in literature, the list goes on.
"And it's an opportunity for those who live in the Delta to celebrate where it is we live and to help them tell the Delta's story to others. The Delta is a very special place."
Pushing forward
Brown expects the collaborative and extensive effort that created the National Heritage Area and its approved management plan to continue unabated.
"Things are going to begin to move all but immediately, certainly by the end of the summer," he said, regarding the plan's implementation. "First, there will be a symposium focusing on the Delta culture, and we'll be working with the Mississippi Department of Transportation on signage announcing you're entering a National Heritage Area, along the lines of the markers for the Mississippi Blues Trail."
During the National Heritage Area's decade-long gestation, particularly when the Great Recession struck in 2007, doubts emerged among those striving to make it a reality as to whether all the hard work ultimately would pan out.
"Yes, there were some times we wondered if it would happen," Hilpert said. "You consider the timing. There were political and budgetary concerns with the folks in Washington.
"It was always a real effort to get to the point where we could ask for legislative support."
But, "countless letters of support were written from prominent leaders in cities and counties throughout the state and from our congressional delegation.
"The needs of the Delta prevailed."
(Tom Bassing wrote this report.)