Joe's Mississippi NEH Workshop 2014: Day 4: The Blues

Wednesday saw us begin our day with a short bus ride to Dockery Farms. There we learned of the cotton picking culture that was present there and how it led to the music we now call the Blues. Charlie Patton and other cotton pickers sang about the realities of life they found in their harsh lives and eventually made their way singing the Blues around the country.

From Dockery we visited "the crossroads" that Tommy Johnson surely traveled from his home each day when traveling to Dockery. While we didn't meet the devil there, we did marvel in the West African culture brought first to the Caribbean and then on to America by the slaves. This culture consisted of Voodoo that believed in various gods and especially the trickster god of the crossroads.

A short ride to Rueville, Mississippi where Fannie Lou Hammer's grave-site is located and a documentary to detail her life on a cotton plantation and her firing for registering to vote followed. Dr. Edgar Smith gave us in depth background information about Hammers and her involvement in Freedom Summer, SNCC and the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party.

Another bus trip to Indianola, Mississippi and documentary on B.B. King led us to the B.B. King Museum. Here we learned of King and his blues career as he spread the Blues from the Chitlin Circuit and beyond.

The afternoon was spent with Dr. David Evans, professor of Ethnomusicology, discussing the history of the Blues. We also got to experience our taste of the day, Tamales.