Mississippi’s Lower Delta Partnership announces the 2016 Lower Delta Talks series. This will be the 7th lecture series celebrating the history, culture and nature of Mississippi’s Deep Delta. The talks begin on March 15 and continue on the third Tuesday of most months through November. Talks are held in the Fine Arts room of the Sharkey Issaquena library at 6:30 p.m. and are free and open to the public.
The opening talk on March 15th will feature Rolling Fork native Nancy Virden presenting excerpts from her aunt Lady Barnard Garner’s autobiography. This manuscript gives first hand glimpses of rural life in 1920’s and 1930’s Sharkey County, and Virden will share some of these with us.
Volcanoes of the Mississippi Delta will be discussed on April 19 by Mississippi Department of Environmental Quality geologist Paul Parrish. May 17th will feature Blake Wintory of Lakeport Plantation and his presentation on Building Delta Plantations: Connecting Washington County, MS and Chicot County, AR. Emily Havens, Executive Director of Grammy Museum Mississippi in Cleveland, will present on June 21.
August and September will feature family operations. Evelyn Roughton and Jennifer Roughton Schaumburg of Indianola will share with us The Crown (restaurant): its history and its recipes on August 16. Mindy Rutherford and Jenny Rutherford Murphey will share their agribusiness in a talk titled Kin Growers: A Diversified Farming Operation.
Jim McCafferty will discuss his new book The Bear Hunter: The Life & Times of Robert Eager Bobo in the Canebrakes of the Old South on October 11. Rounding out the 2016 series will be Willy Bearden speaking on the Early Days of the Delta on November 15.
The 2016 Lower Delta Talks are sponsored by the Straddlefork Foundation, the Cortright Family, Bank of Anguilla, Friends of the Sharkey-Issaquena Library, Sharkey County Historic Preservation Commission, and Mississippi’s Lower Delta Partnership. Mark your calendars and join us at the library.
