Themed Photo Gallery : Clarksdale
History
Extract from Wikipedia (music and related themes):
Clarksdale is a city in Coahoma County, Mississippi, United States, and seat of the county. The western boundary of the county is formed by the Mississippi River. Located in the Mississippi Delta region, Clarksdale is an agricultural and trading center. It has been home to many blues musicians. Clarksdale is named after John Clark, who founded the city in the mid-19th century.
Former Yazoo & Mississippi Valley/Illinois Central Passenger Depot in Clarksdale, early 1900s.
The building is now the location of the Delta Blues Museum.
Early History
Choctaw and Chickasaw Indians occupied the Delta region prior to the arrival of European settlers. Clarksdale was developed at the former intersection of two Indian routes: the Lower Creek Trade Path, which extended westward from Augusta, Georgia, to New Mexico; and the Chakchiuma Trade Trail, which ran northeastward to the former village at present-day Pontotoc, Mississippi.
The first removal treaty carried out under the Indian Removal Act was the 1830 Treaty of Dancing Rabbit Creek, by which the Choctaw people were robbed of 15 million acres in Indian Territory (now Oklahoma). A similar forced removal of the Chickasaw Nation began in 1837; once in Indian Territory, the Choctaw were forced out of the westernmost part of their land.
Following the removal of the Indians, European-American settlers migrated to the Delta region, where the fertile soil was excellent for growing cotton. They brought or purchased African-American slaves to work the several cotton plantations developed in the county, always locating these on the riverfront for transportation access. John Clark founded the town in 1848 when he bought land in the area and started a timber business. Clark married the sister of James Lusk Alcorn, a major planter who owned a nearby plantation. Alcorn became a politician, elected by the state legislature as US Senator and later elected as governor of the state. Thriving from the cotton trade and associated business, Clarksdale soon earned the title “The Golden Buckle on the Cotton Belt”.
African-American slaves made the plantations work and built the wealth of King Cotton in the state. U.S. Census data shows Coahoma County, Mississippi’s 1860 population was 1,521 whites and 5,085 slaves. James Alcorn was a major planter, owning 77 slaves.
When slavery was abolished, many black families labored as sharecroppers. They gained some independence but were often at a disadvantage in negotiations with white planters. Historian Nicholas Lemann writes “segregation strengthened the grip of the sharecropper system by ensuring that most blacks would have no arena of opportunity in life except for the cotton fields”.
During the Reconstruction Era following the Civil War, Mississippi’s blacks and poor whites both benefited from the State’s new constitution of 1868, which adopted universal suffrage; did away with property qualifications for suffrage or for office; provided for the state’s first public school system; forbade race distinctions in the possession and inheritance of property; and prohibited limiting civil rights in travel.
Those gains were short-lived, as insurgent white paramilitary groups such as the Red Shirts worked to suppress black voting from 1868 on. By 1875 white Democrats took control of the state legislature in Mississippi. They later passed Jim Crow laws, including legal segregation of public facilities.
A freedman named Bill Peace, who had served in the Union Army and returned to Clarksdale after the war, persuaded his former owner to allow him to form a security force to prevent theft from the plantation. On October 9, 1875, whites in Clarksdale began hearing rumors that “General Peace” was preparing his troops to plunder the town; rumors spread that he was planning to murder the whites. A white militia was formed, and they suppressed Peace’s “revolt”. Across Mississippi, white militias frequently formed in response to similar fears of armed black revolt.
Twentieth-century historian Nicholas Lemann writes:
Like the establishment of sharecropping, the restoration to power of the all-white Democratic Party in the South was a development of such magnitude to whites that it became encrusted in legend; many towns have their own mythic stories of the redemption of the white South. In Clarksdale it is the story of the “race riot” of October 9, 1875.
After the Reconstruction era and construction in 1879 of the Louisville, New Orleans and Texas Railway through the town, Clarksdale was incorporated in 1882. In 1886, the town’s streets were laid out; it was not until 1913 that any were paved.
African-Americans composed most of the farm labor in the county into the 1940s, when increasing mechanization reduced the need for field workers and thousands of blacks had left Mississippi in the Great Migration to Chicago and later, West Coast cities. They developed a rich musical tradition drawing from many strands of music, and influencing jazz and the blues in Chicago.
The Great Migration
The movement of large numbers of people both to and from Clarksdale is prominent in the city’s history. Prior to 1920, Delta plantations were in constant need of laborers, and many black families moved to the area to work as sharecroppers. After World War I, plantation owners even encouraged blacks to move from the other parts of Mississippi to the Delta region for work. By this time, Clarksdale had also become home to a multi-cultural mixture of Lebanese, Italian, Chinese and Jewish immigrant merchants.
By 1920, the price of cotton had fallen, and many blacks living in the Delta began to leave. The Illinois Central Railroad operated a large depot in Clarksdale and provided a Chicago-bound route for those seeking greater economic opportunities in the north; it soon became the primary departure point for many.
During the 1940s, three events occurred which increased the exodus of African-Americans from Clarksdale. First, it became possible to commercially produce a cotton crop entirely by machine, which lessened the need for a large, low-paid workforce. (Coincidentally, it was on 28 acres of the nearby Hopson Plantation where the International Harvester Company perfected the single-row mechanical cotton picking machine in 1946; soil was prepared, seeded, picked and bailed entirely by machines, while weeds were eradicated by flame). See also EarlyBlues article Hopson Plantation.
Second, many African-American GIs (soldiers) returned from World War II to find slim opportunities for employment in the Delta region. Finally, there appeared an accelerated climate of racial hatred, as evidenced by the violence against such figures as NAACP representative Aaron Henry.
“The Great Migration” north became the largest movement of Americans in U.S. history, and was recounted with Clarksdale triangulated with Chicago and Washington D.C. in Nicholas Lemann’s award-winning book The Promised Land: The Great Black Migration and How it Changed America. The History Channel later produced a documentary based on the book, narrated by actor Morgan Freeman, who is also a co-owner of Ground Zero Blues Club.
Civil Rights in Clarksdale
On September 10, 1919, Black veteran L.B. Reed was lynched as part of the Red Summer of 1919.
Clarksdale played a very important role in the civil rights movement in Mississippi. The starting point for a civil rights movement in Clarksdale was the rape at gunpoint of two African-American women, Leola Tates and Erline Mills, in August 1951. The two white teenagers they said assaulted them, who admitted the event but said it was consensual, were arrested, but “despite the overwhelming evidence against them, the justice of peace court judge freed the accused perpetrators”.
This was followed by the nearby (50 miles (80 km)) lynching of Emmett Till in 1955.
Music History
Clarksdale has been historically significant in the history of the blues. The Mississippi Blues Trail places interpretative markers for historic sites such as Clarksdale’s Riverside Hotel, where Bessie Smith died following an auto accident on Highway 61. The Riverside Hotel is just one of many historical blues sites in Clarksdale. Early supporters of the effort to preserve Clarksdale’s musical legacy included the award-winning photographer and journalist Panny Mayfield, Living Blues magazine founder Jim O’Neal, and attorney Walter Thompson, father of sports journalist Wright Thompson. In 1995, Mt. Zion Memorial Fund founder Skip Henderson, a vintage guitar dealer from New Brunswick, New Jersey and friend of Delta Blues Museum founder Sid Graves, purchased the Illinois Central Railroad passenger depot to save it from planned demolition. With the help of local businessman Jon Levingston, as well as the Delta Council, Henderson received a US$1.279 million grant from the federal government to restore the passenger depot. These redevelopment funds were then transferred on the advice of Clarksdale’s City attorney, Hunter Twiford, to Coahoma County, in order to establish a tourism locale termed “Blues Alley”, after a phrase coined by then Mayor, Henry Espy. The popularity of the Delta Blues Museum and the growth of the Sunflower River Blues Festival and Juke Joint Festivals have provided an economic boost to the city.
Arts and Culture
Delta Blues Museum
Delta Blues Museum
Juke Joint Festival at Delta Cinema in Clarksdale
In late 1979 Carnegie Public Library Director Sid Graves began a nascent display series which later became the nucleus of the Delta Blues Museum. Graves single-handedly nurtured the beginnings of the museum in the face of an indifferent community and an often recalcitrant Library Board, at times resorting to storing displays in the trunk of his car when denied space in the library. When the fledgling museum was accidentally discovered by Billy Gibbons of the rock band ZZ Top through contact with Howard Stovall Jr., the Delta Blues Museum became the subject of national attention as a pet project of the band, and the Museum began to enjoy national recognition.
In 1995 the museum, at that time Clarksdale’s only attraction, grew to include a large section of the newly renovated library building, but remained under the tight control of the Carnegie Library Board, who subsequently fired Sid Graves, at the time seriously ill. Graves died in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, in January 2005. In an interim move from the renovated Library building, the Museum spent most of 1996 in a converted retail storefront on Delta Avenue under the direction of a politically connected former Wisconsin native, the late Ron Gorsegner. In 1997–1998 Coahoma County would finally provide funds to form a separate Museum Board of Directors composed mainly of socially prominent, local white blues fans, and to renovate the adjoining Illinois Central Railroad freight depot, providing a permanent home for the Delta Blues Museum.
Mississippi Blues Trail Markers
A Blues Trail marker at the WROX building in Clarksdale.
The site is also list on the National Register of Historic Places.
Several Mississippi Blues Trail markers are located in Clarksdale.
One is located on Stovall Road at a cabin believed to have been lived in by famed bluesman McKinley Morganfield, also known as Muddy Waters. Morganfield supposedly lived there from 1915 until 1943 while he worked on the large Stovall cotton plantation before moving to Chicago after mistreatment at the hands of a Stovall overseer.
Another Blues Trail marker is located at the Riverside Hotel, which provided lodging to blues entertainers passing through the delta.
In 2009, a marker devoted to Clarksdale native Sam Cooke was unveiled in front of the New Roxy Theater.
Clarksdale Walk of Fame
Established in 2008, the Clarksdale Walk of Fame are plaques located in downtown, which honor notable people who’ve made significant contributions to Clarksdale. Honorees include John Lee Hooker, Ike Turner, Muddy Waters, and Sam Cooke.
Musicians Born in Clarksdale
Eddie Boyd, Jackie Brenston, Eddie “Bongo” Brown, Willie Brown, Eddie Calhoun, Sam Cooke, Nate Dogg, Marshall Drew, Blac Elvis, Earl Hooker, John Lee Hooker, Son House, Johnny B. Moore, Junior Parker, Mack Rice, Rick Ross, Brother John Sellers, Ike Turner, Robert “Bilbo” Walker Jr., Christone “Kingfish” Ingram.
Musicians Who Lived or Worked in Clarksdale
Gus Cannon, W. C. Handy, Robert Johnson, Willie Morganfield, Frank Stokes, Wade Walton, Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf.
In Popular Culture
Jimmy Page and Robert Plant [Led Zeppelin] named their 1998 album Walking Into Clarksdale as a tribute to the significance that Clarksdale made in the history of the Delta Blues.
See also
Full Clarksdale Wikipedia entry
National Register of Historic Places listings in Coahoma County
Photo Gallery
These photos were mainly taken in 2008 so views may dffer from the present day.
Famous Delta Blues Museum entrance sign.
Delta Blues Museum taken from the old railroad track. Museum extension now built to the left. To the far left is of course …
The famous Ground Zero Blues Club.
Side elevation (now had a small extension to the right).
The front door!
Poster of the time.
Showing the Delta Ave / Blues Alley road sign.
In close-up.
Looking down Delta Ave from Ground Zero entrance porch.
Red’s Blues Club, Sunflower Ave.
Further on down Sunflower Ave. with The Riverside Hotel in view.
Riverside Hotel with Mississippi Blues Trail Marker.
Full text on front and back (as it’s hard to read):
Since 1944 the Riverside Hotel has provided lodging for traveling musicians. It was home to some, including Sonny Boy Williamson II, Ike Turner, and Robert Nighthawk. Before that, the building served African Americans of the Delta as the G.T. Thomas Hospital. Blues singer Bessie Smith died here in 1937 from injuries sustained in a car accident while traveling to Clarksdale for a performance.
On the morning of September 26, 1937, Bessie Smith, “the empress of the blues,” died here at the G.T. Thomas Afro American Hospital following an automobile accident on Highway 61 just outside of Clarksdale. Smith, known for her powerful voice and the raw emotion of her delivery, was the biggest star of the blues in the 1920s, and was in the process of making a comeback.
Born in Chattanooga, Tennessee, in the early 1890s, Smith lost both parents by the time she was nine, and she and her older sister were left caring for nine younger children. Smith and her brother Andrew began performing on the streets to earn money. She began her professional career in 1912 as a dancer with the Moses Stokes touring company, which also included Gertrude “Ma” Rainey (1886-1939), later dubbed the “mother of the blues.” Rainey served as a mentor to Smith, who soon became an established performer on the African-American vaudeville circuit.
In 1923 Bessie Smith made her first recording for the Columbia label, “Downhearted Blues / Gulf Coast Blues.” The single was the first in a string of hits, including “St. Louis Blues,” and Smith soon became the highest paid African-American performer of the 1920s. At the time of her fatal accident, Smith was in her Packard on her way from Memphis to Clarksdale to spend the night. She was to appear the following day with the traveling show Broadway Rastus in the community of Darling, about 20 miles northeast of here. It was widely rumored that Smith’s death resulted from her being refused admission to Clarksdale’s “white” hospital, but the facts suggest otherwise. The reality was that during that time local ambulance drivers would not have considered taking an African-American patient to a “white” hospital in the first place.
Like hospitals, housing accommodations were segregated prior to the 1970s, and some hotels catered to touring musicians. In 1944 the building was opened as the Riverside Hotel, and regular guests in the ’40s and ’50s included local blues artists Sonny Boy Williamson II, Robert Nighthawk, Raymond Hill, Ike Turner, Joe Willie Wilkins, James “Peck” Curtis, Johnny O’Neal, and Robert “Dudlow” Taylor. Another notable guest in the hotel was John F. Kennedy, Jr., who stayed here in 1991.