The Most Southern Place on Earth: The Mississippi Delta and the Roots of Regional Identity [Paperback]

James C. Cobb (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0195089138 | ISBN-13: 978-0195089134 | Publication Date: August 4, 1994

"Cotton obsessed, Negro obsessed," Rupert Vance called it in 1935. "Nowhere but in the Mississippi Delta," he said, "are antebellum conditions so nearly preserved." This crescent of bottomlands between Memphis and Vicksburg, lined by the Yazoo and Mississippi rivers, remains in some ways what it was in 1860: a land of rich soil, wealthy planters, and desperate poverty--the blackest and poorest counties in all the South. And yet it is a cultural treasure house as well--the home of Muddy Waters, B.B. King, Charley Pride, Walker Percy, Elizabeth Spencer, and Shelby Foote. Painting a fascinating portrait of the development and survival of the Mississippi Delta, a society and economy that is often seen as the most extreme in all the South, James C. Cobb offers a comprehensive history of the Delta, from its first white settlement in the 1820s to the present. Exploring the rich black culture of the Delta, Cobb explains how it survived and evolved in the midst of poverty and oppression, beginning with the first settlers in the overgrown, disease-ridden Delta before the Civil War to the bitter battles and incomplete triumphs of the civil rights era. In this comprehensive account, Cobb offers new insight into "the most southern place on earth," untangling the enigma of grindingly poor but prolifically creative Mississippi Delta.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"This is a solidly researched and well-written book that delineates one of the most disturbing chapters and places in American history. It deserves to be widely read not only as a story of this most southern place but also as a story of the United States."--The Journal of Southwest Georgia History

"The work is best as a clear-thinking and sensitive history of racial and worker exploitation and as an argument that such exploitation has not been a great exception to the rest of American history but a particularly vivid culmination of it."--Ted Ownby, University of Mississippi

"Well researched, great little details and stories make it fascinating. A good historical perspective of Delta region."--Ron Bernthal, Sullivan County Community College

"Fascinating."--Philip Scranton, Rutgers University

"Well written, and an excellent addition to the literature on the South since the Civil War. A must read!"--J. Paul Leslie, Nicholls State University

"A lively, compassionate and disturbing book based on a wealth of sources."--The New York Times Book Review

"Extensive, engrossing, and literate."--Stephen J. Whitfield, Brandeis University

"An enthralling new history....Cobb's well-researched, well-written book is 'must' reading for anyone interested in the Delta."--Lexington Herald-Leader

"Cobb...painstakingly lays out the historical roots for the Delta's huge impact on American history....Fascinating history."--Fanfare

"Fulfilling the ironic meaning of the title, James Cobb provides the first comprehensive history of the Mississippi Delta to appear in half a century....His exposition of the often misunderstood sharecrop and tenant systems is a much needed contribution, but the sections devoted to the Delta's distinctive cultural life, both white and black, are outstanding. Like some of the notable works by Delta writers, whom Cobb discusses, The Most Southern Place on Earth will take its place among the classic texts in Southern studies."--Bertram Wyatt-Brown, University of Florida, author of Honor and Violence in the Old South

About the Author

James C. Cobb is Bernadotte Schmitt Professor of History at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. His books include The Selling of the South, Industrialization and Southern Society, and The New Deal and the South.

Product Details

• Paperback: 416 pages
• Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA (August 4, 1994)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0195089138
• ISBN-13: 978-0195089134
• Product Dimensions: 7.9 x 5.2 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #253,746 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

46 of 50 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Most Southern Place on Earth, The Mississippi Delta and, January 9, 2000

By 

Sam Rushing (Colorado) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Most Southern Place on Earth: The Mississippi Delta and the Roots of Regional Identity (Paperback)

I loved what the book! As a 4th generation Mississippi Deltan, seventh generation Mississippian, white , 48 year old male, I was very impressed with Mr Cobb's research. He certainly dispelled many of the myths that we were taught as we grew up from a segregated society to a desegregated society. I now live in Colorado but my family and friends still live in the Delta. I wish this book was required reading in the schools in the Delta as well as anywhere segregation and racism exists to help people better understand why these problems that continue to plague these areas will not go away. A great study on the Mississippi Delta with more fact than fiction.

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Pure soil endlessly deep--dark and sweet, February 4, 2009

By 

Kurt Grussendorf (Pensacola, Florida) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Most Southern Place on Earth: The Mississippi Delta and the Roots of Regional Identity (Paperback)

I must give the author credit for capturing the physical ethos of the Delta land. Like Eudora Welty, I am a strong believer in a "sense of place" and the description of the soil, rivers,vines,cane brakes,and trees is superb. The rich and fecund soil--"in the passionate embrace of deep-rooted trees and close-clinging vines." One can feel the heat rising and the Kudzu groping its tendrils through the subtropical landscape. With entire banks of soil cleaving into the frothing flood swollen Mississippi--the Congo Basin of the South.

These are the rich bottom lands of William Faulkner's Bear novella and Percy's levee lanterns. Here black men and women developed a culture and even freedom that spawned much of the civil rights movement. Asians and Italians and Anglo-Saxon folks from the hill country all came together in a curious mix. The Delta is the most African part of America in many respects and remains a land of promise and despair--best illustrated in the music of the Delta Blues. And all the while the promise of the soil and the rich fecundity of the soil conjures up images of Antebellum Greek Revival homes next to sharecropper cottages. Less red clay and more black alluvium that was hardly a part of the historical Old South as it developed for the most part much later after the War. The book is but an introduction to a unique land.

19 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Most Southern Place on Earth, May 5, 2005

By 

JD - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Most Southern Place on Earth: The Mississippi Delta and the Roots of Regional Identity (Paperback)

I couldn't disagree more with Cecil Fox's obtuse review of this book. I think Mr. Fox spent more time examining his 'Word of the Day' calendar than attempting to formulate a coherent review. In fact, his description of Cobb's work reads more like a pastiche of academic cliches than an opinion from a reader who might have actually read the book he was reviewing. Revisionism? Where? "Ideological rectitude?" What ideology was espoused? I thought the text was concise and honest about the South, the Delta, and regional identity. Apologist? Please see Mr. Fox's review of "Moon Handbooks Havana" for a textbook example where he equates the U.S. with a third-world country in comparison to Cuba and offers up the laughable non sequitur that "Civil liberties are no more endangered in Havana than in Alabama or the Bronx." If Mr. Fox did indeed grow up in the Delta, then his review more accurately reflects the pretentious dismisiveness of a prodigal son from Madison or Ridgeland than a sharecropper from Tutwiler. Cobb's focus on the elite as an oppresive force that shaped both the economy and society in the same manner that the Mississippi shaped the Delta might not be popular with all but will never be mistaken as revisionist.