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When It's Darkness on the Delta
How America's Richest Soil Became Its Poorest Land
Author:
W. Ralph Eubanks
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For readers of
The Sum of Us
and
South to America
, an essential new look at the roots of American inequality—and the seeds of its transformation
Once the powerhouse of a fledgling country’s economy, the Mississippi Delta has been consigned to a narrative of destitution. It is often faulted for the sins of the South, portrayed as a regional backwater that willfully cleaved itself from the modern world. But buried beneath the weight of good ol’ boy politics and whitewashed histories lies the Delta’s true story.
Mississippi native and award-winning writer W. Ralph Eubanks digs through this loamy topsoil, revealing a microcosm of economic oppression in the US. He traverses the Delta, examining its bellwether efforts to combat income inequality, and introduces people like
Theodore G. Bilbo and William Whittington
, segregationist congressmen who sabotaged federal reparations for former sharecroppers in the 1940s and ’50s
Gloria Carter Dickerson
, founder of the Emmett Till Academy, whose parents were instrumental in desegregating schools in Drew, MS, where Till was murdered
Calvin Head
, a community organizer who runs a farming co-op in Mileston, who revived the legacy of his hometown, the only Black resettlement community in Mississippi
With clear-eyed analysis and heart-rending prose, Eubanks exhumes a rich seedbed of racist political machinations and economic turmoil. Yet scattered within, yearning for transformation and reinvention, are the undying seeds of the oppressed. Their thirst, Eubanks argues, is one that can be quenched by thoughtful policymaking—and by investing in the very people whose ancestors tilled such fertile land.
Goodreads reviews
ISBN:
978-080704532-9
Publication Date:
1/13/2026
Size:
6
x
9
Inches (US)
Price:
$30.00
Format:
Cloth
Not Yet Published
Will Ship On:
January 2026
(
Backorder policy
)
Add To Cart
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Also Available In:
Audio
Categories:
American Society
>
Economics
Forthcoming
>
Fall 2025
History
>
American History
Race and Ethnicity in America