The Delta is a two-hundred-mile, leaf-shaped triangle of rich black soil bounded by the Tallahatchie and Yazoo Rivers to the east, and the Mississippi River to the west. This birthplace of the blues is completely flat from Memphis, Tennessee to Vicksburg, Mississippi. The land was flooded each spring by the Mississippi River before man intervened. Once, the river-rich soil was hidden beneath dense forests and canebrakes, through which sluggish bayous meandered. Today, the Delta is covered with cotton and soybean fields, and dotted with little towns that feel set back in time.
Cotton farmers first began the hard, slow work of clearing the land in 1835, but made little progress. Determined to get back on their feet after the Civil War ended in 1865, the farmers found dirt-cheap labor among the newly freed slaves, and redoubled efforts to clear the Delta and develop new plantations…