Mississippi Delta

The majority of these books are a part of University of Memphis McWherter Library's circulating collection and are available for check-out.  However, a few of these are housed in our Reference Collection or Preservation and Special Collections Department and are for in-house use only.

Not student or faculty?  Visit McWherter Library's
Circulation desk to obtain a Special Privileges Card, which enables guest check-out.

Protestants have dominated Mississippi since the late 18th century. The Baptists are the leading denomination and many adherents are fundamentalists.   Because of a strong church influence, Mississippi was among the first states to enact prohibition and among the last to repeal it.

In 2000, membership in the two principal Protestant denominations were: the Southern Baptist Convention, 916,440 known adherents, and the United Methodist Church, 240,576. There were about 115,760 Roman Catholics, an estimated 3,919 Muslims, and about 1,400 Jews. Over 1.2 million people (about 45.4% of the population) did not claim any religious affiliation.

For more information on Mississippi Delta religious traditions, visit Delta State University's Delta Center for Culture and Learning.

James Creek Missionary
Baptist Church
Aberdeen, MS

New Hope Presbyterian Church
Rienzi, MS 

Hebrew Union Temple
Greenville, MS

St Mark's Episcopal Church
Raymond, MS

Bethel AME Church
Vicksburg, MS

Family connection is a strong component in the religions of the Mississippi Delta.  Bruce Cole, Chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities, says that "Citizens kept ignorant of their history are robbed of the riches of their heritage." 

Discover the riches of your family heritage!   Start your own genealogical research with Ancestry.com or HeritageQuest Online.  And our Preservation and Special Collections Department might even have some lost family photos or documents!

Not student or faculty?  Stop by the McWherter Library Circulation desk to obtain a Special Priviliges Card.  This will allow access to the database HeritageQuest Online from our guest computers in the Learning Commons.

Near the Cross:  Photographs from the Mississippi Delta by Tom Rankin
from Duke University Libraries, Special Collections Exhibit 

This film was made from b/w Super 8mm footage that William Ferris gathered in rural Mississippi in 1968. The film includes footage from rural church services and a full immersion baptism.  From The Center for Southern Folklore.

In the Mississippi Delta, religion and music go hand in hand.  Music is just as important to a sermon as the actual words of the preacher.

In her article "Like a River Flowing with Living Water", Joyce Marie Jackson talks about the tradition of gospel music in Mississippi Delta churches:  "Spirituals, the sacred folk songs created by enslaved African Americans during the ante-bellum era, are still being performed in their traditional a cappella (unaccompanied) style in many rural African-American churches. Urban churches have added piano accompaniment as well as other forms of instrumentation, and spirituals have also been arranged as gospel songs." 

The Five Blind Boys of Mississippi originated in 1936 as a quartet of students from the Piney Woods School near Jackson, Mississippi. The students — Brownlee, Joseph Ford, Lawrence Abrams, and Lloyd Woodard — originally sang under the name "the Cotton Blossom Singers", performing both jubilee quartet and secular material, to raise money for the school. Their teacher, Martha Louise Morrow Foxx, helped organize the blind singers at the behest of the school founder Laurence C. Jones. On March 9, 1937, Brownlee and the others recorded sacred tunes (as the Blind Boys) and three secular numbers (as Abraham, Woodard, and Patterson) for Library of Congress researcher Alan Lomax.  

In the mid-1940s, Brownlee and the others relocated to Chicago, and changed their name to the Five Blind Boys of Mississippi.

Even though Sacred Heart Singing grew out of the New England School Movement, its popularity quickly spread through the south, particularly throughout the Mississippi Delta.  The Anglo-American sacred harp singing conventions that take place in the Delta are usually all-day affairs, and everybody is expected to participate in these religious social events. What follows the singing is another tradition - "dinner-on-the-grounds," a communal feast contributed to by all participants.  For more information on Sacred Heart Singing, see Joyce Marie Jackson's article "Like a River Flowing with Living Water": Worshiping in the Mississippi Delta.

             Winterville Mounds, Greenville, MS

  Winterville Mounds,
  named for a nearby
  community, is the
  site of a prehistoric
  ceremonial center
  built by a Native
  American civilization
  that thrived from
  about A.D. 1000
  to 1450. The
  mounds, part of
  the Winterville
  society's religious
system, were the site of sacred structures and ceremonies.  Archaeological evidence indicates that the Winterville people lived away from the mound center on family farms in scattered settlement districts throughout the Yazoo-Mississippi River Delta basin. Only a few of the highest-ranking tribal officials lived at the mound center.

Some of these articles can be accessed by students and faculty only.

Not student or faculty?  Visit McWherter Library's Circulation desk to obtain a Special Privileges Card, which enables access to articles from guest computers in McWherter Library's Learning Commons.

Find Mississippi Delta Religion databases by Academic Area or Category.  Search by  Religion under Database Subjects for links to the following databases.

Not student or faculty?  Visit McWherter Library's Circulation desk to obtain a Special Priviliges Card, which enables access to databases from guest computers in McWherter Library's Learning Commons.

    Religious Leaders with Delta Roots                                 

  Clarence
  LaVaughn
  Franklin from
  Sunflower County
  Mississippi, was an
  American Baptist
  preacher, civil
  rights activist and father of the legendary soul and gospel singer Aretha Franklin.   

   Rev. George W. Lee
   lived and pastored a
   Baptist congregation
   in Belzoni, MS.
   A staunch supporter
   of civil rights and a
   local NAACP official,
   Rev. Lee constantly
   urged his congregation
   to register and vote.
 

   Will D. Campbell
   was a Baptist minister,
   activist, author, and
   lecturer. Throughout
   his life, he has been
   a notable white
   supporter of civil
   rights in the Southern
   United States.

  Reverend Louis Cole,
  a true circuit preacher 
  at churches in Marshall
  County, Mississippi,
  was active in areas
  he considered
  important: visiting
  the sick, aiding the
needy, counseling the troubled, and trying
to live an exemplary life.