In 1979, I was born in Greenville, a small town on the Mississippi River in the heart of the Delta. Our family lived in Greenville until I was eight and my brother was two, and then we moved 120 miles south to Jackson, Mississippi’s capital city. Before I was a year old, I had already met my two of my very best friends in Greenville, and after we moved, I would go back to the Delta two to three times a year for decades to visit them.
There was always something different about Greenville and the Delta in general. I knew this intuitively, but I couldn’t really put my finger on what it was until much later in life. My father, the consummate Southern storyteller, describes Greenville culture in a way that really rings true. In Jackson, a dinner party goes something like this. Folks arrive at six o’clock, eat dinner at six-thirty, and head home promptly by eight-thirty. In the Delta, folks are invited at six and arrive at eight, drink until dinner’s served at eleven, dance until two, home before dawn.
That, my friends, is the Delta. And really just the tip of the iceberg.
Greenville is home to about 30,000 people. Being a port city between Memphis and New Orleans, Greenville was a very cosmopolitan, diverse, and relatively progressive community, at one time boasting more than sixty Chinese grocery stores in the early twentieth century. The town’s first elected mayor in 1875 was Leopold Wilczinski, a Polish Jew.
has played an important role in the Mississippi Delta since before the Civil War. The Hebrew Union congregation loosely began in Greenville in 1869. Located today in downtown Greenville, this temple was constructed originally as Hebrew Union School in 1881 and was later converted into a synagogue in 1905. One of the coolest legacies of this community (in my opinion) is the Annual Deli Luncheon, a tradition serving corned beef on rye to Deltans for over 130 years. According to the Southern Foodways Alliance, a Chicago deli ships 400 pounds of corned beef each year, a local bakery makes the rye bread, and a 4th generation Greenville, Mississippi family makes the sauerkraut using Betty Goldstein’s recipe, a local legend in the community. “Some say, though, it’s not as good as Betty’s because it’s missing the ash that would accidentally fall in the pot from her cigarette.”
The original office building for the Delta Democrat-Times is located at the corner of Walnut and Main Streets in downtown Greenville. The newspaper began in the mid-1800’s, but the official moniker came in 1939 by Hodding Carter II, a Louisiana transplant. At the time, Carter II was labeled a progressive, and by today's standards, he would be barely considered a moderate. He was outspoken about intolerance against Black Mississippians, and won a Pulitzer for his work on the mistreatment of Japanese Americans during WWII. On a plane the day after Bobby Kennedy was assassinated, Carter II famously punched a guy who called Kennedy a son of a bitch. "You're a son of a bitch!" then pow, right in the mouth.
One of my mama's first journalism jobs was at the DDT in the mid-1970's working under Hodding Carter III, whose staff were 100 Percenters (against segregation). She worked alongside recent grads from Berkeley and Yale who had traveled to the MS Delta to report on civil rights in a state hell bent against racial justice.
According to the MS Civil Rights Project, "Carter III said the same kind of paper – outspoken against the white establishment – might not have thrived in Jackson. 'There was a broader sense of the world in Greenville' because many Greenville merchants were Catholic, Jewish and Lebanese descendants who were not offended by the paper’s stance. ‘They weren’t 100% Southerners themselves,' Carter III said.
Will Campbell, who was forced out as chaplain at the U of Mississippi for his integrationist views, says Carter’s stand was braver than Carter III describes. 'The Greenville Delta Democrat-Times was enlightened under the leadership of Hodding Carter,' Campbell said. 'The Charlotte Observer gave some leadership on integration. The Raleigh News and Observer also stepped out. But for the most part, the Southern press didn’t have much to be proud of.”
In 2019, Australian-based NuFarm began transforming an older manufacturing facility in Greenville, Mississippi into a new crop protection facility. This building has been empty since 2015 - its last tenants being 13 Matcor employees who made dashboards for Nissan Armadas.
Largely because of its location on the Mississippi River, Greenville has historically been a manufacturing community. Post NAFTA, many of these companies moved out of the US, leaving behind large empty facilities and an under-developed workforce. Greenville is working to change both, having secured over 100 million in economic investments in the last few years, while simultaneously investing in the community’s workforce development thru several nationally recognized programs.
Greenville currently has a poverty rate of 35% and a 6.6% unemployment rate. This newly renovated plant will be the first manufacturing company to set up in Washington County since 2004, bringing with it 69 jobs with benefits, all but one of which will be local hires.
“Community development IS creative. You want to embrace the unknown, the uncertainty of the process….Because what we’re doing everyday is figuring out creative ways to structure deals, creative ways to get people here, and really it goes back to telling a story.” - William Coppage, Director, Washington County Economic Alliance, Greenville, Mississippi.
Want to plan a trip to Greenville? Check out some travel suggestions and a weekend itinerary to Mississippi’s Washington County.
Like what you see? Invest in a painting or a limited edition print of Greenville, Mississippi.