A Slow Demise in the Delta

In the mid-1990s, Morris received a federal grant to help start a sweet-potato processing plant in Mound Bayou. The idea was to provide jobs for some of the young unemployed men during planting and harvest seasons. The potatoes came from the fields of local black farmers. The plant created about 20 temporary jobs, Morris said.

Now, he and several other black farmers hope to get help from Rural Development to expand. Their plan is to use the same facility to clean and process a variety of fresh vegetables and sell them at local markets and to the casinos in Tunica County. "We want to use people who are unskilled, people who are left on the wayside," Morris said. "So many of our people are on the corners. They have no hope. It is a real struggle."

Morris has been more fortunate than many black farmers. He grew up in a farm family and returned here after receiving undergraduate and master's degrees. He has slowly built up his farm and now is able to borrow from a local bank. "Borrowing has always been a problem" for small black farmers, he said. "And borrowing from the government has not been the best, either. That has hampered the black farmer."

A decade-old lawsuit by black farmers against the Agriculture Department alleged a pattern of discrimination. Settlements are still being sorted out and Morris said that he could possibly receive a cash award. The department has since created a program to help minority farmers, but the impact has been modest. The powerful county farm committees, which hire the county Farm Service Agency executive and help enforce federal farm policies, continue to be dominated by whites. Nationally, there are 7,882 committee members, but just 90 of them are black. In Mississippi there are 236 committee members, only eight of whom are black.

Neblett, the Shelby farmer, worries that the economic and education gaps between whites and blacks in the Delta have grown so wide they may never be bridged. "We're now to the point that it is such a culture difference between those who are privileged and who had the education that I don't know how you will close that [gap]," he said.

Pat W. Denton, who is from a prominent white Shelby farm family, recently moved to Cleveland, Miss. He still rents out 1,600 acres back home and is part owner of the local cotton gin. "When I was a kid we had theaters, service stations and steakhouses in Shelby," he said. "Now, it's just going down."

As farmers shift from cotton to corn to take advantage of higher prices, even the cotton gin is emptying out. "We used to do 35,000 bales," Denton said. "We might do 15,000 this year."

Said Judy Hill: "That's what's happening all over. These Delta towns, they're just folding up."