Life and Death in the Delta : African American Narratives of Violence, Resilience, and Social Change

Based on oral histories with African American activists and community leaders, "Life and Death in the Delta" explores the civil rights movement in several Mississippi communities in the context of the region's history of white supremacy, racial oppression, and African American cultural vitality.

Terrorism, black poverty, and economic exploitation produced a condition of collective trauma and social suffering for thousands of black Deltans in the Twentieth Century.

This work reveals the impact of that oppression, and of African American traditions of community service and leadership in the lives of women and men who became activists.

The result is a sweeping history, told through the voices of ordinary people, of how the civil rights movement operated on a local level: the circumstances that made it thrive, the problems it faced, and the dangers participants encountered on a daily basis.