Honoring the past
Delta National Heritage Area aims to preserve intertwining cultures
When it comes to history, culture and heritage of the Delta region, says Paul Alford of Horn Lake, there’s lots to save and nothing left if you let it go. There’s work to do, perspiration in preservation.
“If you lose your heritage, you lose your family, you lose everything,” said the Civil War re-enactor and second-incommand of the Samuel Hughey Camp 1452 of the Sons of Confederate Veterans. “If you can’t honor your father, grandfather of great-grandfather for what they did and contributed, you’re lost yourself.”
For the present, he and fellow camp members are focused on activity: the upcoming Battle of Hernando, a Civil War engagement at the old Mussacuna plantation site, to be re-enacted June 1415, marking its 150th anniversary. The public event’s focal point is the antebellum Robertson-Yates home, said camp member Larry Dixon of Olive Branch. It’s expected to draw thousands of viewers, plus hundreds of blue-clad “Yankee” and gray-butternut “Rebel” troops, and infuse cash into the local economy along with a living-history lesson.
“There’s a lot that happened here that didn’t get into the history books,” Dixon said.
The Delta region also is past, present and future for John T. Wallace, a Grenada native.
“I’ve got family here since way back,” he said, noting a rich African-American and Native American intertwining.
“They were Choctaw Indians,” Wallace said. “That’s a heritage I’d like to see preserved — whatever can be done.”
Differing stories, trails and traditions, but all flowing purposefully in an 18-county campaign seeking to make the Mississippi Delta National Heritage Area a functioning reality.
Development of a management plan took a major step as Alford, Dixon, Wallace and others gathered at the Landers
Center in Southaven on Tuesday to make their views known on the federally designated heritage area’s major focus areas for action, protection and preservation for the next 10-15 years. A similar session that also drew dozens of citizens and officials was held earlier in the day in Greenwood in Leflore County.
“There’s room for everybody, there’s no hard and fast rules,” said Kim Terrell, DeSoto Tourism Association director. She’s served on the heritage area’s governing board since March 2010, when her appointment was approved by DeSoto Board of Supervisors, joined by Tunica, Tate and Panola counties.
The grass-roots, community- driven project, tying heritage preservation and economic development, flows from a federal act passed in 2009 and co-sponsored by U.S. Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss. The law sets aside funding to implement a plan to reach, over a 10-year period, goals that include safeguarding and ensuring wide recognition of the Delta’s nationally significant historical, cultural and natural heritage.
Terrell and fellow board members have been tasked with planning toward formation of a regional coordinating and fiscal agency. Four other groups of counties are involved: Bolivar, Coahoma, Quitman and Tallahatchie; Holmes, Humphreys, Leflore and Carroll; Washington, Sunflower and Issaquena; and Warren, Yazoo and Sharkey
hen Terrell came aboard, the planning group had a three-year window to develop a proposal, with $150,000 in federal funds available in each of those years, matched by local dollars in kind or in hand.
“This process has been going on for 10 years and now we’re in sight of the f inish of the planning phase,” said Luther Brown, director of the Delta Center for Culture and Learning at Delta State University in Cleveland and manager of the Delta heritage area.
Heritage areas are not national park units, but the National Park Service partners with, provides technical assistance and distributes matching federal funds from Congress to heritage area entities. The Park Service does not assume ownership of land inside heritage areas or impose land-use controls.
There are 49 nationwide, including two others in Mississippi: the Gulf Heritage Area based in Biloxi and the Hills Heritage Area centered in Tupelo. Decision-making is left to local citizens and groups, and Terrell said she’s excit- ed to be in on a collaborative approach that’s based on regional knowledge and viewpoints: “It’s for all the things that make us what we are, for people to fully realize what’s in their own backyard.”
Participants at the Landers Center reviewed five options, ranging from no action to hands-on agendas of activities, outreach, revitalization and protection. Testifying to the effectiveness of an active area was Augie Carlino, executive director of the Rivers of Steel National Heritage Area of the Pittsburgh, Pa., region.
“Do nothing and everything stays a hodgepodge,” he said. Embrace an ambitious option and get results: “A heritage area is a structure that must be listened to” for allocation of funds and resources.
Results from the public meetings will be shared with the Delta heritage area board and a final draft with the best option developed; this draft will get a public airing for comment by this summer, probably July, said Nancy Morgan, a Tallahassee, Fla.,-based member of the National Trust for Historic Preservation team helping devel- op the plan. The management blueprint that’s due in December will be based on the selected option.
“This is the direction we’ll want to travel,” said Morgan. “There’s a lot of energy around the idea of telling the Delta’s story.”
“No action? No way,” said Hernando’s director of community development, Shelly Johnstone. “I’m never in favor of no action — I hope to see an activist heritage area. People come all the way from Germany and Sweden to follow our Blues Trail. Everyone is fascinated by the Mississippi River. We have such great opportunities for ecotourism, history tourism and cultural heritage.”