Dine on Labor

Chapter 2 - Delta Pride

“If the case of the Iowa firefighters shows what labor can achieve in the political arena given the proper strategy, the story of the Delta Pride illustrates labor’s potential in the realm of the workplace and workers’ lives, as well as in the broader community — despite declining resources, ebbing strength, and adversaries with influence. This achievement is all the more stunning because it occurred in a state in which the elite has long viewed organized labor as an alien element and in which union membership has represented a scant 5 percent of the workforce.

The sleepy Delta town of Indianola lies in the heart of Mississippi’s Sunflower County, an isolated region where change comes slowly, if at all. Grab a counter stool at one of the local eateries, and just as in years past, they’ll slide you a plate of fresh local catfish with homemade hush puppies and coleslaw. It’s the kind of delicious and inexpensive fare you’d expect to find in the catfish capital of the country, and when you’re done, they’ll urge you to “Come back and visit us again, y’hear?” — making a first-timer feel almost like an old-timer.

You can get a room at the inn for $40 a night, but unless you book the second floor, you may have to sweep the blackened window clear of crickets simply to peer outside or block the vents with your shoes to keep them out. And try to avoid the little green frogs that every few seasons invade the area and hop all over people. Whites still tend to cluster north of the railroad tracks, where stately homes and some sprawling estates dot the countryside. South of the tracks one finds a world of stark poverty, where blacks live in narrow shacks virtually on top of one another, though in recent years some have been torn down.

The town — population 12,066, home town of blues singer B.B. King, and birthplace of the White Citizens Council that was formed a half-century ago to defend Jim Crow practices — is midway between Jackson and Memphis and 25 miles east of the Mississippi River that divides the state from Arkansas. It retains a provincial view of the outside world, sometimes startlingly so. On my first visit years ago, a deputy sheriff wearing a fake smile greeted me in mellifluous tones, “How about that — you all the way down here from St. Louis, Kansas, just to visit us.” He was, of course, about as genuinely glad to see me as he was geographically literate, since my intent was highly subversive: to report on a bitter labor struggle that had racial overtones. But then as now, manners and at least the pretense of hospitality trump sincerity.

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