The One-time Collaboration between Mt. Zion Fund and Delta Blues Museum to Save Cemeteries

Cultural Resource Management, Eradication, and Desecration in the Magnolia State

Mississippi's Delta blues music impelled the rise of the Mt. Zion Memorial Fund in 1989, but the need to preserve abandoned cemeteries and burial sites of musicians keeps us going.  Like many folks still today visiting the Delta, we enjoy visiting the graves of blues artists,  But unlike most folks now, we discovered that most of them were not marked and some border on the level of atrocity. When Cootchie Howard showed our founder the grave of Charley Patton, one of the most popular early blues guitarists and composers in the Delta, I am not ashamed to admit that he cried.  Here was a man who served as a mentor to many other legends and his grave was twenty yards from a garbage dump. He deserved more respect than that. 

That may be in the dictionary: disrespect - storing garbage on the grave of someone's ancestor

Yet, if the grave is unmarked.  It's legal in Mississippi.  And the law has not changed as of 2017.

At the dedication of Patton's headstone, Rev. Ernest Ware of New Jerusalem Baptist Church in Holly Ridge mentioned Mt. Olive Cemetery where his two brothers and great-grandmother were buried. He told Henderson that farmers had plowed over the cemetery and planted cotton on the property. 

"As I looked into his eyes, I saw bitterness, defeat and helplessness," Henderson recalled, "I hope I never see anything like that in human eyes again." 

Says Ware: "As a minister, I know it's nothing but flesh in the graves. The soul is gone to another place. It's just the principle of the thing. These families want to go back and visit the graves of their loved ones. How would you feel just going back to a cotton field?" Henderson established the Mt. Zion Memorial Fund, a non-profit corporation that raises "money to support church communities in memorializing musical figures associated with their church or buried at their church." 

"Our whole premise in doing this is that the church cornmunity controls its property.  If they control the property, they don't have to worry about others coming in to destroy cemeteries."

Sid Graves, director of the Delta Blues Museum in Clarksdale, thought the MZMF had been an inspiration to many Delta residents. The Mt. Zion Memorial Fund "spent a lot of time and money helping the people here [and] some churches have been able to retire their debts."  Graves even joined together with Henderson in his efforts at "empowering the people of the Delta, while he and the churches are honoring the blues greats."  Graves explained his support,. "I respect him and his efforts."

Mississippi's chief archaeologist says the state has laws protecting gravesites, but it's up to local, county and state officials to enforce them. "There is always the misconception that the Department of Archives and History can do something about all grave desecrations," informed archaeologist Sam McGahey. "The fact is, we only have the authority to protect ancient graves — the graves of Native Americans, Hawaiians and Eskimos. Law enforcement officers must handle the other problems. Archives and History just doesn't have the time or manpower to go around and chase violators or check out every place a possible desecration occurs. "I think we would put an end to this problem if officials would only enforce the law."

Assistant Attorney General Trey Bobbinger says state law makes obliterating a cemetery that is recognizable by grave markers, a plot, or fence line a misdemeanor carrying a fine of not more than $500 or a sentence of not more than one year in the county jail, or both. 

On the other hand, state law makes injuring, disfiguring, removing, excavating, damaging, digging into or destroying any "prehistoric or historic American Indian or aboriginal burial" a misdemeanor carrying a fine of not less than $500 and not more than $5,000 or a sentence of not more than 30 days or both. "The county may order restitution to pay the cost of damage to the grave," admits Bobbinger. "However, before a person can be prosecuted for desecration of a cemetery, he must have knowingly or willingly committed the offense." 

Rev. Earnest Ware of Leland, a plaintiff in a Washington County grave desecration lawsuit, exclaimed, "The law says destroying graves is a crime and those who do it should be penalized. Something has to be done. All I want is better laws, better protection for the dead. A little respect is not much to ask for."  But look around.  A little respect is the one thing that has never been.

Since 1989, the Mt. Zion Memorial Fund has assisted Delta residents in the preservation of area cemeteries. Skip Henderson took an interest in the preservation after discovering that many of the graves of legendary bluesmen were in danger of being lost. "Farmers are taking over much of the land in the Delta," he maintained, and "We don't want to continue to lose the rich heritage that is found in the Mississippi Delta. The thing I find ironic is black farm workers who are required to go around Indian mounds, but yet they plow through the graves of their own relatives. How can people let this happen'?"  There is only so much the that can legally be done through  the Mt. Zion  Memorial Fund.

John Hurt: Last Chord Diminished

What the writer of this smart alek article seems to be unaware of is that those other electric bands rode to fame on the likes of John Hurt's back. He trivializes the social networks that collected the 78s, searched for the singers, brought them to light--and to some money--in the cloistered little bubble of an 'inner' folk world, and made them an enduring symbol of passive resistance against oppression, without ever having to mention the word. He's right about the stoicism. Some of his statements are factually incorrect."

--- Andrew Cohen

John Hurt: Last Chord Diminished 

By John Lombardi - Louisville Courier-Post - June 4, 1967

Mississippi John Hurt is dead. And this is a delayed-reaction post modem. Which is okay because a lot of things that happened to the 72-year-old blues singer were "delayed."

Like his success.

A folklore enthusiast and writer, Tom Hoskins, found him cleaning out a livery stable near his home town of Avalon, Miss., back in 1960. He persuaded John to journey up to the Newport Folk Festival that year and perform for the then-burgeoning crowd of "authentic" blues and country music purists who were beginning to create the market that has boomed and died since.

"Electrified Critics"

John went up, with a borrowed guitar, and didn't exactly electrify the audience. He "electrified" a small nucleus of critics, writers who were influential later in folk music publications like "Sing Out" and "The Little Sandy Review," and who "interpreted" John's worth for the new record buyers.

He caught on slowly but surely, until it was suddenly very "in" to dig his intricate finger-picking and gentle blues vocals. That was in 1963-65.

Then he began to subside, like unamplified folk music generally, and to give way to post-hip electric-rock and acid-rock blues groups like the Paul Butterfield Band, the Blues Project, and later the Mothers of Invention and the Lovin' Spoonful.

"Albums Sold Well"

By 1966 when most of the "new" folk clubs around the country were regularly booking rock, John was still appearing but not really "drawing."

But his four albums had sold well, and his appearances guaranteed him an income for the rest of his life.

John had cut records earlier, back in the 20s and early 30s for old labels like Caedmon and Bluebird, and he'd been praised then as a "natural virtuoso," but with the Depression, money to buy such luxuries as records dried up. Especially among rural and urban Negro audiences.

"Success Fades"

(Real collectors, with the money to spend, were able to go on buying blues records and tapes, but they didn't constitute a large enough public to sustain too many careers.)

So after a brief period of comparative success, John faded back into rural Avalon.

One groovy thing about him was an ability to ride-with-it. He had a kind of easy-going stoicism, an ability to bend without breaking—and bend pretty far. He smiled at you—you couldn't miss it.

"Just Make 'Em Up"

And John didn't consider himself any guitar virtuoso. He made up a lot of the chords he played, and his chord progressions could get rather obviously repetitious, even to an inexperienced blues listener.

"I just make 'em up (chords) and fit 'em in where they sound right," he told an interviewer last year.

He always liked to tell it like it was.

One night at the 2nd Fret in Philadelphia, during the height of his popularity, he looked down from the tiny wooden stage at a ringside couple and smiled; "I seen trouble all my days." Then he sang "I Love My Baby By the Lovin' Spoonful," and you knew he wasn't jiving.

"Like the Janitor"

He'd come in a short time before, a little early, to catch the end of Jesse Colin Young's act. Jesse, at the time, was a rising young folk star and, for my money, the best of the white blues singers.

John had on a wrinkled old see-through white shirt, baggy, street-colored pants and his ever-present, turned-down, flop-felt hat. He looked like the janitor.

He came sidling in, slowly, along the wall, then worked himself as unobtrusively as possible past some ringside customers and settled in a corner.

"Encounter Angers Patron"

Courier Post, Jan 14, 1967.

Before getting to his seat though. John stepped on a man's foot. The guy was with his wife, and they were both in their late 20s with lank, pale hair and blue eyes and just in from Narberth or Bryn Mawr or St. David's to see the great John Hurt.

The man winced and kind of drew back, then exchanged a look with his wife that might have meant nothing more than "my foot hurts," but looked more like "who is that damned black janitor anyway?"

John didn't say "excuse me" or anything and the man went on looking outraged and kept casting furious glances at him for the rest of the act, until some people sitting behind him noticed who it was and began whispering: "That's Mississippi John Hurt, John Hurt, Hurt, Hurt, Hurt . . ." just like Tom Wolfe says they always do.


Got a Light?

The outraged guy was shocked.

John stood up, still smiling from Jesse's fine blues, and fished a cigarette out of his shirt pocket. Then he began fumbling for a match.

He wasn't fast enough.

The guy from Narberth or Bryn Mawr stuck a lighter in his face and offered, with bounteous good-fellowship and the-proper-amount-of-respect-for-such-a-really-great-artist: "Here John, I've got your light."

Hurt was grinning as he accepted.

Levon Helm on the Delta Cultural Center at Helena - June 28, 1988

Levon Helm ( c. early 2000s)

(making his case for one element of the Lower MS Delta Develepmont Act before the committees on Environment and Public Works and Small Business in the US Senate)

"Mr. Chairmen, while economic progress must take place, there is no reason why this progress should so drastically change our way of life that we lose our culture, that sense of who we are. That is perhaps the most important reason that this commission should pursue projects like the Delta Cultural Center in Helena, Arkansas which would help to preserve and interpret the rich cultural heritage of the Arkansas and Mississippi Delta region. Through organized events, exhibits, and programs, this center would give the people of the Delta the sense of community that is so badly needed there as well as work to preserve the region's unique cultural aspects. I have seen the importance of doing this through my work at the Helena Blues Festival. This October will be the 3rd year that the event has taken place and I would like to take this time to invite each of you to come and join us. You could then understand what an event such as the Festival can do for the morale of the people in that area."

Helm proved a powerful force in Helena and Washington D.C.  Having come up in Marvell, the famous drummer/singer was an eager ambassador for Arkansas.  He had been the feature artist at the 1987 King Biscuit Blues Festival, which served as a major step up towards welcoming as many as 40,000 in 1988 and over 100,000 in the early nineties.  His support of the cultural center in Helena may have been the final, deciding factor in the decision of the governor in 1989.  

Levon Helm in early 1990s

At the historical setting of Centennial Baptist Church, Gov. Bill Clinton recently unveiled plans for the new Arkansas Delta Cultural Center in Helena. Economists project that within 5 to 6 years the center will bring between $3 and $6.5 million into the local economy as well as create 134 new jobs in the newly-created tourism and tourism-related industries.  “It has been my vision for many years to establish a center that preserves the history and culture of the people of the Arkansas Delta,” Clinton informed, and he wanted to recognize the people who developed the region into a “land of opportunity and economic prosperity.”  In his vision, the center celebrated the “rich culture and dramatic past as well as symbolizing hope” in overcoming all the challenges “to make the Delta of tomorrow a better place.”  Clinton made the announcement at a press conference prior to the opening of-the Arkansas Public Hearing of the Lower Mississippi Delta Development Commission. The site of the news conference, Centennial Baptist Church, is one of a handful of existing turn-of-the-century buildings in downtown Helena. It was designed by African American  architect, Henry James Price, and built in 1905 at a cost of $30,000.

Daily Arkansas Gazette, Aug 31, 1912.

The first phase of a six-phase, $8.5 million historic preservation and cultural resource management initiative was to restore the Missouri-Pacific Railroad depot in Helena and establish a visitor’s center for researchers and tourists.  Built in 1912, the depot’s once enjoyed a bustling lobby filled with passengers, and architects planned to restore the almost eighty year-old room to look much like it did in its earliest years.  The information desk, in addition, would look like “an old depot or bank teller window,” and it would provide maps and other information about historic sites and events across the Delta.  The center was going to feature an exhibit titled: “The Arkansas Delta: A Landscape of Change,” which revealed the diverse nature of experiences in the Delta through a series of panels featuring text and photographs as well as videos, documents, and artifacts   The initial display, “River Country,” explained the difficulties of the natural environment that impeded settlement in the Delta, and it employed the use of film to show historic newsreels of floods as well as workers building a levee.  The artifacts included in “Life on the Frontier” helped demonstrate the acerbic nature of life for the early settlers.  By constructing an exhibit using farm implements, murals depicting farming methods, and footage of farming in the early half of the twentieth century, “Rural Life: Living on the Land” explained the persistent historical role of agricultural development in Mississippi.  Other panels describe the social and cultural life of Native Americans in the Arkansas Delta, explain the geographical attraction that drew large groups of immigrant’s merchants to the region, interprets the significance of the Civil War as well as the complexities of racial discourse in the New South.  Children as well as adults, moreover, have the opportunity to climb into the navigator seat of a caboose, which sits adjacent to the property.

Daily Arkansas Gazette, Sep 24, 1912.

The following phases of the project included the development of an interpretive walking tour along the Mississippi River, the procurement a few suitable buildings: 1) to establish an archive and an art gallery, 2) to setup an interpretive center and house major exhibits, and 3) to open a twenty-five room bed and breakfast.[1]   The bed and breakfast will be housed in the Missouri Pacific Railroad depot which is located near the Mississippi River levee in downtown Helena. The Union Pacific Railroad and the City of Helena were responsible for the donation of the building and grounds for the centerpiece of the project. With the renovation of the historic depot beginning in October, the architectural workers hoped to complete their work in less than a year, which might allow its grand opening to coincide with the annual King Biscuit Blues Festival.

Daily Arkansas Gazette, Apr 19, 1913.

[1] “First Phase of the DCC Set to Open This Fall,” Marianna (AR) Courier, Sep 6, 1989, p.16.

“Plans made to build Arkansas Delta Cultural Center in Helena,” Marianna (AR) Courier, Sep 14, 1989, p.11.

United States Congress Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, Lower Mississippi Delta Development Act: joint hearing before the committees on Environment and Public Works and Small Business, United States Senate, One Hundredth Congress, second session, on S. 2246, a bill to establish the Lower Mississippi Delta Development Commission, June 28, 1988 (Washington, DC: U.S. G.P.O., 1988), 96.

Bentonia Blues Documentary