Delta Fragments: The Recollections of a Sharecropper’s Son is an autobiographical journey back to the Mississippi Delta by John Oliver Hodges, who is the son of black sharecroppers. Born in the Mississippi Delta town of Greenwood, Hodges attended segregated schools in the 1950s and 60s, worked in plantation cotton fields, and graduated as valedictorian from Broad Street High School in 1963. After leaving the region to attend Morehouse College in Atlanta on a full-tuition scholarship, Hodges proved to be an honor student and was selected as a Merrill scholar to travel and study in France. He eventually earned multiple degrees and became a tenured university professor. Now a retired professor who lives in Knoxville, Tennessee, with his wife Carolyn, Hodges offers Delta Fragments as an autobiographical memoir that depicts the various experiences of his personal history, including his memories of family life, childhood friendships, and the brutal injustices of the Jim Crow South.
In the introduction, Hodges explains to the reader that the book was initially focused on essays on the religion and culture of the Yazoo-Mississippi Delta and was going to be a book to correct certain misconceptions of the Delta, and of “my people presented in other works or regions” (xiii). However, as the book progressed it began to become an autobiographical history that chronicled the relationship between “John Oliver, the boy growing up in Greenwood, and Dr. Hodges, the college professor who had returned to examine the past” (xiii). Drawing heavily from the disciplines of geography, folklore, oral history, and cultural studies, he sheds light on the impact of race upon life in the Deep South, familial relationships, and childhood friendships, and in essence offers an insightful reflection on the present state of race relations in America.
Hodges admits that his work is similar to other well-known autobiographical accounts of life in the Mississippi Delta, such as Clifton Taulbert’s Once Upon a Time When We Were Colored and William Alexander Percy’s Lanterns on the Levee: Recollections of a Planter’s Son. But what makes his autobiographical account different is that he uses stories and episodes from his own life to illustrate aspects of culture in the Mississippi Delta. Moreover, he uses vignettes or stories as “fragments” to present and discuss complex issues of growing up in the Jim Crow South. These vignettes, communicated through the oral tradition, are intended for three specific audiences, which Hodges identifies as 1) his generation--to give a sense of the “difficult but rich and fulfilling lives that blacks [of his generation] experienced in the Delta” (xvi); 2) his generation’s children and grandchildren--to “help them recall moments of struggle, sadness, and joy that will give them a sense of pride in their ability to endure” (xvi); and 3) students and scholars of the South and African American history and culture--to understand that “his experiences embrace a number of issues of concern to the academic community” (xvi).
These brief yet revealing vignettes actually provide the structure for the book and are grouped into two main sections. In Part 1, Learning, the vignettes presented reflect Hodges’s coming of age as he introduces us to the town of Greenwood, to the state of Mississippi and the region known as the Mississippi Delta, and to his parents, grandparents, sister, and aunts, uncles, cousins, teachers, and schoolmates. He also recounts stories of growing up on a plantation, dancing in smoky juke joints, playing sandlot football and baseball, journeying to the West Coast as a nineteen-year-old to meet the biological father he never knew while growing up, and leaving family and friends to attend Morehouse College in Atlanta.
In Part 2, Reflecting, he connects his firsthand experience with broader themes: the Civil Rights Movement, Delta blues, black folkways, gambling in Mississippi, the vital role of religion in the African American community, and the perplexing problems of poverty, crime, and an underfunded educational system that still challenge black and white citizens of the Delta. Hodges expressly states: “Part II is designed especially to promote discussion on a range of controversial and sensitive issues arising from my personal experiences in the Mississippi Delta” (xvii). These experiences also include commentary on the Black Church; the 1955 death of Emmett Till, an event Hodges describes as “the most significant event of his youth…the case provided a clear object lesson on the importance of staying in one’s place…a nightmare from my childhood that still haunts my sleep” (153, 156); the 1963 assassination of Medgar Evers, the newly elected field secretary of the NAACP and “one of the first and youngest of the major civil rights leaders to be assassinated” (175); and the year 1963, which was the “most significant and bloodiest year of the Civil Rights Movement” (181).
Overall, the fragments, which vary in length, but fit together to present a larger mosaic, are Hodges’s “best effort to lay bare the soul and emotions of a community coming to self-understanding, even as he takes the journey with them” (xv). The fragments are analytical and provocative in nature, and Hodges admits that he has presented them in a “pick a fight” approach to get dialogue and discussion started. Thus, he endeavors to tell his personal story in such a way that many of his experiences may be used as the subjects of classroom lectures or discussions. In fact, his methodology for the book is based on this precise intention of engaging the academic community in productive dialogue. He is careful to provide context for the vignettes, and deftly uses poems, quotes, and even song lyrics at the beginning of each chapter to establish and discuss the historical, socio-cultural, and political conditions in which the vignettes take place.
The book includes seventeen black-and-white photos, some of which capture Hodges from his birth to his time as a college graduate. The photo series, which largely consists of personal snapshots, also includes the myriad of relatives and friends he discusses in the book, and allows the reader to gain insight into how close the familial ties are and to put names and faces together to identify exactly who Hodges is referring to. Also included is a map of the state of Mississippi with a special close-up of the Mississippi Delta region.
The book concludes with two appendices, one which details a table of black and white persons in the Delta by population, education, and income, and the other that includes a reproduction of three official investigative reports that were filed by the Mississippi Sovereignty Commission that dealt with voter-registration activities in which the author was involved in Sunflower County, Mississippi, in 1962. A bibliography in which materials are grouped under major topics found in the book is included, as well as an index.
Hodges’s book is a poignant and descriptive autobiographical journey of a man who was born the son of sharecroppers in the Jim Crow South and sojourned on to become a tenured university professor with a Ph.D. from the University of Chicago. It is also a reflection on the Civil Rights Movement, Delta blues, black folkways, gambling in Mississippi, and the vital role of religion in the African American community. In addition, it is an insightful commentary on the larger issues and problems of poverty, crime, and an underfunded educational system that still trouble black and white citizens of the Delta in the twenty-first century.
--------
[Review length: 1217 words • Review posted on April 30, 2014]