Skip to main content

Delta State’s Delta Center leads group on a two-day on heritage tour

By October 15, 2010General

Tour participants in front of the B.B. King Museum.

The Delta State University Delta Center for Culture and Learning recently conducted a two-day heritage tour for the Mississippi Center for Justice staff members, board members and donors, as well as writers for the Chronicle of Philanthropy and the Jackson Free Press.  

The tour stopped at the B.B. King Museum in Indianola, the Delta Center in Cleveland, Dockery Farms, and Mound Bayou before heading to Po’ Monkey’s Lounge for a tamale tasting and live Blues event.  

Participants also visited the grave of Fannie Lou Hamer in Ruleville, and Money, Mississippi, where Caroline Bryant took offense at the actions of Emmett Till in 1955, leading to his murder.   

The group also made a stop at the Mississippi State Penitentiary in Parchman, where Hank Thomas, a successful businessman in Atlanta and participant in the tour, revisited his former cell on death row. Thomas, one of  thirteen original Freedom Riders, was arrested in 1961 at the Jackson bus station for challenging the South’s Jim Crow laws and protesting segregated interstate bus transportation.
 
The tour was lead by the Delta Center’s Luther Brown and Lee Aylward.