As part of their Audio Journalism class, ten Princeton students traveled to the Deep South during Fall Break to report on the town of Mound Bayou, Mississippi. Along with Professor Joe Richman, Professor Errin Haines and Assistant Dean Bryant Blount, they were immersed in the region’s rich history, from the terror of Jim Crow to major sites of the Civil Rights Movement before arriving in Mound Bayou. Known as “the jewel of the Delta,” it is the oldest black township in the country, founded by formerly enslaved men and women just after the end of the Civil War.
Over several days, the students fanned out across Mound Bayou, conducting dozens of interviews and logging hundreds of hours of tape on topics ranging from farming, to education, to football, to healthcare, to food insecurity to cultural tourism. Among the people they met were citizens whose families go back generations in the town, including the current mayor, principal of the recently-consolidated high school, a second-grade class learning Mound Bayou’s history, the owner of a world-renowned pottery compound and a local restaurant owner. In their down time, there were visits to a juke joint, line dancing, a Harvest festival, and a canoe trip down the Mississippi River.
The students’ work will culminate in a 10-story podcast to air at the end of the semester, but first, read more about their behind-the-scenes experiences, documented on this blog.