{"id":41,"date":"2019-11-04T12:45:01","date_gmt":"2019-11-04T17:45:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/commons.princeton.edu\/audio-journalism\/?p=41"},"modified":"2020-02-10T05:06:15","modified_gmt":"2020-02-10T10:06:15","slug":"farmers-of-the-delta","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/commons.princeton.edu\/audio-journalism\/2019\/11\/04\/farmers-of-the-delta\/","title":{"rendered":"Farmers of the Delta"},"content":{"rendered":"

October 31, 2019<\/span><\/p>\n

I was nervous. I sat at Joni\u2019s Nook, which had become our Mound Bayou fortress of sorts, waiting for the arrival of Mr. John Coleman. We had spoken on the phone multiple times, but this was the moment I would finally get to meet him. When the door swung open and a man with kind eyes and a smiling face walked in, my nerves evaporated.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ll take you to the farm,\u201d Mr. Coleman said.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

We drove about a mile to a demonstration farm run in partnership with Alcorn State University. Mr. Coleman manages the small farm, which was established by the university in 1995 and serves as a resource for the local farming community.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

One of the highlights of the interview came when Mr. Coleman showed us a booklet chronicling the Coleman family history, written by a relative who had conducted extensive research on the family origins of the Colemans. As we report on Mound Bayou, the importance of family has emerged as a key theme that weaves into many of our pieces. I could sense that theme in Mr. Coleman\u2019s story as he flipped through the pages and showed us black and white photographs of his aunties and siblings.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Mr. Coleman\u2019s ancestral roots run deep in Mound Bayou. His great grandfather was one of the first African Americans to purchase land from the founders of the town at the end of the 19th century. Today, the Colemans and their descendants still own about 700 acres in and around Mound Bayou. As we drove through the town on his pickup truck, he pointed proudly to the tracts of farmland we passed on either side of the gravel road. \u201cThat land\u2019s black owned,\u201d he would say. \u201cAnd that\u2019s black owned. That\u2019s my uncle\u2019s land right there. And that\u2019s my cousins\u2019.\u201d I asked myself, where else in America would I hear something like that? Perhaps only in Mound Bayou.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Another memorable moment came when Mr. Coleman told us about his great grandfather. He worked as a sharecropper in Alabama before settling in Mound Bayou. While he was a sharecropper, he asked his landlord if he could buy shoes for his son. The landlord replied: \u201cIt\u2019ll be a cold day in hell before your son gets shoes.\u201d Nevertheless, Mr. Coleman\u2019s great grandfather purchased his own land and became a successful, enterprising black farmer in Mound Bayou. Now, Mr. Coleman wants to continue the legacy. His 29-year-old son has also chosen farming as a career. The pride in Mr. Coleman\u2019s voice as he talked about his son\u2019s decision was moving for me.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

I enjoyed speaking with Mr. Coleman \u2014 who spent about two hours with us \u2014 so much that I almost didn\u2019t want our time together to end. Fortunately, he is a member of the local school board and will be attending this week\u2019s football game. His leadership in the education system of Mound Bayou didn\u2019t surprise me. So much of this week has been about uncovering the many ways Mound Bayouans support one another in different aspects of life. Education, health, business, agriculture — these have been the pillars of Mound Bayou since its founding in 1887. It\u2019s impossible to tell one story without the other. As our stories start to take shape, I\u2019m filled with excitement to see the connections across our different stories and to have a role in piecing the wider story together. I also feel a sense of responsibility. Farmers like Mr. Coleman are essential to Mound Bayou. I hope to tell their story well.<\/span><\/p>\n

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\"\"<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

October 31, 2019 I was nervous. I sat at Joni\u2019s Nook, which had become our Mound Bayou fortress of sorts, waiting for the arrival of Mr. John Coleman. We had spoken on the phone multiple times, but this was the moment I would finally get to meet him. When the door swung open and a … Continue reading Farmers of the Delta<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":842,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-41","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/commons.princeton.edu\/audio-journalism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/commons.princeton.edu\/audio-journalism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/commons.princeton.edu\/audio-journalism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/commons.princeton.edu\/audio-journalism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/842"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/commons.princeton.edu\/audio-journalism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=41"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/commons.princeton.edu\/audio-journalism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":45,"href":"https:\/\/commons.princeton.edu\/audio-journalism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41\/revisions\/45"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/commons.princeton.edu\/audio-journalism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/commons.princeton.edu\/audio-journalism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=41"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/commons.princeton.edu\/audio-journalism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=41"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}