EDUCATIONAL TOUR 2015

MISSISSIPPI DELTA & THE BLUES

TENTATIVE ITINERARY
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Day 1: Memphis, Tennessee
National Civil Rights Museum (Loraine Motel):
- Civil rights, gentrification, impacts of racial integration
Soulsville (Stax Studio Soul Museum):
- Civil rights, gentrification, ethnic identity, musical evolution,
development of soul as a cultural expression
Reverend Al Greens Full Gospel Tabernacle Church:
- Religion and civil rights, urbanization, migration
Memphis Rock n Soul Museum:
- Musical evolution, cultural syncretism, friction of
distance
Beale Street:
- Urbanization, urban decline and gentrification,
racial segregation, tourism and economic development,
place authenticity

Day 2: Memphis-to-Tunica via the Blues Highway
(Highway 61)
Sun Studios:
- Cultural syncretism, demographic and technological
change, gender relations, racial integration,
urbanization, telecommunications
Graceland:
- Tourism, sense of place, economic development, place
marketing
Old Robinsonville (remnants of Front Street, Abbey, and Leatherman
Plantation, childhood home of Robert Johnson):
- Economic change, tourism, agricultural mechanization
Fitzgerald Hotel & Casino(Tunica Resorts, Mississippi):
- Economic change, transportation, Mississippi River,
agricultural mechanization, tourism
The Hollywood Cafe (Robinsonville, Mississippi): Home of the
Fried Dill Pickle
- Food as form of cultural expression

Day 3: Clarksdale, Mississippi-to-Cleveland, Mississippi
Shack up Inn at Hopson Plantation:
- Agricultural mechanization, technological change,
migration, tourism
The Riverside Hotel
- Blues history, heritage tourism, Jim Crow segregation
Muddy Waters Cabin on Stovall Plantation:
-Migration, mechanization of agricultural, urbanization,
transmigration and popular culture, civil rights
New World District:
- Jim Crow segregation, ethnicity, impact of integration,
urban change
Delta Blues Museum:
- Transportation, migration, economic development,

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Excerpted from John Strait, Experiencing Blues at the Crossroads: A Place-Based Method for Teaching the
Geography of the Blues Culture, Journal of Geography 111 (2012): 194-209.
tourism
Theos New RockNRoll Museum:
- Musical evolution, transnational migration, tourism,
economic development
Tutwiler Mural and Rail Station (Tutwiler, Mississippi)
- Sense of place, art and folk culture, relative location,
site, and situation
Mound Bayou
- Racial segregation, relative location, site, and situation
Rosedale, Mississippi (Robert Johnson Marker)
- Site and situation, transportation, relative location
Po Monkeys Juke Joint by day
- African linguistic influences, vernacular architecture
Reds Lounge (Clarksdale Juke Joint)
- Music and ethnic identity

Day 4: Cleveland, Mississippi-to-Ruleville,
Mississippi-to-Greenwood, Mississippi
Fanny Lou Hamer grave (Ruleville)
- Civil rights, gender relations, Freedom Summer,
political change
Dockery Farms (near Cleveland)
- The Plantation South, agricultural mechanization,
tourism, technological change, site and situation,
African cultural influences
Robert Johnsons crossroads (near Dockery Farms, outside
Cleveland)
- Religion, African folk traditions, cultural syncretism
Youngs Grocery, formerly Bryants Grocery and Meat Market
(Money, Mississippi)
- Civil rights, gender relations, Jim Crow, migration,
telecommunications, political change
Robert Johnson graves (near Greenwood)
- Tourism, African religious heritage, cultural syncretism,
musical evolution, folk and popular culture
Black Power Park (Greenwood, Mississippi)
- Civil Rights, ethnic identity, soul culture, migration,
political change, racial segregation
Evening at Po Monkeys (Merigold, Mississippi)
- Racial segregation, third spaces, heritage tourism

Day 5: Cleveland, Mississipp-to-I ndianola,
Mississippi-to-Huntsville, Texas
Where the Southern Crosses the Dog (Moorhead, Mississippi)
- Transportation, relative location, site and situation
B.B. King Museum & Delta Interpretive Center (Indianola,
Mississippi)
- Jim Crow, globalization, cultural diffusion, musical
evolution
Charley Patton grave (Holly Springs)
- Jim Crow, folk, and popular culture
Nelson Street (Greenville, Mississippi)
- Jim Crow, urban decline, and gentrification
Mississippi River Levee (Greenville, Mississippi)
- Mississippi Flood of 1927, fluvial geomorphology,
regional literature