A Word on Words; 1030; Richard Schweid Marshall Debruhul

paul wharton were so programmed delving into the world of the center offers this week richard sweig talks about catfish and that built your hosts tara were downwards mr john sigg and former chairman of the freedom forum's first amendment center at vanderbilt university beginning saving our guest is no friend last time he was here he had written a book about hot pepper he'd been to louisiana now he's been the mississippi delta and it's catfish and the delta confederate fishing in the mississippi delta which is why welcome to world war ii great to have you back you went to buy you and i even the bio as hearsay odd of louisiana of year is your own louisiana you talk about the value given the citadel has a bio for catfish it i miss him getting that got nothing but so it means

the idea no about catfish the read the book writing about or were down there i mean i knew back if they've got it even for a fried catfish all my life without the love but i know that the catfish have become a truly dominant part of the mississippi economy four million four hundred million dollars a year most of it look at them as two counties and sunflower county and bells are counting at a lot of money four hundred million dollars a year end cotton and saw me a row crops and those two guys at least earned abandoned in favor of captive in their coverage has surpassed thirty cardinals two cars in the first crop that surpassed cotton terms of revenue in this century but you know it was the late seventies these guys are big transformers look at the same problems as farmers all over and particular with cotton where they're having a lot of

international competition and there were deep in debt and do they happened to do this time with catfish and it worked out that the land they'll water really well and the farmers were able to to make adjustment and fish save most them from foreclosure really love is they would be out of business now that hadn't been for the cat well i had a lawmaker i'm audience think that this is a book about economy as it's more than a study of mississippi county all it is there right it is in a very real sense a story about people you say pretty early on that one comes through on this a bit of the race and get fish country is never far from one's mine it still dominates the city politics mississippi society it's a big

business for him and you interview people about catfish and almost inevitably problems of race or even two into the battle and something i didn't know see the idea going down and having to write about race and but it was unavoidable as you know having lived here so long it's you know it has been this it is always been that way when i was growing up very often thought well don't let the sun set on you go into mississippi because those guys down there that can be and indeed in a sense it certainly is truly split supportive of everything down there and it's in many ways is still the most lurid world part of the united states you get down there to the delta you look at dr bennett wrote a look at some of the house and you think oh i could do that some poor country somewhere in latin america about moore back country what the law or in north africa some words very very poor and the people are very poor and then you know lots of black

people is no question about a dark skinned people suffer tremendously incipient why people are really rich these farmers are well to do for the most four when you talk about a family the family that has the largest operation the largest farm so one son flies his own plane to vegas to shoot craps a video they stick together of that family is awaited tell about the one of a mile is that a true story that one of the murder was chased home by the sheriff's office and when the sheriffs got an average modern son was standing in the front yard with a gun i think there probably is a true story oh i couldn't verify but serve the woman told me son was a truth telling moment yes the summit was that the sheriff staring down <unk> moment that you interviewed his son bob talk

about wilbur well i interviewed all three of those people and let people move their own father came to the delta and like a lot of people who were from old cotton baron families and even before that the indigo was a big croc that this is a family that was quite poor and in the fall i came in on a few acres and what a few more one a few more and it's basically a real success story but you know when you talk to these people it's just it's very difficult to know their attitude towards african americans in mississippi is bad thing when it comes up in conversation it's very difficult to know what was in the heart as if you have an interview with someone else and they say some awful racist comment for instance what you do you know do smile if it's a joke the left or what you'd say something or can break the floor the interviewer just gotten out and this came up with me repeatedly they're having our memory you're talking with bob and

immediately he said you say and you know the one in a direct patient rare farm racist comments immediately begins talk about you also write about those people about it so much money in a lot of the jamaican from federal subsidies in this campaign and we're talking thousands and hundreds of thousands of dollars when nothing annoys the morning to see a woman go into the grocery store bought package of the pages with a bulk food stamp and put the change in la feel as if they being the government is being really raw that these people are really are abusing the system in a way is much ports and then as you you didn't give the whole q and a i assumed that as the conversation went back in for bob sewed and get a sense what you're about and suddenly says well they're not all bad so we raised here on the farm and

the like and one is that we are right now and i don't think it was really ambiguous sense of minnesota for interest on what one i think that that's really how you know again john you know this yourself on being a southerner by him anyway these people are very close and always quite willing to admit that if you grow up in the mississippi delta basically whether you're white or black you have more in common with each other than you do with somebody from any other place because life is so caught in the delta land sort of what such a particular shaped your life and people eat the same food and they have the same sort of rhythm to their lives and they all very much involved with the delta and away and so they have a lot in common and he's going he says humans got there with the soloist on the now he's got his own house and the senate is serious and i think in that sense i think that what people in mississippi have much more appreciation for black culture around them in some ways maybe then do people that i talked to a man who has served

bavaria intelligent culture black guy who left the delta not a waltz against the greenville blues festival and we lived in yonkers and it was when our tie every day go to work making a good living but in a way he felt much more isolated as an african american in yonkers outside new york city ending the delta you and for the savings in the delta little white person would yearn for it they were transplanted from the delta to new york and he went back to the delta levees not doing good work you you point out that unusual number of books have really a emanated from this very most of the hard way what can spout like his book is one you quote as a as reference point traces shulman spoke there is a a biography

on and then john dollars worth of wood with a fourth you mentioned an all of that is because of the racial conflicts of the press and the lingering impact of to some extent i think there's something else and that is i think from my point here anyhow what really got me interested in this book was the land itself it so far all there's an energy about the delta i felt that it had just driving the first time i went into the delta it's iconic and worked sixteen hours a day without getting tired something about the landing and i think the fertility of the soil it's been weighed down by the river on top of avalanche were so long it grows things really well done and the fact that you look out you can look from horizon to horizon without having univision interrupted at all something about it it's very thick and then its varying

it makes for a good writer but it's been good and they are sandwiched right well at our readers that it makes for good writing amused archivist are about catfish and it's about people and catfish and people and race and people and humanity i congratulate you on on what you've done it again let alone let me i'll talk about bobby inman an end and the rich white family on the other side is ernest myers earnest white wine there is quite a black farmer odd as if there is a giant there is a giant food operation that's an rem and agribusiness an agro conglomerate that really had the corner or not a you tell a story every white chuckling over how he took them on and really be a minister not this god has is it's got four is when his

environmental science got that right it's gotten on iran's elite black catfish was a surge from an essential again fish former in mississippi or maybe another catfish farmer to buy to it is the only guy who set up a processing plant and he set up so micro processing plant that he put together jerry rigged it with whatever he could find around the new doug some ponds and got some money and didn't know where his next hour was going to come from to do this but he's just a guy who lacked we've always lived one of the road from family member yet i knew her husband quite well and he is a guy now is only about seventy years old who just his father was a former only nineteen hundred acres of land a narrative on the twenties and raised its gotten the family and it's been a formal was life and we saw all these white neighbors who were losing money when he was in common so they started to make money with catfish and some wealthier can do it i can do it and he went down to

the big processing plant and got to work and called him and said i wanted to read and tell me was black was you know that it would get to her so you showed up they took him to the plant one point of acid and well you know why dont say what would sell for wearable moment to do just what you're doing here and that is what he did and he's been the police just lawyers kept its head above water cutting low price gave a very tough time and got him on price and he actually started reading about a lot of the rules about to minority businesses and that some federal government contracts at the game and helped them i guess they went up into my guest is from that same dispute and was the first african american legislator to get elected in the century and do and it's doing ok scuttle a conference today like he has a black farmer who farm fifty acres of it as a small farming operation but doing very well i'm retired

now and do words of a little sort of the one room storefront in bills are not helping people who come in with all kinds of problems and sent to help in this community as an annual the average person in the world and very small downtown those only becomes really sort of a mini mardi gras and then you walk along the streets and there's a guy with a guitar that surprising a brown sack playing out playing a blues it's a great narrative of the delta's really is where the blues that the delta is where rock n roll came from because of course rock n roll was itself to the los alamos owes itself to help again but and then down the way there are people on the lawn or eating saw and catfish and three and i think it's that the people come from miles around

despite the bells we're all catfish something that says people in jackson professionals and jackson it's a saturday in the spring you know it's a nine mile drive which is a drop in the bucket to these people and i got a lot of people from jackson people come over from oxford from the arrests and certainly go a catfish festival this weekend in the rubble of their own but as a pretty good time there aren't you talk to the secretary of state about the time mope listed molpus more recognizable give them to build a few years ago on the first amendment hi i'm ed and he seems to be a progressive politicians from philadelphia mississippi and he was tremendously mark chaney and goodman you say that they showed up the martyrs of those three black civil rights workers influences though at that moment a mistaken dick molpus ran for governor elect in the last couple of years with him and i'm

actually going to get lots of them around the country you know i hope one day to be governing the city is a very good time to do a lot of sort of as a hard worker and a lot of reform stuff that didn't get a whole lot of press that really changed the way the mississippi operates forever undo is on a lot of very substantial legacy the other of the other and when you talk among the public officials but the other white public official stand on mountains the county agent who i thought yet commentators trying hard to know everybody might get fish it's got some retailers really is really something because when you think of a county agent you know a phenomenal commentator he did with the job was really created to do he was there for these guys when they were first developing the catfish farming industry hill office and visited him there on the top of the bills only our house and in the

back it sank about six buckets and this was a forest catfish a laboratory in a world essentially i mean and he this guy you could call him up and say to the mornings hundred miles away said tommy i don't know i just went out to the pond in that dined out there i don't know what i'm going to do and say the right there and that has gotten the hundred miles and that therefore the morning do what he couldn't he was really in addition to that he was a lodestar for journalists people would go down there and all unjust wars that eventually gets sent tommy taylor so he singlehandedly got the catfish industry in the delta off the ground running which is what now you work with him out to examine was it with him you went to a family member of mentally ill illness of them are thin ellis and you got there and he says we got don't slam the door and these pieces don't slam the door as goes catfish

very sensitive ears and they hear a door slammed illinois and amy dive bomber blew in and was an effort to discover what's right well or hamburger finn had influence was infecting that letter was i got it was one thing how it was spent a lot of time out of the like catfish farms and all you don't want to wear that where a big catfish then the ball right out of my head and annual awards ellen story of the airway embarrassment about us follow is that you know they're so against these huge fees for the girl then then there is dr myers from kuow that's right move the marker age line and that's very interesting that by land but men from the educated us to wisconsin and it came down

to the steak and sort of he was there to pay back his save icon for medical school and so we would work and julie you went down to louisiana mariner woman from louisiana very nice woman had a little boy and came over to my city and again to bills all night and was pretty shocked there were sort of got involved with the new local chapter of the indelible a cpa and became or more outspoken at a clinic and chilling actually that i understand is about this half the size of his roman insurers real small didn't go through to a pretty quick and this was the only public health clinic for a long ways around and i think there was even a doctor in private practice i would talk about places and served bye bye the prisoners died set up this clinic in it was busy as good that he would talk to me in between patients that there was a steady stream of people coming in and got one more evolved than in alabama he was threatening to boycott the world catfish festival because bill zorn a lot of money and they just were not putting much money into

the black community and this of course is the difficult thing about being down there is that there's a lot of money you're always aware just processing plants businesses out businesses down the markets but the markets fed the price that it fluctuates but basically were talking a lot of money being generated and there was really only supplants a lot of them saw a lot of people making a lot of and yet you know the people who are doing the work the grunt work i just horribly benefiting olivier writing the minimum wage most of my own wage most of them black and you go through parts of town where there's you know the housing is to say in a sub standard is an understatement and you don't see no one ever point out to say oh this is where the processing plant put up his recreation field oh this is where the processing plant but some housing for the workers or anything like that they don't they do almost nothing you know watch your back now as an arrest i take it that the

dopamine so come on am a folk hero awful villain you heard a story that the during a time of tension he had gotten out of many countries in your story of the store and he'd been assaulted and beaten because you set up an israeli prison and with that dr marty's an award to read that you've said you don't like them or while i'm tr i had heard a couple days before the same leonard two guys talking to catfish farm was talking one on was saying he owns a deal happened then upstart dr mohler enjoy stopped over at the feed store bells on them four was a top club and i didn't know that's an aria that great that's great and i want us all as dr myers i thought i was was a big forms of id fellas do with the really think that their propaganda or is it said the polling is joining her lap the note every time somebody saw the story like that it wouldn't be a walk in and then there was

merritt robert merritt the spoof of possible superintendent who was served but in office as a result of a boycott beneficiary of a boycott of nineteen eighty six when there is your school superintendent retired under a cloud having to do with financial mismanagement mismanagement and they went outside the county to bring a guy in a white got to be superintendent of the vanilla mississippi they have private academies where all the white kids go to school and then as soon as they integrated the schools soon as it became clear that all right they're going to have to integrate public schools private academies sprang up like mushrooms at the lorraine and all the white kids go to private academies now that's beginning to change in the grammar schools a little bit but it's still substantially true so you have the public schools supported by joe about why people blow to bear the wood johnny the brunt of the burden but who are not using schools saw their incentive is to keep their contribution as low as possible and like

contribution to education has lost public schools are because their kids are not going to be in those schools and sally were not limited to superintendent was a person this person is the fund's they picked a white person from another county is probably from greenville regimen was maybe from sunflower county and moved out and they brought him back to be superintendent of people just said no no way we've got to very very qualified principles of public schools here in indianola and they decided that they are our marriage was the one who really want to concentrate and we want to see running schools so they boycotted andrew so the blackboard fell as a black boycott of indianola business says the only business it was exempt was the piggly wiggly which is sort of historically been good to black people and has employed like people and so my management positions for all the other businesses in town were boycotted and theory was the first time was a first boycott i think an animal's history and it was

very successful nesting costume month i think and finally there was in a lot was an easter season which is when a big season for the merchants in indianola for the downtown stores who had a lot of money now with the changes that have moved in and they were under a lot of pressure economically and they finally convinced the school board to reconsider the decision by out the contract of the white guy that had been appointed to the position in a put up american and he's done a great job and you say that there is a rivalry integration was grueling own initiatives he's taken and this is done a terrific job in fact three years after dr mary came into office they had a referendum in indianola to you raise the tax contribution for the public schools passed with seventy five percent of the vote eighty percent of the vote so he's done now is very good job as tom weber of jobs of that it's evident also won some of indianola society grammar school well i'm pretty much the balances being redress there's still a lot of promise in

junior high school high school where parents to take their kids for a variety of reasons to the academy were so expensive to go is private academies in mississippi costs an awful lot of months well they may wind up but it even if it is the shipment of them out of a line up re integrating to some major beach be worthwhile out to follow that story you know i'm a largely gone to love to cajun country to write a book about hot pepper i said how can you make a book out that when i heard economists of the governor on a book about catfish our conviction like a book out a catfish what's next he got another book in the works i do have this back from barcelona spent the year and a half or just finished a book about what we should say the barcelona and even the by you know the biotech companies and scientists in the spanish press whatsoever and years i want to be out in the late fall

and i know will get you back but tell me about your writing right when you go on the sane you do research you do the interviews and then say downright malice or do you try to compose as you're in the process of gathering information it seems like a fallen into and i'd really like to do this i go find out of something interesting i don't know anything about some progress toward the same places most of my readers some subject and i know nothing about and then i go and try and learn about in the case of just at this conference and so we're down to indianola and rented a house along the house and downtown and it will end combine a lot of formal interviews calling up people and say look i'm a writer i'm here you know and it's great because everybody always waiting for a writer to call him up on the phone one day has a column don't know what usually visit me in downtown indianola so i do that and do a lot of formal interviewing and then

just walk around and sit on the porch drinking beer and whatever as well and i take all of that and come back to my office and sit down in and write the book what is the writing process mean you've been built or kyle with a set regiments only hours a day generally i do a fund of always found this person in our budget is still is this varies from person to person for me i can't i made the right first thing in a day i can work on this paper for instance or republican an incident right so what we did in order to concentrate and they're pretty much a claim on that hasn't been sullied by the events of the day saw sudan jefferson and i'm writing if possible i can write it five or six hours a day easily and you rely on then and mr rewrite re write and rewrite and i say this book i wrote two steppers will probably are all completely four times and large delegate says the

changes that's entering its part of that process of rewriting they just live fish and the delta as ben our guest ana were done where is your host has been dancing and all of this program was produced in the studios of wbez in it's b fb