The Mississippi Delta 37: Tchula

Tchula is a tiny town in Holmes County, Mississippi, on US 49E a few miles south of Itta Bena. I wrote about Itta Bena in The Mississippi Delta 27 but had never driven 49E further south to see that stretch of the Delta. I decided to explore on a blazing hot 2020 summer day.

Former road bridge, Front Street, Tchula (Tri-X 400 film, Fuji GW690II camera, green filter)

Entering town from the south, I turned onto Front Street. A bridge formerly connected to Cooper Road, which follows the Tchula lakeshore. 

Front yard, Front Street, Tchula

Background

Tchula is rough, just gruesome. I found a long article in The Guardian. "Poorest town in poorest state: segregation is gone but so are the jobs. In his second dispatch from the US’s most deprived communities, Chris McGreal visits Tchula in Mississippi, where crime is high and opportunities are few". 

A 2019 article in The Guardian describes how little help was forthcoming after flooding in that year. 

“It was so painful to visit homes today and see what we saw. No one should have to live like this in the richest country on earth,” Barber told the crowd at the Good Samaritan Ecumenical church.

“But there must be, and will be, a movement of people who say, ‘That is wrong, and we can’t stand for that any more.”

Mississippi Today featured a 2019 article on flooding and neglect of the inhabitants, "Living Day to Day: Surrounded by water and ignored by powerful officials, Tchula and its people fight for survival"

A somber 2015 article in The Atlantic, titled "How White Flight Ravaged the Mississippi Delta," describes the horrors of poverty, segregation, racism, and the flight of wealth to other places. Tchula now is the fifth poorest town in the country, according to the 2015 Atlantic article.

The Mississippi Center for Investigative Reporting documented how Covid devastated Holmes County when it was already off the cliff with no safety net.

2020 Photographs

No more lunches at Speedy's, Tchula

Main Street view west, Tchula

Main Streeet view west, Tchula (Fuji X-E1 digital file)

I stopped on Main Street and went into the food store. Everyone was very friendly, and everyone was wearing a mask, even kids on bicycles. The local folks were more rigorous with their masks than Vicksburgers (or MAGA rally attendees at the White House). Trains occasionally thunder through town at high speed.

Former gas station, Main Street

Back lot of former commercial building, Jefferson Street, Tchula

Many of the former commercial buildings are no longer used. The vines shows abandonment.

Juke joint, US 49E, Tchula (Tri-X 400 film)

US 49E, view north, Tchula, Mississippi (Tri-X 400 film, Fuji GW690II, yellow filter)

This has been our short visit to Tchula. Type "Mississippi Delta" in the search box for other examples of Delta towns. 

All photographs with one digital exception were from Kodak Tri-X film via my Fuji GW690II camera (the "Texas Leica") with a 90mm ƒ/3.5 EBC-Fujinon lens. Praus Productions in Rochester, New York, developed the film in Xtol developer. I scanned the negatives with a Minolta Scan-Multi medium format film scanner.