The Mississippi Delta 34: 2012 Road Trip through the Central Delta

Here are some photographs from a short trip through the southern and central Mississippi Delta in March of 2012. I often used digital equipment at this time but still took a film camera with me when I looked for interesting topics.

Boyle

Boyle is in Bolivar County, Mississippi, just a short distance south of Cleveland. Catfish is, or at least was, a big business. I expect most people drive by quickly on US 61/US 278 heading to or from Cleveland, where Delta State University is located. There is not too much to see in Boyle. But south of town, I saw the sun shining on a cluster of old gravestones just off 278. I could not find a name for the graveyard. If any readers can identify the site, please let me know.

Mound Bayou

Mound Bayou, about 10 miles north of Cleveland, has an interesting history in that it was a town founded by former slaves. I wrote about Mound Bayou before in The Mississippi Delta 8 and The Mississippi Delta 8b. The history of this town is a story of determination, back-breaking hard work, and a dream of creating a better life for African Americans in an era when they were treated brutally by the southern white political establishment and the klan.

The Taborian Hospital was founded by the International Order of Twelve Knights and Daughters of Tabor, a fraternal organization. For over twenty years, the hospital provided low-cost health care to African-Americans in the Mississippi Delta in an era when most public hospitals would only admit white patients. When I took these pictures in March 2012, the Taborian Hospital had been closed for almost two decades. From 2012 to 2015, the hospital was renovated, cleaned, and reopened as an urgent care facility. Preservation in Mississippi wrote about the progress in 2012 and 2016. But as of 2018, it was closed again! The facility is mired in some sort of lawsuit, and there is minimal information on the web about what is happening. All that money and effort wasted?

Shelby

Shelby is another town in Bolivar County. It has (had) more of a downtown that many other Delta towns, but today much of Shelby is pretty rough. I wrote about Shelby before in The Mississippi Delta 9. I will return some day and look around some more.

Hushpuckena

Former general store (Panatomic-X, Fuji GW690II, no filter)

Interior of store with discarded medical records (Panasonic G-1 digital file converted to B&W)

Old store in Hushpuchena (Panasonic G-1 digital file converted to B&W)

Hushpuckena is an unincorporated community - really a former town - about 4 miles north of Shelby. A friend's uncle suggested I take a look and he was right. The former commercial strip faced Old 49, which is now a partly overgrown country lane. I included an interior picture from my digital camera because the papers all over the floor were 1980s medical records from Bolivar County Hospital. I told a doctor friend of mine from Greenville, and he recovered and destroyed the records. He said he recognized some nurses on his staff.

This ends our very short 2012 drive through the central Delta. All these photographs except the two digital Hushpuckena files are from Kodak Panatomic-X film taken with my Fuji GW690II camera with EBC Fujinon 90mm ƒ/3.5 lens. I used a tripod to support the camera for all these frames.

The Mississippi Delta 9: Hushpuckena and Shelby

A friend suggested I visit the semi-abandoned town of Hushpuckena, about 4 miles north of Shelby in Bolivar County. This was an excellent suggestion because driving along modern US 61, you would not know the former town existed in a grove of trees. You have to turn off and look for Old Highway 61. I stopped at one occupied 1960s-style house, and a young lady said there were plenty of empty houses for me to photograph.

Most interesting to me was the old country store (or company store, if one company once owned all the fields around here). I could not make out the faded signs.

The roof over the left half of the building had failed and the jungle was taking over. From the decorative side plate over the door lock, you can see that this building had been made with pride.

A door on the side was open and I took some photographs inside. The manila folders on the floor contained thousands of 1980s medical records from Bolivar County Hospital. What were the easy chairs for? Did someone have a party reading X-ray and diagnostic reports? Very odd. I love exploring old buildings because you never know what you might find.

Shelby is only a few miles away. The former Shelby Bank & Trust Co. once occupied the cutest little square-front building. A friend informed me that the Roberts Insurance Agency also once used this building. The dark sky is a result of a polarizing filter. Sadly, many of the other commercial buildings in Shelby are gone.

These are digital images taken with a tripod-mounted Panasonic G1 digital camera, most with the 14-45mm Lumix lens. The scenes in the old Huskpuckena store were taken with the superb Olympus 9-18mm lens for micro four thirds (µ4/3) format.

Some black and white film photographs from this same trip are in this article (click the link).

Update March 2013:  The medical records have been removed, according to a physician I know in Greenville. When I told him the story, he was alarmed and had the files removed and destroyed. He said the files were still pertinent because two of the names he saw were his coworkers from the Greenville hospital.