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    When It's Darkness on the Delta

    How America's Richest Soil Became Its Poorest Land

    Author W. Ralph Eubanks
    Look inside
    Hardcover
    $30.00 US
    Beacon Press
    6.22"W x 9.27"H x 0.95"D   | 15 oz | 18 per carton
    On sale Jan 13, 2026 | 256 Pages | 9780807045329
    Add to cart Add to list Exam Copies

    For readers of The Sum of Us and South to America, an essential new look at the roots of American inequality—and the seeds of its transformation

    Once the powerhouse of a fledgling country’s economy, the Mississippi Delta has been consigned to a narrative of destitution. It is often faulted for the sins of the South, portrayed as a regional backwater that willfully cleaved itself from the modern world. But buried beneath the weight of good ol’ boy politics and white-washed histories lies the Delta’s true story.

    Mississippi native and award-winning writer W. Ralph Eubanks unearths the region’s buried history, revealing a microcosm of economic oppression in the US. He traverses the Delta, examining its bellwether efforts to combat income inequality through vivid portraits of key figures like


    • Theodore G. Bilbo and William Whittington, segregationist congressmen who sabotaged federal reparations for former sharecroppers in the 1940s and ’50s
    • Gloria Carter Dickerson, founder of the Emmett Till Academy, whose parents were instrumental in desegregating schools in Drew, MS, where Till was murdered
    • Calvin Head, a community organizer who runs a farming co-op in Mileston, who revived the legacy of his hometown, the only Black resettlement community in Mississippi

    Eubanks delivers a powerful and insightful examination of how racism and economic instability have shaped life in the Mississippi Delta. He traces the enduring consequences of political decisions that have entrenched inequality across generations. At the same time, he brings attention to the resilience of local communities and the grassroots movements working toward meaningful change. The book offers a thoughtful framework for policy reform and community investment, underscoring the need to support those who have long sustained the region through their labor and lived experience.
    “Native son, erudite scholar, and deep-seeing observer, Eubanks gets down into the nitty-gritty of Mississippi with this marvelous Delta travelogue and analysis. He makes those lonely backroads come alive in all their difficult, complicated history.”
    —Richard Grant, author of Dispatches from Pluto: Lost and Found in the Mississippi Delta

    “When It’s Darkness on the Delta is as brilliant and necessary as the greatest books made by a Mississippian, but it is wholly singular in the way Ralph Eubanks nimbly, and profoundly, rides the voices of the folks making the Delta today. This book is not interested in representation; it is what happens when the responsible love of a people, a region, and an utterly legendary skill meet. Goodness gracious. We are thankful.”
    —Kiese Laymon, author of Heavy

    “This is an important book. Eubanks speaks truth to power about an iconic and ill-understood American landscape and proves beyond question that as the Mississippi Delta goes, so goes our republic.”
    —Richard Ford

    “I am from the coast of Mississippi. Growing up, the Delta was as foreign to me as another country. They talked differently up there. The air didn’t smell right. But W. Ralph Eubanks’s When It’s Darkness on the Delta brings the Delta home to me. With stunningly beautiful prose and an intimacy that breaks down assumptions, he renders this part of Mississippi with tenderness and unflinching honesty. He tells its story (his family’s story) and, in doing so, he tells the American story. And, even though it is one filled with resilience, it ain’t pretty. What a precious gift.”
    —Eddie S. Glaude Jr., author of Begin Again
    W. Ralph Eubanks is a faculty fellow and writer in residence at the Center for the Study of Southern Culture at the University of Mississippi. He is the author of A Place Like Mississippi: A Journey Through a Real and Imagined Literary Landscape, as well as two other works of nonfiction, Ever Is a Long Time and The House at the End of the Road. He is a writer and an essayist whose work focuses on race, identity, and the American South, and his writing has appeared in Vanity Fair, the American Scholar, the Georgia Review, and the New Yorker. He is a 2007 Guggenheim fellow, a 2021-2022 Harvard Radcliffe Institute fellow, and the recipient of a 2023 Mississippi Governor’s Arts Award for excellence in literature and in recognition of his role as a cultural ambassador for the state of Mississippi.
    W. Ralph Eubanks View titles by W. Ralph Eubanks
    PROLOGUE
    Palimpsest

    CHAPTER 1
    The Dimming Mystique of Mileston

    CHAPTER 2
    “It’s Going to Take a Moses”

    CHAPTER 3
    “We Thought Mississippi Was Safer Than Arkansas”

    CHAPTER 4
    The Past Is a Foreign Country

    CHAPTER 5
    “The Jewel of the Delta”

    CHAPTER 6
    Race, Health, and Poverty in a Sanctuary from Segregation

    CHAPTER 7
    “Hunger Has No Color Line”

    CHAPTER 8
    Saving an Opportunity Desert

    CHAPTER 9
    A Cruel and Intolerable Burden

    CHAPTER 10
    “Justice Is a Blind Goddess”

    CHAPTER 11
    The Wrong Side of That Fence

    CHAPTER 12
    Your Blues Ain’t Like Mine

    CHAPTER 13
    Casino Lights

    CHAPTER 14
    Resilience and Salvation in the Delta

    CHAPTER 15
    A Veiled Mirror

    Acknowledgments
    Notes
    Index

    About

    For readers of The Sum of Us and South to America, an essential new look at the roots of American inequality—and the seeds of its transformation

    Once the powerhouse of a fledgling country’s economy, the Mississippi Delta has been consigned to a narrative of destitution. It is often faulted for the sins of the South, portrayed as a regional backwater that willfully cleaved itself from the modern world. But buried beneath the weight of good ol’ boy politics and white-washed histories lies the Delta’s true story.

    Mississippi native and award-winning writer W. Ralph Eubanks unearths the region’s buried history, revealing a microcosm of economic oppression in the US. He traverses the Delta, examining its bellwether efforts to combat income inequality through vivid portraits of key figures like


    • Theodore G. Bilbo and William Whittington, segregationist congressmen who sabotaged federal reparations for former sharecroppers in the 1940s and ’50s
    • Gloria Carter Dickerson, founder of the Emmett Till Academy, whose parents were instrumental in desegregating schools in Drew, MS, where Till was murdered
    • Calvin Head, a community organizer who runs a farming co-op in Mileston, who revived the legacy of his hometown, the only Black resettlement community in Mississippi

    Eubanks delivers a powerful and insightful examination of how racism and economic instability have shaped life in the Mississippi Delta. He traces the enduring consequences of political decisions that have entrenched inequality across generations. At the same time, he brings attention to the resilience of local communities and the grassroots movements working toward meaningful change. The book offers a thoughtful framework for policy reform and community investment, underscoring the need to support those who have long sustained the region through their labor and lived experience.

    Praise

    “Native son, erudite scholar, and deep-seeing observer, Eubanks gets down into the nitty-gritty of Mississippi with this marvelous Delta travelogue and analysis. He makes those lonely backroads come alive in all their difficult, complicated history.”
    —Richard Grant, author of Dispatches from Pluto: Lost and Found in the Mississippi Delta

    “When It’s Darkness on the Delta is as brilliant and necessary as the greatest books made by a Mississippian, but it is wholly singular in the way Ralph Eubanks nimbly, and profoundly, rides the voices of the folks making the Delta today. This book is not interested in representation; it is what happens when the responsible love of a people, a region, and an utterly legendary skill meet. Goodness gracious. We are thankful.”
    —Kiese Laymon, author of Heavy

    “This is an important book. Eubanks speaks truth to power about an iconic and ill-understood American landscape and proves beyond question that as the Mississippi Delta goes, so goes our republic.”
    —Richard Ford

    “I am from the coast of Mississippi. Growing up, the Delta was as foreign to me as another country. They talked differently up there. The air didn’t smell right. But W. Ralph Eubanks’s When It’s Darkness on the Delta brings the Delta home to me. With stunningly beautiful prose and an intimacy that breaks down assumptions, he renders this part of Mississippi with tenderness and unflinching honesty. He tells its story (his family’s story) and, in doing so, he tells the American story. And, even though it is one filled with resilience, it ain’t pretty. What a precious gift.”
    —Eddie S. Glaude Jr., author of Begin Again

    Author

    W. Ralph Eubanks is a faculty fellow and writer in residence at the Center for the Study of Southern Culture at the University of Mississippi. He is the author of A Place Like Mississippi: A Journey Through a Real and Imagined Literary Landscape, as well as two other works of nonfiction, Ever Is a Long Time and The House at the End of the Road. He is a writer and an essayist whose work focuses on race, identity, and the American South, and his writing has appeared in Vanity Fair, the American Scholar, the Georgia Review, and the New Yorker. He is a 2007 Guggenheim fellow, a 2021-2022 Harvard Radcliffe Institute fellow, and the recipient of a 2023 Mississippi Governor’s Arts Award for excellence in literature and in recognition of his role as a cultural ambassador for the state of Mississippi.
    W. Ralph Eubanks View titles by W. Ralph Eubanks

    Table of Contents

    PROLOGUE
    Palimpsest

    CHAPTER 1
    The Dimming Mystique of Mileston

    CHAPTER 2
    “It’s Going to Take a Moses”

    CHAPTER 3
    “We Thought Mississippi Was Safer Than Arkansas”

    CHAPTER 4
    The Past Is a Foreign Country

    CHAPTER 5
    “The Jewel of the Delta”

    CHAPTER 6
    Race, Health, and Poverty in a Sanctuary from Segregation

    CHAPTER 7
    “Hunger Has No Color Line”

    CHAPTER 8
    Saving an Opportunity Desert

    CHAPTER 9
    A Cruel and Intolerable Burden

    CHAPTER 10
    “Justice Is a Blind Goddess”

    CHAPTER 11
    The Wrong Side of That Fence

    CHAPTER 12
    Your Blues Ain’t Like Mine

    CHAPTER 13
    Casino Lights

    CHAPTER 14
    Resilience and Salvation in the Delta

    CHAPTER 15
    A Veiled Mirror

    Acknowledgments
    Notes
    Index

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