Beverly Lowry - Deer Creek Drive: A Reckoning of Memory and Murder in the Mississippi Delta

Youd think by now people would have forgotten or perhaps decided simply to let go of the memory of what happened in the Mississippi Delta town of Leland in the early afternoon of November 17, 1948. But nobody has. Even people too young to remember know about it. Theyve seen clippings pasted in old scrapbooks or heard the story (which did not, by the way, end that year or the next but went on and on, one of those stories that because people love to tell it keeps starting over). Although some local residents still refuse to engage, even briefly, in a discussion of the matter, there are those who wouldif you went to Lelandgladly point out the house where it happenedstill standing, freshly painted perfectly white, lawn exquisitely maintained. They might even be willing to tell you exactly where in the house the sixty-eight-year-old society matron was attacked, first in the enclosed back porch, and then dragged on a small rug into her own bathroom, where she, or, more than likely, her body, ended up: facedown, her daughter said, in her own blood soup, the crown of her head against the tub, beside which sat an ordinary three-legged wooden stool. And between the stool and her head, the gleaming nightmare weapon washed and wiped clean of prints and gore.

That it happened was shocking enough on its own. But there? In that neighborhood?

Until that year, both of these women, the society-matron mother and the socialite daughter, had lived pretty much their whole lives on this street, whichit is important to notewas and still is the most desirable in town, the street about which locals say, If you want to get to heaven, you have to live on Deer Creek Drive.

Or, as some would say, simply the Drive.

If by happenstance you did find yourself in Leland standing before the murder house, you might then want to check out the house where the dead womans daughter lived with her cotton broker husband and two young daughters: a mere three houses away down the Drive, north toward Stoneville. You could walk there in minutes, noting as you went, thanks in great measure to the Leland Garden Club, the beauty of the surroundings: the meandering creek to your left and on its high, sloping banks the oak and sycamore trees, the occasional surviving sweet gum, the crepe myrtle and pecan, the azalea and rosebushes, the park benches, the well-fed families of proprietary ducks.

That the two womens homes were situated on what some Leland families consider the wrong side of the creek should also be noted. It is, of course, a measure of small-town snobbery that there exists, to some, a bad side of the best street in town, but the distinction is also significant in terms of current property values. Houses on South Deer Creek Drive, according to a longtime realtor and lifelong resident, command a higher price. Asked why this was, she answered with a sigh, as if the reason should have been obvious. Because, she said, Black people live on the south side.

Close to? Or on?

These days? Both.

It was 2018. Id returned to the Delta to participate in the annual Hot Tamale Festival, which took place in downtown Greenville. The realtor was driving me around Leland, pointing out places of historical interest, including a museum devoted to Kermit the Frog and his creator, the puppeteer Jim Henson, surely Lelands best-known resident, more famous even than the bluesmen James Son Thomas and Johnny Winter. Shed promised to get me into the murder house, which shed personally sold five times since the killing, but when we drove there and she went inside to ask, the current residents told her no way.