Gilmore Ruth Wilson - Development arrested : The Blues and Plantation Power in the Mississippi Delta

CLYDE WOODS

With Introduction by
Ruth Wilson Gilmore

Dedicated to Lena, James, and Malik Woods, Mamie Woods,
Robert Gibson, Nathaniel Gibson, Sr., Denise Bates, and to
Willie Dixon, Fannie Lou Hamer, and Richard Wright

This paperback edition first published 2017
First published by Verso 1998
Clyde Woods 1998, 2000, 2017
Introduction Ruth Wilson Gilmore 2017

All rights reserved

The moral rights of the authors have been asserted

1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

Verso

UK: 6 Meard Street, London W1F 0EG
US: 20 Jay Street, Suite 1010, Brooklyn, NY 11201
versobooks.com

Verso is the imprint of New Left Books

ISBN-13: 978-1-84467-561-6

ISBN-13: 978-1-78663-252-4 (UK EBK)

ISBN-13: 978-1-78663-253-1 (US EBK)

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

The Library of Congress Has Cataloged the Hardback Edition as Follows:

Woods. Clyde Adrian.

Development arrested : the cotton and blues empire of the
Mississippi Delta / Clyde Woods.

p. cm. (The Haymarket series)

Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and index.

ISBN 1859848117 (cloth)

1. Afro-AmericansMississippi River ValleyEconomic conditions. 2. AfroAmericansMississippi River ValleyPolitics and government. 3. AfroAmericansMississippi River ValleySocial conditions. 4. Blues (Music)Political aspectsMississippi River ValleyHistory. 5. Plantation lifeMississippi River ValleyHistory. 6. Mississippi River ValleyEconomic conditions. 7. Mississippi River ValleyRace relations. 8. Mississippi River ValleyPolitics and government. 9. United States. Lower Mississippi Delta Development Commission. I. Title.

F358.2.N4W66 1998

Typeset by SetSystems Ltd, Saffron Walden, Essex
Printed in the US by Maple Press

In a Natchez cemetery I

learn beneath sacred grounds

that hold bones of the Whos

Who of 1800 plantation society

and remains of two Confederate

Generals. A couple of blacks

are interred with honor;

one, a musician, perhaps

a blues singer who did

not sing rain into droughts of

his peoples dayshis people

tilling and tilling so

mansions can be erected;

the other a barber, a free Negro,

who aborted bondage and

owned slaves himself. Cut

down by a white who owed

him money. I learn Natchez

has more millionaires

than any American town

in the early 19th century.

When I visit huge mansions

I run around to the back,

looking for the house

behind the house behind

the Big house where my origins

begin in this Republic.

There: a forlorn abandoned

cabin peers from debris. My

ancestors spirits converse

in broken accents of jimpson

weeds. Bitter winters devour

their names then rush to

confront my face. I do

not find any hints on lips

of guides that they

ever exist.

Makers of wealth

are invisible in America.

Maybe blues singers

molded tales of crimson

sorrows here and moaned them

up river to the deltas

in back stroked agony. Maybe

the crawling kingsnake,

whose head they bash

like that of Choctaw and Chickasawrule

the den of truths

not revealed.

There are no monuments

to those who worked the

landscapes of reality

in this town. This painting

is incomplete. Elegant

mansions are witnesses

to crimes. They testify

with opulence. They

testify with grandeur

and extravagance. Somebodys

hands bleed so I

exist. Somebodys feet

cordoned my boundaries

from wilderness. Somebodys

shoulders hold me up.

Here is an incomplete blues

song. This Natchez I

visit. My epic is totality:

nomadic memory of the

times strolling in breezes.

And despotic hands

clapping limitations

on dawns of brown eyes.

America is my song, red

blood of native Americans

eavesdropping on the heavy

sack my mother pulls. This

land is my landscape of inherited

harvests. I excavate with

songs.

I know this land. I breathe

this land. I birth this land.

I embrace this land. Where, Architect,

James Son Thomas, blue

prints my song in out

stretched screams in tenderness.

He inherits from Gospel

trains rolling from prayers

and sermons. His days mothered

in Leland misery. Muddy Waters, Muralist of

the spirit, scrawls my initials

on hours in this place. His damp

metaphors of pain spread debts

inside memory. Here. Wright lifts

the anvil of articulation

to wring meaning from meaningless

suffering. I know.

My song, polyglot

blues singers voyages

through words on trial. Defends

the voiceless.

In Wolfs laminated

fresco of howls on walls

of my soul. I unravel

a share

croppers diary. A sonic

epic of landless fingers

picking cotton

mouth greed. As guardian

angels. I am the black boy,

as chattel, as sharecroppers,

as worker, as the homeless

and imprisoned.

Here. My song over

flows the gossip of grand

estates and whispers of

famished names of uprooted

from memory. Out

cast memoirs of toilers. I

balance neglect with epic

moans. I am Mississippi: frontier

landscapes of blood

letting and blood

hounds on my trails. Sagas

of the new world: Indians

massacred in my skull. Where

names of the lynched form

a gallery of gentle

side dishes of horror.

My song and I

are combatants on chaotic

plains of experiences.

I come from a million field

hollers and moans. The wretched

itinerary of chains.

I am the native son of

a bitchs brew hopping

a Be-Bop Express

from here to some

where and some

where. I set fires

to curtains of silence.

Sterling D. Plumpp
June 17, 1998