A carefully rendered political, social, and economic history of the Yazoo-Mississippi Delta, The Most Southern Place on Earth elucidates all the nuances and subtleties of one of the most notorious and arcane regions of the United States. In spite of sometimes tedious and redundant statistical figures to bolster his point, Cobb expertly creates a linear narrative that parses out the stories and opinions (both erroneous and astute) of planters, scholars, politicians, and workers. I was really impressed with how he negotiated the unenviable task of wading through murky and tortuous historical accounts of the Delta, a place that seemingly epitomizes social apathy and ambivalence; where people could consider themselves kind, neighborly, and courteous, while simultaneously perpetuating a caste system that operates on the principles of paternalism, cruelty, and intimidation. By integrating statistical data, first person accounts, and a little bit of necessary historical revisionism, the myth of the Delta as a region sequestered by the past and untouched by modernity is untangled, leaving a society that may indeed have merely been a hyperbolized version of modern America.

Cobb’s argument indicates that where money can be made utilizing unchecked or encouraged exploitation, the social culmination will look something like the Yazoo Delta. He builds his argument by continually illustrating the federal government’s involvement in, and perpetuation of, the economic and social situation in the Delta, occasionally even implicating the global market as complicit to its construction. Factually, his position is reinforced by citing legislation on both state and federal levels, recounting unabashed admissions by planters and politicians of manipulation and exploitation of federal programs, as well as appealing to news reports of either federal inaction or, in some cases, compliance regarding regional abuse of labor and funds. In addition to planter testimony, black sharecroppers’ and day laborers’ testimony is included, as well as accounts given by civil rights workers and those that covered the racial situation in the Delta during the mid-twentieth century. Cobb synthesizes this material well, using all of them in concert to draw the Delta out of its mythical status as an American singularity into a more modern position as quite dependent on external forces to maintain its status quo.

In spite of his plethora of sources, Cobb’s attempts at interdisciplinary scholarship seem a little forced at best. After extensive social and historical scholarship, two concluding chapters on the arts of the Delta seem like a coda in a different key. Not to devalue their informational wealth, but their effectiveness is undermined by their placement as an addendum at the end of a cohesive narrative. I was left wishing that the final chapters had been integrated in the main body of the book, enriching already fantastic information. Additionally, I would have liked to have known how Southern religion played into this region’s history. It seems that the religious beliefs of both workers and planters in the Delta would have surely affected their views of the Delta and its sociological ills. My final qualm with the book was that, while poor whites in the Delta were occasionally included in the overall discussion of the region’s sociology, I would have liked to read more about their position as outside of, or even below, the planter/black labor dichotomy. That is, until their racism became a useful tool of the planter elite, at which time they were raised from their status as “poor white trash,” maligned by both planter and black worker alike, to a status of poor white trash with a useful purpose—that of maintaining the racial status quo through violence and intimidation.

Cobb’s most powerful observation occurs in the concluding paragraph of his epilogue, in which he warns that “wherever and whenever the pursuit of wealth, pleasure, and power overwhelms the ideals of equality, justice, and compassion,” the American Dream becomes a “self-indulgent fantasy." This image of the American Dream corrupted into self-indulgence and delusion served as a strong one for me. Not only does this passage serve to reaffirm his main thesis of the Delta as a potential microcosm of American corruption, but it also appears to presage corruption and exploitation in other aspects of American society. This passage also takes the scope of the book out of history and into contemporary sociology. No longer merely a rendering of life in the Delta, the book becomes a warning to all readers of the very real possibility for, or even existence of, Delta-like situations elsewhere in the United States. Anything that illustrates the undeniable American truth that those with power, typically derived from wealth, seek to perpetuate and reinforce that power at all costs, even to the gross detriment of human welfare, environmental protection, and individual morality, is a welcome change from typically accepted notions of idealism and progressivism as the main impetus of change in American society. The entire book illustrates that, no matter the political affiliation or ideological platform, money and power broker many of the deals that gets made in the United States. This truth was expanded into a sickening caricature in the Yazoo-Mississippi Delta, and in spite of national disgust and revolution, the federal government simply claimed to have their hands tied as far as the matter was concerned. Cobb seeks to condemn and warn of the consequences of such attitudes, however unlikely his presentiment will be heeded.… (mehr)