Mississippi
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Some time ago, something crawled or slithered or grew like a fungus. Something that started small, got bigger, lurched like a swamp thing out of the mud and moist earth and humid nights of the Delta. Then, it took over the world. So next time some smartass ferner, horrified by our latest ham-fisted foreign policy blunder, wonders out loud, what good is America?

Well, you can always pipe up that the blues, rock and roll, R&B, and soul all came out of this place. One state, Mississippi. ♪ I took a walk through this beautiful world ♪ ♪ Felt the cool rain on my shoulder ♪ ♪ Bouncing in here in this beautiful world ♪ ♪ I felt the rain getting colder ♪

Right now we're in the middle of downtown Jackson, Ferris Street. It's a street with a lot of history, what it used to be like back in the day. The street was packed with folks, folks all over. They had their own restaurants, grocery stores.

I mean, everything happened on Ferris Street that happened in Jackson for the African American community. The state capital of Jackson, Mississippi, located along Interstate Highway 55, just outside what's known as the Mississippi Delta. It's the kind of place that makes you wonder, why did they make it the capital? Until you grab hold of what used to be around here.

-Faris Street used to be the hub of African American life in this city. It's black commercial cultural center. When Dr. King came to town, he came here. Everybody did. Medgar Evers had an office just upstairs here.

Musicians like Tommy Johnson, Sonny Boy Williamson II, and Elmore James all played here. And the likes of Duke Ellington, Cab Calloway, Count Basie, and Louis Armstrong all took the stage at places like the Crystal Palace Ballroom and the Alamo on Farish Street. What happened? Where did it all go? What killed Farish Street was integration. Once we were able to branch out of our own indigenous black-run businesses, the black-owned businesses died. Right. So great for the black race, but terrible for the black business.

In fact, the only reason you're coming to Ferris here right now is we have two churches, two funeral homes, and the Big Apple Inn. So you're going to either die, worship, or come to my place to eat. And that's the only trap you have. Or all three in that, you know. That's right. Not in that order, but...

Back when things were hopping, Gene O'Lee's great-grandfather Juan "Big John" Mora moved to Mississippi from Mexico City, started a family with an African-American woman in Jackson. He sold hot tamales out of a steel drum on the corner. In 1939, he moved the operation inside, right here. Now, the last restaurant on the street.

Lurking inside waiting for us is John T. Edge, who leads the Southern Foodways Alliance. Mr. Edge, how you doing? Who makes a point, a mission, out of knowing and teaching as much as he can about the real culinary traditions of the South, and doing what he can to keep them alive and unmolested. Thanks, sir. Look at that. Awesome. It's just like a dream sandwich.

What you go for here are smokes, smoked sausage sandwiches, and these magnificent beauties, pig ear sandwiches called ears. Both pretty much served with the same garnishes of slaw, mustard, homemade hot sauce on a soft bun.

Now, as I understand it, originally this was one of those, nobody wants these things, they're dirt cheap. That's exactly right. In fact, by dirt cheap, the ears were actually free. Right. When my great-grandfather started getting the pig ears, the local butcher was giving them to him because he was just throwing them away. It's everything we love about pig, the texture, it makes it fatty, lean, all that. Oh, that's good. Mmm. Man.

That is just hard to beat. Isn't it good? Mm-hmm, it's a good sandwich. And of course, some hot tamales, which at this point in history are about as Mississippi as they are Mexican. Like the Blues, they came out of Mississippi in the early 20th century as Mexican migrant workers came in to replace African Americans who were headed to work in the great factories and stockyards of Chicago and Detroit.

You know, sitting down here eating tamales, we can sketch a history of Mississippi. And that's kind of what I'm most interested in doing, helping southerners understand that their foods are as African as they are Western European. If not more. If not more, largely more. You know, music and all the other cultural expressions of the South.

I think food is a sneaky way of getting at some of the serious stuff we've been talking about. As I told you before, I didn't know what a cool job or what a cool restaurant I had until you showed it to me. I'm just making a living. You know, just like a lot of folks around Mississippi. We're not trying to make history. We're not trying to increase tourism. All we're doing is doing what we do.

There is a discomfort level about exploring southern food waste, particularly Mississippi food waste. When you're talking about high-end traditional southern cooking, you're talking plantation slavery cooking, because that's where these recipes came from.

So to revel in that, you don't want to tumble into nostalgia. The potential for awkwardness and offense is enormous. I want to be careful. I'm not saying that's what I want the South to be. I'm saying that's what people come to the South looking for. Right. They come to the South looking for the past preserved in the ember.

But the reality is something different. I don't want to fix it in the past. I don't want to fix it in 1865 or 1965. I want it to progress and change. I want to document the change along the way and celebrate that change. The burden of race is upon us and we ain't gonna shake it. And that can make us better. I'm a Yankee, so for me it's kind of shocking to see this flag. It means a lot of things to a lot of people.

First and foremost meaning, I'm not a Yankee and I don't much care what you think. There's no doubt that much of Mississippi history is ugly. From slavery, which was pretty much the backbone, the foundation of industry here from the get-go, to Jim Crow, lynchings to church burnings. 14-year-old Emmett Till, killed for talking sass to a white lady in 1955.

The assassination of Medgar Evers in 1963. The murders of civil rights workers James Cheney, Michael Schwerner and Andrew Goodman in 1964. Hell, they had to send in 30,000 armed federal agents, national guardsmen and military police just to enforce federal law allowing a black man to attend state college. A notion that was, shall we say, less than popular here.

To be honest, that was about all I had for an image of the state of Mississippi. That was all I knew, and it hadn't occurred to me to look further. But I've traveled the world since then, and I visited and learned to love many places not my own, cultures and beliefs very different from the Upper East Side of Manhattan. Why can't I love Mississippi?

High Infamous is a proud son and resident of Mississippi, a youth mentor in Jackson's church and public school systems, owner of a marketing agency, and hip-hop artist.

This town, it feels empty. Where is everybody? I think one thing is a lot of people think that you have to leave Mississippi to be able to do something great. But I think a lot of it is there's so much bubbling in the undercurrent that sometimes isn't seen. And I think it takes an artist who usually takes something that's blank and creates something that's awesome to be able to see the potential in the place in a canvas, so to speak, that has been vacated by others.

Soul Wired Cafe, one of a number of places where something is going on. Where artists, entrepreneurs move into workshops, performance spaces, set up something new and good in formerly abandoned and neglected parts of town. ♪ Name all ready so there's no need for intro ♪ ♪ We have a round, it close, the hood is ♪ ♪ That's exactly why the hood's here ♪ ♪ And if you trying to find it, better look here ♪

This is a deeply, deeply conservative state, to say the least, right? This is a tough question because I haven't got my own opinion. Is it more racist in New York? So I think there are some deeply ingrained problems in Mississippi that

are connected to a very ugly past that we share with some other southern states. However, I think as far as we talk about racism expressed through a classist lens, I think Mississippi and New York are on par, right? Yeah, no doubt. Pie Infamous is originally from Clarksdale in the Delta and went to Ole Miss, but he's neither left nor lost faith. He feels an obligation to empower, uplift, educate, to contribute.

One of the important tasks of musicians is being able to really speak truthfully about what's going on without fear of reprisal, right? It allows the audience then to say, "You know what? You're right." Now that you've put it to a nice melody or to a nice beat or you say it in that way, and hopefully then that engages them more and allows them to move. And I don't think any movement in the world has not had a soundtrack.

right regardless of what it is and so that's our job

I know you're busy. We all are. But if you have 15 minutes or so every week and want to better understand the news, I've got a podcast I think you should check out. I'm David Rind, and I'm the host of CNN One Thing. Every week, I call up a plugged-in CNN correspondent, and we talk about a story they're covering. We break it down carefully and with context, without the unnecessary noise, so you can get on with your week. Follow CNN's One Thing on iHeartRadio.

Depending on what metrics you're using, the Mississippi is somewhere between the 10th and the 4th largest river in the world. One thing for sure, it's big and it's freaking strong. Also, you really got to put your back into it if you're crazy enough to want to paddle a canoe around in its fast-moving waters. What's the source of the Mississippi? Well, anywhere a raindrop falls in 44% of America. Its furthest reach is 34x Montana.

If you follow the volume of water, two-thirds comes down the Ohio River. But most people say Lake Itasca, Minnesota. John Ruskie is what I guess you'd call a river rat. In 1998, he started the Quapaw Canoe Company, a custom outfit that leads guided expeditions on the Mississippi River and its tributaries.

As a central part of his operations, he trains local kids from Mississippi and across the river in neighboring Arkansas under an apprentice program, teaching skills like hand-carving canoes, outdoor survival, and the ins and outs of guiding and the history of the river. Most of these kids come from pretty distressed neighborhoods, and the hope, the intent, is that once trained up, they'll stay with the company. Nice paddling, Tony. You got the feather down.

Thank you. I'll be feeling that tomorrow. Buck Island. Most of the island could be under 45 to 50 feet of flowing river water from April to June with the spring ice melt and rainstorms. We do a lot of cooking with Dutch ovens out here. Multi-purpose and indestructible. Mm-hmm. Hey, and the next step in this thing is that here are the greens, and we should stuff as many greens as we can into that pot. Into this right here? Uh-huh. All right.

So how does your program work? Around what age are they generally when they get first time? Teenagers. And as soon as they can hold a paddle, the only thing we ask is interest and commitment. Well, what does that mean, commitment? We have this thing called the three R's, which is respect of yourself, getting good sleep, eating good food, especially before we go on a trip. Second one is respect of other people, other paddlers, and of course the clients.

And then the third thing is taking care of the river. And you know, they've been told by their parents, don't get on the Mississippi River. Maybe they don't even know how to swim. And you know, for a young man or woman, overcoming a fear like that and getting in the canoe and then to have people come and appreciate what you're doing is a life-changing experience. But within that is this incredible, bright, beautiful spirit that is intact in the Delta.

Sweet potatoes, greens, into the Dutch ovens. Throw on the corn when getting close. Finally, on the wet logs on top of glowing coals, lay some steaks, some pork loin and pork tenderloins right on there. Just keep an eye on them. Well, we got a full spectrum of steaks. Steak is perfect. Corn on the cob? Yeah. A hunk of bread. Living large on the Mississippi.

And yes, there is too much food for two people. And yes, that is a whole hell of a lot of meat. And I know it would be awful to waste all that extra. But don't worry. Because these gentlemen are tired and hungry. Welcome, gentlemen. Right on, Quapos. Come on. Corn on the cob here, greens. I'll be cookie.

Yeah, put a little more of this. Oh, looking good. I don't want to say I'm good, but I'm good. -That's a do. -All right. Work, sir? Who's missing steak here? Yes, sir. You got it? Who needs steak? I feel all Crocodile Dundee. Beautiful. So, all that paddling, how bad am I gonna hurt tomorrow? Oh, I don't like the sound of that. I can't tell you. I got to leave home early. That hesitation, not a good sign. Those tender ones are nice.

Good stuff. Man, we have mastered the wild today. The Mississippi Delta is a big sponge that stretches between the Yazoo and the Mississippi. It's what's called an alluvial floodplain of about 7,000 square miles or almost 4.5 million acres.

This area used to look very different. Massive, wild, old wood forests and swamps. After the passage of the cheerful-sounding Native Removal Act of 1830, the Delta became open for settlement by any white people crazy enough, hardy enough, determined enough, or just plain mean and greedy enough to come here.

There's no way to make up for our bad racial past, but you do, you know, the sense of community that keeps people here.

is evidenced in this place. Julia Reid is Greenville born and raised, the daughter of a political family, a writer, author, and as Delta as it gets. How long have you been in Mississippi?

22 years. I came in 1992. John Currence is a celebrated chef who had left New Orleans to come to Mississippi and opened first one, then many more restaurants and businesses in the town of Oxford. I've stayed busy. And this is Doe's Eat Place in Greenville.

Hello, hi. This is the great Florence Signer. Florence in charge of the salad bowl and has been for-- This is Florence's doe senior sister-in-law. When did y'all open up? Florence, 1930? '41. '41, close enough. Like a lot of folks around here, Dominic "Big Doe" Signer got his start selling hot tamales to go.

At the beginning, the place catered to the black community. But after word got out how good the food was, white people started coming, which led to a kind of weird accommodation to the segregation of the day. Blacks came in the front, white people snuck in the back. The menu expanded with the clientele. What human qualities are unique or marked in the native of Mississippi? I cannot address Mississippi because, like I said, the Delta is a whole other planet.

Ah, okay, better question. How does the lifelong Delta resident differ from the others? You had to be a little crazy to want to come in the first place because it was like the swamp, buddy. It was underwater. I mean, you had to be crazy to come and you hadn't had enough money to make it work. So you had some sort of gamblers. I mean, that spirit still infuses the place. It's a little reckless.

It's sophisticated because they'd all come from elsewhere. You know, you go from the Delta to the hills. I mean, we're totally snobbish up here even when we didn't have a right to be. I mean, where you just came from, Jackson, are you kidding me? You'd have to be paid money to go to Jackson from Greenville. Do they feel the same way down there about you guys? They don't get us because they ain't got no sense of humor. So what about the food?

Has this place changed at all? No. It's been 20 years since I was here last and literally exactly the same. Not much in the way of capital improvements or time motion study. The system such as it is, is well, crazy. You eat right here in the kitchen. In the division of labor, the flow of work, well, I gave up trying to figure it out five minutes in and just figured I'll get loaded and eat all this delicious food.

The salad thing is famous, hand-tossed in the same wooden bowl for decades. The hot tamales, same as they ever was. And those tamales are just incredible because they're made with the steak drippings and stuff that you're getting ready to see. Oh, yeah. Oh, really? So it greatly enhances the flavor. Oh, my God. I could eat them until I was sick. Fries done in cast iron pan on the stovetop. The famous shrimp.

Steaks on an old roll-out broiler. Drippings all over the top. And you know, you're not going to get skinny or healthy eating the hot tamales and fried shrimp and steak and doughs. There's no question about it. Oh, that's good. Happy. It's the grease that makes it. Uh-huh. Man, that's good. Oh, you're right about those shrimp. They are delicious. The shrimp? Oh, yeah.

Is there a dessert that I should be saving room for? Are you kidding me? There is no dessert. It's pretty damn bare bones, my friend. If you ask for one, they'll give you a lollipop. This is exactly what you expect in Mississippi though, right? Yeah, it's supposed to look like this. You know, I moved here from Georgia and the thing that struck me when I moved here driving through the Delta the first time was just how empty it was. Like, you know, it was like everybody left.

The Great Migration, Three Factors, Automation, the invention of mechanical means to pick cotton, the call of better paying jobs in the industries of the North, and of course, freedom. You know, people think about the blues as a lament. A lot of blues songs are about freedom, about getting the hell out of Mississippi. And there were a lot of reasons to get the hell out of Mississippi.

for a long time. Now there's a return migration. There's that whole period, late 60s, early 70s, where kids are bugging out of Brown University to come sit at the foot of an aged bluefin in Mississippi. There's a cyclical pattern to that. Now you see people kind of doing the same thing with food. Like there's a whole generation that wants to come down here and sit at the foot of an aged catfish cook. ♪

State Senator Willie Simmons has been an elected official of the Mississippi Delta for 20 years, and he's been running this place, Senator's Place, for 11. Now, what's the difference between soul food and southern, traditional southern food? It depends upon the culture and what neighborhood you were in. If you were in the black neighborhood, then it became soul. We probably put a little bit more of the throwaway in our cooking, the pig feet.

the pigtail, the neck bones, and all of that's fatty. Now you're making me hungry. Now you are definitely hungry. We'll get some neck bones over there. Oh, excellent. So greens. Tuna greens. I'll have some of that for sure. Is that fried okra there? I'll have a little of that. Might need more than one plate at this rate. Let me get some mac and cheese. What's that, lima beans? And the red bean. Oh man, that looks kind of good too. Yeah, a little bit of that. Neck bones floating around somewhere?

Okay, yeah, I'll have some of those. Little rice and gravy on there? Yeah, thanks. And, uh, oh, I don't know, a piece of fried chicken there. If you got a thigh, that would be great. Okra's perfect. Yeah, it is. Oh, man, that's good. Now, here in the South, if you want to, you can throw your fork away and just grab that egg roll and... Oh, yeah, I'll be working on that once. We forgive you and the whole of the industry. I could eat this okra all day long, man. It's good.

I don't know what you think about those greens and butter beans, but they're nice. Man, that's tasty. Do you think the right people get the credit for Southern cooking as we know it? I do. You think the right people get the credit? I mean, look at who you... People know. People know who's behind this food, whether it's called soul food or whether it's called country cooking. How is the Delta, the mindset of the Delta, different than the rest of the state? No one else can compare with us. Like, there is no other Southern.

who can sit and talk to you and tell you that they represent Dockery Plantation where the blues supposed to have been born. There's no one else can tell you that in his district is the home of E.B. King. Can tell you that he represented the area where Fenneloo Hamer came from, where Jerry Butler was born. Go on and name others, the Staple Singers. When we talk about

the heritage and the culture and what comes out of the Delta. That's all within this little district that I represent. So, the Mississippi Delta has that pride. 46 miles southeast is Greenwood.

A town with a lot of history, most of it of the not-good variety. Known, unfortunately, as much for Byron de la Beckwith and Tom Brady's infamous speech after Brown versus the Board of Education as anything else, fairly or not, it's hard to get past that. During all the years of cruelty and struggle from 1933 on, through it all, and until today, this place, Luskos, was a beloved institution.

Once a grocery store, it turned restaurant to the money class, serving them in discreet quarters in the back where one could enjoy an alcoholic beverage in what was then a dry state. Still going after all these years and unchanged. Why? This place is like a reliquary of indiscretions past, you know?

But maybe to really tell the story of this place, you have to start with the story of its most famous employee, Booker Wright, who'd been working at Lusko's as a waiter since he was 14 years old. In 1965, NBC News came to town, making a documentary on race relations.

Booker's entertaining recitation of the menu at Lusko's was famous around town, so they asked him to do his usual routine for the camera. But at the end of his usual litany is where he dropped the truth bomb that nobody was ready for. Right here. Now, that's what my customers, I say my customers, be expecting of me.

Some people are nice, some are not. Some call me Booker, some call me John, some call me Jim, some call me nigga. All of that hurt, but you have to smile. If you don't, what's wrong with you? The meaner the man be, the more you smile. Although you're crying on the inside. I'm not going to tip that nigga. You don't look for no tip. Yes, sir. Thank you. What did you say? Come back. Be glad. Take care of yourself. Well, that's what you have to go through with. But remember, you have to keep that smile.

Telling the truth was still risky business in 1966 Mississippi, and Booker Wright was not rewarded for his candor. It was not a good experience for him. It did not make him a star by a... Not within the white community, but even though Stokely Carmichael maybe first chanted black power here, that was less important to the black community here than what Booker said on the NBC News. Yeah. The private dining rooms at Luskos are still here,

The menu, much the same. Steaks, fish, the famous broiled shrimp, the Lusko special salad with the house Italian vinaigrette dressing, and a healthy dose of anchovy, onion rings. Salad makes me happy. Yeah, me too. Mostly the anchovies make me happy. Yeah, yeah, love those. Catfish for Mr. Edge, the famous pompano for me. It's the kind of mark of being a great restaurant in the Delta, if you have pompano. It's a big damn fish.

No way I'm finishing this. Sitting here, the booths, the curtains, the whole ring bell for service thing, it seems lost in time. We got a long and ugly history, but one of the things I love about this place is you can't deny the burden of the past. It gets on your shoulders right there. America chooses to deny its problems in many ways and declares itself a post-racial society. That just shit doesn't fly in Mississippi. You can't claim that.

Hi, I'm Ben Mankiewicz, and this is my podcast, Talking Pictures. Can you ask me all the Super 8 questions? Of course. Because they're so fun. This season, I'm talking to the people who make us laugh. Who knew you were funny? I knew I was funny. From Turner Classic Movies and the streaming service Max, this is Talking Pictures, a podcast about movies, about memories, and all the life that happens in between.

How many varieties of man's game? It's not for you gals. We have this sitcom we'd love you to do called Here's Agnes. Listen to Talking Pictures on Max or wherever you get your podcasts. Oxford, Mississippi is a lovely, incongruously eccentric little island. A mutation, a college town. A magnet for writers, thinkers, and oddballs. Drawn perhaps by its rich literary tradition is the home of one of our greatest authors, William Faulkner.

Faulkner was a Mississippi native, a former postman, an outdoorsman, an eventual winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature and two Pulitzer Prizes for fiction. He never graduated high school. This was his house, Roanoke.

Faulkner wrote such American classics as The Sound and the Fury, As I Lay Dying, Light in August, and Absalom, Absalom. And many of his works took place in a fictional county, a place very much like this place in Mississippi. This is where Faulkner started his writing career, in this room here. For the past 10 years, Bill Griffith has been curator at William Faulkner's estate. He added this room on after he won the Nobel Prize.

And on the wall here is an outline of one of his novels. Yeah, that was his greatest book. Faulkner thought this was his masterpiece.

piece. Jack Pendarvis is the author of Your Body is Changing, The Mysterious Secret of the Valuable Treasure, and Awesome, as well as a staff writer for the game-changing animated series Adventure Time, all works of which I am a huge fan. So we wrote right on the wall. He just wrote on it. It's his name. Yeah, it's his version. He said that houses in Mississippi who have a family business have one room dedicated to the family business, and this family's business is writing.

From as early as 1919 through the early 60s, Faulkner wrote extensively about the post-Civil War South. He was the first author to do so, at a time when most writers were writing about anything but. He always said that he wrote about a South torn between itself, torn between the old ways, the old traditional ways and modern development. He said he was going to break the antebellum code. Right. And he did. But? He did. And yet, he had those hobbies and interests that were definitely...

of a gentry class and a gentry nature. - His portrait and his horse. - There's a great example of him in his riding habit. That's a great example. You do get to a certain level of success and all of a sudden this seems like a good idea. And it's never a good idea at that age. - At any age, right? - Exactly.

Was he politically active at all? I mean, there was a lot going on. He's a middle-of-the-road Democrat. That's what he said. He said you have to bring black education up with white education. And since the state of Mississippi will not invest in black education, it's up to its citizens to do so. He said that segregation wasn't about being right or wrong. He said any sane, sober southerner knows that it's wrong. It's about wanting to change or not. But people don't want to give up power.

Fear is still alive and well in Mississippi. I think racism is one of those great things in the world that you'll never solve, and that's why Faulkner wrote about it. Writers, as I know from looking in my own dark heart, are generally terrible people. Put ten of them together and it's like putting your head in a bag full of snakes. I meet a bunch of them above City Grocery, John Currence's place on the square.

There's the brilliant author Tom Franklin and his wife, the poet Beth Ann Fennelly. Grisham writer in residence Megan Abbott. Pandarvis, you know. Poet Chayuma Elliott. Wright Thompson is a senior writer for ESPN. Fellow writer on the series Treme, Chris Offit. Novelist, Ace Atkins. Poet Derek Harrell is originally from Milwaukee. Crime novelist Billy Boyle from Brooklyn.

Downstairs, Currens' restaurant, City Grocery, cranks out many delicious things. The man known as Big Bad Chef, aka Johnny Snack, is sending some of those goodies upstairs, as there's nothing professional writers like more than free food. Usually you put five writers in a room, it's an ugly hell broth of envy, hatred. We all hate Tommy. Right on.

That goes without saying. - Even me, I hate me worst of all. - Around here anyway, the writers are really supportive of each other. For writers to argue would be like arguing over a piece of dirt. I mean, what are we fighting about? The stakes are so low. Why would you be a jerk about it? - If Mississippi were a country and there were a national hero, a general eye,

by consensus statewide, who would the statue be of? - Elvis. - Really? It wouldn't be B.B. King. - It should be. It should be B.B. King. - I mean, yeah, but it would be Elvis. - But it would be Elvis. - Well, I mean, Mississippi is, you know, the joke is that it's not a state, it's a club, that it's so small that everybody knows everybody.

In the middle of Mississippi, Oxford is an oasis of thought and art and literature and feeling and sentiment and everything. They call this place the Velvet Ditch. Why the Velvet Ditch? I guess you just roll in, it's pretty friggin' comfortable, and you don't care much about getting out. Right? Right? Am I right? No one here seems too bitter about that. It's a place that needs help, but it's a really great place. We're never leaving.

Is there a distinctive barbecue style in the state of Mississippi? No, not that we can really discern at all. And it's part of the reason that we wanted to do this. We got our hands on this place and sort of been puzzled for years what Mississippi barbecue is all about. The more I dug into it, the less and less I could find. So what we wanted to do is sort of take a look at barbecue that surrounds us and see if we could sort of Frankenstein barbecue.

There isn't really any fixed idea of Mississippi barbecue. And other than this place, Lamar Lounge, John Currence's not-for-profit bar restaurant, there's no other pit-smoked whole hog barbecue in the entire state. A 175-pound pig will feed many mouths. About 250 people eat here a day. Now, this is a not-for-profit restaurant.

- Establishment? Is that right? - Yeah, it sure is. - What kind of socialist, communist are you up to, currents? What's going on here? This is the state of Mississippi. - Oh, just a feel-good kind of guy. - Me too. I've been here only a week, and my sentences, they're starting to change already. Because it's not just a physical rhythm to the speech, but the way I'm organizing my thoughts is starting to change.

Some of the Oxford writers from last night managed to make it out of bed, heads pounding no doubt, filled with the shame and self-loathing surely familiar for writers. But like such greats of the past as Malcolm Lowry, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Charles Bukowski, they too have learned that more alcohol first thing will often make you feel better about the world.

particularly if accompanied by freshly baked cornbread, biscuits, pulled pork off that whole hog, sweet jerk chicken, and brisket. Hell, I feel better already. The Mississippi that I've received is not the Mississippi that I've had in my head. I was surprised on how sold I was off the bat. If you want a rag, you come to Oxford.

You think that's true? Well, apparently, yes. I like that line in Barton Fink, "You can't throw a rock without hitting a rider." Then he says, "Do me a favor, throw it hard." It's easy to just look at Mississippi and go, "That just happens down there, so we're good. Our hands are clean." It's a totally misperceived place. When I came, I fell in love with the place. I never thought that I would. There's something to it, but you can't put your finger on it, on what it is.

What it is can be found in the dark spaces across the tracks and on the other side of town. Hey, good evening, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to Red Case Lounge, right by the cemetery and back by the river. ♪♪ ♪♪

What is a juk joint? You've heard reference to them, no doubt, but what is it? I guess the first thing you gotta know is it's pronounced "juk joint". And this one, this is a real good one. Scholars have suggested the word "juk" came from the Gullah, descendants of enslaved Africans, and it meant wicked or disorderly, to dance or a place of shelter.

Juke Joint started as plantation community rooms during slavery times. They went on to become the small, private, African-American run bars, clubs, and lounges. First in rural areas, then in towns and cities where workers could dance, drink, party, and gamble as a respite from the hard labor of Delta sharecropping, tenant farming, house service, and segregation.

They were often condemned by church leaders as houses of the devil. William "Poe Monkey" Seabury runs this place, as he has since 1963. And he makes the rules. How long has this been a business? I've been in this place 58 years. I'm 74. How did you get into this business? I just got into it. Something I like to do. And everybody come here and enjoy themselves.

No problem. Please explain this policy. No hats backwards and no pants hanging down. That's right. That's right. If you don't like my rules, don't come. What are the rules here? No rap music? No. I'm about to laugh. I don't like that stuff. It gives me a headache in the brain. I love all blues. All of it good to me, as long as it's blues. Good R&B? That's right. That's right.

- But no rap? - No, no. - Never, even if Kanye West wants to rent out the place, you gonna rent it to him? - Yeah, I'd rent it to him. - Okay, just in case. - So I ain't got time to work with them and keep down all this old bullshit. If you ain't come for a good time, stay away from here. - Where you still living by? - Well, thank you, sir. I love your place and thank you for having us. - Well, you got to come back again. - Oh, I surely will. - I'll find somebody to get naked with you. - Okay, DJ, you can kick it back off.

Thurma's a badger and she's bad. Thursday night, don't forget about it. Come right here. Thursday night is family night at Poe Monkey's. Mostly locals, a mixed bag. The music is classic R&B and pre-disco soul. The attitude, loose. Just familiarize yourself with those rules and there won't be a problem.

In the cities of the North, where I come from, in some ways we've been able to buy ourselves free from our past. New arrivals pour in with no memory of the ugly parts of our history. We can afford the luxury of the new. We can live in comfortable bubbles, our apartments high in the sky. In many ways more separate than at any time in history. But for Mississippi, the past is right there to see, still present.

and coming to terms with it, not an abstract discussion, but the daily business of life. I run a school for young women.

We're not a threat to anyone. In the new HBO original series, Dune Prophecy, it is sisterhood above all. I'm Greta Johnson. And I'm Ahmed Ali Akbar. Join us on the official Dune Prophecy podcast, where we unpack each episode with the show's creators, cast, and crew. Stream Dune Prophecy Sundays starting November 17th exclusively on Max, and you can listen to new episodes of the podcast every Sunday night.