Delta State holds summer heritage workshop for teachers

CLEVELAND - Forty teachers from across the United States recently participated in a Delta heritage workshop entitled “The Most Southern Place on Earth: Music, History and Culture of the Mississippi Delta,” funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities. The workshop was presented by the Delta State University Delta Center for Culture and Learning, and was led by Center staff Luther Brown and Lee Aylward. Participants sampled Delta foods, visited local museums, and listened to the Blues as they traveled throughout the Delta visiting sites in Greenville, Greenwood, Clarksdale and Memphis, with stops in between where significant events occurred. They discussed issues involving civil rights and political leadership, immigrants’ experiences in the Delta, the Blues, the great migration, agriculture, religious heritage, and the Great Flood of 1927, among other things. All of the teachers who participate in the summer workshop will present lessons on the Delta’s heritage in their classrooms back home. Photo: Workshop participants in front of the Flood Museum in Greenville.