Delta Center for Culture and Learning

06/20/2025

06/05/2025

Music video by Bobby Gentry performing Ode to Billie Joe (HQ/HD version)🤠 Listen to more great country classics: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLbQ27Wem...

07/10/2024

Hello! My name is Jessica Johnson. I am originally from Columbia, Maryland, but I have lived in Charlotte, North Carolina, for most of my adolescent years. This summer, I have had the privilege of working with the Delta Center as part of my Community Summer through The Robertson Scholars Leadership Program.

Transformational leadership is a term that has guided my collegiate experience so far as a Robertson Scholar. The Robertson, a full-ride scholarship program whose recipients are dually enrolled at Duke University and UNC Chapel Hill, prides itself on cultivating the next generation of changemakers and disrupters of systems that refuse to benefit marginalized communities. As I have worked this summer under Dr. Rolando Herts and the team at The Delta Center for Culture and Learning, I have assigned a new perspective and definition to transformational leadership.

Please read more about my experience and the lessons I've learned at the Delta Center here!
https://www.msdeltaheritage.com/blog/2024/7/10/understanding-the-stories-of-the-delta-jessica-johnson-robertson-scholar

06/26/2024

Hello, my name is Kiestin Jackson, sophomore at the The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. As part of the The Robertson Scholars Leadership Program—a full-ride merit scholarship program adjoining Duke University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill—I have had the opportunity to intern this summer at the Delta Center for Culture and Learning.

Working under Dr. Rolando Herts and the Delta Center team has been a genuine privilege. In part with his copious network of changemakers such as Dr. Alysia Burton Steele, associate professor of journalism at the The University of Mississippi, Dr. Herts’ expertise in tourism planning and community engagement has been pivotal to my development this summer. The Mississippi Delta has served as a landscape of inspiration for my ongoing work in visual media, urban planning, and economic development.

Please read more about my experience here! www.msdeltaheritage.com/blog/2024/6/25/reflections-from-our-2024-robertson-scholar-kiestin-jackson

06/21/2024

Happy Friday! We have been busy producing our inaugural MS Delta Cultural Heritage Ambassadors Program. Supporting this new project are Annelise, Jessica, and Kiestin, our 2024 Robertson Community Summer Scholars from The Robertson Scholars Leadership Program at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Duke University. Here they are receiving a warm welcome from the Mississippi Heritage Trust at their recent Listen Up conference in Vicksburg. Welcome Robertsons!

06/19/2024

Grant awards of up to $15,000 will be available for projects that preserve, perpetuate, and celebrate the Mississippi Delta's rich and complex heritage.

06/01/2024

This afternoon at 1pm, please join us at the Jacob Conference Center in Ewing hall for a screening and discussion of the film "Voices from the Sit-in"! Special guest Dr. Timla Washington, Office of Congressman Bennie Thompson, will highlight the importance of community-based cultural heritage storytelling.

The event is free and anyone is welcome! We hope to see you there!

05/09/2024

The 2024 MS Delta NHA cultural heritage grants application cycle opens on Wednesday, May 22!

Grant awards of up to $15,000 will be available for projects that preserve, perpetuate, and celebrate the Mississippi Delta's rich and complex heritage.

Learn more and register for our May 22 workshops at msdeltaheritage.com/grants

04/30/2024

Historian David Cohn famously wrote that "The Mississippi Delta begins in the lobby of the Peabody Hotel in Memphis." After spending a couple of weeks in Cleveland, MS - which included an interview at WDSW The Trail 88.1FM Cleveland, MS, meeting Delta Music Institute professor Barry Bays, and attending "Written In Their Soul: The Stax Songwriter Demos" at GRAMMY Museum Mississippi -- we took our Brazilian guests Toyo and Gabi to Memphis to experience the famous duck walk at The Peabody Memphis (where Gabi was named an honorary Duckmaster!), the Stax Museum of American Soul Music, WYXR radio station at Crosstown Concourse, historic Royal Studios with Lawrence Boo Mitchell, The Four Way soul food restaurant, and, of course, historic Beale Street - Memphis, which is known as the "Home of the Blues." Toyo and Gabi are flying back to Brazil today, so we will miss them terribly and look forward to seeing them at Mississippi Delta Blues Festival Brazil's Cleveland, MS Edition in November! Many thanks to our campus and community partners for showing these special international guests excellent MS Delta hospitality: Delta State University International Education, Delta State University Archives & Museum, Mississippi Delta National Heritage Area, Visit Cleveland Mississippi, Visit Clarksdale, B.B. King Museum and Delta Interpretive Center, and several others. Safe travels, Toyo and Gabi!

04/26/2024

This week, we were pleased to host a brilliant group of Spring Break Service Learning students from Hunter College (part of The City University of New York system) organized by Hunter team members Miesha Smith, and Malkie Schwartz. They engaged in deep discussions about Mississippi Delta cultural heritage inspired by visits to Mississippi Civil Rights Museum and Medgar and Myrlie Evers Home National Monument in Jackson while viewing our Cast of Blues exhibit. They even got a chance to chat with our Mississippi Delta Blues Festival Brazil guests Gabi and Toyo! Their next stop was B.B. King Museum and Delta Interpretive Center before heading back to NYC.

04/25/2024

During their research visit to the MS Delta, our Delta Delegation to Brazil partners have continued to draw inspiration from people and places in Cleveland/Bolivar County including the bayous and fields surrounding historic Bethlehem II Missionary Baptist Church in Shaw and the Mississippi River at Terrene Landing in Rosedale. They also gave presentations about Brazilian connections to the Blues during a Mississippi Delta Cultural Heritage Ambassadors session at Visit Clarksdale and during a Lunch and Learn event at Delta State University Archives & Museum. Many thanks to our local partners : Delta State University International Education, and Visit Cleveland Mississippi for continuing to help us host these special international guests.