Mississippi
History is huge draw for Mississippi River cruise goers, but whose history?
![History is huge draw for Mississippi River cruise goers, but whose history? History is huge draw for Mississippi River cruise goers, but whose history?](https://mississippitoday.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/american-queen-kb.jpg)
Overnight cruises returned to the Mississippi River a decade ago, following the industry’s collapse. As existing cruise lines adapt, and companies like Viking enter the market, many passengers say the river’s storied past is part of the draw.
But what history do they learn, and how?
On a hot afternoon in late May, Lee Hendrix stood on stage in the dimly lit Grand Saloon — an elaborate floating reproduction of the original Ford’s Theatre in Washington, D.C., where Abraham Lincoln was assassinated.
The former river captain and self-schooled historian described the sinking of the Sultana near Memphis more than 150 years ago, when at least 1,400 people drowned on the Mississippi River. A rapt crowd listened as their own vessel, the American Queen, mosied safely up the same route.
Hendrix is a riverlorian — think: river, lore and historian — aboard the American Queen, a steamboat that can haul more than 400 cruise-goers the length of the Mississippi River. This audience is nearing the end of a seven-day journey from New Orleans to Memphis.
This cruise line offers presentations about local history, as do all three overnight Mississippi River cruise lines — American Queen Voyages, American Cruise Lines and Viking. Some presenters are Ph.D. historians, and others are self-schooled, like Hendrix, who’s a veteran on the river.
The American Queen is billed as capturing the nostalgia of 19th century steamboat travel. The company prides itself on using a restored, century-old steam engine, and the sentiment extends to the rest of the vessel, which oozes with memorabilia of the period.
Passengers are greeted with red carpeted stairs at the bow of the boat, ending at a set of gilded double doors that open to the Mark Twain Gallery, a dimly-lit room lined with ornate bookshelves, steamboat replicas in glass cases and displays of Twain’s works.
Lower river tours with American Queen Voyages start at about $4,000 — well above the cost of an average Caribbean cruise — and the most expensive tickets come with a $10,000 price tag. They attract a crowd that’s mostly retired, wealthy and well-traveled, and history is part of the draw for many passengers.
The company’s strategy “is to identify thoughtful and deliberate shore excursions” and provide riverlorians to help guests understand the complexity of the region, Cindy D’Aoust, president of American Queen Voyages, said in a statement.. .
Most days, passengers can find Hendrix walking laps around the fourth floor deck of the American Queen or in the Chart Room — an airy room at the boat’s bow, filled with books and maps of the river — ready to answer passengers’ questions in between excursions in riverside towns.
But at a time when many plantations are facing scrutiny for not accurately representing the legacy of slavery in the South, historians like John Anfinson, a Ph.D. historian and riverlorian with American Cruise Lines, try to add context to these stops along the tour in a “Plantation Preview.”
Anfinson does his best to prepare tourists before they step off the boat, steering away from the history they often hear on guided tours and opting instead to describe the legacy of slavery in the South. That way, he said, people can make sense of the stories shared on tours in a meaningful way.
American Cruise Lines’ description of the Houmas House, one of the most notorious plantations of the South, reads: “Step off of your ship docked right at Houmas House and explore one of the most elaborately renovated of the grand homes along the river, once a private home and thriving historical agricultural enterprise.”
Anfinson read the description and exclaimed: “Talk about a way to avoid saying ‘plantation!’”
Houmas House is named after the indigenous Louisianans they stole the land from and was owned by Revolutionary War general Wade Hampton, one of the largest slaveholders in the antebellum South. In the same year he purchased Houmas House, he suppressed a slave revolt that resulted in the deaths of 95 enslaved people.
The Houmas House website does not mention this history, and Anfinson understands why not all historic sites lead with that.
“In the fractured America of today, the audience is going to be fractured in how they listen to that story,” Anfinson said.
The Laura Plantation, situated between New Orleans and Baton Rouge, was the first museum of its kind in the South that highlighted the lives of enslaved people when it opened in 1994. Operations manager Jay Schexnaydre said many other plantations have followed suit since then.
The Laura Plantation prides itself on taking guests through the house, grounds and slave quarters, compared to some other plantations that keep visitors in “the big house.” Some plantations still choose to showcase the grandeur of Antebellum homes on plantation tours, focusing on antique furniture and portraits.
“What people are interested in is the truth,” Schexnaydre said.
American Queen Voyages and Viking feature the Laura Plantation on their itineraries, but Schexnaydre said the logistics of tours can impact visitors’ experiences.
If passengers start their tour in New Orleans, the Laura Plantation is one of their first stops. If their tour starts in Memphis, heading downriver, Schexnaydre said passengers likely will spend the last week touring other plantations, and might opt for an alternate excursion instead.
“Every stop is plantations, plantations, plantations,” he said.
Part of the Laura Plantation’s tour follows the arc of one family over three generations rather than telling the stories of enslaved people in a general sense. Schexnaydre said it helps visitors connect more intimately with people whose stories might otherwise be lost to history.
Riverlorian Hendrix makes an effort to confront forgotten history in his 45-minute lecture about the Sultana — a maritime disaster that rivals the death toll from the Titanic. He talked about how commercial navigation impacted indigenous peoples; the neglect of a steamboat captain who overcrowded the Sultana for profit; and the prisoners of war who died in the fiery explosion.
The story of the Sultana was lost in headlines about the killing of Lincoln’s assassin John Wilkes Booth and other events as the war neared its end, but Hendrix said it’s more than that.
“So, why doesn’t anybody know about the Sultana?” Hendrix wondered aloud on stage. “The people on the Sultana were poor soldiers returning home. Most of the people on the Titanic were rich people.”
Anfinson and Hendrix know some passengers will skip their talks. Some people are celebrating a birthday or anniversary, Anfinson said; not everyone is there for a history lesson. In many ways, it’s up to passengers to craft their experiences, but the histories that passengers encounter often depend on who’s telling them, and how.
Hendrix became a riverlorian after decades on the river, first as a deckhand and then as a river pilot, with a brief stint away that involved performing skits where he played a steamboat captain. He said he’s always loved river history, “probably more so than other pilots.”
By the time passengers heard Hendrix’s recollection of the Sultana’s sinking, they had stopped at ports in Nottoway, St. Francisville, Natchez and Vicksburg. In St. Francisville, passengers could choose between two excursions: “Plantations of the Back Roads” or “Redemption and Rehabilitation at Angola Prison.”
The Louisiana State Penitentiary — more often called Angola, for the former slave plantation that occupied the land — is the largest maximum-security prison in the country. Under the convict lease system, prisoners were abused, underfed and worked to death during much of the 19th and early 20th centuries, and it earned a reputation as “the bloodiest prison in the South.”
The Angola Museum included on the cruise line’s itinerary tries to tell “the complex and compelling stories of corrections and justice in Louisiana.” Visitors tour through the prison’s infamous past, including a stop at the Red Hat Cell Block, adjacent to a small room that was the site of 11 executions by electric chair between 1956 and 1961.
The prison now touts a philosophy of moral rehabilitation, though it continues to come under fire for involuntary servitude. The tour brings visitors to the present-day with a tour of the crop fields, where prisoners grow the food they eat.
American Queen passenger Jennifer White Fischer felt she left the tour with a more nuanced understanding of the criminal justice system. But then, she said tour guides at the nearby Louisiana State University Rural Life Museum raised critical questions about Angola she hadn’t considered.
As someone who discovered her love of history later in life, and recently wrote a book about her travels, she prioritizes the educational excursions on her tours.
“(River cruises) have just opened my eyes to the whole vastness of our country,” she said.
About halfway through the cruise from New Orleans to Memphis, passengers spent an afternoon in Vicksburg, Mississippi. The itinerary featured mainstays like the Jesse Brent Lower Mississippi River Museum and the Vicksburg National Military Park, but a more recent addition to the lineup tells Civil War history in a different way.
Charles Pendleton opened the Vicksburg Civil War Museum two years ago to talk about the war from a Black perspective.
“You open something like this, and all of the factors are not in your favor,” Pendleton said. “You’re Black, you’re in Vicksburg, Mississippi, where everybody has deep feelings about the Confederacy…and here you are telling a different story.”
A self-made historian, Pendleton started out attending Civil War gun shows, where he said white attendees made a point to tout their own theories about the war. It was the impetus for his own research, which led to him sharing presentations at his church.
Then, he stumbled across more Civil War-era memorabilia at antique shops, including a receipt for a seven-year-old girl named Ella. It elicited an emotional response he hadn’t experienced at other Civil War museums, and he wanted to capture that emotion for other museum-goers in Vicksburg.
Pendleton said most visitors are white and estimates at least half come from river cruises, which he said have been a boon for his museum and other small businesses. As cruise lines add new boats to their fleets and more stops to their itineraries, Pendleton hopes the industry will continue to elevate voices like his.
This story, the first of a three-part series, published in partnership with the Mississippi Center for Investigative Reporting, part of Mississippi Today, is a product of the Mississippi River Basin Ag & Water Desk, an independent reporting network based at the University of Missouri in partnership with Report for America, funded by the Walton Family Foundation.
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Mississippi
Bus company in deadly Mississippi crash has mixed safety record: USDOT
WARREN COUNTY, Miss. (WJTV) – There are questions about a bus company’s track record after a fatal bus crash in Mississippi on Saturday, August 31.
Seven people died when a passenger bus traveling on Interstate 20 left the roadway and overturned. The Mississippi Highway Patrol (MHP) said that 41 passengers and two drivers were enroute to Dallas from Atlanta.
Autobuses Regiomontanos owned the bus in the crash. The company, which is registered with the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT), has had a troubled record in recent memory. It consists of lawsuits, driver fitness violations and even another fatal crash in 2023.
According to the DOT, the company, based in Laredo, Texas, operates 17 vehicles and employs 39 drivers. The company currently has a ‘conditional‘ safety rating. It is given to companies with ‘inadequate‘ safety controls. Still, companies with this rating may continue to operate.
Its most recent compliance review occurred in July 2023. Using data available from the DOT’s Safety Management System, it has had 155 inspections. Of those inspections, 58 had violations. Nearly all were vehicle maintenance violations.
Three infractions between October and December of 2023 involved issues with vehicle tires. Other infractions included 16 brake or air brake violations and citations for having two buses with no or defective emergency exits.
Seven victims killed in Mississippi bus crash identified
Other inspection violations related to the bus company’s drivers. All violations occurred this year. They include the following:
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(1) Operating a commercial vehicle without corrective lenses or hearing aids as indicated on the driver’s medical certificate (2) Operating a commercial motor vehicle (CMV) while not possessing a valid commercial driver’s license (CDL).
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05/13/2024
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05/14/2024
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05/14/2024
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05/28/2024
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Operate a CMV while not in possession of a CDL on person.
DOT data indicates that company buses have been in four separate accidents over the last two years. A November 2022 crash required a bus to be towed away and another in April 2023 resulted in someone dying. Below is the record.
Date |
Location |
Deaths |
Injuries |
10/16/2023 |
Louisiana |
0 |
1 |
4/15/2023 |
Texas |
1 |
2 |
11/23/2022 |
Tennessee |
0 |
0 |
9/24/2022 |
Arkansas |
0 |
1 |
The NTSB is investigating the crash in conjunction with MHP. NTSB officials said they will look at the carrier’s safety record and protections for bus occupants.
Community comes together to help Mississippi bus crash victims
Autobuses Regiomontanos violated several provisions of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). According to the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ), it failed to have an ADA training program in place for its employees and contractors, failed to file required ADA compliance reports and failed to ensure that all lifts on its buses were properly maintained.
In 2015, the company entered into a settlement agreement with the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Texas.
The company was also named as a defendant in a $708 million lawsuit filed by New York City City in January. The city accused Autobuses Regiomontanos and other charter bus and transportation companies of taking migrants to the Big Apple on behalf of the State of Texas.
The DOT advises travelers to do the following before they book their next bus trip.
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Search for bus companies
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Verify that a company is authorized to operate
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Review the company’s safety records
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Make sure the company is licensed and insured
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If appropriate, report a company
DOT agencies advise consumers that unless a motor carrier has received an unsatisfactory rating or has been ordered to discontinue its operations, it is authorized to operate on the nation’s roadways. Additionally, readers should not conclude that a carrier is safe or unsafe by only using data from DOT agencies. For more information, click here.
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For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to WJTV.
Mississippi
As Climate Threats to Agriculture Mount, Could the Mississippi River Delta Be the Next California? – Inside Climate News
![As Climate Threats to Agriculture Mount, Could the Mississippi River Delta Be the Next California? – Inside Climate News As Climate Threats to Agriculture Mount, Could the Mississippi River Delta Be the Next California? – Inside Climate News](https://insideclimatenews.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/PRODUCE015-1024x683.jpg)
This story was originally published by The Tennessee Lookout.
A smorgasbord of bright red tomatoes and vibrant vegetables line the walls of Michael Katrutsa’s produce shop in rural Camden, Tennessee. What began a decade ago as a roadside farm stand is now an air-conditioned outbuilding packed with crates of watermelon, cantaloupe and his locally renowned sweet corn — all picked fresh by a handful of local employees each morning.
The roughly 20-acre farm west of the Tennessee River sells about half of its produce through his shop, with the rest going to the wholesale market.
Farms like Katrutsa’s make up just a sliver of roughly 10.7 million acres of Tennessee farmland largely dominated by hay, soybeans, corn and cotton. Specialized machines help farmers harvest vast quantities of these commodity “row crops,” but Katrutsa said the startup cost was too steep for him. While specialty crops like produce are more labor-intensive, requiring near-constant attention from early July up until the first frost in October, Katrutsa said he takes pride in feeding his neighbors.
The World Wildlife Fund sees farms in the mid-Mississippi delta as ripe with opportunity to become a new mecca for commercial-scale American produce. California currently grows nearly three-quarters of the nation’s fruits and nuts and more than a third of its vegetables.
Explore the latest news about what’s at stake for the climate during this election season.
But as climate change compounds the threats of water scarcity, extreme weather and wildfires on California’s resources, WWF’s Markets Institute is exploring what it would take for farmers in West Tennessee, Mississippi and Arkansas to embrace — and equitably profit from — specialty crop production like strawberries, lettuce or walnuts.
Specialty crops make up only 0.19% of the region’s farm acreage, but their higher sale value allows them to generate 1.08% of the region’s agriculture revenue, according to WWF’s May report, called The Next California, spearheaded by Markets Institute Senior Director Julia Kurnik. She argues that there’s an opportunity to proactively create more inclusive, higher-yield business models on existing farms, preventing natural ecosystems from being unnecessarily transformed into farmland.
But shifting produce growth to the Mid-Delta comes with hurdles: it requires buyers willing to try new markets, understanding of new crops’ diseases and needs, specialized equipment like cold storage and lots of expensive hands-on labor.
“It is not as simple as a farmer simply putting new crops in the ground,” Kurnik said.
Early Adopters Put Idea to the Test
Sixth-generation Arkansas farmer Hallie Shoffner is putting WWF’s models to the test through a nonprofit called the Delta Harvest Food Hub. The hub works with Black and women farmers to pilot the scalability of growing specialty crops in the Delta region, starting with specialty rice.
Shoffner grows basmati, jasmine, sushi rice, sake rice seeds and more on her 2,000-acre, century-old farm located in an unincorporated town outside Newport, Arkansas. She’s skeptical about a full switch to produce, but sees specialty rice products as “low-hanging fruit” easily adopted in the mid-Delta, where commodity rice is already widely grown.
The United States is the fifth-largest rice exporter in the world, and Arkansas is the country’s top producer, with other Mississippi River valley states not far behind. But the majority of specialty rice is grown in California or imported from East Asian countries.
“We are forward-thinking farmers who want to change, who want to do something different,” Shoffner said. “We want to make more money, because we know we cannot make as much money as small farms in the current agricultural economy.”
The commodity farming that dominates Delta agriculture makes the economic success of farmers largely dependent on the market prices of rice, corn, soybeans, wheat and other crops, Shoffner said. This incentivizes farms to grow larger to ensure they turn a profit even when prices are low, like they are now. But smaller farms struggle to stay afloat.
Shoffner said her vision for developing specialty crop markets in Arkansas will be through more collaboration between many smaller farms to diversify crop production and produce for large contracts together. She’s also exploring possibilities for expanding chickpea, sunflower, sesame and pea production in Arkansas.
And while she’s at it, Shoffner is working to make agriculture more equitable.
“As a white farmer who is a sixth generation farmer, I realize that I have inherited a large amount of land that systematically disenfranchised Black farmers,” Shoffner said. “And it is my responsibility to acknowledge that, and leverage what I’ve been given to help others.”
Her project, Delta Harvest, has a contract to grow specialty rice with a large company and she’s working with several Black farmers. She was too small to do it by herself, so they are doing it cooperatively.
Finding the Right Markets
In Mississippi, efforts to shift some of California’s sprawling specialty crop industry to the Mid-Delta drew skepticism from some farmers—even those with established specialty crop operations.
For the past 20 years, Don van de Werken has co-owned a 120-acre blueberry and tea farm in Poplarville, Mississippi, distributing much of its crops to buyers in his county and nearby cities.
Van de Werken questioned whether there would be enough regional demand to sustain a scaled-up specialty crop industry in Mississippi, noting that the success of his own enterprise hinges on targeting hyper-local markets like New Orleans. Shipping vegetables, fruits and other produce to buyers outside the Delta region would quickly become cost prohibitive for local farmers, van de Werken said.
“The problem we have, not just in Mississippi but the mid South in general, is we just don’t have the population base,” said van de Werken, who is also president of the Gulf South Blueberry Growers Association. “We don’t want our blueberries to go to Maine or Seattle. We want to focus our produce in a regional market.”
To make growing specialty crops worthwhile, Mississippi farmers would need to identify nearby buyers willing to purchase the new products on a consistent basis, van de Werken said. While selling goods directly to retail grocery chains like Kroger is often difficult, farmers could reduce financial risks by signing purchasing agreements with regional brokers like Louisiana-based Capitol City Produce.
“Anybody that puts anything in the ground is already taking a risk, but you want to minimize that risk,” he explained. “If you can prove to the brokers and the buyers that they can make money doing this, then the farming will come.”
The WWF report investigates ways to distribute risk across the supply chain to make selling to new markets easier on farmers, and works to connect buyers with Mid-Delta farmers.
AgLaunch, a Memphis-based nonprofit that guides farmers in innovation, estimates that adding specialty crops to the Mid-Delta region could spur $4.6 billion in added revenue and 33,000 jobs. But while commodity crop prices are readily available on the Chicago Board of Trade, the specialty crop market is generally not so transparent. Large, vertically integrated companies usually dictate contract terms, AgLaunch President and farmer Pete Nelson said.
AgLaunch helps build “smart contracts” that allow multiple farmers to produce on a contract, helping them secure higher quantity deals with proper compensation as a collective.
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Purdue College of Agriculture professor Fred Whitford said the idea of farming cooperatives that help smaller farmers carve out space in a large-quantity market is more than 100 years old. Whitford compared commodity producers to retail giants like Walmart, which make money by selling in bulk. Small producers are more like Ace Hardware, he said.
“Maybe the smaller folks have an ability to make more off their land by going to a specialty crop,” he said.
New Challenges Need New Solutions
Farmers who embrace specialty crops will face hurdles before they make it to the market.
Growing produce can be more profitable but “easier said than done,” Whitford said. “It’s nice on paper … but boy, in reality, you’re going to have to keep an eye on this crop, whatever you’re growing, because one slip up … then you have lost a lot of money.”
In Tennessee, Katrutsa grew strawberries in addition to his other crops for 10 years, but last April, a hail storm pulverized his entire field, leaving him with nothing. He’s not growing strawberries this year, and he might not plant them again — he’s not sure if he can find enough labor to make it work.
He grows many types of produce so if one fails, it’s less catastrophic. He sources seedlings from a neighboring state (it’s cheaper than growing from seed) and plants five times each season to maximize yield.
He works with a consultant to help identify diseases and how to treat them. Tomatoes are the most challenging, Katrutsa said. Some of his tomato plants withered this year due to bacterial wilt that flourishes in wet soil and high temperatures and has few effective chemical remedies.
Carolyn Preble helps out farmer Michael Katrutsa at the farm shop, which stocks the more than 20 acres of produce Katrutsa grows in rural Camden, Tennessee. Credit: John Partipilo/Tennessee Lookout
Chemical treatments pose other challenges. In Shaw, Mississippi, Michael Muzzi relies on a range of herbicides to grow soybeans and other feed grains on his 2,000-acre farm. Once sprayed, herbicides like Liberty and Dicamba remain in the ground and can drift in the air, which is hazardous to specialty crops, like tomatoes, that aren’t resistant.
“You’re not going to be able to spray [those herbicides] on specialty crops,” Muzzi said. “You’d have to have something that’s chemically tolerant.”
Growing fruits and vegetables on a farm with previous heavy herbicide use would require insulating those crops from chemical runoff — a feat that could only be reliably achieved by leaving whole acres of land unused for years, he said.
AgLaunch is exploring innovative ways to address these problems. For some farmers, this means helping make their existing row crops more efficient using farmer-incubated technology, adding local value by growing specialty crops or taking on processing, Nelson said.
Then there’s disruption with higher risk: farmers can partner with agriculture automation technology startups, allowing them to field test their products and collect data in exchange for farmer equity in the startup companies. If the startup succeeds, the farmer shares in the benefits.
“It’s not as simple as, ‘Hey, we should grow tomatoes,’” Nelson said. “It’s how you think about the whole value chain and make sure the farmer is protected. Make sure it’s not an opportunity just to grow a crop, but it’s an opportunity to own part of the processing or to build new products.”
Kurnik said WWF isn’t trying to recruit farmers to start growing specialty crops – they just want Mid-Delta farmers to have the information they need to make informed decisions. In terms of acreage, row crops “dwarf” specialty crops in the United States. A small percentage shift would mean a significant change in the level of specialty crops in the Delta.
“We don’t need everyone to want to jump on board tomorrow,” she said. “They would flood the market if they did.”
This story is a product of the Mississippi River Basin Ag & Water Desk, an independent reporting network based at the University of Missouri in partnership with Report for America, with major funding from the Walton Family Foundation. Disclosure: The Next California report was also funded by Walton.
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Mississippi
Mississippi man dies of an apparent overdose in MDOC custody in Rankin County
![Mississippi man dies of an apparent overdose in MDOC custody in Rankin County Mississippi man dies of an apparent overdose in MDOC custody in Rankin County](https://www.gannett-cdn.com/-mm-/62f03215fa8f49a1bd8baf9d444d47064169505c/c=0-21-533-322/local/-/media/2015/08/01/JacksonMS/JacksonMS/635740391618225482-jail-bars-prison-bars-.jpg?auto=webp&format=pjpg&width=1200)
A 41-year-old man incarcerated at Central Mississippi Correctional Facility in Rankin County died Thursday of an apparent overdose.
Mississippi Department of Corrections Commissioner Burl Cain confirmed the death in a news release.
The man was identified as Juan Gonzalez. According to prison records, he was serving a four-year sentence on multiple convictions in Hinds County and was tentatively scheduled for release in May 2025.
“Because of the unknown nature of the substance, the Mississippi Emergency Management Agency and the Mississippi Department of Health were notified,” MDOC reported.
The investigation into Gonzalez’s death remains ongoing.
This is a developing story and may be updated.
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