Washington County, Mississippi (Images of America)

Washington County, located on the Mississippi River in the heartof the Yazoo-Mississippi Delta, is the culture that cotton built.Founded by hearty pioneers willing to risk even their lives for theunexcelled wealth that the “white gold” of cotton promised, the countywas literally carved out of a swampy, cane-covered wilderness wherethe brave were as likely to reap an early grave as elaborate grandeur.This collection of more than two hundred photographs from thelate nineteenth century through the mid-twentieth depicts the uniqueand pervasive dichotomies that the struggle to weave the “CottonKingdom” produced, especially the twin threads of prosperity andpoverty. Here men struck it rich in an unprecedented short time,but here they lost it just as quickly. While high cotton bought whitemen opulent homes and the leisure to produce literary classics,simultaneously it bought the black man little more than a shotgunshack and the pain that birthed the blues. Witness the challengespresented to the mule by the machine and to the isolation of thecounty’s way of life by international war and the infusion of industry.Despite the divisions, this collection also illustrates the common,commendable effort by the citizens of one American county in theSouth to clear their land, cultivate their fields, build their homes, pavetheir streets, construct their highways, lay their railroads, and protect itall from flood, fever, and fire with an unfaltering faith in the future.