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Delta Travel Diary
Charlie Patton, "Father of the Delta Blues"
Charlie Patton, "Father of the Delta Blues", lived most of his life in the Mississippi Delta. Patton, whose music influenced Blues greats John Lee Hooker and Howlin' Wolf, was 9 years old when his family moved to Dockery Plantation sawmill and cotton farm near Ruleville, Mississippi where he came under the tutelage of Henry Sloan. Sloan had an unusual style of playing music that is recognized as very early blues. The State of Mississippi recently unveiled a marker at his burial site in Holly Ridge, one of the first to be erected on the Mississippi Blues Trail.
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Fannie Lou Hamer, Civil Rights Activist
Fannie Lou Hamer was an American voting rights activist and civil rights leader born in the Mississippi Delta in 1917. She was instrumental in organizing Mississippi's "Freedom Summer" for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, and later became the Vice-Chair of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party. Although tackling a job that was dangerous, Hamer went about her work with a passion that inspired others. A marker commemorating the significance of her work stands in honor of her in Ruleville, Mississippi.
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Lucy Somerville Howorth
A child prodigy who graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Randolph-Macon College at 16, Howorth graduated first in her law school class at Ole Miss. She was named U. S. Commissioner for the Southern Judicial District of MS and elected to the State Legislature in 1932. Howorth was appointed by Pres. Roosevelt to the Board of Veterans Appeal in Washington, D.C. and served as General Counsel for the War Claims Commission. She was the first female to hold such a position in a federal agency. In recognition of her monumental work on behalf of women, the Mississippi AAUW established the $80,000 Lucy Somerville Howorth Fellowships Endowment in 1974 to help aid women seeking advanced degrees in fields traditionally dominated by men.
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Margaret Wade
Called "the Mother of modern Women's College Basketball", Wade was the architect of three consecutive national championship teams in 1975/ 76/ & 77 at Delta State University. She pioneered a movement in women's basketball that brought the sport more popularity then it had ever known. Margaret Wade's legacy is remembered and symbolized through the oldest and most prestigious award presented in Division I women's basketball, the Wade Trophy. It is called the Heisman Trophy of women's sports.
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Dave "Boo" Ferriss
Dave "Boo" Ferriss is legendary as the coach of Delta State University baseball for 26 years where he directed nine DSU squads to the NCAA Division II Playoffs. In his 26-year tenure, he compiled a 639-387-8 career record that still ranks among the all-time coaching leaders at the NCAA Division II level. The Mississippi Sports Hall of Fame and Museum presents the Ferriss Trophy in May each year to the state's best college baseball player. Boo Ferriss played major league baseball with the Boston Red Sox from 1945-50.
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Mississippi Delta Tourism Association
P.O. Box 68 - Greenville, Mississippi 38701
Toll Free: 877-DELTA MS
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