Download the synopsis handout for When It’s Darkness on the Delta: How America’s Richest Soil Became Its Poorest Land for the Urban Engagement Book Club, Thursday, Sptember 17, Noon (Central time), over Zoom
You don’t have to read the book. I already did…
I read the books. You get the insights.
You are invited!
A special encouragement to attend the Urban Engagement Book Club
Thursday, September 17, over Zoom, Noon (Central Time)
Please join us. All details below.
(You do not need to read the book — all are welcome)
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Download the synopsis handout handout by clicking here.
Our book for September:
When It’s Darkness on the Delta: How America’s Richest Soil Became Its Poorest Land
by W. Ralph Eubanks
As part of the War on Poverty, Lyndon Johnson sought to make America confront poverty firsthand, and Robert F. Kennedy carried that mission into the Mississippi Delta in 1967, visiting desperately poor families and seeing children suffering from hunger and malnutrition.
The Mississippi Delta…one of the places where America’s long struggles with poverty and racial inequality are most starkly visible.
How did a region blessed with some of the richest agricultural soil in America become home to some of its deepest and most persistent poverty?
In When It’s Darkness on the Delta, Mississippi native W. Ralph Eubanks combines history, personal narrative, and travel through the Mississippi Delta to examine the forces that produced generations of economic and racial inequality.
He traces the legacy of slavery, sharecropping, Jim Crow, agricultural mechanization, political power, and disinvestment—and challenges the familiar idea that the Delta’s poverty is simply the result of individual failure.
For Eubanks, the Delta is not an isolated Southern tragedy. It is a particularly revealing example of how inequality has been created and sustained in America.
“The story of the Delta is not just a Mississippi story. Nor is it just a Southern story. At its very core, the Delta’s story is an American story.” — W. Ralph Eubanks
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What: The Urban Engagement Book Club
When: Thursday, September 17, noon (Central time)
Where: On Zoom only
Cost: No cost; no registration required.
I encourage all to download my comprehensive handout, print it out, and follow along.
Come join us on Zoom.
Urban Engagement Book Club
Synopsis presented by Randy Mayeux
We conclude shortly after 1:00 pm
(This event is free).
Here is the Zoom link to join our gathering:
Randy Mayeux is inviting you to a scheduled Zoom meeting.
Topic: Urban Engagement Book Club
Time: September 17, 2026 12:00 PM Central Time (US and Canada)
Join Zoom Meeting
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/82765148206?pwd=Ybl8bxMDYs49xo95L4onnj3Uslgg7J.1
Meeting ID: 827 6514 8206
Passcode: 294235
