Delta Epiphany

Robert F. Kennedy in Mississippi

Ellen B. Meacham

• Publisher: University Press of Mississippi
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9781496817457
• eBook ISBN: 9781496817464
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: North American History
• Index: History

In April 1967, a year before his run for president, Senator Robert F. Kennedy knelt in a crumbling shack in Mississippi trying to coax a response from a listless child. The toddler sat picking at dried rice and beans spilled over the dirt floor as Kennedy, former US attorney general and brother to a president, touched the boy's distended stomach and stroked his face and hair. After several minutes with little response, the senator walked out the back door, wiping away tears.In Delta Epiphany: Robert F. Kennedy in Mississippi, Ellen B. Meacham tells the story of Kennedy's visit to the Delta, while also examining the forces of history, economics, and politics that shaped the lives of the children he met in Mississippi in 1967 and the decades that followed. The book includes thirty-seven powerful photographs, a dozen published here for the first time. Kennedy's visit to the Mississippi Delta as part of a Senate subcommittee investigation of poverty programs lasted only a few hours, but Kennedy, the people he encountered, Mississippi, and the nation felt the impact of that journey for much longer. His visit and its aftermath crystallized many of the domestic issues that later moved Kennedy toward his candidacy for the presidency. Upon his return to Washington, Kennedy immediately began seeking ways to help the children he met on his visit; however, his efforts were frustrated by institutional obstacles and blocked by powerful men who were indifferent and, at times, hostile to the plight of poor black children.Sadly, we know what happened to Kennedy, but this book also introduces us to three of the children he met on his visit, including the baby on the floor, and finishes their stories. Kennedy talked about what he had seen in Mississippi for the remaining fourteen months of his life. His vision for America was shaped by the plight of the hungry children he encountered there.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Preface
• Prologue
• Chapter 1 “Now This Problem Has to Be Faced”
• Chapter 2 “We Were to Try Harder than Anyone Else”
• Chapter 3 “It’s to Hell with Bobby K”
• Chapter 4 “They Are Starving”
• Chapter 5 “Wherever One Looks in This Land, Whatever One Sees, That Is the Work of Man”
• Chapter 6 “I Just Couldn’t Make a Living”
• Chapter 7 “A Terrible Reflection on Our Society”
• Chapter 8 “We Need to Make an Effort Together”
• Chapter 9 “You Don’t Know What I Saw!”
• Chapter 10 “I’d Feel Better if I Were Doing What I Think Ought to Be Done”
• Chapter 11 Bring the Poor People to Washington
• Chapter 12 “It Let Us Know that There Was Somebody Who Cared”
• Chapter 13 “We Don’t Speak of Statistics, Numbers. We Speak of Human Beings”
• Acknowledgments
• Source Notes
• Bibliography
• About the Photographers
• Index