The Arts Tour of the Mississippi Hills

“The violets in the mountains have broken the rocks.”  — Tennessee Williams

Maybe it is simply a miracle. Maybe it is a kind of artistic astronomy—how talents, like comets, streak across the scene to disappear into history, or more often, become supernovas of such power and brilliance they illuminate the cosmos for us all.

Can there ever be a logical explanation for this star-studded region? Can it ever be explained how one small corner of one small state has somehow produced a veritable Who’s Who of creative arts? Icons whose influence not only continues to resonate the world over, but who, in many cases, changed the world as we know it: William Faulkner, Elvis Presley, Tennessee Williams, Howlin’ Wolf, Tammy Wynette, John Grisham and Oprah Winfrey, and that’s just to name the most well known.

But if the “how” can never be known, the “when” is a matter of a record, even if some of that record was lost to history once the vibrant arts of the Chickasaw and Choctaw civilizations were submerged in the deluge of white settlement that began in the Mississippi Hills in the 1830s.

In those early days, it was homesteads and towns, plantations and fortunes that were the settlers’ shining creations. However, as the century drew to a close, the first glimmers of creative greatness emerged, from sources that couldn’t have been more dissimilar: A runaway bride, a reckless tycoon, a courageous crusader, and a Southern belle with a secret.