The Deepest South of All: True Stories from Natchez, Mississippi

The Deepest South of All by Richard Grant is a thoughtful, hilarious, and well-told story of Natchez, Mississippi. Grant is a British author who immerses himself in Natchez for half a year. He lives with an influential author with generations of history in the town, and he documents the people, parties, and the history of the area. His chapters alternate between his current day experience and the life of Prince Abd al Rahman Ibrahima. 

The story of Ibrahima is one of the only documented slave stories. Prince was African royalty who was captured and sold into slavery by a rival tribe. He spent 40 years as a slave near Natchez before returning to Africa with unlikely help from American politicians. 

Natchez thrived as the second largest slave trading post in the United States. While the town is now a remote outpost along the Mississippi River, it prospered during the 1800s with an economy largely built around the slave trade and plantations supported by slave labor. 

During the Civil War, Natchez was one of the only Southern towns to side with the Union despite the town’s reliance on slavery. Union soldiers made large the town’s mansions their headquarters. Siding with the Union spared the town from destruction like others across the South. Natchez heavily promotes those antebellum homes as a reason to visit the town.

Grant’s storytelling focuses on the eccentric characters living in Natchez while also highlighting a number of dichotomies unique to Natchez. I found the book compelling and informative. I have not spent much time in the South, and Grant blends a number of primary sources and interviews to tell the story of the area. 

Character Highlights

• A brothel (women’s boarding house) run openly by a black woman, supported heavily by KKK members until the early 1990s
• Documentation of the Deacons for Defense, a civil rights group who fought the Klan with violence and made headway politically with violent tactics and threats

Quotes

“Daddy thought Obama was a better candidate, but he couldn’t bring himself to vote for a black man, so he abstained and went to bed early on election night. I stayed up and watched the whole thing. I went into his bedroom the next morning and told him the result. Daddy let out a big sigh of relief and said, ‘Thank God that nigger won.”

“Asked to describe it, she said, “We’re house-crazy. We adore old homes, antiques, throwing parties, making it fabulous. Gay men love it here. Natchez is very liberal and tolerant in some ways, and very conservative and racist in other ways, although I will say that our racists aren’t generally hateful or mean. Nor do they think they’re racists. There’s still a lot of denial in the white community about the fact that this whole town was built on slavery. Most black people don’t like thinking about slavery either, although they’re acutely aware of it.”

“In Natchez, you only use the word home if it’s antebellum,” said Doug. “If your house was built after the Civil War, it’s trashy to call it a home.”

“The garden clubs are about raising money, social prestige, tourism, and the historic preservation of antebellum buildings. They’re run by women, and they have a lot of power. Natchez is probably the closest thing to a matriarchy that you’re going to find in America.”

“The romance of the Old South was still the prime attraction for most tourists in Natchez. They tended to be white American retirees with the normal white American views about slavery: it was a long time ago, you can’t change the past, let’s not talk about it, let’s not think about it, don’t you dare make us feel bad about it.”

“Racial divisiveness, inherited from slavery and Jim Crow, was the ongoing curse of Natchez. The schools were divided, and the town was divided over the schools. The vast majority of white children went to fairly successful private schools, even if it bankrupted their parents to send them there. The vast majority of black children went to the public schools, which were rated F by the Mississippi Department of Education.”

“Natchez is nicknamed the Little Easy because it has more in common with New Orleans, the Big Easy, than the rest of Mississippi. After Hurricane Katrina, there was a migration of gay men from New Orleans to Natchez because you could buy a fabulous old house for not much money, and because Natchez has always been gay-friendly.”

“When I asked her how much progress she had made, she said, “I’ve reached the point now where I can have lunch with black housekeepers and host mixed dinner parties.” If you live somewhere urban, liberal, and cosmopolitan, that might sound like a pretty feeble marker of progress, but in the Deep South, eating together at the same table in someone’s home has proved one of the most difficult taboos to overcome. It has often been observed that black and white Southerners find it easier to have sex with each other than to eat supper together.”