Clarksdale, MS

After the crowds and excitement of Beale Street in Memphis, we headed to Clarksdale, Mississippi, the birthplace of the Blues. We arrived on a Monday and dere weren't nuttin' goin' on. (Actually, the place on the right is a Blues Club, and is owned by the narrator, who is from Clarksdale.)

We spent the evening in a bar with a bunch of good ol' boys, eating ribs, and watching the Memphis Tigers play the Kansas Jayhawks in the National Final of the College basketball - a very big deal in America, and especially in and around Memphis this year as the Tigers had never won it before. Everyone was enjoying themselves and having a good time. The Tigers looked as though they were going to win, when this happened. They never recovered and the Jayhawks won easily in overtime. One guy went from describing how good each of the Tigers were, calling out their nicknames during the game, to deriding them as niggers. The owner of the bar expressed the opinion that he really didn't care what "one set of colored boys did to another set of colored boys." We got a crash course in how attitudes had changed very little in some parts of the south.