Boll Weevil Blues: Cotton and Myth in Mississippi

In the early 20th century the cotton boll weevil, a nasty little beetle that had already destroyed millions of pounds of cotton in Texas and Louisiana, stood on the western banks of the Mississippi River poised to invade the richest and most important cotton land in the world: the Yazoo-Mississippi Delta. In the months and years that followed the weevil made a major, but surprising, impact on the people of the state. Many Mississippians now think of it as a terrible natural disaster, akin to Hurricane Katrina or the BP Oil Spill. Yet history reveals a much more surprising story. The boll weevil destroyed tons of cotton across the state, but its biggest effect on Mississippi came not from barren fields, but from how people responded to the threat of its invasion. Stories about the boll weevil, in other words, were more important to its history than the stands of cotton it destroyed. Dr. Giesen’s presentation uses blues and country songs, old family stories, rumors and more traditional historical records, to explain how an array of Mississippians — from sharecroppers to planters to college professors — changed the course of the state’s history as they tried to manage the boll weevil’s invasion.

Speakers Expertise:

Dr. James C Giesen is an Associate Professor at Mississippi State University in the division of agricultural, rural, and environmental history. Giesen also serves as the executive secretary of the Agricultural History Society and editor of the University of Georgia Press series Environmental History and the American South. Giesen’s book titled, “Boll Weevil Blues: Cotton, Myth, and Power in the American South” published in 2011, was the winner of both the 2012 Deep South Book Prize as well as the 2013 Francis Butler Simkins Award from the Southern Historical Association for the best first book on Southern History.