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.
