Divine Agitators: the Delta Ministry and Civil Rights in Mississippi.

Divine Agitators: The Delta Ministry and Civil Rights in Mississippi. By Mark Newman. (Athens and London: University of Georgia Press, c. 2004. Pp. xx, 352. Paper, $22.95, ISBN 0-8203-2532-5; cloth, $54.95, ISBN 0-82032526-0.)

Mississippi apologists sometimes tell tourists that "the Delta" region resembles the Greek letter delta, if you look at it long enough on a map. This is to mollify visitors who are dismayed to learn that the Delta of song and story is not a delta at all, but drained swampland in the northern half of the state, three hundred miles upstream from the real delta, which is in Louisiana. Most Mississippians are unapologetic, however. They think it perfectly natural for delta to mean one thing in their state and another thing everywhere else.

In the late 1960s, a group of well-meaning outsiders sought to mend the region's ways. They called their project the Delta Ministry (DM) but confounded geography further by putting two of the project's three headquarters in Hattiesburg and McComb, near Mississippi's southern border and nowhere near anybody's definition of any delta. Sponsored by the National Council of Churches (NCC), the Delta Ministry tried to bring economic aid to black Mississippians while encouraging them to vote and run for office.

Mark Newman, one of the most diligent scholars of religion and race in the South, tells the Delta Ministry's long-neglected story in his solid and clearheaded Divine Agitators. The DM arrived too late to gain leverage from its association with the civil rights movement, which had by then devolved into confrontationalism and utopianism: occupation of the Air Force base at Greenville and a communal experiment called Freedom City brought nothing but media attention. Ministry support for such gestures annoyed a resistant white population without forcing any concessions.

The DM did not have much better luck rallying Mississippi's black population, which Newman refreshingly avows was "Riven by factionalism, fear, and apathy" (p. 89). The project racked up an impressive record in bringing federal funds to poor Mississippians, especially through Head Start. But mainly Newman tells a story of failure. He insists, with suspicious frequency, that the story is "significant"--often in sentences beginning with "despite" (pp. xii, 45,220). The DM became significant, he explains, "by default": the mass movement was fizzling just as the NCC bureaucracy lumbered into action, making the DM the largest civil rights group left in the South (p. 150).

It would be refreshing if historians, like scientists, felt free to report that their research did not uncover anything terribly significant. "That the Delta Ministry could not solve the Delta's predicament should not be surprising given its magnitude, but the Ministry helped improve the lives or at least lessen the burden of many thousands of the region's inhabitants," Newman tells readers (p. 225). If the goal were simply knowledge--rather than the vicarious political salvation that most in the field seem to seek--this would be a satisfying conclusion. It is anticlimactic only because Newman felt compelled to pump the story up earlier with promises of significance. Projects like the Delta Ministry need to be studied with the care and penetrating intelligence Newman brings to this work. Failures contain lessons as valuable as the more typical stories of triumphant grassroots solidarity and resistance. The defensiveness of authors--and editors--about civil rights failures only occludes such lessons.

University of Arkansas 

DAVID L. CHAPPELL