Sept. 22, 1927

St. Louis native Josephine Baker became the first Black woman to star in a major motion picture. She played the lead role of Papitou in the French silent film, “Siren of the Tropics,” who, like Baker, found her true calling as a performer. 

The film’s success led to other starring roles, an autobiography, the creation of a doll in her likeness and even a toothpaste commercial. 

At age 11, Baker had witnessed racial violence in East St. Louis, “watching the glow of the burning of Negro homes lighting the sky. We children stood huddled together in bewilderment … frightened to death with the screams of the Negro families running across this bridge with nothing but what they had on their backs as their worldly belongings.” 

After working in some choruses on Broadway, she traveled to Paris, where she became the most successful American entertainer working in France. Picasso drew paintings of her, author Ernest Hemingway spent hours talking to her in Paris bars. During World War II, she aided the French Resistance by socializing with the Germans while secretly gathering information that she transmitted to England, sometimes writing the information in invisible ink on her sheet music. 

After the war, she received the Croix de Guerre, the medal of the Légion d’honneur and other medals. When she returned to the U.S., she refused to appear before segregated audiences, despite being offered up to $10,000 ($110,000 in today‘s money) to perform. She fought to prevent Willie McGee’s execution in Mississippi, and in 1951, the NAACP honored her with a “Josephine Baker Day” and a parade of 100,000 in Harlem. 

In 1963, she became the only official female speaker at the March on Washington. She adopted a dozen children in her lifetime from countries around the globe. She called her children the “Rainbow Tribe.” She played Carnegie Hall in 1973, the Royal Variety Performance in 1974 and a revue celebrating her 50 years in show business in 1975. 

After rave reviews, she died unexpectedly after experiencing a cerebral hemorrhage. More than 20,000 attended her funeral, where she received full French military honors. 

Diana Ross portrayed Baker in her Tony-winning Broadway show, an HBO movie told her life (for which Lynn Whitfield became the first Black actress to win an Emmy for Lead Actress in a Miniseries or Special), and she was depicted in the TV series, “Lovecraft Country.” 

In 2021, Baker was inducted into the Panthéon in Paris — the first Black woman to receive this honor.

This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

Sept. 21, 1955

Moses Wright took the witness stand and identified the men who kidnapped and killed his great-nephew, Emmett Till. 

“It was the first time in my life I had the courage to accuse a white man of a crime, let alone something terrible as killing a boy,” Wright said later. “I just wanted to see justice done.” 

He worked as a sharecropper and was also a minister, whom the locals called “Preacher.” The two white men who abducted Till — J.W. Milam and his half-brother, Roy Bryant — threatened to kill Wright if he said anything. 

“How old are you, Preacher?” Milam asked. Wright replied 64. “If you make any trouble, you’ll never live to be 65,” Milam said. When the teen’s body was recovered from the Tallahatchie River, Wright identified Till. Despite threats, Wright still took the witness stand. When the prosecutor asked him to point out Till’s abductors, he stood up, pointed his weathered finger at Milam and said, “There he is. That’s the man.” 

He testified that Bryant identified himself as “Mr. Bryant.” It may have been the first murder trial in Mississippi where a Black man testified against a white man. Even after the trial, the threats continued, and Wright left to join his family in Chicago, where he had already sent them.

This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

BATON ROUGE, La. — Mayors from 10 states along the Mississippi River convened in Louisiana’s capital this week to announce a cooperative agreement between the working river’s ports. 

In town for the annual Mississippi River Cities & Towns Initiative meeting, the mayors also called upon the next U.S. president to prioritize several federal policy changes to support the 105 cities represented by the initiative. 

On Wednesday, mayors from the Midwestern Corn Belt joined mayors from Louisiana to sign the Mississippi River Ports Cooperative Endeavor Agreement. The agreement is the first to ensure cooperation between the inland ports in the heart of the corn belt and the coastal ports of Louisiana that export 60% of the nation’s agricultural products.

Vicksburg, Mississippi, Mayor George Flaggs praised the move in a statement on Friday, adding that he and the other mayors there were paying particular attention to environmental issues along the river such as the ongoing drought.

“This agreement ensures that ports from St. Louis to St. Paul will receive federal designation, a significant step that will bolster commerce and strengthen the economic impact of the entire Mississippi River region,” Flaggs said.

The inland ports between St. Louis and St. Paul were not federally recognized until 2022, said Robert Sinkler, executive coordinating director of the Corn Belt Ports. With the support of the Mississippi River cities initiative, the Corn Belt Ports initiative launched in 2019 to advocate for federal recognition of those ports.

Now, the corn belt and coastal ports will take on commerce-related policy actions together, for the first time in Mississippi River history, said Sinkler. The river moves nearly one trillion dollars in product through its ports annually, according to MRCTI. Maintaining the navigation capability on the river is a key part of the agreement. 

Drought disrupts commerce and drinking water along the Mississippi River corridor

For the third year in a row, the Midwest is under extreme drought conditions, which have led to low water levels that threaten to disrupt barge transports carrying fuel and grain. The 16-month drought spanning from 2022 to 2023 cost the nation $26 billion. The drought of 2012 cost the Mississippi River corridor $35 billion.

Belinda Constant, mayor of Gretna, Louisiana, said that droughts often cost more than floods, but do not qualify as “major disasters” worthy of relief from the Federal Emergency Management Agency. 

“We still are not able to capture federal disaster declarations for drought or intense heat,” Constant said. 

While drought is not considered a “major disaster” by FEMA, the president can declare one. President Joe Biden declared a federal emergency last September in Louisiana when the effects of drought caused salt water to intrude up the Mississippi River and threaten drinking water.

FEMA is not set up to provide relief for intense droughts or extreme heat, which are expected to become more extreme, according to the Fifth National Climate Assessment. The federal government does offer support through other agencies, such as farm losses through the U.S. Department of Agriculture. 

Constant asked the next U.S. president to update FEMA regulations to include droughts and extreme heat. Earlier this summer, dozens of labor and environmental groups filed a petition to push FEMA to declare extreme heat and wildfire smoke as “major disasters,” on par with other natural disasters such as floods and tornadoes. 

Constant said the next administration should also create a mechanism to incentivize or compensate manufacturers and farmers who recycle water or reduce water usage during dry periods. 

Louisiana is again dealing with drought. As of Sept. 13, 2024, the saltwater wedge had reached river mile 45, corroding drinking water infrastructure below Port Sulphur and inching toward Pointe a la Hache, Louisiana. Earlier this week, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers began construction on an underwater sill near Myrtle Grove to help slow the creep of saltwater intrusion for the third summer in a row.

But the drought impacts all communities along the Mississippi River, not just those in southern Louisiana. And 50 cities with a total population of 20 million people depend on the Mississippi River for their drinking water.

“Memphis depends on the health of the corridor to power our international port and fuel our multi-billion-dollar outdoor recreation and tourism industry,” said Paul Young, mayor of Memphis, Tennessee. The tournament fishing industry is worth billions in revenue. 

“It is vital we work to safeguard the Mississippi River together,” he added.

Advocating for the Mississippi River corridor as a whole

The 105 cities represented by inititiuave also called on the next U.S. president to advocate for the corridor both at home and internationally. “We are asking the next president to please work with us to enact a federal Mississippi River program through which we can deploy infrastructure spending at a multi-state scale,” said Hollies J. Winston, mayor of Brooklyn Park, Minnesota. 

On the global stage, the initiative has advocated for the Mississippi River corridor at five United Nations climate meetings. Bob Gallagher, mayor of Bettendorf, Iowa, called on the next President to ensure that the nation remains a part of the Paris Agreement to sustain the corridor’s $500 billion in revenue.

“Serving as a past co-chair of MRCTI along with being from an agricultural state, I know firsthand that U.S. participation in the Paris Accord helps us compete and move our commodities and goods across the world to other markets,” said Gallagher. 

Pulling out of the Paris Agreement could trigger tariffs for goods coming from a non-signatory nation. Leaving the international climate accord would place farmers and manufacturers at a potential disadvantage in the global market, said Gallagher.

In 2017, President Donald Trump announced that the U.S. would withdraw from the Paris Climate Accord. In 2021, on President Biden’s first day in office, the U.S. rejoined the international agreement to limit temperature increases.

“We can’t afford to make any policy decisions that will jeopardize the $164 billion in agricultural commodities the Mississippi River makes possible every year,” said Gallagher. 

Mitch Reynolds, mayor of La Crosse, Wisconsin, and the initiative’s co-chair, said that the advocacy work of the initiative is paramount to defending the health of the river and its communities. 

The Mississippi River Ports Cooperative Endeavor Agreement unites the communities along the corridor in a shared commitment to protect, restore and manage the river’s resources sustainably, said Sharon Weston Broome, mayor of Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and host of the initiative’s 13th annual meeting.

“We urge the next administration to increase its focus on the river, its impact on the national economy and its continued need for stewardship,” said Broome.

This story is a product of the Mississippi River Basin Ag & Water Desk, an independent reporting network based at the University of Missouri in partnership with Report for America, with major funding from the Walton Family Foundation. MRCTI is also a Walton grantee. 

Mississippi Today environmental reporter Alex Rozier contributed to this report.

This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.