MISSISSIPPI DELTA NATIONAL HERITAGE AREA
Points of Pride
The Mississippi Delta National Heritage Area (MS Delta NHA) is housed in the Delta Center for Culture and Learning. Its mission is to preserve, perpetuate, and celebrate the Mississippi Delta’s rich and complex heritage by fostering a climate of collaboration that supports Delta communities and their economies. Since it was congressionally designated in 2009, MS Delta NHA has fulfilled its mission and Management Plan through community programs and strategic partnerships like:
The Civil Rights Heritage Archive and African American Civil Rights Network Designation (2021)
The Alliance of National Heritage Areas Spring Meeting (2022)
Read more about our recent work below.
LANDMARK LEGISLATION TO ENSURE LONG-TERM STABILITY FOR AMERICA’S NATIONAL HERITAGE AREAS NOW LAW
In December 2022, President Biden signed the National Heritage Area Act (S. 1942). On December 22, 2022, the U.S. House of Representatives overwhelmingly approved the legislation by a bi-partisan vote of 326-95, after the Senate passed the legislation without opposition two days earlier. It was one of the last bills passed in the 117th Congress.
The National Heritage Area Act creates standard criteria for the funding, management, and designation of National Heritage Areas across the country and provides them an annual authorization of up to $1 million per year for the next 15 years.
MS DELTA CIVIL RIGHTS HERITAGE TOURISM SUMMIT ATTRACTS REGIONAL AND NATIONAL STAKEHOLDERS
In September 2023, the MS Delta NHA partnered with six other organizations to host the Mississippi Delta region’s first-ever Civil Rights Heritage Tourism Summit at the B.B. King Museum and Delta Interpretive Center in Indianola. The day-long summit featured a variety of panel discussions and presentations on different subjects relating to Civil Rights heritage tourism development in the Mississippi Delta.
MS Delta NHA offering Spring 2024 community festival/event grants
The Mississippi Delta National Heritage Area (MS Delta NHA) is offering $3,000 reimbursement grant awards this spring to organizations planning a community festival or event that stimulates tourism in the Mississippi Delta region’s 18 counties.
“So many Mississippi Delta communities have festivals and events that attract visitors from throughout our state, nation, and world,” said Dr. Rolando Herts, Executive Director of the MS Delta NHA. “The National Heritage Area is committed to supporting community-based tourism activities like festivals and events that illuminate the rich cultural heritage of our region.”
MISSISSIPPI DELTA NHA ANNOUNCES 2023-24 AWARD RECIPIENTS
In the eighth year of its grants program, the Mississippi Delta National Heritage Area has awarded $147,944.23 to eight cultural heritage development projects in the Mississippi Delta. This is the second year for the Grants Leadership Academy format.
This year’s grant projects include educational opportunities for MS Delta youth in Cleveland and Indianola, an artist residency in Belzoni, and celebration of the 45th anniversary of the Delta Blues Museum in Clarksdale, among other projects.
DELTA DELEGATION HONORS B.B. KING MUSEUM AND DELTA INTERPRETIVE CENTER
The Delta Delegation to Brazil recently traveled to Caxias do Sul, Brazil to promote Mississippi Delta cultural heritage at the 14th annual Mississippi Delta Blues Festival (MDBF) Brazil, dubbed the B.B. King Museum Edition.
The B.B. King Museum Edition featured performances from music scholar and B.B. King Museum board member Alphonso Sanders accompanied by the B.B. King Museum Legacy Band. Claudette King, musician and youngest daughter of the late B.B. King also performed several sets at the festival. Hosted at Caxias do Sul’s Parque da Festa da Uva, stages and musical spaces were named to honor the legacy of King and the cultural heritage of Indianola, where the B.B. King Museum and Delta Interpretive Center is housed.
MS DELTA NHA PARTNERS WITH MS ALLIANCE OF NONPROFITS AND PHILANTHROPY ON GRANT WRITING WORKSHOPS
At the end of March 2023, the Mississippi Delta National Heritage Area (MS Delta NHA) partnered with the Mississippi Alliance of Nonprofits and Philanthropy (The Alliance) to offer a one-and-a-half-day grant writing workshop on the campus of Delta State University for a class of nearly thirty participants.
ROBERTSON SCHOLARS, MS DELTA NHA CIVIL RIGHTS HERITAGE ARCHIVE FEATURED BY NBCU
Jenna Smith and Vishal Jammulapati spent the summer of 2022 driving around the Mississippi Delta, interviewing community servant leaders about the legacy of the Civil Rights Movement in the Mississippi Delta. Smith and Jammulapati were working as Community Summer interns at the Delta Center for Culture and Learning as part of the Robertson Scholars Leadership Program at Duke University and University of North Carolina Chapel Hill.
DELTA CENTER PRODUCES 11TH YEAR OF MOST SOUTHERN PLACE ON EARTH WORKSHOPS
In the summer of 2023, the Delta Center produced the 11th year of the nationally acclaimed Most Southern Place on Earth workshop for K-12 educators. Across one week in June and another in July, over 70 K-12 educators from throughout the U.S. participated in these immersive, Mississippi Delta-based experiential learning workshops.