Clarksdale, Mississippi sits at the crossroads of memory and myth, a place where cotton and soybean fields stretch toward the horizon and the blues clubs still hum. But behind the stories about dirty deals made at dusty crossroads, you’ll find the work of real people holding the town together.
One of those people is journalist Aallyah Wright, who grew up here and now often reports on Clarksdale alongside national coverage for the news website Capital B.
But the Clarksdale she remembers — where she spent an idyllic-sounding childhood playing with friends with the comforts of family nearby — concealed some of the region’s harder truths. “I just grew up having fun being outside, scraping my knee, playing hopscotch, walking around the corner to meet friends,” she says. “All of the things that you do when you’re a child.”
Only later did she begin to see the gaps behind those memories, like the abandoned storefronts, the aging school buildings, and the steady turnover of teachers. Her mother worked multiple jobs to make ends meet. “As a child, you don’t really notice the realities of the place that you live,” she says. “But as I’ve gotten older and become more curious, it has allowed me to see injustice, systemic challenges and racism for what they are.”
Wright studied journalism at Delta State University, a 40-minute drive down Highway 61 to Cleveland, where her professors emphasized taking the long view of the profession. “We want to do some good in the world,” she recalls one telling her class. “Sometimes that impact is not immediate. Sometimes it takes years. Sometimes it doesn’t happen at all.”
Wright’s reporting is shaped by the way issues overlap in the Delta. “Growing up in a place like Clarksdale, it allows you to see those intersections and that a lot of things are ripple effects,” she says. “How sometimes health care can affect education and education could affect food access. All of these different things are not siloed.”
Recently, she has written about the independent farmers still hanging onto their family land and ways as they pursue one of the Delta’s most familiar yet precarious livelihoods. “We know the farming industry has always been a challenging industry, given weather conditions and just the work that it takes to be a farmer,” she says.
Yet the people she interviews continue to find ways forward. “Every farmer I’ve talked to has said, ‘You know what? We’ve been through worse, and we will get through this.’ They have this optimistic mindset. It’s not that it won’t be difficult, but they’re not going to let it deter them.”
Blues tourism is the other side of the coin, and one that has long defined Clarksdale’s image. And of course, blues music grew out of the sharecropping farm culture, so their stories will always be intertwined. But Wright looks at who benefits from it and who doesn’t.
“There are these amazing [blues] festivals that happen every year,” she says, “but some in the Black community feel as if these festivals don’t necessarily benefit them or they don’t have a say in it.”
Locals like Tyler Yarbrough used the occasion of the release of the movie “Sinners,” which is soundtracked by Delta blues and set in a fictionalized version of the city, to flip the script. Wright came across a local campaign he started urging Hollywood to bring the movie to town, even though it had no movie theater, so locals could see and celebrate and take ownership of their culture.
“I saw some conversation happening in Clarksdale about how we should get ‘Sinners’ here,” she says. “And then I saw that Tyler had written this open letter asking the cast, the crew, [director] Ryan Coogler, Warner Brothers to come to town. And there’s only three signatures on this open letter. I was like, ‘What is happening?’”
Her curiosity became the start of a story she wrote that went viral and helped the community’s message reach the studio. “It started from me just thinking about the makeup of the community and the concerns people had,” she says. “I just wanted to be a part of uplifting their message in hopes that it would get to Warner Brothers and Ryan Coogler. And it just so happened that it in fact did.”
She views that moment as an example of what can happen when reporting grows out of real connection. “This is the place that raised me, the place that I was born, the place where I got my start in journalism,” she says. “It speaks to the power of being rooted in community and being in connection with people, so that when these things happen, it’s nice being that person they trust to tell their stories.”
Although she is optimistic, Wright doesn’t gloss over the Delta’s struggles. “Despite some progress and some growth in the Delta, it’s been stagnant,” she says. “It’s been difficult to get basic necessities in these places where people died and fought for and lost their homes and their jobs for these rights that everyone enjoys today.”
She pauses. “When you’re not living in this or you’re not seeing this every day, you’re not necessarily thinking about it. But the people who are there, they can’t help but to see or live in it every day.”
Wright approaches her work with an awareness of exclusion — of who’s missing from the story. “It made me deepen the type of questions I asked, whether it’s of public officials and legislators or whether it’s examining legislation or lawsuits,” she says. “It really helps me to build a better understanding of the type of stories I want to write, but also whose voices are needed to shape those stories. Where’s the hurt? Where is the harm? Who’s been excluded, who’s been given more than enough space to share their perspective?”
Even in the face of those inequities, Wright points to the persistence of people who work for change. “These places are resilient,” she says. “There are folks who are actually working day in and day out to change the future of their communities.”
For Wright, the Delta remains both a home and a vantage point — a place that keeps her grounded in the people she writes about.
“You can always go home,” she says. But when you do, you’d better listen.