Further evidence of the lack of promise and failure of casinos in Tunica, Mississippi: the now-closed Casino Way Court shopping center. And I would add that Sam's Town in Tunica is now closed as well.

If you’re in Columbus, Mississippi, today stop by for my conversation with poet C.T. Salazar and stay for Delta blues from Edna Nicole and Rev Slim.

These are great photographs but if you imagine this kind of destruction on every corner you get a true sense of the damage. In Oxford , MS, it truly looks as if a bomb went off. www.nytimes.com/2026/02/11/u...

Today is the 99th birthday of my diva and homegirl, Leontyne Price, from Laurel, Mississippi, which is just down the road from my hometown of Mount Olive. www.wqxr.org/story/singul...

@wralpheubanks.bsky.social describes the Mississippi Delta as a palimpsest. There are layered stories written on top of each other. Those stories keep up from seeing how it’s a region built on the backs of Black folks. @esglaude.bsky.social buff.ly/pu2v8dW

"Popularity is not always a measure of merit, and, in any case, it is not static. What people click—and what they think they like—is largely a matter of what is available to them. Publics are made and maintained, not discovered preformed, like rock formations." www.newyorker.com/books/page-t...

Tomorrow I will be talking about my photographs of the Mississippi Delta at the Center for the Study of Southern Culture at the University of Mississippi. The talk is part of the SouthTalks series and takes place in the Tupelo Room of Barnard Observatory at noon, February 11.

Mixing history, journalism, photography, and memoir, @wralpheubanks.bsky.social’s WHEN IT’S DARKNESS ON THE DELTA challenges our understanding of the Mississippi Delta, a place that has become, in the minds of many, a pilgrimage site for Blues fans.

I waited to read this analysis until I finished “The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny.” Yes, Kiran Desai has a sense of places. www.nytimes.com/interactive/...

Gather around the radio tomorrow at 3:00 pm: I’ll be a guest on “It’s Lit, Y’all” on Mississippi Public Broadcasting. www.mpbonline.org/radio/Its-Li...

I'm so excited to be a part of this panel at AWP!

@wralpheubanks.bsky.social’s WHEN IT’S DARKNESS ON THE DELTA is #2 in top Mississippi Reads this week! We LOVE to see it! 😍 buff.ly/KT8K8Gr

My friend Gregory Robison publishes a letterpress printed publication called “The Impartial Observer.” Essays for "The Impartial Observer" cannot exceed 100 words, so this was a challenge in brevity and precision. To learn more about Greg’s “riot of obsolescence “ visit impartialobserver.org.

My first nationally syndicated piece of writing was published by the Washington Post (and edited by David Ignatius). My first book was reviewed by the Post's Pulitzer Prize winning critic Jonathan Yardley. Most important, as a proud Washingtonian, this hurts. www.newyorker.com/news/annals-...

Did you know that Mileston is the only Black resettlement community in MS? The fear was that if there were more Black-owning segments in the Delta, that would disrupt the power balance that white landowners maintained. @wralpheubanks.bsky.social #BlackHistoryMonth

This is appalling and infuriating. This change is being made because the “great replacement theory” is the same philosophy as the one advocated by Byron de la Beckwith. mississippitoday.org/2026/02/05/m...

It's a week before my book talk and blues show at Friendly City Books in Columbus, Mississippi. It should be a fun evening! www.friendlycitybooks.com/events/260212

Race is an economic construct. While writing WHEN IT’S DARKNESS ON THE DELTA, @wralpheubanks.bsky.social lived in Clarksdale, MS, for 4 months to see that reality in action, day by day. Poverty is not an abstraction. @brittanyepage.bsky.social

“I wanted to get them to blend the past before prison and the present conflicts inside the prison walls, and begin to recognize how the confluence of those parts of their existence affected their interior life.” — @wralpheubanks.bsky.social

I listened to @thesullivansummer interview with W. Ralph Eubanks discussing his new book, When It’s Darkness on The Delta, on New Books in African American Studies podcast. I bought the book, but I enjoyed the interview. I also enjoy Eubanks’ writing. #Blackbookysky #Booksky #Blacksky

The University of Mississippi, a school that has worked to eliminate historical vestiges of racism has seen a 50 percent increase in Black enrollment. The change has not gone unnoticed by students. www.nytimes.com/2026/02/03/u...

When people are oppressed, they have to find some way to release that, and that very often comes through art. In this case, release in the Delta came through the Blues.

“Granted, it is really like apples to oranges to compare the freezing rain that pummeled Mississippi with the protests occurring in Minneapolis. But it was Reeves who chose to make that comparison…” mississippitoday.org/2026/02/01/r...

The @authorsguild.org mission is to protect authors and journalists’ rights, and today we stand by writers and journalists on the ground in Minnesota and elsewhere who are calling power to account, as writers have always done. authorsguild.org/news/ag-and-...

The Mississippi Delta has some of the richest soil in the world, yet it’s also one of the poorest places in the world. @wralpheubanks.bsky.social unpacks the irony of this reality, of the region’s history of extraction, in WHEN IT’S DARKNESS ON THE DELTA.

I will simply never recover from reading this sentence: "Since Georgia implemented work requirements in 2020, they have spent twice as much on Deloitte consultants and administrative costs as on healthcare for people."

When @wralpheubanks.bsky.social begins his prison writing classes, he asks his students to find one small detail from their past, then write from the flood of memory for 10 minutes and just see where the writing takes them.

The ice on the trees in Oxford, Mississippi is beautiful and scary at the same time. Hopefully it will melt soon.

An inmate in Parchman’s Unit 29 said that at 3 a.m., a fire was set down the hall from his cell. He said inmates were trying to get the attention of correctional officers after the power went out, and the temperature inside the block got “too damn cold.” mississippitoday.org/2026/01/25/t...

If just 3 percent of Mississippi Delta agricultural land was converted from traditional row crops into fruits, vegetables and nuts, producers would earn an additional $3.2 billion in revenue. But the federal government doesn’t insure them. www.nytimes.com/2026/01/25/b...

After Saturday's tragic shooting, I wrote about why Minnesota "officially" isn't doing more to resist ICE — and why Trump's actions are so dangerous. www.wired.com/story/why-mi...

We’ve set up the Mississippi Delta as this whole other place to the point of mythologizing it. But @wralpheubanks.bsky.social argues that it’s the most American place on earth. So much wealth was built there. So much was extracted from it. buff.ly/EYHGu2G

Writing WHEN IT’S DARKNESS ON THE DELTA was 10 years in the making. @wralpheubanks.bsky.social has family ties to the Mississippi Delta. He wanted to explore the region and his relationship with it.

“Ultimately, Eubanks challenges readers to view the Delta not as a southern anomaly, but as a microcosm of American history and extraction. He emphasizes that the region's struggle reflects a broader national trend of normalizing economic disparity. “ open.substack.com/pub/esglaude...

A few weeks ago I recorded this interview with WUNC’s “Due South” on “When It’s Darkness on the Delta.” It aired today and you can give it a listen here. www.wunc.org/show/due-sou...

Join me tomorrow in Cambridge MA for a conversation with my dear friend Steve Yarbrough on “When It’s Darkness on the Delta” at the Harvard Bookstore.The weather will be like Massachusetts in winter but the conversation will be on Mississippi and America. www.harvard.com/event/w-ralp...

@brittanyepage.bsky.social interviewed @beaconpress.bsky.social author @wralpheubanks.bsky.social about his new book WHEN IT'S DARKNESS ON THE DELTA, calling it beautifully written. Listen to him discuss his research and connection to the Mississippi Delta. www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Ogx...

“This isn’t a joyride down Highway 61 into the heart of a juke-joint Saturday night. This is a long, sober walk into a place where wealth was won on the backs of a subjugated race,…This book talks loud and clear. Are we listening?” chapter16.org/mississippi-...

@wralpheubanks.bsky.social came to realize that the Mississippi Delta is a place of great beauty, yet violence is as much a part of the place as its beauty. His great responsibility was to reflect this dichotomy.

If you missed the discussion of “When It’s Darkness on the Delta” at Politics and Prose, here is the recording of the event on YouTube. youtube.com/watch?v=R23U...

Thanks, Vann R. Newkirk II for a robust conversation about “When It’s Darkness on the Delta” last night at Politics and Prose in DC. And thanks to all who came out on a cold winter evening.

Legal and criminal justice experts said a ruling by a federal judge last week revealed conduct by immigration agents that evokes the civil rights era. That means Donald Trump is America ‘s Bull Connor. www.nytimes.com/2026/01/18/u...

“Everyone underestimated the ways that the plantation power structure would work so hard to maintain their dominance. It is in that struggle for power that we see the problems in the Mississippi Delta. It is that eternal power struggle.” www.theadvocate.com/baton_rouge/...

I would like to think the Mad King proclaiming “I will continue to illegally raise taxes on the American people until the NATO alliance collapses” would be the type of statement to cause Congress to act, but I’m not sure there’s any red line the GOP Congress has anymore.

DC folks :Come to Politics & Prose Bookstore at 5:00 pm tomorrow , January 18, for my conversation with the Atlantic’s Vann R. Newkirk on my new book “When It’s Darkness on the Delta.” politics-prose.com/w-ralph-euba...

I recently had the opportunity to speak with @wralpheubanks.bsky.social about his new book, "When It's Darkness on the Delta: How America's Richest Soil Became Its Poorest Land." We talked about the roots of America's inequality, the weaponization of only certain welfare scandals, and much more!

In addition to WHEN IT’S DARKNESS ON THE DELTA being narrative nonfiction that blends memoir, historical narrative, and reporting, @wralpheubanks.bsky.social says it imagines a different future for the Mississippi Delta. @newbooksnetwork.bsky.social buff.ly/EYHGu2G

We can’t confront the Mississippi Delta’s past or present inequities unless we can see evidence that inequality exists. For @wralpheubanks.bsky.social, photographs provide evidence. @oxfordamerican.bsky.social

Join me tonight in Jackson, Mississippi, at Lemuria Books for my conversation with Mississippi Museum of Art director Betsy Bradley about “When It’s Darkness on the Delta.” The signing is at 5:00 and the program begins at 5:30.

If you weren't able to make last night's event at Square Books, in Oxford, Mississippi, it was captured on video and you can watch it here. youtu.be/tp-CCwxSHr4?...