Helena Arkansas
Helena Arkansas |
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| The wonderful mural shown below is painted on the side of a building in downtown Helena. It depicts the history of Helena and was painted by Cristen Craven Barnard. Click on the mural to see a detailed version. |
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Just the FactsNOTE: The data that follows derives primarily from the 1990 U.S. census and as such is a decade out of date. Comparative data for the U.S. at large and for the St. Louis metro area are presented to establish perspective. St. Louis was chosen because it is the largest city on the river as well as smack dab in the middle.
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 Helena Arkansas is a poor city, but it wasn't always so poor. When Mark Twain visited there he had this to say, "The country about it is exceptionally productive. Helena has a good cotton trade; handles from forty to sixty thousand bales annually; she has a large lumber and grain commerce; has a foundry; oil mills, machine shops and wagon factories--in brief has $1,000,000 invested in manufacturing industries." Fifteen years after the Civil War Mark Twain was describing one of Arkansas' most prosperous cities. This year (August 7, 1999) Bill Clinton visited Helena and said this; "Yesterday in Washington, I was able to announce that our country had produced 19 million jobs, and then some, since I became President. But the unemployment rate in the deep Delta is still twice the national average. The income is less than two-thirds the national average." If you'll look at the statistics above (Helena mind you is better off than much of the Delta at large) you can see that Mr. Clinton's account of the Delta's economic health was about as accurate as his court testimony has been--shall we say overly optimistic. Clinton was in Helena meeting with some of the areas movers and shakers to discuss what can be done to improve the economic conditions in the Delta. Don't hold your breath.
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 The Delta's problems are long lived. The area's wealth is in its land and what that land can grow. From early on in the history of this country ownership of the land in the Delta has been centralized in the hands of a few. At first they built their wealth on the backs of slaves. When Mark Twain visited the Delta after the Civil War, it appeared prosperous because those few land owners could not work the land without labor and could not process the land's production without labor. (Their free labor had been freed). By the turn of the century however the wealthy had managed to replace one form of slavery with another and the African Americans were again chained to the cotton fields by share cropping and segregation. Then in the 1940's things got worse as the land owners began the transformation to industrial farming. The working of the land and the processing of the land's produce is now a highly mechanized business requiring only a small fraction of the pre-war labor force. The Delta has never been able to recover or shift it's economy to compensate for this change. One obvious reason for this is racism. It's clear just driving through the Delta that the most visible poverty correlates with the areas that have the highest African American populations. This is painfully obvious in Helena. As you drive west away from the river you leave Helena and enter West Helena. West Helena is up the hill above Helena and is a separately incorporated community. Mr. Clinton made his remarks to a crowd in West Helena. To put it bluntly, the middle class whites live in West Helena on top of the hill and the poor blacks live in Helena at the bottom of the hill. I've lived long enough to know that those disadvantaged African Americans haven't chosen their condition, and that given any reasonable opportunity they would make improvements. Something is standing in their way--it's racism plain and simple.
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 Less than an hour drive southeast across the river is Clarksdale Mississippi, the birthplace of the "Blues." Helena as well is rich with the heritage and culture of the Delta. In 1941 Helena radio station KFFA broadcast the first daily "King Biscuit Time" radio show. Today the Peabody award winning "King Biscuit Time" program is the longest running daily radio show in the country having broadcast it's 13,288th program in July 1999. Featured on that first program was harmonica player Sonny Boy Williamson II (Rice Miller) who lived in Helena and continued to perform live on the show until his death in 1965. Today Sunshine Sonny Payne hosts the show which he has now done nearly 12,000 times. The "Blues" may have been born in Clarksdale MS., but in 1941 they moved across the river to Helena where they continue to reside at radio station KFFA. If you're ever near Helena be sure and tune in to hear Sunshine say it one more time, "Pass the biscuits 'cause it's King Biscuit Time here on KFFA radio."
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 The first King Biscuit Blues Festival was held in Helena in 1986, under the sponsorship of the organization Main Street Helena. A yearly event now, the King Biscuit Festival draws an international crowd from all corners of the Globe for a three day weekend (the first weekend in October) and tiny Helena more than quadruples in population. The 1999 festival was unfortunately a rather wet one and so I have few good photographs to show you. The photograph (one click back) on the opening page for "The Cotton Belt" is from this years festival and is of one of the many "unscheduled" artists who simply show up to find a stoop on the street and begin to play.
Helena is also host to the Delta Culture Center which is located in the city's restored train depot. The Delta Culture Center is maintained by the state Department of Arkansas Heritage. In addition to an excellent museum, the Center also supports educational programs in Helena and the surrounding region. The last time Isaac and I visited we saw drawings by the local school children on display in the Center. The painting to the left hangs in the Center and was used as the poster for the 1997 King Biscuit festival. Like the mural at the top of the page and the mural for the Sonny Boy Blues Society just above, it was painted by Delta artist Cristen Craven Barnard. |
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The river in Helena is blue and broad. Most of the Missouri mud has settled out by now and you can stand knee deep on the river's sandy bottom and see your toes (in late Fall). Apart from a large grain elevator south of town and a truly offensive cowboy-country music theme casino, the shores of the river are covered in natural growth or bordered by cotton fields that reach right to the levee. Helena is the only place you can cross the river between Memphis and Greenville. I've traveled extensively in the South having driven through much of Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia and Florida, and I've seen some pretty bad cases of out of control kudzu, but Helena gets the prize. Although physically poor it may be, Helena is culturally rich and rightfully proud. As I wandered around town with my camera, I met friendly people who were pleased to answer my questions. They spoke with pride and a tone of ownership about their heritage. After all, what other small town in the U.S. can claim such a triumph as to be home to the most important musical development in the history of our nation. |
Isaac and I were simply astonished at how much of Helena had succumbed to this rampaging Asian import. For those of you in the north who may not know, kudzu (Pueraria lobata) was deliberately imported into the U.S. and deliberately spread throughout the southern states as an ornamental plant, as livestock fodder and as a ground cover to control erosion. As in many other cases where alien species have been introduced to ecosystems around the world, the unexpected often occurs. Kudzu loves our Southern climate and grows better here than it does in Asia. In Asia kudzu is also kept at bay by natural predation. There are insects over there that eat it, but they didn't import those bugs to the U.S. Kudzu can grow a foot a day and is highly resistant to herbicides. As you can see from the accompanying photograph, kudzu has great potential for a B grade science fiction film (there is actually an abandoned house beneath that kudzu pile).