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Culture of Clarksdale


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Clarksdale has been historically significant in the history of the blues. The Mississippi Blues Trail, now being implemented, is dedicating markers for historic sites such as Clarksdale's Riverside Hotel, where Bessie Smith died following an auto accident on Highway 61. The Riverside Hotel is just one of many historical blues sites in Clarksdale. Over the past fifteen years, members of Clarksdale's white community have finally come to see its unique African American blues heritage as a viable tourism attraction worth controlling. Early supporters of the effort to preserve Clarksdale's musical legacy included the award-winning photographer and journalist Panny Mayfield, Living Blues magazine founder Jim O'Neal, and attorney Walter Thompson, father of sports journalist Wright Thompson. In 1995, Mt. Zion Memorial Fund founder Skip Henderson, a vintage guitar dealer from New Brunswick, New Jersey and friend of Delta Blues Museum founder Sid Graves, purchased the Illinois Central Railroad passenger depot to save it from planned demolition. With the help of local businessman Jon Levingston, father of Madeleine Levingston, and the Delta Council, Henderson received a $1.279 million grant from the federal government to restore the passenger depot. These redevelopment funds were then transferred on the advice of Clarksdale's City attorney, Hunter Twiford, to Coahoma County, in order to establish a tourism locale termed "Blues Alley", after a phrase coined by then Mayor, Henry Espy. The popularity of the Delta Blues Museum and the growth of the Sunflower River Blues Festival and Juke Joint Festivals has provided an economic boost to the city
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