Touting his book, “The Oliver Family, Mississippi Delta Legacy,” author James Oliver spoke to the Indianola Rotary Club this week, retelling stories from his family and his growing up just outside the city limits.
Reaching back to the 1870s, the book chronicles five generations of the Oliver family.
“I’m certainly not a professional writer but over my lifetime I managed to capture stories from my family. I found a lot of those stories to be pretty interesting so I kept kind of a diary. I grew up with the story that my great, great grandfather was a bank robber. There’s not many people can say that or brag about it. He was also a great bear hunter in the Mississippi Delta and he hunted with a lot of other great hunters. He had a white hunting mule named Molly,” Oliver said. “He also lost his farm in a poker game. That’s not uncommon in the Delta.”
The initial drive to write the book began in 1963 at the Washington County Courthouse when his name was called. An older gentleman called him over and regaled him with stories of his father, grandfather and great-grandfather. He realized then he wanted to capture those stories in writing. But it wasn’t until his mother passed away in 1995 that he got serious about getting it done.
“This book covers what I call the eight major events of the Mississippi Delta,” Oliver said. “It’s written through the eyes of my family but if you read it, you’ll see that it’s written to our ancestors.”
Oliver also relied heavily on the late Marie M. Hemphill’s Fever, Floods and Faith – A History of Sunflower County, 1844 – 1976. He spent hours and hours in courthouses finding deeds and other records to back up the stories.
“It’s the story of my great-grandparents, the story of my grandparents and it’s the story of my parents and it’s the story of the Faulkner family – a very interesting family. They all are very intelligent, they all loved to fight and they all loved whiskey that I could tell. It’s what we call ‘Our Roots.’”
Of the many topics covered, Oliver pointed out, “it’s the story of race relations. It’s very, very different than the story we get on TV today. When you read this, you’ll get an idea of what race relations were like at the time. We were all poor, we all lived together and nobody had any money. We all did what we had to and I use the term that we were all co-dependent on one another.”
He mentioned Luster Bayless, the famous Hollywood costume designer in Ruleville.
“My great-grandfather was his grandfather. He’s quite a character on his own,” Oliver said.
The forty minute program also included a bit of teaching and preaching on water conservation.
“I won’t see it in my lifetime but there’ll come a time when the Sunflower River will be used again for recreation. We’re going to bring back wildlife fisheries to the Sunflower River. I think as we get more land in the CRP and WRP in the lower part of the Mississippi Delta and it doesn’t have to be drained quite as clear as it is now. It’s a complicated thing.”
He noted that he had sold enough copies of the book that first came out in 2019 to cover the cost of the work put into creating it. And now, any book sale proceeds go to charity. He gave each member and guest an autographed book with no strings attached but the suggested retail price of $29 would go charity. He noted they were also available locally at The Crowne and at the Pecan House.
“One of the reasons I tried to get this down on paper is that in 50 years it will be cherished a lot more than it will be today. People will not understand that there were pitcher pumps in outhouses and bear wrestling at the Holly Ridge gin. It was a great time. It was a great place to be a child. I hope I captured some of that after World War II times. We lived in innocent times and I hope that I captured some of that.”
Oliver was the guest of Rotarian Scott Mitchell.
