Vendors arrive with their tables and merchandise.
It’s late September, but it’s usually still hot and muggy next to the bayou in Indianola.
Volunteers and community leaders are already setting up tents and getting the stage set for the annual Indian Bayou Arts & Eats Festival.
Boy Scouts help the vendors carry their belongings to their designated tents.
That’s the kind of thing that makes the small festival so special.
“They all enjoy it more than any of the other festivals,” said Evelyn Roughton, one of the event’s chief organizers each year. “You enjoy it if you’re selling a lot, but if you feel welcome, warm and helped, that’s what they love.”
Unfortunately, this growing festival - along with many other fall events in Sunflower County - is the latest victim of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“It just makes sense to keep everybody safe and not have it this year,” Roughton said. “It just breaks my heart. The whole town has worked on it for a lot of years.”
There are of course the health risks that come with large gatherings these days, but even if the coronavirus was to fizzle out by fall, it would still be a financial challenge to make the festival work.
“In past years we have been able to apply for small tourism grants to assist with festival expenses,” said Cherri Britt, who has worked with Indianola Chamber Main Street for years as a volunteer and served as the board president last year. “Due to COVID-19, these grants are not available at this time, and we depend on this money to help offset festival expenses.”
The coronavirus wiped out quite a number of events in the spring locally, particularly graduation ceremonies and youth baseball, but the impact will continue to be felt in the coming months as more events drop from the fall calendar.
About 25 miles to the north, the Great Ruleville Roast and Run, which takes place around the same time as Indian Bayou, was officially canceled last week.
This event, which usually draws around 2,500 people to the small town each year, according to the Ruleville Chamber, serves as the Chamber’s only fundraiser.
“Money in past years has been raised to repair the Ruleville Depot, purchase downtown banners, launch projects like the downtown median landscape beautification and electrical repairs and new benches in Rule Park,” said Robyn Marlow, one of the event’s organizers.
There is also a popular Memphis BBQ Network associated competition at the festival, as well as the 5K and the fun run for kids.
Back in Indianola, one of the town’s growing summer programs, the Open Air Farmers Market, has been canceled as well.
There are farmers markets going on across the state, but organizers of the Indianola event, which provides fresh produce to the area’s most vulnerable populations, feel that safety must be a priority and that it would be difficult to enforce all of the guidelines set forth by the Mississippi Department of Health to ensure everyone’s safety.
“We just feel that we are not able to safely monitor and guarantee the safety of our citizens at a market,” Britt said in a statement.
Back to the fall season, one of the largest gatherings of the year was set to take place in mid-September with the ribbon cutting celebration for the most recent expansion at the B.B. King Museum.
No definitive decision has been made, but it is unlikely there will be a grand opening this fall.
“I don’t foresee us actually having a grand opening in September like we had planned because of the restrictions,” said B.B. King Museum & Delta Interpretive Center Executive Director Malika Polk-Lee. “I see us postponing it until maybe early 2021 and planning a larger grand opening.”
Right now, Polk-Lee said, there is a limit to how many people can attend events, both indoors and outdoors, which would not bode well for attendance.
Also, travel restrictions will keep the museum from being able to invite special guests to the event.
“It wouldn’t benefit us to do a grand opening on the scale we would need to do it and not have people be able to come and enjoy it,” she said.
Polk-Lee said the cancellation of the museum’s event, along with the festivals, will have a negative impact on the community as a whole.
“It’s going to really hurt the community, from a socioeconomic standpoint,” she said. “From the economic side, there’s the sales tax and the tourists it brings in, and from the socio side, you cannot provide the social outlet for your own residents.”
Polk-Lee said that the museum may be open again to the public, with social distancing restrictions in place, at some point this summer, but the museum is looking into grants for new programs that could help the community in the COVID-19 environment.
Meanwhile, event organizers will have a year-plus to get ready for the fall of 2021.
“Nobody needs to give up on it,” Roughton said of the Indian Bayou festival. “It’s not dead. It’s just on hold.”
