GREENWOOD (MISSISSIPPI, USA) 2008-2010

COCOON On the Banks of the Yalobusha River, Greenwood, Mississippi, a performance-installation by Kate Browne in the former capital of cotton and enslavement in the Mississippi Delta.

"So much happened in the Delta, in Greenwood, Mississippi, that is important to US history. A small town in the Mississippi Delta that was a cotton capital both before and after the Civil War, and the scene of intense Civil Rights organizing in the 1960s. It was here, in 1966, on the James Meredith March Against Fear, that Stokely Carmichael first publicly uttered the words “Black Power.” Here, the Great Migration emptied the town and surrounding Delta. I was interested in what was remembered in a place that so many people had left for the North. This was the first time my interviews began to take a more prominent role in the artwork and I began to figure out how to include these voices in Cocoon, and I began speaking with Bob Zellner, former member of SNCC, about how to organize." Kate Browne

partners & funders: National Resources Initiative of North Mississippi Arts Commission.

team: The Greenwood, Mississippi team came from Communities in Schools Greenwood and the Boys and Girls Club of the Mississippi Delta. Thank you to Shun Pearson who was the Field Organizer.