The old political joke used to be that late-in-life conservatives are just liberals who have been pick-pocketed. There’s definitely some truth to that old saw, but I don’t know what it means when a lifelong conservative finds himself agreeing with a liberal! That’s the situation I’m now in after reading Arkansas Democrat-Gazette editorial page editor Paul Greenberg’s recent column on federal funding in the Delta.

BY ROBERT MCFARLAND, JR. Delta Business Journal

Clarksdale attorney, Bill Luckett, and actor Morgan Freeman have done it again. The duo have unveiled their latest business venture, a blues club in the heart of downtown Clarksdale called Ground Zero. This time, the duo brought in a third partner, Howard Stovall, Clarksdale native and executive director of the Blues Foundation in Memphis. Luckett and Freeman’s first outing was opening the high end restaurant, Madidi, also located in downtown Clarksdale, now in it’s eight month of operation.
“It was a very exciting opening with a packed house, “ says Luckett. “Unfortunately, there were many people whom we wish we could have invited. However, we had the media, vendors, and with three owners sending out our own invitations we were somewhat limited on who we could invite.

BY NANCY COTTEN HIRST DBJ Contributing Editor

Ben Lamensdorf, Cary farmer and businessman, has assumed the reins as President of the Delta Council with an eye toward the future. Not so much for himself as for his children, grandchildren, and the host of other Deltans who would like to see their families continue to thrive in this rural and small town tradition.
Joining the ranks of outstanding leaders who have preceded him, Lamensdorf says that he feels honored in this company. “If I just carry on the work of Kenneth Hood and the other previous presidents, it’ll keep me busy,” he says. “People don’t realize that the Delta Council is behind so many of the good things that happen in the Delta. They tend to work behind the scene. I think our Council helps the area, not just in agricultural concerns, but in education, economic development, and so many other things, more than any other Council in the country.

ANALYSIS BY JACK CRISSDBJ Executive Editor

The following is an updated version of an article which was originally published in 1995
Many eyes in the legal profession are now on Mississippi. What the state is being watched for, however, is not the type of issue the Chamber of Commerce can be proud of, unless attracting trial lawyers is our main goal.
As first mentioned in the June 2001 Delta Business Journal (“A legal black eye for Mississippi” by Scott Coopwood, “From The Publisher”), Mississippi is now becoming known as the nation’s haven for outlandish lawsuits with huge judgments, especially in poorer, rural counties. Whereas Alabama was once referred to by Time magazine as “Tort Hell”, Mississippi has now moved into the lead in terms of multiple-plaintiff lawsuits directed at companies and corporations seen as having deep (and guilt laden) pockets.

BY MARY ELLEN POWELL DBJ Contributing Writer

Delta and Pine Land has been in the Delta for seventy-seven years, but their business interests are as far flung as China and Turkey. Eighteen years ago when Murray Robinson came to the company as executive vice-president in 1988, he saw the need for the company to begin participating in the global market. Thirteen years later, Robinson, now CEO, can see how such a forward-thinking philosophy has paid off earning the company the title of being number 42 on the Hot Growth list named by Business Week magazine.
The global mindset begun by Robinson has expanded to the point where Delta and Pine Land now sells its herbicide-tolerant, insect-resistant genetically modified cottonseed as well as conventional seed, to approximately 15 to 20 countries worldwide. According to Business Week, overseas sales account for 10 percent of revenues and are growing 35 percent annually.

BY William F. Winter

Its publication produced no great fanfare. There were no widely publicized autograph sessions for its authors. It has not been on anybody’s best-seller list. It is not prominently displayed nor even offered for sale in the leading book stores.
Yet the recently published volume with the beguiling title, Delta Autumn, may just be one of the most important books that has come out of Mississippi recently. This is a book that has the potential to set public education on a dynamic new course in the Delta.
Its authors are eight bright young men and women, who, as members of the Mississippi Teacher Corps, learned first-hand about Delta public schools by teaching in those schools over the last several years. These first-year teachers have been driven by a passion to help students to overcome the handicap of poverty and apathy that have caused so many of them to fail in years gone by.

BY ALLEN TYE

The last five years, culminating with the events of Spring 2001, have been extraordinarily confusing and tortuous for the members of the Federal Reserve. Flash back to 1997: The economy is healthy, the Nasdaq and the Dow Jones Industrials had shown modestly impressive growth to 1700 and 8100 respectively. The Federal Reserve publicly expresses confidence in gold and commodity prices as early indicators of any looming inflation.

BY JULIE SPEED DBJ Contributing Writer

Since 1995, the Enterprise Corporation of the Delta, a private, nonprofit business development organization, has been assisting the Delta business community.
Led by William J. Bynum, CEO and president of ECD, the organization accomplishes its primary mission of improving the quality of life for low- and moderate-income residents of the Delta and rural regions of Mississippi, Arkansas and Louisiana by providing market-driven financial and technical assistance to firms, entrepreneurs and homeowners, forging strategic partnership with private, public and nonprofit organization, and promoting the development of the region’s human and economic assets.
The Delta Business Journal talked to Bynum, a University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill graduate who previously directed programs with the North Carolina Rural Economic Development Center and has completed executive coursework at Harvard Business School, about ECD’s priorities and objectives.

BY MIKE LAVIN DBJ Contributing Writer

Dr. Kingsley Harbor, chairman of the department of Mass Communications at Miss Valley State University, is extremely pleased with his job these days. The campus’ new television station is aiding him tremendously with teaching his students the latest trends in the field
Broadcasting journalism newest concentration is in the mass communications department, includes print journalism, public relations, speech communications.
“The television studio is our attempt to provide a facility for students who will be graduating in broadcasting,” Dr. Harbor says.
Also getting ready to be accredited by national accrediting agency in communications. This accredidation will, in part, will depend on graduates ability to “apply tools and technologies appropriate for communications professions in which they will work,” Dr. Harbor says.

BY MARK BIRD DBJ Contributing Writer

Coahoma County is a place of contrasts. It is an area with an economy historically based on agriculture, but one where industry and tourism are coming on strong. It is a place with the relaxed lifestyle and advantages of small towns, but also one that is alive with the excitement of casino gaming and live entertainment. And, while you hear a lot of optimism about the future, it is tempered by major concerns about present economic conditions.
Agriculture remains the top industry, but it has suffered the most in recent years, from a combination of bad weather, foreign competition, and low commodity prices. At the same time, strong investment in the area from other sectors has helped maintain steady, if slower, growth.
Ron Hudson of the Clarksdale/Coahoma County Chamber of Commerce says that while there is economic uncertainty, especially in agriculture, the county has fared reasonably well.

BY STEVE STEWART

A four-block stroll through downtown Clarksdale reveals the potential of a city that rarely gives itself enough credit.
The walk begins on the northern end of the historic district at the Cutrer Mansion, an 85-year-old Italian Renaissance villa that, even in its decaying state, stands as a testament to what Clarksdalians can achieve when they ignore some of the traditional barriers to progress.
An Oxford architect is putting the finishing touches on renovation plans that will make the grand old mansion the focal point of a new joint campus of Delta State University and Coahoma Community College. Many see the higher-education center as the catalyst for economic prosperity in a community where far too many residents lack the skills to get and keep a good-paying job.

BY ALLEN ROARK DBJ Contributing Writer

Education is the key factor to future growth of the Delta. This is an uncontested fact acknowledged by business and government leaders, citizens, and workers throughout the region. It is a fact trumpeted by those who are entrusted to run our universities and colleges, whose purpose it is to ensure proper and adequate training, and impart knowledge, to the Delta’s young people.
Obstacles to this purpose exist, however, in spite of the wide consensus of its importance. Internal problems at our higher education facilities, such as brain drain, and external problems, such as budgetary restraints and cuts, hinder the full accomplishment of the goals of the state’s colleges and universities. Especially hard hit are those in and around the Delta which serve our area.

BY MARY ELLEN POWELL DBJ Contributing Writer

As a teenager, Charles Coghlan realized that farming was something he wanted to do for the rest of his life. It was a career that he loved then and still loves today. He enjoyed the outdoors and watching the crops grow. Now, many years later, those are the same things that he still enjoys. In fact, he can’t imagine himself doing anything else.
Coghlan grew up in the Delta in a sharecropper’s family where his father farmed near the area where he leases and farms approximately 6000 acres today. He and his wife kept up the family tradition by raising two daughters in the farming way of life. They felt it was a good way to raise children and, even though the girls may not have thought so then, his daughters see now that they benefited from their upbringing on the farm.