in-her-shoes

When It's Darkness on the Delta: How America's Richest Soil Became Its Poorest Land W. Ralph Eubanks

Wed, 25 Mar 2026 02:48:46 GMT

When It's Darkness on the Delta

When It's Darkness on the Delta: How America's Richest Soil Became Its Poorest Land

By W. Ralph Eubanks

PUBLISHERS WEEKLY FEB 2, 2026

Publisher Description

For readers of The Sum of Us and South to America, an essential new look at the roots of American inequality—and the seeds of its transformation.

Once the powerhouse of a fledgling country’s economy, the Mississippi Delta has been consigned to a narrative of destitution. It is often faulted for the sins of the South, portrayed as a regional backwater that willfully cleaved itself from the modern world. But buried beneath the weight of good ol’ boy politics and white-washed histories lies the Delta’s true story.

Mississippi native and award-winning writer W. Ralph Eubanks unearths the region’s buried history, revealing a microcosm of economic oppression in the US. He traverses the Delta, examining its bellwether efforts to combat income inequality through vivid portraits of key figures like

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Mound Bayou Food Clinic Fights Food Scarcity

Wed, 25 Mar 2026 02:34:34 GMT

Mound Bayou Food Clinic Fights Food Scarcity

Mound Bayou Food Clinic Provides Healthy Fruits and Vegetables, Fights Food Scarcity .

By Jaylin R. Smith

March 2, 2026

MOUND BAYOU, Miss.—Wash Sellers used to drive 15 minutes just to get an orange. A native of Merigold, Mississippi—a couple of miles north of Cleveland in Bolivar County—Sellers begins his year participating in the Daniel Fast, a 21-day religious-based diet that limits his eating to fruit, vegetables, beans and nuts. For years, Sellers would have to drive all of the way to Cleveland to get fresh produce for his fast. He doesn’t have to do that anymore.Rural communities across the country are grappling with food insecurity. Schoolchildren, seniors, grocers, and even farmers face a food crisis compounded by government cuts and soaring costs. These nine stories reveal how communities are navigating and reimagining the systems that have left them hungry.

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Food Clinic Fills Grocery Gap in Mound Bayou with Fresh Produce

Wed, 25 Mar 2026 02:14:47 GMT

Food Clinic Fills Grocery Gap in Mound Bayou with Fresh Produce

Food Clinic Fills Grocery Gap in Mound Bayou with Fresh Produce .

By Rondarius Ellzey

March 4, 2026

The clinic provides fresh fruit and vegetables to residents in a place where the nearest grocery store is miles away.

And those we talked to say they're grateful for it.

"We don't get have to run that 20 miles to get bananas, and they're cheaper" Oliver Anderson says.

"It's really important because we are in what you call a food dessert" Darryl Johnson said.

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The Black Women Driving a Food Revolution in Rural Mississippi

Wed, 29 Oct 2025 15:09:08 GMT

Farmacy Marketplace oakland

From grocery stores to food distribution services, Black women are leading efforts to feed their communities.

By Aallyah Wright

September 29, 2025

Sowing Resilience: Rural communities across the country are grappling with food insecurity. Schoolchildren, seniors, grocers, and even farmers face a food crisis compounded by government cuts and soaring costs. These nine stories reveal how communities are navigating and reimagining the systems that have left them hungry.

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Farmacy Marketplace Oakland MS

Fri, 01 Aug 2025 16:24:21 GMT

Farmacy Marketplace oakland

Farmacy Marketplace Oakland is now officially open ! Be sure to stop by and see all the fresh goods we have in stock for you ✅

11825 US Hwy 51

Oakland MS 38948

Ways One Farmer Is Taking on the Food Desert Dilemma

Tue, 10 Dec 2024 03:30:14 GMT

by DIANNe Munson

Mangham founded In Her Shoes (IHS), a nonprofit located in Webb, MS, in 2017 and operates it with a staff of three: a program coordinator, an outreach and communications coordinator, and an administrative assistant.IHS is the means by which Mangham helps farmers learn the business of farming. It’s also the hub for everything else she does.

(CLICK IMAGE ABOVE FOR FULL FEATURE ARTICLE)

Farmacy Mobile, Upcoming Events

Sun, 01 Dec 2024 18:11:33 GMT

FARMACY MOBILE LAUnch

Farmacy Marketplace is proud to announce the launch of Farmacy Mobile, aimed at enhancing food accessibility in underserved communities. This initiative will kick off in Jonestown, MS, offering fresh fruits and vegetables on the go. Farmacy Marketplace is also expanding to Oakland, MS! Stay connected for more details on our launch and open date and mission to improve food access in the MS Delta. #FarmacyMobile #FoodAccess #HealthyEating #CommunitySupport #Sustainability

IHS Founder and Executive Director Named to Soil Health Institute Board

Thu, 01 Aug 2024 03:02:45 GMT

IHS Founder and Executive Director Named to Soil Health Institute Board

The Soil Health Institute welcomed a familiar face to its board recently. In Her Shoes’ Founder and Executive Director, Marquitrice Mangham, joined the board in April.

‘A blessing to the community’: New Black-owned grocery opens to serve small Delta town

Thu, 01 Aug 2024 03:01:18 GMT

James Croft checks the inventory at Farmacy Marketplace in Webb, Miss., Friday, October 28, 2022. Credit: Eric Shelton/Mississippi Today

WEBB — Marquitrice Mangham didn’t just want to create the grocery store her hometown desperately needed. She wanted to bolster the Delta’s long-struggling food system.

Enter Farmacy Marketplace: A neighborhood grocer that isn’t just the first store in decades to offer Webb shoppers fresh meat and produce, but also a steady marketplace for small-scale farmers to sell their crops.

“A huge amount of food waste goes on in the Delta because everything is so sparsely populated,” said Mangham, who heads the nonprofit that runs the new Tallahatchie County grocery store. “No supermarket business is going to contract you to buy 20 pounds of tomatoes every couple weeks.”

But the Farmacy Marketplace can, giving the region’s struggling small-scale farmers a more reliable income and the people of Webb access to produce without driving a half-hour to the nearest grocery store.

The Mississippi Delta may be known for its fertile soil, but its major farm operations largely grow soy and corn for animal feed rather than produce the food the region’s population actually eats. There are few industries and jobs outside of agriculture. In most Delta counties, the poverty rate is between 30%-40%.

The Delta is also covered with what the U.S. Department of Agriculture calls rural food deserts: low-income tracts where a third of the population lives more than 20 miles from the nearest large grocer. Mangham hopes what she’s creating at Farmacy Marketplace will become a model for other communities.

Dollar stores force local grocery stores to close. This woman opened one anyway.

Thu, 01 Aug 2024 01:58:25 GMT

Photo credit: Gettyimages

Marquitrice Mangham never imagined that she’d open a grocery store in her hometown of Webb, Mississippi.

She left in the 1990s after high school. But in 2016, she inherited her family’s farm, splitting her time between the majority-Black town of fewer than 500 people in the rural Delta and her current home in Atlanta.

Webb had changed considerably and was regressing, she said. Businesses had closed, and the housing situation got worse — but the food desert still had a Dollar General. Like many counties across the Delta region, Tallahatchie County, where Webb is, is situated in a food desert. Though the town has had the Dollar General since 2009, it only provided frozen and processed foods. Here, the residents never had a grocery store, forcing many to travel more than 20 miles to the nearest one.