Sept. 10, 1942

Longtime NASA mathematician and aeronautical engineer Christine Mann Darden was born in Monroe, North Carolina. 

NASA Langley hired her as a “human computer,” and she became the first Black woman promoted into senior executive service, the top rank in the federal civil service. 

Her mother was a teacher, and when Darden was 4, she began taking her with her. Her mother said she could play outside, “but who was I going to play with?” she asked. “I stayed and did the first grade work. [At the end of the year], she promoted me to second grade.” A high school geometry teacher inspired Darden to study math. In 1958, she became class valedictorian of her high school and received a scholarship to attend Hampton Institute (now Hampton University). 

In 1960, she took part in lunch counter sit-in protests at Woolworth’s in downtown Hampton, Virginia. After graduating, she taught math, and NASA hired her in 1967 in its “computer pool.” She asked for a transfer to engineering, which her supervisor told her was impossible. Then she went to the director and asked why men and women with the same education were assigned different jobs. “Nobody has ever asked me that question before,” the director responded. “Well,” Darden replied, “I’m asking it now.” 

Three weeks later, she was promoted to engineering. While working at NASA, she earned a doctorate in Fluid Mechanics. A few years later, she led the Sonic Boom Group of NASA’s High Speed Research Program and was responsible for the development of NASA’s sonic boom research program. 

Supersonic planes offer the promise of transporting people and cargo at tremendous speeds, but they cause disruptive sonic booms. Darden’s groundbreaking work on high-lift wing design led to experimental planes NASA launched in 2016 that were quieter, safer and faster. 

That same year, she was featured in the book, “Hidden Figures: The American Dream and the Untold Story of the Black Women Mathematicians Who Helped Win the Space Race”. In 2019, she was awarded the Congressional Gold Medal. She told Quanta magazine, “In recent years, I’ve been talking to students all over the country. Invariably, the young women come up and say, ‘We didn’t know women did work like that!’ Girls need to know that women do this work.”

This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

An excellent new TV documentary “9/20” tells the compelling story of a football game played 23 years ago that was, as then-Mississippi State quarterback Wayne Madkin put it, “bigger than all of us.”

The game was played on Sept. 20, 2001, at Scott Field in Starkville. Final score: South Carolina 16, Mississippi State 14. Twenty-three years later, the score seems irrelevant.

For sure, the final score was nowhere near the reason why the SEC Network will air the 30-minute MSU Films documentary at 7 p.m. on the 23rd anniversary of 9/11/2001.

That South Carolina-Mississippi State game was the first big-time college or professional football game played after terrorists killed more than 3,000 Americans, injured more than 6,000 others and changed our lives forever. It was the worst attack on our homeland in our nation’s history.

Madkin, the Bulldogs’ quarterback, remembers walking out onto the field that warm evening, along with all the State and South Carolina players and suddenly knowing the experience was something he would never forget. 

Scott Field was packed. American flags were everywhere — I mean everywhere, thousands and thousands of them. Bulldogs and Gamecocks players surrounded the biggest flag of all, each holding on to it during the playing of the national anthem. 

“At that time I knew this was bigger than football,” Madkin says. “You have a couple days in your life that you know will define you, that you are never going to forget, that you can pass on or share to your legacy. This was one of those for me.

“Once you actually got on that field and you held that enormous American flag and you saw South Carolina and Mississippi State all together as one, nobody cared if you were a Republican or a Democrat or a South Carolina fan or a Mississippi State fan. At that particular time it was bigger than all of us and we were Americans.”

All of us who were alive 23 years ago remember where we were and who we were with when we heard — or actually saw on our TVs — the horrible news of Sept. 11, 2001. Larry Templeton, then the Mississippi State athletic director, was in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, for an NCAA meeting. Somebody walked into the meeting room told all in attendance they needed to get to a television.

And so they did. And since they were all high-ranking athletics officials, most with programs to run hundreds or thousands of miles away, all began trying to figure out how to get home. There were no flights. All air traffic was grounded. Templeton and then-Auburn athletic director David Housel were in a group of four who decided to rent a car and and drive south.

“We got the last rental car in Philadelphia,” Templeton said. “At least that’s what we were told.”

“It was an eerie drive. Every time we would go through a big city, you could see the military presence, the security. I’ll never forget going through Washington, D.C. You would have thought we were at war.”

Their first stop, other than for gas or fast food, was the Atlanta airport, where Housel had left his car. “We couldn’t even get close,” Templeton says. “Tanks were blocking the road. We pulled up and a soldier asked what we were doing. We told them who we were and that Housel needed to get his car to drive back to Auburn. They told Housel to get his stuff and get out, that they’d drive him to his car, and for us to turn around.”

When Templeton turned in the rental at Golden Triangle Regional Airport, he says, “at least a dozen people were waiting in line to get a car.”

The next few days were filled with meetings and phone call after phone call. State was supposed to play host to BYU that Saturday. The initial plan in the SEC was to play the scheduled games. That changed when the NFL canceled the games for that weekend. The BYU game was postponed and later scheduled for December.

State’s next scheduled game was the South Carolina game the following Thursday, and it was in doubt as well. But then, the call came from the SEC office on Saturday, Sept. 15. Roy Kramer, the SEC commissioner, had been in discussions with White House staff. He told Templeton, “The president (George W. Bush) wants your game to be the first.”

That gave Templeton and his staff five days to prepare for a game that would surely be the biggest security undertaking in college football history. Again, if you’re old enough, you remember. America was basically at a standstill. Airports were still closed. Planes were still grounded. There was still great fear of another attack. A stadium filled with tens of thousands of fans seemed a likely target.

Templeton asked Kramer: “How will we get South Carolina here?”

Kramer answered, “You worry about preparing for the game. I’ll get them there.”

Before it was over, the National Guard, the Air Force, the FBI, the Mississippi Highway Patrol, then-Gov. Ronnie Musgrove’s office and still others were involved in game preparation. Security measures that have become commonplace were instituted for the first time. Among the more than 40,000 in attendance for the game were bomb sniffing dogs.

David Garraway, one of the film’s three co-producers, believes “9/20” tells an important story.

“In the very first days after 9/11 — those days of uncertainty and fear — we find a society looking for normalcy. Sports are such an indelible part of the American experience, and they became a refuge,” Garraway said. “When America needed competitive sports to move forward from this tragedy, Mississippi State rose to the occasion.”

There were hiccups. For instance, the Delta jet chartered for South Carolina the day before the game was grounded due to mechanical issues. Coach Lou Holtz and his Gamecocks flew into Starkville on a different plane on game day, highly unusual in college football.

Because of security, the lines to get into the game were unusually long. But there were no incidents and a decidedly partisan crowd, many dressed in red, white and blue instead of maroon and white, seemed to endure the delays gladly. It was as if everyone in attendance, including this writer, was just glad to be doing something somewhat normal for the first time in nine days.

In many ways, the game was a patriotic celebration of America with some football played in between. The game itself was competitive and well-played. South Carolina, the more physical team that night, won a hard-earned victory.

Templeton’s lasting memory? “A sense of accomplishment,” he answers. “Just playing the game, amid all the circumstances, was an accomplishment.”

Madkin? “I feel very blessed to have been part of it. You know, 9/11 changed everything. It changed our lives forever, but that game was part of the healing process of America. We lost the game, but we were part of history. We were part of one of the first steps of America getting back to normal.”

“9/11” will be aired on the SEC Network at 7 p.m. Wednesday. It will be available for streaming here following the broadcast. 

This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

CORONA, Tenn. — Life in the tiny community of Corona, a chunk of  Tennessee on the Arkansas side of the Mississippi River, has never been easy for Joanne Moore. Like many, she’s been forced to leave. 

Her old home, once a grand mansion, is now falling apart. Weeds crawl up the bricks. The gutter has fallen off. A flood in 2021 left the house without running water. It has been the victim of three separate break-ins.

“It was, and still is, extremely distressing to me,” she said. 

Moore raised her children there. Her daughter, Melissa Faber, called her childhood in Corona “magical.” Her family hunted and angled there, catching fish from Corona Lake which once fed into the river. 

A combination of health issues and increased river flooding pushed Moore and her family off Corona — what Moore calls “the island” — in 2007. Without a well to get water from, Moore, 89, couldn’t return even if she wanted to. She worries about the culture and history of the island being lost as more and more people move away. 

Moore is one of many who have faced tough choices as increased flooding and decreased economic opportunity have led to population loss in the Arkansas Delta, the region bordering the Mississippi River. Five counties in the Delta have seen their population decrease by more than 30 percent since 1990. Once a thriving agricultural community, Corona is a shell of its former self as the island’s unique ways of life are threatened.

Communities gained, communities lost

Corona is one of many river communities along state borders that are isolated from the rest of their respective states due to changes in the course of the Mississippi River over time. These communities are the result of the unique geography of the river, which for thousands of years shifted course and carved new paths. 

The borders for southern states were drawn up in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, years before the river was leveed and fixed in place in the 1930s. As a result, some border towns are fixed in time, locked in by these old boundaries — slivers of Tennessee are surrounded by the state of Arkansas. Portions of Arkansas are surrounded by Mississippi.

Tennessee alone has 10 such border irregularities. Arkansas has 12. Mississippi has 13. 

“There’s something magic about living on the river,”said Boyce Upholt, a journalist who just published a book about the Mississippi River called The Great River.

Corona’s population and water issues are a part of the larger trend of population loss across the Mississippi Delta. Michael Pakko, chief economist with the Arkansas Economic Development Institute who is currently running for state treasurer, said that the population loss began with the decline of the cotton industry during the Great Depression.

Mississippi County, the Arkansas county closest to Corona, had a population of 82,375 in 1950. In 2020, its population was just 40,000.

The story is the same for other counties across the Delta. Between 1990 and 2023, six Arkansas Delta counties lost population.

Phillips County, south of Memphis, along the border with Mississippi, lost nearly half of its population over the past three decades. 

For Pakko, the biggest challenge for counties in the Delta is managing the “negative growth in a positive way.”  There is no definitive answer to how that is done, he said. He called the solution the “million dollar question.”

The popularization of remote work that was spurred on by the COVID-19 pandemic may spark population growth in these regions, he said, but that is only speculation. For now, these areas remain in what Pakko called a “vicious cycle” of industry decline and population loss.

Moore doubts that people will come to places like Corona in the near future. She said the difficulties associated with living on the island — like water and first-responder issues —make it difficult for newcomers.

“If you don’t have a good reason to be there, you’re not going to live there,” she said. 

A rich history lost 

Originally founded in the 1830s, Corona was cut off from the rest of Tennessee following a flood in 1876. In 1950, Corona’s census district — which also includes a small portion of mainland Tennessee — had a population of 281. In 2022, Corona’s zip code — also covering a part of Arkansas — had a population of just 15.

Upholt said that communities along the river sprang up as centers of commerce that supported the booming trade along the Mississippi. Cities like Greenville became transportation and commercial hubs as the cotton trade grew.

That all changed with the expansion of railroads in the 1880s. Cities like Cleveland, Mississippi, further inland, saw rapid population growth. As transportation changed, river towns began to lose population.

“Few towns along the river are what they used to be. The business on the river isn’t what it used to be,” Upholt said.

With population loss, life in these river towns became more difficult. Even more so on the island of Corona, which is about a two hour drive from the rest of Tipton County, Tennessee.

Moore said that her family has received little help from the county due to the distance. 

She recalled how in the 1950s, her husband and brother-in-law had to run seven miles of telephone lines themselves and purchase their own equipment to pave roads. When their children were old enough for school, they rented an apartment in Memphis so they could send them. 

“We lived like people, in a lot of respects, 100 years ago,” she said.

Moore wasn’t born on Corona. She is from nearby Wilson, Arkansas, and moved to Corona when she met her husband. The farm that she lived on had been in her husband’s family since 1836. Despite the difficulty, she stayed there because that is where her husband worked and lived, she said.

Moore, a historian who worked with the Tennessee Historical Commission for more than 30 years, particularly enjoyed the community that came with island living. Property owners on nearby Island 35 — another border island — would host yearly gatherings. People from the surrounding communities, she said, would take riverboats to the island and socialize into the early morning hours. 

One of the largest challenges Moore and her family faced while living on Corona was water. During their time on the island, they built their own well to source groundwater, but it looked “like Orange Crush, almost” and wasn’t potable. They had to get bottled water. 

This difficult, yet doable, existence on the island ended in 2007. Moore ended up moving back to Wilson. She’s lived there since, going back to visit her home around once a month, but without water and amenities, she can’t spend the night. 

Moore has ruled out going back to Corona full time due to health concerns. Her house flooded in 2011. She said a subsequent flood three years ago took out her well and water treatment system. Since then, the property hasn’t had running water.

She’s trying to get onto the water system of nearby Joiner, Arkansas. If that happened, she and her family could spend more time on the island and upkeep the decaying home.

According to Moore, this would cost thousands. She said she has been unable to get help from  Tipton County.

“Water would keep me from living here — if nothing else,” she said. “Nobody should have to go without any water.”

Compounding this issue is the landscape of Corona itself. In the 1800s, Mississippi and Tennessee began to construct a series of levees to prevent flooding along the river. 

In 1927, Mississippi experienced its worst flood in recent history, what Upholt called a “waking up” moment for waterway engineers. This led to an expansion of the levee system to control the Mississippi. 

Corona remained unprotected by those levees, on the banks of the river. 

“It’s a huge commitment for someone to live there,” Upholt said.

Increased flood risk and the precariousness of living inside a levee leaves Moore worried. Forty-three percent of the homes in her zip code have a moderate flood risk of flooding within the next 30 years, according to climate data and analytics firm First Street. 

Rainfall and flood risks are rising across Southeastern states. Moore said that she cannot obtain flood insurance.

“It’s a very strange feeling to be sleeping at night knowing the river is coming up right underneath your head,” she said. “Every time the river comes up, it changes the landscape of the island.”

Fewer residents, more hunters 

As people move out, duck hunters are moving in. For part of the year, that is. 

Many of these border islands function as hunting clubs. One of these clubs is Beulah Island Hunting Club, located on the titular Beulah Island. The island, technically a piece of Arkansas, falls on the Mississippi-side of the border about 35 miles north of Greenville, Mississippi. 

Before becoming a hunting club, Beulah Island was a lumber camp owned by the lumber companies Anderson Tully and Desha Land & Timber. The club began acquiring the land in 2008.

Henry Mosco, a Mississippi Realtor who sells shares of Beulah Island, said the lightly developed nature of the island and the fact it is inside the levee made it prime ground for a hunting club.

These hunting clubs can be lucrative sources of revenue, said Mosco. A recent listing shows one share of the roughly 2,863-acre island for $185,000. Owners, Mosco said, don’t live on the island. Instead, they build houses or cabins on the islands and live on them during hunting retreats. 

“Your average person isn’t buying these memberships,” Mosco said.

This could be the future of Corona. Moore said that parts of Corona owned by other families have gone into a conservation program already, and will probably become hunting camps.

For Moore, the largest loss of places like Corona is cultural. During a recent break-in, her father’s World War II medals and ribbons were stolen.

She worries that as these areas depopulate, the unique histories of these places will be forgotten.

“We’re losing a lot of history, a different type of history,” she said. “We’re losing a way of life.”

This story is a product of the Mississippi River Basin Ag & Water Desk, an independent reporting network based at the University of Missouri in partnership with Report for America, with major funding from the Walton Family Foundation.

This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.