“Mississippi Blacktop: long road to the blues” is a gritty, visual road trip through America’s iconic Mississippi Delta region, where the history is as rich and colorful as the area’s fertile soil. As you view the photos set in and around the small town of Clarksdale, Mississippi, and read about the people, places, and events they illustrate, you will be transported to a land of rough beauty; a land of music (the blues in particular), religion, poverty, community, slavery, Jim Crow laws, juke joints, Hoodoo, sharecropping, gospel, segregation, some legendary crossroads, and even the Devil himself.

When artist Ming C. Lowe visited the town in 2005, she took hundreds of black & white photographs. After reviewing them, she recognized there was a larger story to tell than she had ever imagined. Beginning with 36 small prints exhibited in a few galleries, she later enlarged and framed a total of 63 of the images, prepared an exhibition that is ready to tour, and wrote an accompanying catalog—all of which became “Mississippi Blacktop: long road to the blues.”