For Delta Librarian, The End

After decades of doing battle with illiteracy, poverty, racism and the elements in Mississippi, Ronnie Wise is walking away.

By J.R. Moehringer, Times Staff Writer
September 23, 2006

CLEVELAND, Miss. — It's not easy to escape the Delta. People have been writing songs for 100 years about how hard it is to escape, especially this part of the Delta, where the crushing poverty and the heat storms and the ghost towns get hold of you and won't let go.

Some used to hop a train out, but the trains don't stop here anymore. Some worked their way out, but jobs have gotten scarce. Few dreamed of escaping through books. Then Ronnie Wise came along.

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Accompanying photo gallery. The aforementioned latimes.com membership is also needed to access.

For what it's worth, I thought that this sentence was particularly powerful:

"A mind can be a terrible thing," says Oscar Lindsey, the prison librarian, "and a book can keep you from twirling around inside it."

I'm now using it as my blog's epigraph for the time being.