Tallahatchie River

This blues song laments the devastation caused in the local African-American community by a flood on the normally shallow river.

The river has historical significance due to the 1955 murder of Emmett Till, an African-American boy visiting from Chicago, who was brutally murdered by white men in Money, Mississippi, for allegedly whistling at a white woman.

In it, he wrote that Donham said of her long-ago allegations that Till grabbed her and was menacing and sexually crude toward her, "that part is not true."

Till was beaten, shot, and sunk in the river with a cotton gin fan tied around his neck by barbed wire.

This event is mentioned in the song, "Freedom Highway" by the Staple Singers, in the lines, "Found dead people in the forests, Tallahatchie River and lakes... whole world is wondering, what's wrong with the United States?