New book looks at Delta Debutante Club of the Civil Rights era in MS
Beauvais S. McCaddon didn’t waste any time getting to real issues surrounding the spectacle of debutante socialization. Early on in her memoir, “Invitation Only: A Delta Debutante Meets the Second Reconstruction,” McCaddon asks: “How could I and other debs while living in the red-hot center of civil rights activity in the Mississippi Delta be totally clueless to the earthquake? What and who was a Delta Debutante? What was the purpose of the organization, the Delta Debutante Club? How did I fit into the role and where did it lead me?” Those questions have long been asked by people living across the vast demesne of the Mississippi Delta, an 18-county area of Northwest Mississippi, some 200 miles long and nearly 100 miles wide that’s considered one of the nation’s premier agricultural locales. To fully grasp the process of presenting elite Delta girls to “society” through the Delta Debutante Club, founded in 1943, it’s almost necessary to have a family member involved in what McCaddon describes as “the pure fantasy of being a debutante.” Then again, who’s elite? Why wasn’t civil rights activist Fannie Lou Hamer considered elite? She was courageous, smart and worked hard, virtues admired in Mississippi. “Invitation Only” offers
