The American South, from Nashville to New Orleans

From Tennessee to Louisiana

This trip runs south from Tennessee to Louisiana, over nearly 1,800 kilometres. It begins on the Natchez Trace Parkway, a 715-kilometre road with no lorries and no billboards. You drive at 80 km/h at most through forests and meadows, and stop at a viewpoint, a Native American mound or on the banks of the Tennessee River.

In Memphis, the clubs on Beale Street play the blues. Then Highway 61 crosses the Mississippi Delta, a plain of cotton fields and silos. In the evening, in Clarksdale, you listen to musicians in a juke joint, a blues bar.

Further south, you visit the grand houses of Natchez, then the swamp of Lake Martin, with its cypresses, egrets and alligators, seen from the road. Finally, the River Road leads to New Orleans, its jazz clubs and its streetcars.

In Nashville, the Grand Ole Opry, born in 1925, is the oldest radio show still on air in the United States. From 1943 to 1974, it was held at the Ryman Auditorium, the “Mother Church of Country Music”. On Lower Broadway, the honky-tonks play country music from the morning on, often with no entry fee. Around Muscle Shoals, in Alabama, the FAME and Muscle Shoals Sound studios recorded Aretha Franklin and the Rolling Stones.

The blues came out of the cotton plantations of the Delta. Legend has it that Robert Johnson sold his soul to the devil at a crossroads. Clarksdale places it where Highways 61 and 49 meet. During the Great Migration, hundreds of thousands of Black people left the Delta for Chicago, and the blues went electric. In New Orleans, Congo Square recalls the Sundays when enslaved people played music and danced there: one of the roots of jazz.

The Mississippi, from the Civil War to civil rights

The river played a major part in the Civil War. At Vicksburg, after a siege from 18 May to 4 July 1863, the Union took the main Confederate stronghold on the river, and soon cut the Confederacy in two. The national military park displays the USS Cairo, a gunboat sunk by a mine in 1862.

Natchez has kept its antebellum mansions. Longwood, an octagonal house, was left unfinished in 1861, when its workers from the North went home. Cotton and slave labour built these houses. On the River Road, the Whitney Plantation tells the lives of the people enslaved in Louisiana. In Memphis, the Lorraine Motel, where Martin Luther King was assassinated on 4 April 1968, houses the National Civil Rights Museum.

What not to miss

1. 1GracelandElvis’s home in Memphis, open to the public since 1982.
2. 2Emerald MoundThe second-largest ceremonial mound of the Mississippian period in the United States, near Natchez.
3. 3The Louisiana State CapitolThe tallest state capitol in the country, with an observation deck on the 27th floor.
4. 4Oak AlleyA double row of 28 oaks, a century older than the house.
5. 5Avery IslandThe salt dome where Tabasco has been made since 1868.
6. 6Jackson SquareThe heart of the French Quarter, in front of St Louis Cathedral.

The American South in pictures

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The oak alley at Oak Alley, seen from the house.

The Southern table

In Nashville, you try hot chicken, a very spicy fried chicken. In Memphis, barbecue ribs come “dry”, rubbed with spices, or “wet”, coated in sauce. In the Delta, people eat fried catfish and hot tamales.

In Louisiana, Cajun cooking comes from the Acadians, driven out of Acadia by the British from 1755 onwards: boudin, crawfish étouffée, gumbo. New Orleans adds Creole cooking, jambalaya and the po’boy. At the French Market, Café du Monde serves beignets with chicory coffee.