‘Food is medicine': Mississippi grocery store revitalizes its majority-Black town with fresh produce

The Guardian

06-05-2025

W ith the recent release of Ryan Coogler's Sinners, Clarksdale, Mississippi, known as the home of the blues, has been thrust into the spotlight. But while the nation and world are captivated with a version of Clarksdale from over 90 years ago, residents today are focused on the future.
On 2 May, rain and warnings of thunderstorms were not enough to keep people in Clarksdale's Brickyard neighborhood away from the reopening of J's Grocery, a local staple since 1997 that had been under renovation for the last year.
A collaboration between the store owner, Al Jones, and local farmers, J's, the only Black-owned supermarket in the area, now carries fresh produce. 'We started with a storefront, then we added a piece on the back,' Jones said. 'But we still didn't have fresh vegetables, the store was too hot all the time to carry vegetables.' Customers flock to the reopening of J's Grocery. People who queued were given a reusable grocery bag with a voucher to allow them to purchase fresh produce. Photograph: Courtesy/Noah Stewart
The new stock and collaboration was made possible by a deal between Jones; Partnership for a Healthier America (PHA), a non-profit that works to provide access to nutritious food; Rootswell, a Mississippi Delta-based group that was formed to 'shift the paradigm of food apartheid'; Novo Nordisk, a pharmaceutical company; and other groups.
'At a time in our country when the federal government is just pulling money back everywhere, we invested in people and community,' Noreen Springstead, PHA's president and CEO said at the opening.
Around 150 local students celebrated the reopening in the morning before the ribbon cutting. They enjoyed music from a DJ, live art and cooking demonstrations.
Jarvis Howard of Tunica, Mississippi, a visual artist who goes by DudeThatDraw, painted a live mural, a smaller version of one he is installing at nearby George H Oliver elementary school. 'Food is medicine,' the mural reads over vibrantly colored vegetables. When he wasn't tending to the mural, Howard was painting kids' faces.
People who queued – around 200 locals– were given a reusable grocery bag with a voucher to allow them to purchase fresh produce. 'It's amazing. They're saying that they haven't seen anything of this nature in this community,' Jones said of the new store. 'They're used to Hot Pockets and cups of noodles, never greens and okra, corn. So that's what we gave to them.' J's serves Clarksdale, a primarily Black town that has a population of nearly 14,000. Photograph: Courtesy/Noah Stewart
Clarksdale, which today has a population of nearly 14,000, is primarily Black. The grocery store is in a walkable, mixed-income community, with an elementary school almost right across the street. A middle school, Head Start center, a nursing home and senior citizen housing, low-income apartments and single-family homes are all in close proximity. In addition to the newly offered produce, the store also features a third space: a seated, shaded area surrounded by raised beds planted with herbs, where residents can gather and chat.
The Mississippi Delta is abundant in fertile land and crops; agriculture is the state's number one industry. Though some 30% of the state is farmland, most of that land is dedicated to cash crops, which are exported. In 2022, nearly 20% of Mississippians were food insecure.
Farms in the region 'produce a lot of commodity crops, like corn, soybean, cotton. They don't produce a lot of food that we eat,' said Robbie Pollard, one of the farmers whose produce is now sold at J's. 'We're trying to change the landscape to start producing more food in the Delta, like converting some of that land that's used for row crop production.' Corner store mentality
Upon entering the new grocery store, residents are greeted with J's culturally relevant produce, such as collard greens and Swiss chard, and Pollard said they plan to introduce staples such as okra, purple peas, butter beans, tomatoes, squash, watermelon, cantaloupe and lettuce throughout the coming seasons. A sign that celebrates the new offerings reads: 'We scare away our competition with the freshest produce in town!!!'
Pollard said that while the Mississippi Delta region is abundant in farmland, there's a gap in what reaches the community. His initiative, Happy Foods Project, which is part of his farm, Start 2 Finish, is working to remedy that by collaborating with other farmers, and introducing youth to farming through farm visits and farm-to-school programs.
J's Grocery reopening will be a gamechanger for the neighborhood, he said. Some residents lack transportation to be able to get to big box stores that sell imported produce. Rural counties in the Mississippi Delta, like Coahoma county in which Clarksdale is the largest town, average one supermarket per 190.5 sq miles. The reopening of J's was a celebration that included a DJ, live art and cooking demonstrations. Photograph: Courtesy/Noah Stewart
'It feels good to just be able to offer people the types of food that they're looking for, not just trying to push something off to them,' Pollard said. 'Being able to provide them with a lot of the food that they grew up on – it's an honor to be able to provide fresh produce to my community.'
After Clarksdale lost its Kroger in 2017, residents initially pushed for another big box store to move in. But Tyler Yarbrough, the director of Mississippi Delta Programs for PHA, and others wanted the town to be able to return to its locally owned, locally operated roots. Prior to big box grocery stores entering the region, Clarksdale, and much of the Mississippi Delta, was serviced by locally owned mom-and-pop shops, largely run by Chinese, Lebanese and Italian immigrants. But as those chains moved in, many grocers' children were less interested in running the family grocery store, and instead left the area to go to college or pursue a different career.
Yarbrough said that stories from his grandmother and other older residents of shopping in the 1960s provided inspiration for what they might be able to bring back to the town. At the time, locals didn't need to leave their communities to procure groceries. Instead, they went to the local grocery stores, which, like J's, had a butcher who sold chicken, pork, freshly sliced bacon and produce. Ribbon cutting of the revamped J's. 'It feels good to just be able to offer people the types of food that they're looking for,' said Robbie Pollard, one of the farmers whose produce is now sold at the store. Photograph: Courtesy/Noah Stewart
'It is in our food system history of having these neighborhood corner stores,' he said, noting that the Brickyard and downtown Clarksdale once had 12 such shops. 'This project is honoring that legacy and reminding us that we can own our food and the stores that we shop from.'
At the reopening ceremony, locals cheered in remembrance as he named those now-closed corner stores. 'I hope this will not be the last one – I want to see us spread across the city,' Jones said. 'At one time, we had corner stores everywhere. Now that we know that we can put produce in corner stores, let's do it.'