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In That Land of Perfect Day (signed)

by Brandon Thibodeaux

Photographs: Brandon Thibodeaux

Publisher: Red Hook Editions

128 pages

ISBN: 978-1-941703-05-2

Price: 82 €

Comments: Hardback / Clothbound, 22.86 cm x 30.48 cm

For the past eight years I have lived with and photographed a number of families in townships and villages spanning some 60 square miles of the northern Mississippi Delta; Towns with names like Alligator, BoBo, and Duncan, as well as the United States’ oldest completely African American municipality, Mound Bayou. During this time I came across a sermon by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. from November 1967 in which he uses the Biblical story of Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego to voice his call for civil disobedience. The three men, in refusing to bow before King Nebuchadnezzar’s golden idol, were cast into a fiery furnace but found their selves shielded from its flames by their faith in their Lord. To this Dr. King exclaimed, "Somewhere along the way you should discover something that is so dear, so precious to you, that is so eternally worthful, that you will never give it up. You ought to discover some principle. You ought to have some great faith that grips you so much that you will never give it up. Somehow you must go on and say, I know that the God that I worship is able to delivery me, but if not, I’m going on anyhow, I’m going to stand up for it anyway!"

This quote speaks to two themes, faith and perseverance. And in reflecting upon this I realized that these themes run throughout my experiences in the Delta. From the life of a single mother fighting to provide for her children, to the chorus of the hymns we sing in church, like This Little Light of Mine, Take My Hand Precious Lord, and By and By – from which the title of this project is derived.

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