The new plantation?

Having unskilled, minority labor is not unique to the Delta, points out Tom Buchanan, a sociologist at the University at Chattanooga who recently wrote a study of the industry. But, he writes, "the elites here have ... successfully been able to assume that this work force remains unskilled and without opportunities." Dr. Buchanan points out that the isolation of the Delta and the lack of other alternatives have created a situation in which labor relations are indeed "uniquely reminiscent of plantation slavery."

Years of unhappy murmurings - or, in the case of Dr. Myers, vociferous protests - have basically led nowhere.

Accusations of black workers being mistreated in this plant or another - claims of unhealthy work conditions, limits on bathroom visits, white supervisors with stop watches, even sexual abuse - are impossible to verify. Stories vary, and no legal action has ever been sought against a processing plant or a farm.

One strike was mounted to protest work conditions at Freshwater Farms in 1998, but it quickly ended with the firing of the protestors who had no-strike clauses in their contracts.

If one thing is indisputable, however, it is that here the vast majority of workers on the production or "kill" line - doing the skinning, cutting, and gutting of the fish - are black and getting minimum wage or slightly above. And the vast majority of front-office personnel are white and making above minimum wage. More significantly, all the catfish farm and processing plant owners are white.

"I don't think the fact that the workers lower down on the totem pole are black is in itself racism," says Steven Yarbrough a novelist whose book "The Oxygen Man" takes place among the catfish industry workers in Mississippi. "But you could nonetheless honestly level charges of racism at the industry.... It's about lingering attitudes. And it's about ownership."

"Civil rights got us to the lunch counter and onto the same buses," pipes in Myers. "But here in the Delta we have yet to own the buses or restaurants or, as the case may be, the catfish-processing plants."

There are those who argue that times have changed, but the story of Walter Roberts weighs against such assertions.

Dr. Roberts is one black man who made a play for some more opportunity and lost out. A well-to-do vet with his own practice, Roberts used to treat sick catfish up and down the Delta and knew the business inside out. A few years ago, he decided to buy some land and try farming for himself.

One white farmer told him, "Fish farming is hard work. You can't be lazy. It's not for blacks," he recalls. The bank would not give him a loan. No one would sell him the baby catfish, known as fingerlings. And the processing plants froze him out, he says. Three years later he gave up.

"The white farmers wanted to prove me wrong. They didn't believe a black man could succeed. And they didn't want any more blacks coming in," he says.

These days, Roberts is hatching a new plan: He wants to start a catfish distribution business - buying processed catfish for repackaging and redistributing.

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