A mile across the river lay the floodplain of Arkansas, a world of chiggers and alligator gars and water moccasins that lived in swampy oxbow lakes. In the main channel, whole trees could be seen shooting downstream. The brown Mississippi, wide with northern snowmelt, was a confusion of crosscurrents and boils. The good families, the old families, in their finest James Davis clothes, bourbon flasks in hand, assembled for the start of the South's Greatest Party. They'd come from all the clubs - Chickasaw, University, Colonial, Hunt and Polo, the Memphis Country Club - and from the garden societies. They'd come from all the secret krewes - from the Mystic Society of the Memphi, from Osiris and RaMet and Sphinx. Seventy-five thousand people, dressed to be seen, waited in the twilight. Louis, the citizens of Memphis stood along the cobblestoned banks, enjoying the musky coolness of the river. In early May 1967, three hundred miles downstream from St.
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