Finance leaders, mayors of several major Deep South cities and others will attend DELTA FEST conference in Jackson next week, which planners are calling an “economic activation festival” to map a 10-year plan for economic prosperity in the Deep South.

The free three-day event, held from Sept. 16-18 at the Environmental Learning Center in south Jackson, was organized by HOPE Enterprise Corporation and Yancey Consulting. It will include presentations and support from other major financial institutions like Capital One, Wells Fargo and Goldman Sachs.

The idea for the festival, HOPE CEO Bill Bynum said, was developed following the 2024 election as a way to empower people in communities across the Deep South.

“Last November, it was clear that we were at a very critical point in the country and that there were going to be changes in the economic policies going forward,” Bynum told Mississippi Today. “But we’d also seen over the years that we know what it takes to ensure that people in places like in the Delta, in the Alabama Black Belt, in south Jackson, in Central City in New Orleans could navigate these economic shifts, these political shifts, these crises.

“So we reached out to our investors, to our board, to our team here at HOPE and our allies and said, ‘It’s time to create a new paradigm where everyday people in the South have the tools they need to prosper,” Bynum continued. “Delta Fest is not just a forum, it’s not just a conference. We see it as a strategy, a vision.”

An opening ceremony will take place on Sept. 16 and will be hosted by comedian Rita Brent and feature musical performances by Benjamin Cone with members of the Mississippi Mass Choir and the Jackson State Sonic Boom Pep Band. Later, there will be a fireside chat with music executive and Jackson State University professor Cortez Bryant. 

The next two days are dedicated to sessions broken into three tracks: Ownership, Entrepreneurship and Community Infrastructure. One will feature Jackson Mayor John Horhn along with the mayors of Birmingham, Montgomery and Little Rock. They will be joined by other local and national leaders, policymakers, creatives and entrepreneurs to share ideas, resources and information.

Bynum said he expects that by the end of the festival, there will be “some clear direction, some clear tools that people can put to use to start to advance a prosperous economy.”

“This isn’t just ideas and platitudes, this is really around, ‘What can people pick up right now to do and build within their entrepreneurship, ownership and community infrastructure?’” said Lisa Yancey, the founder and president of Yancey Consulting. “Anything that we want to materialize, anything that we want to manifest isn’t outside of us. It is already within us … We just need to activate it.”

Editor’s note: Bill Bynum serves on the Deep South Today board of directors. Several of the Delta Fest sponsors and speakers are Mississippi Today donors. Donors do not in any way influence our newsroom’s editorial decisions. For more on that policy or to view a list of our donors, click here.