SIN & SALVATION IN BAPTIST TOWN

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Jarvis Russel, Winky, and others hang out in the Baptist Town neighborhood of Greenwood, Mississippi on Saturday, July 3, 2010.
Butta's wake and Baptist Town residents hang out in the Baptist Town neighborhood of Greenwood, Mississippi on Thursday, November 4, 2010.
in the Baptist Town neighborhood of Greenwood, Mississippi on February 18, 2011.
(L-R) Pat Hawkins, Roger "Winky" Williams, Eddie "Head" Taylor and Robert Pritchett load into a van on the fourth of July in the Baptist Town neighborhood of Greenwood, Mississippi before driving out to the lake in Grenada on Sunday, July 4, 2010.
T.Mac Howard (far right) serves pizza to young men from south Greenwood in a building donated to Delta Street Ministries in Greenwood, Mississippi on September 29, 2011. Mr. Howard started a school for at-risk young men in 2012.
The smoke of cigarettes and cooking food filters together with a shaft of light in Adrian "Nikki" Wilson's apartment she shares with her girlfriend "Dominique" and mother Ellen in Greenwood, Mississippi on November 30, 2011. Born and raised in Baptist Town, Nikki recently moved out of her childhood home and across the tracks, where there is more anonymity and less drama. She and her mother moved back into the Baptist Town neighborhood a few months later.
Demetrius "Butta" Anderson, 18, and Roger "Winky" Williams count money on a friend's car before a night of smoking, drinking and gambling in front of Hoover's Store in the Baptist Town neighborhood of Greenwood, Mississippi on July 2, 2010. Butta was shot and killed in October, becoming the third person in his family to be murdered.

Matt Eich

About SIN & SALVATION IN BAPTIST TOWN

“Mississippi is magic, Mississippi is hell.” I scribbled this note to myself in a journal on an early trip. It still sums up my feelings pretty well. What started as a three-day assignment quickly morphed into an obsession that has taken me more than 120 days in the field over the course of nearly seven years, with only more questions in need of answering.

In April of 2010 I was sent to Mississippi for an assignment about rural healthcare. I spent a few hours in the town of Greenwood, Mississippi and was struck by the openness of the residents of the Baptist Town neighborhood, and also the glaring disparity between their living conditions and those of their neighbors in picturesque north Greenwood.