You may not be familiar with the history of how and why Italians immigrated to the Mississippi Delta years after the Civil War. It is a fascinating story that led to decades of crops being sown on seemingly endless rows of rich Delta soil by multi-generational Italian farming families.

For over 40 years Lawrence Reginelli has been embracing and continuing that Italian family farming tradition handed down to him from his father. “I’m the second generation of my family to be born in this area,” says Reginelli, who today farms 4,000 acres in the rural outskirts of Shaw, Mississippi. “My grandparents came over from Italy on the boat hanging their dreams on the hope of a better life.”