Joe Pope, Joe’s White Front Café in Rosedale, MS. Photo by Rod Davis, July 2004—five months before Joe Pope’s passing.
IN MEMORY OF JOE POPE, 1924-2004
In December 2004, revered hot tamale cook and vendor Joe Pope of Rosedale, Mississippi, passed away. He embodied the history of hot tamales in the Mississippi Delta. Born in Alabama in 1924, Pope’s family moved to a farm near Rosedale in the early 1930s. At that same time, John Hooks, who would later become an acquaintance of Pope’s, obtained a recipe for hot tamales from a Mexican migrant in the community. Decades later, Pope would turn to this tamale recipe and make it his own, selling hot tamales in an effort to earn some extra money. Before long, his side business became a full-time venture. For thirty-plus years, Pope made and sold his popular shuck-wrapped beef tamales from a modest clapboard building on Highway 1 in Rosedale, Joe’s Hot Tamale Place, a.k.a. The White Front Café.
John Williams, Jr., has fond memories of eating his cousin Joe Pope’s hot tamales while growing up in Rosedale. In 1999, Williams followed in his older cousin’s footsteps and opened a tamale place of his own, John’s Homestyle Hot Tamales, in Cleveland, Mississippi.
The Vance family of Benoit was also close with Pope, so much so that Pope shared his recipe with Jonathan Vance and his father. Jonathan began making and selling hot tamales at The Airport Grocery, which opened in 1992.
Many more have tried to replicate Pope’s recipe. Some have actually paid big money for the knowledge but stopped short of producing tamales when they realized the amount of labor involved.
The influence of Joe Pope and his hot tamales has extended far beyond the Delta, inspiring others to make and serve these bundles of meat and meal. This short tamale timeline traces the evolution of tamales in the Mississippi Delta, from Mexican to African American to cousin to friend.
The Mississippi Delta Hot Tamale Trail is the story of how tamales came to the Delta, how they were transformed, and how they have endured. It is the story of the late Joe Pope.
Today, Joe Pope’s youngest sister, Barbara Pope, runs her brother’s business. She peddles those famous Delta tamales to long-time customers and tourists alike. But Joe’s passing was a wake-up call, and it brought home the realization that a generation of tamale makers in the Mississippi Delta may just be on the brink of disappearing. Their stories should be collected. We wish we would have gotten Joe’s.
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I wrote this piece in 2005, and it is still available within the SFA’s online archive. You can find it with the Tamale Trail interviews under the heading “XTRAS: In Memoriam.”