Tennessee Williams
Historical marker location:Williams famously remarked that "home is where you hang your childhood," and for the world renowned playwright, that place was the Mississippi Delta, specifically Clarksdale, where he set some of his greatest dramas, including Summer and Smoke, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, and Orpheus Descending. Others were filled with Delta characters and memories of the region-notably The Glass Menagerie and A Streetcar Named Desire. To Williams the alluvial area seemed so wide and so flat that "the seasons could walk across it four-a breast." It was for him the magical element of place that served both as an inspiration and the background against which the remarkable lives of his characters could be acted out. Born Thomas Lanier Williams III in 1911, he often professed himself "a Mississippian" and never lost his Delta accent nor his pride at being born in the state that produced so many authors. He died in 1983.