The Mighty Mississippi with Sir Trevor McDonald

The first part of the series sees Trevor take to the air to look down upon the mouth of the Mississippi in the Gulf of Mexico, before heading to New Orleans, where he attends a colourful jazz funeral, meets a debutante and witnesses the devastating effects of Hurricane Katrina still evident years after the tragedy. His journey takes him to a plantation, one of a few still working, and he is shocked to see inside a slave cabin. Trevor also takes a ride on an airboat through a primeval swamp and comes face to face with one of his worse nightmares. As he starts his exploration of the Mississippi, Trevor is mesmerised by the breath-taking view as his seaplane swoops over the vast wetland created by the river as it meets the sea. His first stop is the vibrant city of New Orleans where he heads for the Garden District to see its impressive collection of mansions, some of which have been in the same family for generations. He meets the Favrow family who have lived in the area for 200 years. He talks to their daughter about the debutante ball season, a traditional period which sees daughters of wealthy New Orleans' families attend a year long calendar of parties and balls in lavish gowns. In contrast to the Garden District, Trevor also visits the Third Ward of the city where most of the inhabitants are descendants of slaves. He attends a jazz funeral, a music and dance parade to see off one of the much-loved members of the community. Next Trevor takes to the river itself and ventures aboard a tug boat to learn about the challenges and dangers of navigating the Mississippi. And he heads to downtown New Orleans where jazz began and visits the Howling Wolf Club to listen to the music and join in the dancing. One band member reveals to Trevor how joining a jazz band has saved his life. He explains that so many of his contemporaries have suffered from depression because of the high crime rates in the area and some have even turned to drugs. As they ch

In the second part of the series, Trevor visits Morgan Freeman and talks to him about his childhood in the Deep South. He meets a close friend of Dr Martin Luther King who was standing next to him when he was assassinated, and he visits one of Elvis Presley’s first and much-loved girlfriends. The second part of his journey begins in the quiet town of Clarksdale, Mississippi, where he meets actor, Morgan Freeman. Morgan tells Trevor that when he was growing up the segregation of black and white people was rigidly enforced, but it didn’t really trouble him until he reached his teenage years. He says: “I still remember my childhood as being a lot of freedom. I’d get up in the morning, aged four, five, and go hunt my best friend and we would just run. That’s what I remember. I was going to a very good school, I had very good teachers. I was in a very safe environment. What white people did, I didn’t care about. “I knew that we were separate, if I went into town then there were the separate facilities; the waiting room at the bus station, the water fountains. I didn’t have to go, and I didn’t go, so it didn’t bother me. By the time I graduated from high school, I did have this feeling about Mississippi’s state of apartheid and when I left, I was leaving for good.” Morgan explains that he started going back to Mississippi when his parents moved back there in the mid 1950s and he eventually returned to live there himself. However, he reveals that he was shocked to discover that although children now go to mixed schools in his local town, they were still encouraged to socialise separately out of school. Morgan explains that he discovered that black and white teenagers were not going to the same prom so he decided to fund the first integrated prom in Clarksdale in 2008. He says: “The realisation that even in the 21st century, this kind of thing was being perpetrated upon the children, I just found it bizarre. We’re talking

Trevor McDonald ends his trip along the Mississippi river, or as he prefers to put it, “a vibrant, liquid highway”, being hoist into the air by a couple of strapping young male cheerleaders in Minnesota. You might think that cheerleading is for perky, pom-pom waving girls, but McDonald informs us that it was once an all-male preserve. George Bush and Ronald Reagan were both cheerleaders, which is the kind of factoid that is well worth mulling over. He later visits a huge armaments factory in Rock Island, Illinois and wanders around a gigantic shopping mall, eavesdropping on a wedding in its chapel.