About the Screenplay:

With Down in the Delta, a family saga set in the South, Maya Angelou – author, teacher, actress and honoured cultural personage – realized a longtime dream of directing her own film, staring Alfre Woodward, Al Freeman Jr., Esther Rolle, Mary Alice, and Wesley Snipes. This is the screenplay to the 1998 feature film written by first-time screenwriter Myron E. Goble.

Down in the Delta is an emotionally riveting story of a troubled family who who must return to their roots in Mississippi to discover their history and rediscover their faith in each other and their future. Life is spinning out of control for Loretta Sinclair, an undereducated African American woman who lives in Chicago with her mother and two children. Consumed by the bleakness of her present struggle to support herself and her children, she succumbs to the drug and alcohol-ridden streets of the neighbourhood. In a final effort to save her daughter and her children, Loretta’s mother, Rosa Lynn, takes great pains to move her family back to the ancestral home down in the Mississippi Delta. Here, differences, abound, as big city meets small town and the young confront the old. But Loretta and her son discover their remarkable family history, which restores their faith in each other and the future.

Myron E. Goble won the 1993 Nicholl Fellowship Award from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences with his first screenplay Down in the Delta.