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We travel to the Mississippi Delta into the world of Lebanese immigrants \\u2014where barbecue and the blues meet kibbe, a kind of traditional Lebanese raw meatloaf. Lebanese immigrants began arriving in the Delta in the late 1800s,\\xa0soon after the Civil War. Many worked\\xa0as peddlers, then grocers and restaurateurs.

Kibbe \\u2014 a word and a recipe with so many variations we don\\u2019t know where to start. Many love it raw. Ground lamb or beef mixed with bulgur wheat, cinnamon, salt and pepper. However it\\u2019s made, it\\u2019s part of the glue that holds the Lebanese family culture together in the Mississippi Delta and beyond.

We visit Pat Davis, owner of\\xa0Abe\\u2019s BAR-B-Q\\xa0at the intersection of Highway 61 and 49 in Clarksdale, Miss., the famed crossroads where, legend has it, blues icon Robert Johnson made a deal with the devil to play guitar better than anybody. Since 1924 Abe\\u2019s has been known for it\\u2019s barbecue, but if you know to ask, they\\u2019ve got grape leaves in the back.

Chafik Chamoun, who owns\\xa0Chamoun\\u2019s Rest Haven on Highway 61, features\\xa0Southern, Lebanese and Italian food \\u2014 but he\\u2019s best known for his\\xa0Kibbe. Chafik\\xa0arrived in Clarksdale from Lebanon\\xa0in 1954, and first worked as a peddler selling ladies slips and nylon stockings.

Sammy Ray, Professor Emeritus at Texas A&M University, Galveston, talks about\\xa0growing up in a barbecue shack that his mother ran on the edge of what was then called \\u201cBlack Town.\\u201d\\xa0His father peddled\\xa0dry goods to the black sharecroppers.

During the civil rights movement in the 1960s, Abe\\u2019s BAR-B-Q and Chamoun\\u2019s Rest Haven\\xa0were some of the only restaurants in the area that would serve blacks.\\xa0\\u201cWe were tested in 1965,\\u201d Pat Davis remembers. \\u201cA bunch of black kids went to all the restaurants on the highway and every one refused them except Chamoun\\u2019s\\xa0and my place. And everybody else got lawsuits against them.\\u201d

The list of famous Lebanese Americans is long and impressive. Ralph Nader, Paul Anka, Dick Dale, Casey Kasem, Khalil Gibran and Vince Vaughn, to name a few. But the one most people talked about on our trip was Danny Thomas. Pat Davis took us out in the parking lot to listen to a CD that he just happened to have in his car of Danny Thomas singing in Arabic.

\\u201cWe called ourselves Syrians when we first came here,\\u201d Davis says. \\u201cAnd until Danny came and said he was Lebanese then we all began to realize we really are Lebanese and Danny Thomas can say it. So we\\u2019re Lebanese now.\\u201d

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