Celebrating Mound Bayou, Mississippi, The Oldest All-Black Town in the U.S.
“This place was a sanctuary. If anyone wanted to lynch you, you could come here and you’d be safe.”
“Once the Klan planned to ride into town. People heard about it. They got up on their roofs with their rifles. The Klan rode away.”
“There was no Jim Crow here. You went in any place by the front door, not the back.”
“School was tough. All the teachers wanted you to do well, and they helped you.”
“When I first got here in 1947, the whole town was hopping! Music, cafes, people strolling up and down the main street.”
Former and current residents told me all this when I visited Mound Bayou, a town of about 1,700 in the Mississippi Delta, for the celebration of the 134th anniversary of its founding on July 12, 1887. Today Mound Bayou is a quiet place: No one promenades up and down the main street, and there are no cafes or music.
The Mound Bayou welcome sign chronicles the small municipality’s history and its founding by freed slaves. Ann Marie Cunningham/MCIR
But at the high school, local dignitaries, including Democratic U.S. Rep. Bennie Thompson, who represents the Delta, and Reena Evers-Everette, the second of Medgar Evers’ three children, gathered in July 2021 to cut the ribbon for the new Mound Bayou Museum of African American History. This museum will teach new generations about Mound Bayou’s extraordinary history as the oldest and largest all-Black community in America, and its crucial role in the civil rights movement. You could say the movement for civil rights for African Americans was born in Mound Bayou, and it was delivered —along with several people I met — by Dr. Theodore Roosevelt Mason Howard, successful surgeon and entrepreneur, and civil rights advocate.
Dr. Theodore Roosevelt Mason Howard
Before Dr. Howard arrived in 1942, the big men in Mound Bayou were the founders, two of Confederate President Jefferson Davis’ slaves freed when the Confederacy lost the Civil War. Davis had educated these two cousins and made them the managers of five successful plantations that belonged to him and his brother. Isaiah T. Montgomery and his cousin, Benjamin T. Green, had decided that Black people needed to learn to become successful plantation owners themselves. They founded Mound Bayou near arable land and negotiated with the new railroad for a stop at their town. In 1898, when Mount Bayou was incorporated and Montgomery became the first mayor, the Confederacy was done but cotton was still king. Thanks to the two founders’ experience and expertise, Mount Bayou became the place Delta farmers brought their cotton for shipment.
According to T.R.M. Howard: Doctor, Entrepreneur, Civil Rights Pioneer, a biography by David T. Beito and Linda Royster Beito, Dr. Howard came to Mound Bayou in 1942 to work as the first chief surgeon at the town’s hospital of Knights and Daughters of Tabor. He took over where the founders had left off, and built the town to survive past the looming slump in the cotton market.
Reena Evers-Everette, in black at left in front, attends the ribbon cutting July 10, 2021. of the Mound Bayou Museum of African American History on the 134th anniversary of the municipality’s founding. Ann Marie Cunningham/MCIR
Somehow, Dr. Howard found the time between operations to start a large farm, a restaurant, a hospital, a home construction company, and an insurance firm, Magnolia Mutual Life Insurance Co. He also built a small zoo, a park, and Mississippi’s first swimming pool for Blacks. In 1947, Howard left the Knights and Daughters and founded another clinic. There, although abortion was illegal in Mississippi, he became known as a leading provider.
In 1951, Dr. Howard hired the young, newly married Medgar Evers to work at Magnolia Mutual as an insurance salesman. With Dr. Howard’s blessing, Evers talked about civil rights as well as insurance to Delta farmers. Once Dr. Howard had recommended Evers to the NAACP as its first field secretary for Mississippi, Evers moved to Jackson in 1956. There he organized voter-registration efforts and economic boycotts and investigated crimes against Black people, even though his office was shot into regularly.
After Emmett Till was murdered in late August 1955, his mother Mamie Till-Mobley came down from Chicago to attend the trial of two White men who were involved. She stayed with Dr. Howard, and he opened his home to reporters, witnesses and investigators, and spoke out for civil rights. Activist Jesse Jackson has called Till’s slaying “the ‘big bang’ of the civil rights movement.” But Dr. Howard received death threats for his efforts and decided to move to Chicago.
At Magnolia Mutual, Hermon Johnson, who had married a woman from Mound Bayou, replaced Evers. Johnson still lives in Mound Bayou, and recalls working at Evers’ desk and typewriter, both of which are in the new museum. His son, the Rev. Darryl R. Johnson, is now a pastor in Mound Bayou and president of the Civic Club, which organized the anniversary celebration. Rev. Johnson remembers doing his homework at his father and Evers’ desk and typewriter.
Reena Evers-Everette, the second of Medgar and Myrlie Evers three children, Rolando Herts, director of The Delta Center and executive director of the Mississippi Delta National Heritage Area, and Hermon Johnson, who succeeded her slain father as Magnolia Mutual, sit in the prototype of the Mound Bayou Museum of African American History. Ann Marie Cunningham/MCIR
Reena Evers-Everette was born in Mound Bayou, delivered by Dr. Howard. Today, as executive director of the Medgar and Myrlie Evers Institute, which pushes for positive social change, exchanges across generational lines, and social and economic justice, she is involved in the Mound Bayou Museum, collecting residents’ stories, documenting their pride in their community and planning ways to keep young people in town.
As one resident told me, “Integration ruined Mound Bayou.” Rolando Herts, Ph.D., director of the Delta Center for Culture and Heritage at Delta State University, explained that in all-Black communities across the country, once people had more options, “they left those communities to move to the suburbs, or to move to urban areas with more opportunities, and took their know-how and their resources with them." There was no longer a need to have an all-Black town behind you to give you the education and self-confidence to help you succeed. Young people began to move away to pursue new opportunities suddenly open to them elsewhere.
Reena Evers-Everette says that civil rights history lives in Mound Bayou: “What it brings back is a feeling of grounding in the sense of the roots of my father’s mission in life and a feeling of gratitude that my birthplace embraced my family.” In part, the museum honors his time here. Residents remain very proud of their history and hope the museum and other projects will encourage younger residents to stay, to keep pushing to complete the founders’ vision and, like Dr. Howard, build new businesses here.
Reena Evers-Everette, Medgar Evers' daughter, works at his desk and typewriter that he used at Magnolia Mutual. Desk and typewriter are now in the new Mound Bayou Museum of African American History. MCIR
Ann Marie Cunningham is a Columbia University Lipman Fellow for 2020 who will be working with the Mississippi Center for investigative Reporting. She is a veteran journalist/producer and author of a best-seller. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Technology Review, The Nation and The New Republic. Contact her at amc@mississippicir.org.