Special Report from Mound Bayou, Mississippi

Special Report

Mar 20

“The truth is, while they were lying about us, we were here innovating. We were here being prosperous.”

— Hermon Johnson, Jr.

Historic Bank of Mound Bayou. *Photo by Mira Gordon*

Between Clarksdale and Cleveland on a quiet stretch of Highway 61 in the Mississippi Delta lies a town called Mound Bayou.

Mound Bayou has more churches than stoplights, more vacant stores than occupied ones — a place that appears forgotten. But locals — folks who grew up here and stayed — wear these special glasses that allow them to see the town as it used to be.

Put the glasses on and an overgrown lot transforms into the first Olympic size swimming pool available to Black Mississippians. The boarded up brick building on the corner turns into a bustling bank that holds more Black wealth than anywhere else in the state. The crumbling circular drive across the street backs up with traffic into a hospital that delivered more than 100,000 Black babies. For the better part of a century, this hollowed-out town was an oasis of Black self-sufficiency in a state brimming with racial terror.

Last month, during mid-winter break, the Miseducation staff joined The Bell’s executive director Taylor McGraw, who recently moved back to Mississippi, for a week-long road trip from Memphis to New Orleans. We journeyed through barbecue joints, civil rights museums, blues clubs, the cold halls of the Mississippi legislature, and the windy banks of the Mississippi River. Of all the places we stopped, Mound Bayou, this tiny dot on a map, left the biggest mark.

This is the story of Mound Bayou.

To learn more about the Mound Bayou Museum of African American Culture and History, visit moundbayoumuseum.com.