Themed Photo Gallery and Information: Mound Bayou, Mississippi
History
Mound Bayou is a city in Bolivar County, Mississippi, United States. It is notable for having been founded as an independent black community in 1887 by former slaves led by Isaiah Montgomery. Mound Bayou has a 98.6 percent African-American majority population, one of the largest of any community in the United States.
Mound Bayou traces its origin to freed African Americans from the community of Davis Bend, Mississippi. The latter was started in the 1820s by planter Joseph E. Davis (brother of former Confederate president Jefferson Davis), who intended to create a model slave community on his plantation. Davis was influenced by the utopian ideas of Robert Owen. He encouraged self-leadership in the slave community, provided a higher standard of nutrition and health and dental care, and allowed slaves to become merchants. In the aftermath of the Civil War, Davis Bend became an autonomous free community when Davis sold his property to former slave Benjamin Montgomery, who had run a store and been a prominent leader at Davis Bend. The prolonged agricultural depression, falling cotton prices, flooding by the Mississippi River, and white hostility in the region contributed to the economic failure of Davis Bend.
Isaiah T. Montgomery led the founding of Mound Bayou in 1887 in wilderness in northwest Mississippi. The bottomlands of the Delta were a relatively undeveloped frontier, and blacks had a chance to make money by clearing land and use the profits to buy lands in such frontier areas. By 1900 two-thirds of the owners of land in the bottomlands were black farmers. With the loss of political powere due to state disenfranchisement, high debt and continuing agricultural problems, most of them lost their land and by 1920 were landless sharecroppers. As cotton prices fell, the town suffered a severe economic decline in the 1920s and 1930s.
Shortly after a fire destroyed much of the business district, Mound Bayou began to revive in 1942 after the opening of the Taborian Hospital by the International Order of Twelve Knights and Daughters of Tabor, a fraternal organization. For more than two decades, under its Chief Grand Mentor Perry M. Smith, the hospital provided low-cost health care to thousands of blacks in the Mississippi Delta. The chief surgeon was Dr. T.R.M. Howard, who eventually became one of the wealthiest black men in the state. Howard owned a plantation of more than 1,000 acres (4.0 km2), a home-construction firm, a small zoo, and built the first swimming pool for blacks in Mississippi.
In 1952, Medgar Evers moved to Mound Bayou to sell insurance for Howard’s Magnolia Mutual Life Insurance Company. Howard introduced Evers to civil rights activism through the Regional Council of Negro Leadership which organized a boycott against service stations that refused to provide restrooms for blacks. The RCNL’s annual rallies in Mound Bayou between 1952 and 1955 drew crowds of ten thousand or more. During the trial of Emmett Till’s killers, black reporters and witnesses stayed in Howard’s Mound Bayou home, and Howard gave them an armed escort to the courthouse in Sumner.
Author Michael Premo wrote: “Mound Bayou was an oasis in turbulent times. While the rest of Mississippi was violently segregated, inside the city there were no racial codes… At a time when blacks faced repercussions as severe as death for registering to vote, Mound Bayou residents were casting ballots in every election. The city has a proud history of credit unions, insurance companies, a hospital, five newspapers, and a variety of businesses owned, operated, and patronized by black residents. Mound Bayou is a crowning achievement in the struggle for self-determination and economic empowerment.”
Source: Wikipedia
Mississippi Blues Trail Marker – Mound Bayou Blues
Full text:
Music has been one of the many facets of African American culture proudly nurtured by the community of Mound Bayou, ranging from blues and R&B in cafes, lounges, and juke joints to musical programs in schools, studios, and churches. Mound Bayou’s cast of performers, both formally schooled and self-taught, has included the pioneer king of Delta blues, Charley Patton, fiddler Henry “Son” Simms, singers Nellie “Tiger” Travis and Sir Lattimore Brown, and guitarist Eddie El.
Mound Bayou’s legacy in blues and rhythm & blues extends from the earliest Delta blues to 21st century southern soul. Charley Patton, who paved the way for Delta blues, lived, performed, and even preached in and around Mound Bayou at various times. Son Simms, a resident here in 1900, later performed and recorded with Patton and Muddy Waters after moving to Farrell. A dance band from Mound Bayou reported in a 1932 issue of the Chicago Defender was called the Southern Rangers. The town was also on the itinerary of many minstrel shows.
Several performers with Mound Bayou roots launched careers after leaving Mississippi, including Lattimore Brown, Eddie El, General Crook, and Sylvester Boines. In the 1960s and ’70s Brown recorded regularly, primarily in Nashville, and, although his career was plagued by misfortune, he enjoyed a late career revival after a soul music internet blogger tracked him down in Biloxi. El and guitarist Earl Drane from Eupora, Mississippi, recorded in Chicago as the Blues Rockers for the Aristocrat and Chess labels in 1949-50. Crook had six singles on the 1970-74 Billboard soul charts and later wrote songs for Syl Johnson, Willie Clayton, and others in Chicago. Boines was a Chicago blues bass player, and his brother Aaron played guitar and harmonica.
A younger generation of performers, including some alumni of the popular high school marching band and stage band, developed here under the guidance of R&B veteran Ed Townsend, co-author of the Marvin Gaye hit “Let’s Get It On.” In 1984 Townsend founded a program not only to assemble a band and produce recordings but also to educate locals about the music business. The band, named SSIPP (after Mississippi) by vocalist Nellie Travis, included Linda Gillespie, who later recorded under the name Jaslynn, Joe Johnson (aka Joe Eagle), Gene Williams, Trenis Simmons, Grover Miller, Jr., Donald Grant, and Cedric Evans, later a band director in Cleveland. Travis, a former trombonist and majorette, became one of Chicago’s most prominent blueswomen, with several CDs to her credit and a widespread international blues and soul following. Miller did blues session work in Clarksdale and composed “The Centennial Song: Happy Birthday, Mound Bayou” in 1987. Johnson played drums with Little Milton, Albert King, and Little Jimmy King and founded the Eagle Music & Media Academy in Mound Bayou in 1997 to carry on Townsend’s mission.
Former residents of note include O. B. Buchana, a favorite on the southern soul circuit; organist and music instructor Harvey Marshall; gospel singer Ernestine Rundless; and Sam Cooke’s mother, Annie Mae. A hotel here on Main Street owned by Tippy Hill was once a hot spot for blues bands, while the IBPOEW Elks Lodge and American Legion hall also presented musical events. Deejays and jukeboxes have usually provided the music at other venues such as the Paradise Lounge.
Source: http://msbluestrail.org/
The Mound Bayou Story
“The Mound Bayou Story” is a brochure documenting the history of Mound Bayou produced by The Delta Center for Culture and Learning, The Delta State University, Cleveland, MS, written by Milburn Crowe, John Martin and Luther Brown. No print date on the document but I was given a copy by Luther Brown in 2006 so it pre-dates that.
Click here to see an on-line version of the brochure.
Taborian Hospital
Taborian Hospital opened in 1942 to great fanfare by the International Order of Twelve Knights and Daughters of Tabor. Everyone on the staff, including doctors and nurses, were black. The facilities included two major operating rooms, an x-ray machine, incubators, electrocardiograph, blood bank, and laboratory. Operating costs came almost entirely from membership dues and other voluntary contributions.
The first chief surgeon of the hospital was T.R.M. Howard, who later became an important civil rights leader in Mississippi and mentor to both Medgar Evers and Fannie Lou Hamer, who was often a patient at the hospital (see photo below).
After years of financial pressure, the hospital lost its fraternal status in 1967 when the federal government took it over and put it under the authority of the Office of Economic Opportunity. The hospital, renamed as the Mound Bayou Community Hospital, finally closed in 1983.
During the 1990s, the Knights and Daughters of Tabor began a continuing campaign to renovate the original hospital building which has been empty for many years.
In 2011, work began to restore the hospital and create a regional medical center. When completed, half of the building will serve as an urgent care facility, which will utilize telemedicine in collaboration with the University of Mississippi Medical Center. During construction, effort will be placed on maintaining the historic integrity of the building.
Photo Gallery
Taborian Hospital boarded up in 2006.
Grave of civil rights leader Fannie Lou Hammer, Ruleville, MS.