Mound Bayou — The Self-Governing Black Town

On July 12, 1887, Isaiah T. Montgomery, his cousin Joshua P. T. Montgomery, and Benjamin T. Green bought 840 acres of Delta swampland and founded Mound Bayou. All three were freed people from Davis Bend Plantation in Warren County. Isaiah Montgomery served as the first mayor.

They built it to be self-governing: Black elected officials, Black law enforcement, Black-owned banks and businesses. At its peak, Mound Bayou became the largest and most self-sufficient all-Black town in the United States. In 1908, Theodore Roosevelt ordered his train to make a special stop. From the platform he called it "an object lesson full of hope for the colored people and therefore full of hope for the white people, too." Four years later, Booker T. Washington told a crowd of thousands that Mound Bayou was a place "where a Negro may get inspiration by seeing what other members of his race have accomplished."

The town weathered decades of decline through the leadership of Mayor Benjamin A. Green, son of founder Benjamin Titus Green and the first person born in the community. A Harvard Law School graduate, he won the mayoral election overwhelmingly in 1919 and served until his death in 1960. In the 1920s, Green volunteered to be a possible attorney for use by the NAACP in legal cases—a public alignment that was not exceptional here. Mound Bayou had a higher NAACP membership as a percentage of the Black population than any other Mississippi community.

In 1942, the Taborian Hospital opened, providing low-cost health care to thousands of Black people in the Delta for more than two decades. The chief surgeon was T.R.M. Howard, who became one of the wealthiest Black men in the state. 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 Black people. The RCNL's annual rallies 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.

As author Michael Premo wrote: "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 town is still here, smaller than it was, still 96.8% Black. You stand in a place that ran itself when the country mostly would not let Black towns function.