Editing Duck Hill, Mississippi (section)

==History==
[[File:Duck Hill Mississippi - c 1910.jpg|thumb|[[Illinois Central Railroad|Illinois Central]] Depot in Duck Hill, c. 1910]]
Duck Hill is named for a large hill northeast of the town, where "Duck", a [[Choctaw]] chief, held war councils.<ref>{{cite book | last = McElvaine | first = Robert S. | title = Mississippi: The WPA Guide to the Magnolia State | publisher = University Press of Mississippi | year = 1988 | isbn = 9781604732894 | url = https://books.google.com/books?id=C4VQ8viRWvYC&pg=PP1}}</ref> Chief Duck was also a [[medicine man]] or shaman who treated his people. A statue of Chief Duck is located on U.S. Route 51 in Duck Hill, next to an old [[Illinois Central Railroad|Illinois Central]] caboose.

The first European-American settler in the area was John A. Binford in 1834, who acquired land following [[Indian Removal]] of the [[Choctaw]], who were forced to cede their lands to the United States. He built the first home in the area, and developed his property as a cotton plantation, based on [[Slavery in the United States|enslaved African American workers]]. He became one of the region's most successful planters and large slaveholders. Binford was elected to the [[Mississippi Legislature]]. Duck Hill was a trading center for the cotton planters.

In 1856 the [[Illinois Central Railroad]] completed a line from [[Chicago]] to [[New Orleans]], and it built a depot at Duck Hill. This stimulated its businesses.<ref>{{cite web | title = A Brief Historical Sketch of the Illinois Central Railroad | publisher = Illinois Central Historical Society | url = http://www.icrrhistorical.org/icrr.history.html | access-date = February 17, 2007 | archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20070208094003/http://www.icrrhistorical.org/icrr.history.html | archive-date = February 8, 2007 | url-status = dead | df = dmy-all }}</ref> The line is now used for freight operation by the [[Grenada Railway]].

A train wreck occurred at Duck Hill on October 19, 1862, during the [[American Civil War]], when in the early morning hours two trains collided head-on, killing 34 men. Most of the dead were [[Confederate States of America|Confederate]] soldiers. It was the South's worst loss of life in a train accident to that time.<ref>{{cite web | title = Duck Hill Train Wreck - October 19, 1862 | publisher = MSGenWeb | date = August 1, 2010 | url = http://www.ms-montgomerycounty.org/trainwreck.html | access-date = August 9, 2013 | archive-date = August 31, 2013 | archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20130831155915/http://www.ms-montgomerycounty.org/trainwreck.html | url-status = dead }}</ref>

During the Civil War, Binford's sons, James R. and John A. Jr., helped lead the [[Confederate States Army|Confederate]] "Company E" of the [[15th Mississippi Infantry Regiment]] from Duck Hill, known as the "McClung Rifles". James R. Binford later was elected to the [[Mississippi State Senate]]. After white Democrats regained control of the state legislature following the [[Reconstruction era]], Binford wrote the notorious [[Jim Crow laws]] for Mississippi.<ref>{{cite book | last = Wynne | first = Ben | title = A Hard Trip: A History of the 15th Mississippi Infantry, CSA | publisher = Mercer University Press | year = 2003 | isbn = 9780881461794 | url = https://books.google.com/books?id=9cKx3Poqj10C&pg=PR1}}</ref><ref>{{cite book | last = Doherty | first = Thomas | title = Hollywood's Censor: Joseph I. Breen and the Production Code Administration | publisher = Columbia University Press | year = 2007 | isbn = 9780231143592 | url = https://books.google.com/books?id=mBAiYzRx5LQC&pg=PP1}}</ref>

In 1887, regional businessmen hoped that Duck Hill would become a thriving mill town after iron ore was found nearby. Financial speculation followed. ''Tour of our Southern Correspondent'' reported in ''The New York Times'':
<blockquote>Duck Hill is the euphonious appellation of a straggling wee bit of a hamlet down in the depths of Mississippi, a dozen miles or so from Grenada, on the Illinois Central Railroad, known to the world and to history in something less than a wholesale way.<ref>{{cite web | title = Mississippi is in Line | work=[[The New York Times]] | date = April 4, 1987 | url = https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1887/04/04/100904870.pdf}}</ref></blockquote>

Duck Hill was the site of a railroad robbery in 1888. Two armed men, [[Rube Burrow]] and Joe Jackson, clung to the outside of a train as it left the station, then climbed to the engine cab. They ordered the engineer to stop the train about a mile north of town. The robbers plundered the express car's safe of $3,000, killing one man who tried to intervene.<ref>{{cite web | title = An Express Car Robbed | publisher = Kendallville Standard | date = December 21, 1888 | 
url = https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=UWsoAAAAIBAJ&dq=duck%20hill%20mississippi&pg=5307%2C3463126}}</ref><ref>{{cite web | title = Rube Burrow, Outlaw | work = Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers | publisher = The Sun | date = October 12, 1890 | url = http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83030272/1890-10-12/ed-1/seq-15/}}</ref>

===20th century to present===
In 1930, the Lloyd T. Binford High School opened in Duck Hill. (It was named for [[Lloyd Binford|Lloyd T. Binford]], a [[Memphis, Tennessee|Memphis]] insurance executive and film censor, and the son of state senator James R. Binford. Lloyd Binford was noted for his views on "Southern womanhood" and [[white supremacy]].) The city also built an agriculture education facility for its vocational students, who were overwhelmingly African American in the segregated system.

A new elementary school was constructed in 1963. The schools have since been closed because of declining population in the town.

The high school's gymnasium is used as a community center. In 2012, a committee of volunteers was established to preserve the high school, which has suffered from vandalism.<ref>{{cite web | title = Group Hopes Schools Can Again Serve Community | publisher = Grenada Star | date = August 31, 2012 | url = http://www.grenadastar.com/v2/content.aspx?module=ContentItem&ID=245753&MemberID=1218 | access-date = August 9, 2013 | archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20160303221710/http://www.grenadastar.com/v2/content.aspx?module=ContentItem&ID=245753&MemberID=1218 | archive-date = March 3, 2016 | url-status = dead | df = dmy-all }}</ref>

During World War II, African Americans from across the country were among soldiers trained and stationed in the South. Many resented the [[racial segregation in the United States|segregation]] of public facilities they were forced to observe. In 1943, fifteen armed black soldiers from nearby [[Camp McCain]] came to Duck Hill during the night and began firing into the town. There were no injuries. The soldiers were upset about a recent white assault against a group of black soldiers at nearby [[Starkville, Mississippi|Starkville]].<ref>{{cite book | last = Dougherty | first = Kevin  | title = Weapons of Mississippi | publisher = University Press of Mississippi | year = 2010 | isbn = 9781604734522 | url = https://books.google.com/books?id=2pMqE2E63XgC&pg=PP1}}</ref><ref>{{cite book | last = Orr-Klopfer | first = M. Susan  | title = Where Rebels Roost: Mississippi Civil Rights Revisited | publisher = M. Susan Klopfer | year = 2005 | isbn = 9781411641020 | url = https://books.google.com/books?id=jLKMFlLhCx0C&pg=PP1}}</ref>

Senator [[Trent Lott]], whose father [[sharecropping|sharecropped]] a stretch of cotton field in Duck Hill during the 1940s, said in 1999 while supporting a bill for public education:
{{quote|I am a product of public education from the first grade through the second, third, and fourth grades where I went to school at Duck Hill, Mississippi, and I had better teachers in the second, third, and fourth grades in Duck Hill, Mississippi, than I had the rest of my life.<ref>{{cite news | title = Iona Watson Lott (Obituary) | newspaper = Rome News-Tribune | date = July 12, 2005 | url = https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=W-QyAAAAIBAJ&pg=4253%2C3521995}}</ref><ref>{{cite web | title = REAUTHORIZING THE ELEMENTARY AND SECONDARY EDUCATION ACT OF 1965 | work = [[Congressional Record]] | publisher = U.S. Government Printing Office | year = 1999 | url = http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/CRECB-1999-pt16/html/CRECB-1999-pt16-Pg22592-4.htm}}</ref>}}

===Duck Hill lynchings of 1937===
{{Main|Lynching of Roosevelt Townes and Robert McDaniels}}
The brutal [[Lynching in the United States|lynching]] of two black men, Roosevelt Townes and Robert "Bootjack" McDaniels, in Duck Hill mid-day on April 13, 1937, gained national publicity. These were among nine lynchings of African Americans by whites in [[Montgomery County, Mississippi]], from the post-Reconstruction period into the 20th century. Most occurred in the decades near the turn of the 20th century.<ref>[https://eji.org/sites/default/files/lynching-in-america-third-edition-summary.pdf "Supplement: Lynchings by County/ Mississippi: Montgomery", 3rd edition] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20171023063004/https://eji.org/sites/default/files/lynching-in-america-third-edition-summary.pdf |date=October 23, 2017 }}, p. 7, from ''Lynching in America: Confronting the Legacy of Racial Terror'', 2015 (3rd edition), Equal Justice Institute, Montgomery, Alabama</ref>

The men had been arraigned in the Montgomery County Courthouse in the county seat of [[Winona, Mississippi|Winona]], charged with murdering George Windham, a grocer in Duck Hill, in December 1936. Both men pleaded not guilty. Outside the courthouse a crowd had gathered, and then a group of 12 white men abducted the two accused men from the courthouse.<ref name="winona">[http://nuweb9.neu.edu/civilrights/wp-content/uploads/Dual-Lynching-Condemned-by-Nation.pdf "Roosevelt Townes and Robert "Bootjack" McDaniels", Northeastern University's Center for Civil Rights and Restorative Justice; News Articles: "Dual Lynching Nationally Condemned" and "Mob Lynches Two Negroes Tuesday near Duck Hill"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140923010659/http://nuweb9.neu.edu/civilrights/wp-content/uploads/Dual-Lynching-Condemned-by-Nation.pdf |date=September 23, 2014 }}, ''Winona Times'', April 15, 1937; accessed March 18, 2017</ref>

Townes and McDaniels were loaded into a school bus and driven to a wooded area near Duck Hill. Hundreds of white people followed, and a crowd estimated at 300-500 looked on as Townes and McDaniels were each chained to a tree.<ref name=Clarion>{{cite news|title=State Lynching Stirs U.S. Action: 2 Negroes Slain By Mob, Officers Will Investigate|location=Jackson, MS|newspaper=The Clarion-Ledger|date=April 14, 1937}}</ref><ref name=Charge>{{cite news|title=Murder Charge at Duck Hill|location=Greenwood, Mississippi|publisher=The Greenwood Commonwealth|date=April 6, 1937}}</ref> A blowtorch was used to torture them, until each confessed to Windham's murder. Gasoline was doused on Townes, and on brush around him, and he was burned to death. McDaniels was riddled with bullets, and fatally shot through the head.<ref name=Clarion/>

The police officers who had been guarding the two defendants said they were unable to identify any members of the mob.<ref name=Clarion/> As was typical in lynching cases, no one was charged in the abduction or murders.<ref>{{cite book | last = Wood | first = Amy Louise | title = Lynching and Spectacle: Witnessing Racial Violence in America, 1890-1940 | publisher = University of North Caroline | year = 2009 | isbn = 9780807878118 | url = https://books.google.com/books?id=txZ8PZRsk0YC&pg=PP1}}</ref>

Newspapers carried a photograph of McDaniels' burned and tortured body chained to a tree, and the lynchings were nationally condemned. German newspapers at the time used the murders for propaganda, contrasting the lynchings to controls in Nazi Germany under the "humane" [[Nuremberg Laws|Nuremberg racial laws]].<ref>{{cite web | title = Lynchings Top NAZI Papers | publisher = San Jose News | date = April 13, 1937 | url = https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=yVoiAAAAIBAJ&dq=duck%20hill%20mississippi&pg=868%2C1452671}}</ref>

Such publicity enabled [[Joseph A. Gavagan]] (D-New York) to gain support for anti-lynching legislation he had put forward in the [[United States House of Representatives|House of Representatives]]; it was supported in the [[United States Senate|Senate]] by Democrats [[Robert F. Wagner]] (New York) and [[Frederick Van Nuys]] (Indiana). The legislation eventually passed in the House, but the white Democrats of the [[Solid South]] (most blacks in the region were disenfranchised) blocked it in the Senate, with Senator [[Allen J. Ellender|Allen Ellender]] even proclaiming, "We shall at all cost preserve the [[white supremacy]] of America."<ref>{{cite web|title=Congressional Record – Senate |date=January 20, 1938|url=https://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/GPO-CRECB-1938-pt1-v83/pdf/GPO-CRECB-1938-pt1-v83-16-1.pdf|format=PDF|website=Gpo.gov}}</ref> Their colleagues had similarly defeated anti-lynching legislation in the 1920s that was passed overwhelmingly by the House.<ref>{{cite book | last = Finley | first = Keith M. | title = Southern Opposition to Civil Rights in the United States Senate: A Tactical and Ideological Analysis, 1938-1965 | publisher = Louisiana State University | year = 2003 | url = http://etd.lsu.edu/docs/available/etd-0702103-151627/unrestricted/Finley_dis.pdf | access-date = August 9, 2013 | archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20140611220610/http://etd.lsu.edu/docs/available/etd-0702103-151627/unrestricted/Finley_dis.pdf | archive-date = June 11, 2014 | url-status = dead }}</ref><ref>{{cite book | last = Weiss | first = Nancy Joan | title = Farewell to the Party of Lincoln: Black Politics in the Age of FDR | publisher = Princeton University | year = 1983 | isbn = 9780691047034 | url = https://archive.org/details/farewelltopartyo00weis| url-access = registration }}</ref>