Editing Mound Bayou, Mississippi (section)

==History==
[[File:Isaiah Thornton Montgomery House, West Main Street, Mound Bayou (Bolivar County, Mississippi).jpg|thumb|left|[[I. T. Montgomery House]] is one of three sites in Mound Bayou listed on the [[National Register of Historic Places listings in Bolivar County, Mississippi|National Register of Historic Places]].]]
[[File:Mound Bayou Normal Institute.png|thumb|Mound Bayou Normal Institute, 1910]]
Mound Bayou traces its origin to freed African Americans from the community of [[Davis Bend, Mississippi]]. Davis Bend was started in the 1820s by planter [[Joseph Emory Davis|Joseph E. Davis]] (elder brother of former Confederate president [[Jefferson Davis]]), who intended to create a model [[slavery in the United States|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 [[American Civil War|Civil War]], Davis Bend became an autonomous free community when Davis sold his property to former slave [[Ben Montgomery|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 Montgomery|Isaiah T. Montgomery]], Benjamin's son, led the founding of Mound Bayou in 1887 in northwest Mississippi. The bottomlands of the [[Mississippi Delta|Delta]] were a relatively undeveloped frontier, and freedmen had a chance to make money by clearing land and using the profits to buy lands in such frontier areas. In 1892, the [[Mound Bayou Normal Institute]], a black school was founded by the [[American Missionary Association]].<ref name=":02">{{Cite book |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=uT4LPyzvEWUC |title=An Era of Progress and Promise: 1863–1910 |publisher=Priscilla Pub. Co. |year=1910 |editor-last=Hartshorn |editor-first=W. N. |location=Boston, MA |pages=156 |language=en |oclc=5343815 |editor-last2=Penniman |editor-first2=George W.}}</ref>

African Americans throughout the United States celebrated the Mound Bayou example. In 1908, President [[Theodore Roosevelt]] ordered his train to make a special stop in the town. From the platform, he proclaimed that he was witnessing “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]], in a speech to a crowd of thousands, hailed Mound Bayou as a “place where a Negro may get inspiration by seeing what other members of his race have accomplished...[and] where he has an opportunity to learn some of the fundamental duties and responsibilities of social and civic life.” <ref>{{Cite journal |last=Beito |first=David |title=How Little Mound Bayou Became a Powerful Engine for African American Civil Rights and Economic Advancement |url=https://www.independent.org/news/article.asp?id=14693 |journal=[[Independent Institute]] |date=October 10, 2023}}</ref>

By 1900 two-thirds of the owners of land in the bottomlands were black farmers. With the loss of political power due to state [[disfranchisement after Reconstruction era|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 black people in the Mississippi Delta. The chief surgeon was [[T.R.M. Howard]], who eventually became one of the wealthiest black men in the state. Howard owned a plantation of more than {{convert|1000|acre|sqkm}}, a home-construction firm, and a small zoo, and he built the first swimming pool for [[African Americans in Mississippi|black people 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 [[filling station|service stations]] that refused to provide restrooms for black people. 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, Mississippi|Sumner]].

Author [[Michael Premo]] wrote:
<blockquote>Mound Bayou was an oasis in turbulent times. While the rest of Mississippi was [[Jim Crow laws|violently segregated]], inside the city there were no racial codes ... At a time when blacks faced [[lynching in the United States|repercussions as severe as death]] [[voter suppression in the United States|for registering to vote]], Mound Bayou residents were casting ballots in every election. The city has a proud history of [[credit union]]s, 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.<ref>{{cite web |last=Premo |first=Michael |title=Mound Bayou, Mississippi – The Jewel of the Delta |publisher=[[StoryCorps]] |date=November 10, 2007 |url=http://storycorps.org/blog-posts/mound-bayou-mississippi-the-jewel-of-the-delta/ |archive-url=https://archive.today/20130415222613/http://storycorps.org/blog-posts/mound-bayou-mississippi-the-jewel-of-the-delta/ |url-status=dead |archive-date=April 15, 2013 }}</ref></blockquote>