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Nusce Hall still remembers the way he felt when he learned about his town’s history.
“[It was] like going to Walt Disney World for me,” he recalled.
Hall was nowhere near Disney World when he got the same feeling that inspires children who step into the Magical Kingdom. Two states stretched between him and the towering castles, the whimsical rides, the palm trees that characterize America’s happy place.
Instead, he sat inside a rural Mississippi Delta school about 20 miles east of the Mississippi River and 115 miles north of Vicksburg up Highway 61. It’s a part of the country known for its high poverty, low life-expectancy and history of racial oppression.
But his school sat on hallowed ground, the land cleared and the town settled by freed slaves. It would come to be known as Mound Bayou, one of the first settlements established by freed people exclusively for African Americans.
This is why Mound Bayou felt like Disney World for Hall — why, as a child, it filled him with wonder. Because Isaiah T. Montgomery and Benjamin T. Green — two former slaves who had been owned by Joseph Davis, the brother of Confederate President Jefferson Davis — went on to found a place that would represent success and autonomy for African Americans.
Mound Bayou's history a 'magical kingdom' residents fight to preserve | Mississippi Today
That's an interesting place.
“[It was] like going to Walt Disney World for me,” he recalled.
Hall was nowhere near Disney World when he got the same feeling that inspires children who step into the Magical Kingdom. Two states stretched between him and the towering castles, the whimsical rides, the palm trees that characterize America’s happy place.
Instead, he sat inside a rural Mississippi Delta school about 20 miles east of the Mississippi River and 115 miles north of Vicksburg up Highway 61. It’s a part of the country known for its high poverty, low life-expectancy and history of racial oppression.
But his school sat on hallowed ground, the land cleared and the town settled by freed slaves. It would come to be known as Mound Bayou, one of the first settlements established by freed people exclusively for African Americans.
This is why Mound Bayou felt like Disney World for Hall — why, as a child, it filled him with wonder. Because Isaiah T. Montgomery and Benjamin T. Green — two former slaves who had been owned by Joseph Davis, the brother of Confederate President Jefferson Davis — went on to found a place that would represent success and autonomy for African Americans.
Mound Bayou's history a 'magical kingdom' residents fight to preserve | Mississippi Today
That's an interesting place.
