Mound Bayou, Mississippi (pop. 1,533), is one of the oldest and largest municipalities in the United States founded by African Americans. The community’s founders—cousins Isaiah Montgomery and Benjamin Green—were both formerly enslaved by planter Joseph Davis. Davis was a brother of Jefferson Davis, the president of the Confederate States of America during the American Civil War (1861-1865). The town was founded n 1887.
Mound Bayou is in northwestern Mississippi, a state in the southern United States. It stands in a lowland area known to geographers as the Mississippi Alluvial Plain. Many Mississippians call this area the Delta. Town residents have long called Mound Bayou the “Jewel of the Delta”—a title credited to U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt, who visited the town in 1907. U.S. Route 61 passes near the west side of the town. This road is known as “Blues Highway” to followers of the type of blues music that originated in the Delta by African Americans.
The cousins founded Mound Bayou on 840 acres (340 hectares) of undeveloped land in Bolivar County, in northwestern Mississippi. They chose the site in part because it was near the Louisville, New Orleans and Texas Railroad line. The town took its name from its location near an ancient Indigenous (native) American burial mound rising at the intersection of two bayous. (Bayous are marshy areas at the inlet or outlet of a lake or river.) Early settlers cleared the land, drained swamps, and constructed levees. The cousins hoped the community would become a sanctuary for Black families in the highly segregated South and a center for African American culture and commerce. Mound Bayou was formally incorporated as a town in 1898.
Montgomery, a businessman and planter, was elected the town’s first mayor. He long served as the political leader of the community. The town prospered in its early years. It grew to support banks, churches, a cottonseed oil mill, a library, newspapers, schools, and many other establishments. By 1920, about 800 people called Mound Bayou home. Thousands more lived in nearby communities.
Mound Bayou’s fortunes declined amid low cotton prices and a national economic slowdown in the 1920’s and 1930’s. In 1941, a fire destroyed much of the town’s business district, which the townspeople worked to rebuild. In 1942, the International Order of Twelve Knights and Daughters of Tabor—an African American fraternal organization—founded the Taborian Hospital. In the early 1950’s, surgeon T. R. M. Howard—a leading Mound Bayou resident—founded the Regional Council of Negro Leadership, one of Mississippi’s first civil rights organizations. The town became known as an oasis for Black people during the turbulent civil rights movement of the mid-1900’s.
Mound Bayou’s population reached a peak of about 2,900 by 1980. At the time of the 2010 United States census, the town had a population of about 1,500. About 99 percent of its residents are African American.
