Farish Street, the Freedom Riders, Medgar Evers and Gibbs-Green Plaza.
Farish Street
After Jim Crow segregation was imposed, Farish Street became a flourishing Black business district, and it stayed a hub for Black-owned businesses until the 1970s. It was home to Trumpet Records, Ace Records and the Speir Phonograph Company, and in its early days Jackson State was located at the corner of Farish and Griffith Streets. The neighborhood joined the National Register of Historic Places as a historic district in 1980.
The Freedom Riders
In May 1961 the Freedom Riders' buses reached Jackson, and the riders were arrested as soon as they tried to use the whites-only facilities at the bus stations. That summer most of the rides converged on the city, where every rider was arrested, more than 300 in all, and when the jails overflowed the state sent them to the Mississippi State Penitentiary, known as Parchman Farm.
Medgar Evers
In November 1954 Medgar Evers became the NAACP's first field secretary for Mississippi, organizing boycotts and founding local branches across the state. On June 12, 1963, he was murdered at his home in Jackson. After all-white juries deadlocked in the 1960s, Byron De La Beckwith was finally convicted of his murder on February 5, 1994. The home Evers shared with his wife Myrlie became a National Historic Landmark in 2017 and a National Monument two years later.
Gibbs-Green
Shortly after midnight on May 15, 1970, city and state police opened fire on students outside Alexander Hall, a women's dormitory at Jackson State, and killed Phillip Lafayette Gibbs, 21, and James Earl Green, 17. The university named the area where they fell Gibbs-Green Plaza.
Black Jackson Today
On December 9, 2017, the Mississippi Civil Rights Museum opened in Jackson, the first museum about the civil rights movement sponsored by a US state, telling Mississippi's story from 1945 to 1970. Black-owned restaurants, salons, shops and brands are part of everyday Jackson.
Shop Black-owned businesses in Jackson, Mississippi on CashBlack.
Photo Credits
The Farish Street historic district. Photo: NatalieMaynor from Jackson, Mississippi, USA, CC BY 2.0, Wikimedia Commons The Medgar Evers House. Photo: Jud McCranie, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons The Gibbs-Green Memorial Plaza at Jackson State University. Photo: 2C2K Photography, CC BY 2.0, Wikimedia Commons