87th Infantry Division

The 87th Infantry Division was called to active duty at Camp McCain on 15 December 1942, and many of its first soldiers were among the earliest eighteen-year-old draftees, which earned it the nickname Baby Division. It moved to the Tennessee Maneuver Area in December 1943, then to Fort Jackson, South Carolina, for divisional training. It sailed from Brooklyn in October 1944, landed in France that December and was thrown into the Ardennes. Its record includes one Medal of Honor, nine Distinguished Service Crosses and 364 Silver Stars.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Grenada Freedom Movement Marker — 8.0 mi
  The Mississippi Freedom Trail marker at Line and Green streets for the 1966 Grenada movement, when Black children entering white schools were beaten by a mob and 13 white men were arrested.
• Winona: Fannie Lou Hamer and the Montgomery County Jail — 15 mi
  Two Freedom Trail stops in Winona for 9 June 1963, when Fannie Lou Hamer and other voting-rights workers were arrested at the bus depot and beaten in the Montgomery County Jail.
• Carroll County Courthouse — 18 mi
  The courthouse in Carrollton where, on 17 March 1886, armed white men fired into a courtroom and killed about two dozen Black people, and no one was ever charged.
• Holly Springs National Forest — 20 mi
  A patchwork national forest of about 155,000 acres in the north Mississippi hills, assembled in the 1930s from worn-out cotton fields and replanted in pine by the Civilian Conservation Corps.

More markers nearby

• Camp McCain — 2.6 mi
• Lynching of Bootjack and Red — 4.5 mi
• Lucie E. Campbell — 4.5 mi
• Magic Sam — 5.2 mi