Civil Rights March

On June 22, 1966, the Meredith March carried about a hundred people along Highway 16 near Benton, by one marcher's count fifteen of them white. Police would not let them walk on the pavement, so they trudged along muddy shoulders and ditches. On the line the argument ran over the Deacons for Defense, nonviolence, the role of whites and Black Power, and it continued at the Benton campsite that evening. The next day the march crossed the Big Black River into Madison County, where local Black residents joined and the line lengthened on the way to Canton.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Triangle Cultural Center — 10 mi
  A 1904 school on Main Street in Yazoo City that survived the great fire of that May and now holds the county's historical museum, in a town rebuilt in brick on the same lots.
• Blue Front Cafe — 14 mi
  A cinder-block juke joint in Bentonia, opened in 1948 by Carey and Mary Holmes, home of the Bentonia school of blues and a stop on the Mississippi Blues Trail.

More markers nearby

• Benton — 1.7 mi
• Gatemouth Moore — 9.3 mi
• Redoubt McKee — 9.9 mi
• St. Francis Mission School — 10.0 mi