Columbus, Mississippi Blues

Decoration Day had a second life that the monuments leave out. Black families in Columbus also decorated graves of departed loved ones, and the custom turned up in blues. John Lee Sonny Boy Williamson's best-known Decoration Blues has Big Joe Williams on guitar. He cut a second one, and Howlin' Wolf, Bukka White and Williams recorded their own versions. In Catfish Alley, named for fishermen who sold cooked catch on the street, the same people played in cafes and pool halls, and gospel went out live over WACR radio from the alley.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Tennessee Williams Welcome Center — steps away
  The 1875 Episcopal rectory where Tennessee Williams was born in 1911, moved to Main Street in the 1990s and now Columbus's welcome center and a National Literary Landmark.
• Waverley Mansion — 6.7 mi
  A National Historic Landmark mansion above the Tombigbee River, home of a plantation family that enslaved more than a hundred people, left empty for half a century before a family restored it.
• Howlin' Wolf Memorial and Blues Trail Marker — 15 mi
  A Mississippi Blues Trail marker and granite memorial on East Broad Street honoring Chester Burnett, who was born nearby in 1910 and became the Chicago blues giant Howlin' Wolf.
• Sam D. Hamilton Noxubee National Wildlife Refuge — 26 mi
  A 48,000-acre refuge of bottomland forest and lakes in Noxubee, Oktibbeha and Winston counties, rebuilt from worn-out farmland, with red-cockaded woodpeckers, alligators and winter eagles.

More markers nearby

• Confederate Decoration Day — steps away
• Gleed's Corner — steps away
• Columbus — steps away
• Robinson Road — 0.2 mi