Elks Lodge

The Black Elks began with a refusal. Two Cincinnati men, Arthur Riggs, a Pullman porter born into slavery, and B. F. Howard, wanted to join the Elks, and the white order turned them away. Riggs obtained a copy of the Elks' ritual and copyrighted it, which let the new order use it over the white Elks' objections. In 1912 a New York court sided with the white Elks on the name. The Black order opened a civil liberties department in 1926; the white Elks did not admit Black members until 1972.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Bryant's Grocery — 9.9 mi
  The ruin of the Money store where Emmett Till was accused in August 1955, on private land beside the railroad, with a Mississippi Freedom Trail marker at the corner.
• Carroll County Courthouse — 15 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.
• Winona: Fannie Lou Hamer and the Montgomery County Jail — 25 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.
• Fannie Lou Hamer Memorial Garden — 26 mi
  The small park on Byron Street in Ruleville where Fannie Lou Hamer is buried beside her husband, with a Freedom Trail marker and a 2012 bronze statue.

More markers nearby

• Furry Lewis — 0.4 mi
• Point Leflore — 0.8 mi
• Greenwood — 0.8 mi
• Hubert Sumlin — 1.8 mi