Ensign William Devotie Billingsley

Billingsley, born in Winona in 1887, reported on 2 December 1912 to the Navy's aviation camp at Annapolis to train on the Wright B-2 and was designated Naval Aviator No. 9. In January 1913 the group moved to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, for fleet training. On 20 June 1913 he was flying a pontoon-fitted Wright with Lt. John Towers as passenger when an air pocket pitched the machine forward and both men were thrown out. Towers caught a cable and survived the fall into the water. Billingsley did not. A destroyer was named for him.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Winona: Fannie Lou Hamer and the Montgomery County Jail — 0.6 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 — 10 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.
• Grenada Freedom Movement Marker — 21 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.

More markers nearby

• Pops Staples — 0.5 mi
• Jefferson Davis Memorial Highway — 0.6 mi
• George A. McLean — 0.9 mi
• Narmour and Smith — 10 mi