First Baptist M.B. Church

The Port Gibson boycott began on April 1, 1966, after weeks of failed talks with white merchants. The community's more than twenty demands included desegregated public accommodations, Black hiring in local government and policing, and courtesy titles such as Mr. and Mrs. Registered Black voters rose from a handful in late 1965 to more than 2,600 by May 1966. Four Black candidates won county office in 1967, and by 1975 Black candidates held 23 of 32 elective offices. Charles Evers and organizer Rudy Shields led the effort.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Windsor Ruins — 8.7 mi
  Twenty-three standing Corinthian columns left by an 1890 fire, the largest antebellum mansion in Mississippi, built with enslaved labor on a 2,600-acre cotton plantation.
• Alcorn State University and Oakland Memorial Chapel — 11 mi
  The 1871 Reconstruction college on the old Oakland College campus, first led by Hiram Revels, with the 1838 chapel built by Black craftsmen.
• Lake Bruin State Park — 13 mi
  A state park on a Mississippi River oxbow near St. Joseph, named for a territorial judge who owned a plantation beside it, on a former fish hatchery site.
• Mount Locust — 23 mi
  A 1780s Natchez Trace inn and cotton farm at milepost 15.5, with an enslaved people's cemetery of 43 graves and a brick kiln behind the house.

More markers nearby

• Claiborne County — steps away
• Port Gibson — steps away
• The Bernheimer Complex — steps away
• Battle of Port Gibson — 0.2 mi