Hanging of Will Purvis

The case began with a flogging. In 1893 White Caps, a white supremacist night-riding group, whipped a Black farmhand working for the Buckley family, and Will Buckley said he would testify before a grand jury. He was shot dead on a road leading toward the Purvis home. Purvis was convicted in 1894 and survived the first hanging when the noose loosened. Resentenced in 1895, he escaped, hid four months and surrendered. Governor Anselm McLaurin commuted the sentence, then pardoned him in 1898 after Jim Buckley admitted his identification was a mistake.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• John Ford Home — 16 mi
  A frontier house on the Pearl River where the 1816 Pearl River Convention met, kept by the Marion County Historical Society and open to the public since 1963.
• Salmon Site (Tatum Salt Dome) — 17 mi
  The only place east of the Mississippi River where the United States detonated nuclear devices, two underground tests in 1964 and 1966 in Lamar County.
• Prentiss Institute — 24 mi
  A school for Black Mississippians founded in 1907 in a former plantation house, with a restored 1926 Rosenwald building that now holds a museum.

More markers nearby

• Temporary State Capital — steps away
• Birthplace of Mississippi Rodeo — 0.8 mi
• Gov. Hugh L. White Mansion — 1.2 mi
• Conerly's P. O. and Lampton's Store — 20 mi