James Harrison "Babe" McCarthy

Babe McCarthy never played college basketball. He coached at his Baldwyn high school from 1947, won a state title in 1948, and went 169-85 at Mississippi State from 1955 to 1965 with SEC titles in 1959, 1961, 1962 and 1963. In March 1963 a state injunction was sought to keep his all-white team from leaving Mississippi to play Loyola of Chicago, which started four Black players. The freshman squad went to the airport as a decoy while the varsity hid on campus. He later coached New Orleans to the 1968 ABA Finals.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Brices Cross Roads National Battlefield Site — 5.5 mi
  The crossroads where Nathan Bedford Forrest routed a larger Union force in June 1864, and where Black regiments, many raised at Corinth, held the bridge that let most of the army escape.
• Natchez Trace Parkway Visitor Center — 13 mi
  The parkway's headquarters and official visitor center near Tupelo, with a film, a small museum of the Old Trace and the surviving New Deal houses of the Tupelo Homesteads.
• Chickasaw Village Site — 17 mi
  A Chickasaw village on a remnant of the Black Belt Prairie beside the Natchez Trace Parkway, with house outlines marked on the ground and signs that speak in Chickasaw voices.
• Elvis Presley Birthplace — 17 mi
  The two-room house in East Tupelo where Elvis Presley was born in 1935, with a museum and the church building the family attended, set near the vanished Black neighborhoods where he first heard the blues.

More markers nearby

• George Wardlaw — steps away
• Elijah Pierce — steps away
• Private John Allen — 1.0 mi
• Battle of Booneville — 10 mi