JCJC Bobcats Defy Segregation

The December 1955 Junior Rose Bowl drew 57,132 spectators by one newspaper's count, and Jones lost to Compton, the Tartars, who were winning the game for the third time. Accounts give the score as 21-13 or 22-13. Mississippi had a state law barring all-white teams from competing against integrated squads, and the game defied it. Jones County's president, J. B. Young, held to the commitment to play even though the college risked losing state and local funding.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Amos Deason House — 1.0 mi
  A Greek Revival house in Ellisville where a Confederate major was shot in 1863, tied to the history of the Free State of Jones.
• Lauren Rogers Museum of Art — 8.1 mi
  Mississippi's oldest art museum, a 1923 memorial to a timber heir in Laurel, with a major Native American basket collection and no admission fee since it opened.
• African American Military History Museum — 19 mi
  The wooden USO club that opened in March 1942 for Black soldiers training at Camp Shelby, now a museum of African American military service from the Revolutionary War to Iraq.
• Forrest County Courthouse and Dahmer Memorial — 19 mi
  The courthouse where Hattiesburg held Freedom Day on January 22, 1964, and where a memorial now honors Vernon Dahmer, killed by Klansmen in 1966.

More markers nearby

• Lynching of John Hartfield — 0.6 mi
• Ellisville State School — 1.1 mi
• Ralph Boston — 5.9 mi
• Oak Park School — 6.5 mi