John L. Sullivan

The fight was illegal nearly everywhere, so the promoters hid the site and sold New Orleans tickets that named no destination. More than two thousand spectators and reporters rode a special train north. Governor Robert Lowry opposed the bout and posted state troopers at the Louisiana line, but once the crowd reached Colonel Charles Rich's land at Richburg there was little he could do. In 104-degree heat the men fought for more than two hours. Afterward Sullivan was convicted of prizefighting and Kilrain of assault, and Rich bought Kilrain's sentence so he could work it off for him.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Mount Zion Baptist Church — 2.3 mi
  Hattiesburg's "Civil Rights Church," a Freedom School site in 1964 where Pete Seeger taught music and Martin Luther King Jr. spoke weeks before his death.
• Longleaf Trace — 2.7 mi
  A 44-mile paved rail-trail from Hattiesburg to Prentiss on the old Pearl & Leaf Rivers and Mississippi Central line that hauled the Piney Woods timber.
• Hub City Historic District — 3.0 mi
  Hattiesburg's twelve-block downtown, a railroad town laid out in 1880s pine country, with the Saenger Theater, the courthouse and the 1910 depot.
• Forrest County Courthouse and Dahmer Memorial — 3.0 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

• Pinehills Neighborhood — 0.5 mi
• Bonhomie — 0.9 mi
• William Carey College — 1.0 mi
• Craig Wiseman — 2.0 mi