McCoy Brothers

The McCoys wrote songs that outlived their names. In 1936 Joe McCoy and the Harlem Hamfats recorded Weed Smoker's Dream, a marijuana smoker's lament over lost money. McCoy later rewrote it from a woman's side, scolding a man who will not do right, and as Why Don't You Do Right? it was a hit for Lil Green in 1941 and Peggy Lee's breakthrough with Benny Goodman in 1942. Both brothers died in Chicago in 1950, and their graves in Alsip, Illinois, went unmarked until a 2010 tribute concert paid for stones, set on May 31, 2011.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Medgar and Myrlie Evers Home National Monument — 13 mi
  A modest ranch house in Jackson's Elraine neighborhood where Medgar Evers was shot in the driveway in 1963, now a unit of the National Park Service.
• Farish Street Historic District — 14 mi
  Jackson's Black business and cultural center, where Medgar Evers kept the NAACP office and furniture-store owners recorded the blues, now a quiet National Register district.
• Old Capitol Museum — 14 mi
  Mississippi's Greek Revival statehouse of 1839, where the legislature voted to secede, Hiram Revels was elected to the U.S. Senate and the 1890 constitution was written, now a free state museum.
• Mississippi Civil Rights Museum — 15 mi
  A state museum in downtown Jackson, opened in 2017 beside the Museum of Mississippi History, that tells the movement from 1945 to 1970 through the people who made it.

More markers nearby

• Confederate Cemetery — 0.4 mi
• Champion's Hill — 6.6 mi
• The Chatmon Family — 6.8 mi
• Mississippi College — 7.6 mi