Mississippi City Cemetery

About 880 people are buried here, the earliest burials dating from the 1840s, in the cemetery of what was Harrison County's seat until 1902. Among them are Confederate veterans and, in an unmarked grave, the blues guitarist Blind Roosevelt Graves, who with his brother Uaroy recorded for Paramount in 1929 and is credited with the earliest recorded version of Guitar Boogie. He died in Gulfport Memorial Hospital on December 30, 1962, aged fifty-four, and was buried without a headstone. In 2024 students from Southern Miss and Pass Road Elementary cleaned the grounds so stones could be read.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Biloxi Beach Wade-In Marker — 9.0 mi
  The beachfront parking lot beside the Biloxi Lighthouse where state markers recall the 1959 and 1960 wade-ins that opened Mississippi's public beaches to Black residents.
• Biloxi Lighthouse — 9.0 mi
  A cast-iron tower lit in 1848 on the Biloxi beachfront, kept by women for most of its first century and still in service after Camille and Katrina.
• Ohr-O'Keefe Museum of Art — 11 mi
  Frank Gehry's pavilions on the Biloxi waterfront, built around the pottery of George Ohr, the self-styled Mad Potter, and the rebuilt Pleasant Reed House.
• Maritime & Seafood Industry Museum — 12 mi
  A Point Cadet museum on Biloxi's oyster, shrimp and schooner past, from the packing houses and the shrimpers' unions to the Vietnamese families who rebuilt the industry.

More markers nearby

• Mississippi City Courthouse — 0.8 mi
• Centennial Plaza — 0.8 mi
• Mississippi City Colored School — 1.1 mi
• Grass Lawn — 1.3 mi