Otha Turner

Otha Turner made his own cane fifes, a craft recorded in the 1971 film Gravel Springs Fife and Drum. Born in Rankin County in 1907, he spent nearly all his life near Senatobia in Gravel Springs, apart from nine months laying railroad ties in Indiana. His Rising Star Fife and Drum Band played holiday picnics, and the Labor Day goat roasts he later hosted set the standard for the tradition. Formal recognition came only in the 1990s, when he was past eighty, with festival invitations and a Smithsonian lifetime achievement award.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Sardis Lake and Dam — 11 mi
  A flood-control lake on the Little Tallahatchie, built from 1930s labor and a dredge named Pontotoc, with a dam that for years was the largest earth-filled dam in the world.
• The Lyceum and the Circle, University of Mississippi — 25 mi
  The 1848 Greek Revival building at the center of the Ole Miss campus, where federal marshals held off a mob on 30 September 1962 and James Meredith registered the next morning.
• Rowan Oak — 26 mi
  William Faulkner's Greek Revival house in Oxford, bought in 1930 and kept by the University of Mississippi, with the outline of A Fable still written on his study wall.
• Oxford Square — 26 mi
  The courthouse square laid out in 1837 on land bought from a Chickasaw woman, rebuilt after the 1864 burning and home to Square Books and a memorial to Lafayette County's lynching victims.

More markers nearby

• Fred McDowell — steps away
• Como — steps away
• Sardis — 5.4 mi
• Jessie Mae Hemphill — 5.8 mi