Parish of Carroll

Carroll Parish took the name of Charles Carroll of Carrollton, the Maryland signer of the Declaration of Independence. Its Mississippi River plantations made it a majority-enslaved parish before the war, and after emancipation Black voters helped elect local officials. White conservative groups called Bulldozers answered with violence against Black voters, teachers and their supporters. On March 26, 1877, the legislature split the parish in two. West Carroll was the majority-white half, and historians note the division gave white conservatives a second jurisdiction to control. East Carroll is majority Black today, and Lake Providence is its only municipality.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Grant's Canal, Lake Providence — 0.2 mi
  About 1,000 feet of the ditch Union troops dug in early 1863 to get Grant's army around Vicksburg, with a boardwalk, a pier and a visitor center in the Byerley House.
• Louisiana State Cotton Museum — 2.3 mi
  A state museum on US 65 north of Lake Providence with a sharecropper's cabin, a commissary and a gin house, in the parish where John H. Scott worked for Black voting rights.
• Poverty Point World Heritage Site — 18 mi
  Louisiana's only World Heritage Site: six C-shaped ridges, a 43-acre plaza and Mound A, raised on Macon Ridge between about 1700 and 1100 BCE.

More markers nearby

• Grant's Canal — 0.2 mi
• Battle for the Mississippi: The Vicksburg Campaign — 0.2 mi
• Grant's March Through Louisiana — 0.2 mi
• Soldiers' Rest — 0.7 mi