Shake Rag

Shake Rag grew after emancipation, when freed people settled in shanties around Gum Pond. Most residents worked at the cotton compress, the stockyards, the railroad or a wholesale house, or as domestics and yard boys, and Rising Star M.B. Church anchored community life. For about fifty years people expected the neighborhood to burn; it did in 1962, and the land was cleared in one of Mississippi's first urban renewal projects. About 169 families, 60 individuals and 43 businesses were relocated from the 60-acre tract. Supporters wanted higher property values, more tax revenue or slum clearance.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Elvis Presley Birthplace — 1.1 mi
  The two-room house in East Tupelo where Elvis Presley was born in 1935, with a museum and the church building the family attended, set near the vanished Black neighborhoods where he first heard the blues.
• Tupelo National Battlefield — 2.2 mi
  A one-acre park on Main Street marking the July 1864 battle of Tupelo, a Union victory that kept Nathan Bedford Forrest away from Sherman's supply line, with Black soldiers among the defenders.
• Chickasaw Village Site — 2.7 mi
  A Chickasaw village on a remnant of the Black Belt Prairie beside the Natchez Trace Parkway, with house outlines marked on the ground and signs that speak in Chickasaw voices.
• Natchez Trace Parkway Visitor Center — 5.0 mi
  The parkway's headquarters and official visitor center near Tupelo, with a film, a small museum of the Old Trace and the surviving New Deal houses of the Tupelo Homesteads.

More markers nearby

• John E. Rankin — 0.7 mi
• Elvis Country — 1.1 mi
• Elvis Presley — 1.1 mi
• Battle of Ackia — 1.6 mi