Tallahatchie County

Tallahatchie County had two county seats, Charleston and Sumner, and the Delta's usual divide: around 1900 only 192 of 2,262 Black farmers owned their land, against 490 of 1,027 white farmers. Floods from 1882 to 1884 sent Sumner residents by boat to Webb for supplies. The Sumner courthouse of 1903 burned in 1908, and county records burned a year later. W. C. Handy's first sounds of the blues came through the Tutwiler station here, and the rebuilt courthouse later hosted the 1955 trial of Emmett Till's killers.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Emmett Till Interpretive Center and the Tallahatchie County Courthouse — 0.9 mi
  The 1955 courthouse in Sumner where Emmett Till's killers were acquitted, restored to that year, and the interpretive center across the street that opened after the county's 2007 apology.
• Parchman Farm (Mississippi State Penitentiary) — 11 mi
  The state penitentiary on Sunflower County cotton land, built in 1900 as a prison plantation, where Freedom Riders were held in 1961; a working prison with no visits and a Blues Trail marker at its gate.
• Fannie Lou Hamer Memorial Garden — 18 mi
  The small park on Byron Street in Ruleville where Fannie Lou Hamer is buried beside her husband, with a Freedom Trail marker and a 2012 bronze statue.
• Delta Blues Museum — 21 mi
  The state's oldest music museum, in a restored 1918 freight depot in Clarksdale, with Muddy Waters's rebuilt cabin and instruments from Delta players.

More markers nearby

• W.C. Handy Encounters the Blues — 5.4 mi
• John Lee Hooker — 8.1 mi
• Sonny Boy Williamson — 9.8 mi
• Mose Allison — 11 mi