Tyrone's Barber and Beauty Shop

Tyrone Burton began cutting hair as a teenager, and in the early 1960s he opened the shop to serve Black airmen from nearby Keesler Air Force Base. It stood in East Biloxi's historic Black business district. During the civil rights years it was a safe meeting place for activists and a spot where people were helped to register to vote. Burton remembers a base where Black and white men could not leave in the same cab. He and his wife, Vera, stayed and rebuilt after Katrina. A stretch of Main Street was renamed Tyrone Burton Way in May 2025.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Ohr-O'Keefe Museum of Art — 1.0 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.
• Biloxi Lighthouse — 1.1 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.
• Biloxi Beach Wade-In Marker — 1.1 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.
• Maritime & Seafood Industry Museum — 1.7 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

• Biloxi Blues — steps away
• Cathedral of the Nativity (B.V.M.) — 0.5 mi
• The Magnolia Hotel — 0.6 mi
• Chris LeDoux — 0.6 mi