Willie Morris

Willie Morris was born in Jackson in 1934 but moved to Yazoo City before his first birthday, which is where his sense of place formed. He graduated as valedictorian in 1952, edited the University of Texas's Daily Texan, and went to Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar. He edited the Texas Observer, then became the youngest editor in chief in Harper's history. North toward Home appeared in 1967. After leaving Harper's in 1971 he returned to Mississippi in 1980 as writer in residence at the University of Mississippi.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Mississippi Civil Rights Museum — 0.8 mi
  A state museum in downtown Jackson, opened in 2017 beside the Museum of Mississippi History, that tells the movement from 1945 to 1970 through the people who made it.
• Old Capitol Museum — 1.0 mi
  Mississippi's Greek Revival statehouse of 1839, where the legislature voted to secede, Hiram Revels was elected to the U.S. Senate and the 1890 constitution was written, now a free state museum.
• Farish Street Historic District — 1.0 mi
  Jackson's Black business and cultural center, where Medgar Evers kept the NAACP office and furniture-store owners recorded the blues, now a quiet National Register district.
• Medgar and Myrlie Evers Home National Monument — 3.0 mi
  A modest ranch house in Jackson's Elraine neighborhood where Medgar Evers was shot in the driveway in 1963, now a unit of the National Park Service.

More markers nearby

• The "Cotton Bale" Battery — steps away
• The Jackson Volcano — steps away
• Boyd House "The Oaks" — 0.3 mi
• Manship House — 0.4 mi