Farish Street was the center of one of the oldest Black communities in Mississippi, founded before the Civil War ended. After Reconstruction a small Black middle class built a world of its own here: a Black-run hospital, funeral homes, churches, theaters and schools. By 1908 a third of the district belonged to Black owners and half of Black families owned their homes. Many buildings went up under first- and second-generation freedmen working as carpenters, plasterers and brick masons, and the Alamo Theatre and the Crystal Palace drew the most popular Black performers on tour.
The street carries the civil rights story as well as the music. Medgar Evers ran the NAACP's Mississippi field office from 507 North Farish Street, and after his funeral in 1963 most of the mourners marched to Collins Funeral Home on this street in a mass demonstration. H. C. Speir, who sold phonographs from a furniture store at 225 North Farish in the 1920s, scouted and recorded Ishman Bracey, Tommy Johnson, Charley Patton and the Mississippi Sheiks. In 1950 Lillian McMurry, who ran a furniture store at 309 North Farish, started Trumpet Records, which recorded Elmore James and Sonny Boy Williamson II.
The district reached the National Register in 1980, and in 1995 the National Trust listed it among the country's most endangered places after about two hundred of its nine hundred buildings were lost. A plan for an entertainment district on the blocks between Amite and Hamilton Streets stalled around 2014. Expect a district that is partly empty and partly standing.
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