
Photo by Rory Doyle, courtesy of Brice.
Duck Hill
In 2023, the MDAH erected a historical marker recognizing the site at Duck Hill, Mississippi where Roosevelt "Red" Townes and Robert "Bootjack" McDaniels were violently tortured and killed by a white mob in 1937. Talamieka Brice, pictured, is a community member who submitted the application and oversaw the funding for the marker.
On an overcast day a few years ago, I walked a half-mile from my home in downtown Ellisville, Mississippi, to a spot along a two-lane highway to watch the Mississippi Department of Archives and History (MDAH) unveil a new state historical marker. The crowd waiting for the ceremony to begin was somber, and we made small talk in low voices. The drab weather played some role in this. But so did the history we had gathered to commemorate.
Mississippi natives and history buffs can recognize these state historical markers from almost a mile away—literally. Deep green and topped by the image of a blooming magnolia, each one is adorned with yellow lettering that, in a brief narrative, explains the historical significance of a location. During the last seventy-six years, more than 1,000 such markers have gone up in the state.
Titled “Lynching of John Hartfield,” this marker stands near the site of one of the most brutal racial killings in U.S. history. In 1919, a white mob murdered Hartfield, an African American, in front of a crowd of hundreds. Hartfield had been accused of raping his white girlfriend, though the veracity of that claim later came into question. Despite the murder occurring in public (there was even an advanced notice in the newspaper), no arrest was ever made. Many of the thousands of onlookers even took pieces of Hartfield’s body home as souvenirs. And afterwards, life in Ellisville just went back to normal, like nothing had happened. More than a century later, we gathered where Hartfield died to bear witness anew.
A lynching isn’t something owed celebration, or even commemoration in the traditional sense, especially when considering that when the state began its marker program in 1949, the director of the MDAH said the goal was to “encourage justifiable pride in our state.” For decades, the moments of history this encompassed were overwhelmingly white, almost entirely bypassing the struggles and achievements of the many African Americans who called Mississippi home. Early on, old towns, old colleges, and Civil War sites were popular marker destinations. In the 1970s, markers went up at several historically Black colleges. It wasn’t until the twenty-first century, though, that many locales relating to the Civil Rights Movement began receiving markers, including one dedicated to the memory of Emmett Till in 2007.
But Marian Allen, the local woman who pursued the Hartfield marker, which would document a blight on Mississippi’s history, did so for reasons other than pride: remembrance and acknowledgment. “I don’t want history hidden anymore,” she said.
Despite being born and raised near Ellisville, Allen did not learn of the Hartfield lynching until 2021. An African-American woman in her fifties, she feels this was no oversight. Allen believes local leaders purposefully hid the lynching’s story for generations to avoid grappling with what happened. Now, because of her efforts, every person who comes through Ellisville on Highway 11 passes a marker that presents the details of Hartfield’s murder. “Just acknowledging what happened and not sweeping it under the rug anymore—I see it as part of a healing process,” she said.
Allen’s concerns about hidden history join a larger movement across the American South and beyond demanding an honest reckoning with the past, particularly regarding racial violence and the achievements of African Americans. Mississippi is a nucleus for much of this history, and in the years since the Hartfield marker went up, countless other members of the public across the state have followed Allen’s example.
Since 2022, the MDAH Board of Trustees has approved 118 new state historical markers, and more than half are related to African American history.
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Some of these include commemorations of African Americans whose lives made an impact on their state and until now have been overlooked in Mississippi history; there are markers for Robert G. Clark Jr., the first African American elected to the Mississippi Legislature in the twentieth century; the 1907 House in Jefferson Davis County—which is the site of the Prentiss Normal and Industrial Institute, a school for African American students; and the late Peter Crosby, the first African-American sheriff of Warren County.
Others are acknowledgments of the heinous acts committed against African-Americans in Mississippi, like the Hartfield marker. In 2023, a marker went up at the Duck Hill site where Roosevelt “Red” Townes and Robert “Bootjack” McDaniels were violently tortured and killed by a white mob in 1937. A few months later, a marker went up in Brookhaven honoring Lamar Smith, an African-American man involved in voter registration who in 1955 was killed on the courthouse lawn in broad daylight. The narratives on these plaques can be unpleasant to read. In coming months, even more historical markers bearing these stories and others will appear across the Mississippi countryside.
“We’re embedding these important stories into our landscape, ensuring they are visible and cannot be overlooked,” Linda Fondren, who pursued the Crosby marker, said.
For Fondren, who is the executive director of Catfish Row Museum in Vicksburg, it is a matter of passing on a more complete version of history to subsequent generations. She wanted the Crosby marker to not only honor his legacy but to connect “our past to present civil rights issues.”
“This visibility,” Fondren said, “serves as a powerful tool for education, encouraging future generations to understand our history and build a fairer future.”
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“Some of our history is horrible, but it happened,” Debra Mabry, a Holmes County supervisor who pursued the Robert G. Clark Jr. marker, said. “It doesn’t need to be hidden. It needs to be told.”
For Talamieka Brice, who pursued the Townes and McDaniels marker, the stories serve an important function by simply existing in the public sphere because they “give voice to a historically marginalized community.”
The markers are not the only measures the state of Mississippi has taken toward acknowledging its fraught racial history. In 2017, the Mississippi Civil Rights Museum opened alongside the Museum of Mississippi History in Jackson. Known collectively as Two Mississippi Museums, the complex cost $90 million, and the civil rights museum presents an extensive and nuanced history of white supremacy, Jim Crow laws, and the Civil Rights Movement. Three years later, in 2020, the state Legislature removed the Confederate battle emblem from the state flag.
“Some of our history is horrible, but it happened. It doesn’t need to be hidden. It needs to be told.” —Debra Mabry, a Holmes County supervisor who pursued the Robert G. Clark Jr. historical marker
But the current trend of championing historical markers to document African American history in Mississippi has a more grassroots feel. The MDAH Board of Trustees, while overseeing the program, does not choose which parts of Mississippi history should be considered for historical markers. Instead, members of the public—like Fondren, Allen, Mabry, and Brice—apply for markers; the board then votes on the applications. If a proposed marker is approved, the applicant pays for its physical production. (Each marker costs roughly $2,700.) No taxpayer dollars are spent.
This means most of these new markers are being pursued by people connected to the communities where they are going up—suggesting a groundswell of a movement that wants Mississippi to tell a version of its history that it did not want to tell for a very long time. It’s not just the historians and the institutions vying for a true telling—it’s the people.
Historical markers certainly will not cure Mississippi of its fraught racial legacy, nor solve the ongoing repercussions of inequality caused by enslavement, Jim Crow, and segregation. There remains a powerful faction within the state that is still hesitant to acknowledge certain aspects of its history—even going so far as to ban study of African American history in schools. Confederate figures and their ideals are still honored across Mississippi—the path I took to the Hartfield ceremony two years ago took me right by one such memorial. And every governor since 1993 has designated the month of April as Confederate Heritage Month.
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Still, I cannot help but view the markers as a step, albeit a small one, toward creating a more honest Mississippi. I remember traveling the state with family members as a child, and each time I encountered a historical marker I had never seen before. The shape of the state I held in my head shifted a bit, deepened and widened, into something new. Where history is concerned, that shifting is never ending—it's how the past swims in the present. I have a young son now, and I wonder what shape Mississippi will hold in his mind. I hope it is one driven by the unifying vision Brice has for what these new historical markers can accomplish.
“My hope,” she said, “is that [the markers] inform others of the work that has been done here, inspires them to be more active in community, as well as acknowledge the fertile soil for revolutionary change and empowering narratives that we all stand on.”