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The New World

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Mississippi, Coahoma County, Clarksdale

Front
This neighborhood, known since the turn of the twentieth century as the New World, was a breeding ground for ragtime, blues, and jazz music in Clarksdale's early days as a prosperous and adventurous new cotton town, when brothels here attracted both white and black clientele. Jews, Italians, Chinese, Syrians, and Greeks owned various local businesses, as did some African Americans who lived here, including the Messenger family, which opened its first business on this block in the early 1900s.

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The New World acquired its name from Nelson Jones, an African American who built a saloon with an upstairs rooming house on the south side of the Yazoo & Mississippi Valley Railroad tracks, across from the site where the passenger depot was later built, according to H. L. Talbert, who arrived in Clarksdale in 1891. In 1948 Talbert recalled: ". . . he had a large sign erected on the front which read, Nelson Jones’ New World, and this part of Clarksdale has been known by that name all these years." This sector was also once known as Yellow Bottom(s), when early railroad workers stayed in yellow-painted shanties. African Americans moved into the housing when the railroaders moved on. Brick buildings were constructed after a devastating fire swept the area.

W. C. Handy, who lived in Clarksdale from 1903 to 1905, wrote that money flowed in the New World red light district, where his orchestra performed on "big nights, occasions when social and political figures of importance were expected to dine and dance with their favorite creole belles. . . . This led us to arrange and play tunes that had never been written down and seldom sung outside the environment of the oldest profession. Boogie-house music, it was called." A civic campaign led to curfews beginning in 1914 along with laws to control houses of ill repute, streetwalking, gambling, noise, and liquor. World War I brought economic restrictions as well, although Clarksdale would still be promoted as the Wonder City of the Delta, and the New World continued to be a vibrant, if less freewheeling, district, especially on Saturdays, when plantation workers poured into town. Blues singers performed on the streets, in juke joints, and at the train station. When the popular spots, including the Dipsie Doodle and Messengers, closed at curfew time, festivities shifted en masse back to the plantations. In 1941 scholar John W. Work III compared the Saturday night exodus to "a huge reveling cavalcade moving out to the plantation 'where they can have their fun.'"

Founded by Edward Messenger, who had a liquor license as early as 1907-08, Messengers was one of the earliest African American-owned local businesses. His grandson, George Messenger, celebrated the 100th anniversary of Messenger's in the 21st century. Other New World bars, juke joints, and clubs have included Wade's Barbershop and Lounge, the Casanova, the Blue Den, J.J.'s, Club 2000, and Club Champagne, but the primary blues venue here for several decades was the Red Top Lounge at 377 Yazoo Avenue, owned by Chester Tarzi and later by James Smith when it was also known as the Pig Trail Inn or Smitty's. Blues singer James Alford also ran Smitty's at one time. Other notable businesses in the New World have included Dr. Aaron Henry's 4th Street Drugs, the Roxy and New Roxy theaters, and deejay Early Wright's remote WROX radio studio.

(Industry & Commerce • Arts, Letters, Music • Entertainment • African Americans) Includes location, directions, 6 photos, GPS coordinates, map.

Big Jack Johnson

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Mississippi, Coahoma County, Clarksdale

Front
The Clarksdale area is famed for its many legendary blues artists who achieved their greatest success after moving away, such as Muddy Waters, Ike Turner, and John Lee Hooker. But there were world-renowned musicians who remained lifelong local residents, and foremost among these was Big Jack Johnson (1940-2011), one of the most creative guitarists and lyricists in the blues. When not on tour Johnson considered Red's Blues Club at this site his home base.

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Big Jack Johnson, who was once heralded by noted music critic Robert Palmer as “possibly the most original bluesman alive,” took Delta blues in new directions with his electric, innovative instrumental forays and topical songs about AIDS, war, domestic violence, abortion, Hurricane Katrina, and the 1994 ice storm that paralyzed Clarksdale. His CD "Memphis Barbecue Sessions" won a W. C. Handy Award in 2003, and he earned several Living Blues Awards. Though modest about his guitar prowess and other achievements, Johnson liked to boast of his abilities as a bass player and fisherman. July 30, 1940, was the birthdate he officially used, but the actual date was 1939, as the census from April 6, 1940, shows him as the eight-month-old son of Ellis and Pearl Johnson on Van Savage's Plantation near Lambert. Ellis Johnson, a fiddler, was Jack's earliest musical inspiration, along with music he heard on the radio–both country & western and blues. After moving to Lyon and then to Clarksdale, Johnson worked with Earnest Roy, Sr., C. V. Veal & the Shufflers, and Johnny Dugan & the Esquires, but was best known as a member of the iconic juke joint trio the Jelly Roll Kings with Frank Frost and Sam Carr. Johnson played and recorded with Frost and Carr off and on from 1962 through the 1990s, sometimes joined by his brother-in-law Little Jeno Tucker or his nephew James “Super Chikan” Johnson, who inherited the eclectic Johnson flair for creativity and energy in the blues. Nicknamed “the Oil Man,” Johnson drove a truck for Rutledge Oil Co. until he was able to leave the job and pursue music as a full-time career. He also did farm work and landscaping, and reports of his other exploits included boxing and bear wrestling.

For Johnson’s own band, B. J. & the Oilers, he recruited younger local musicians, including his protege Terry “Big T” Williams, but more often used Pennsylvania-based musicians and others when he toured the East Coast and across the country. His travels also took him to Europe, Canada, Australia and Japan. He appeared in the 1992 film "Deep Blues" and the locally produced 1991 video "Juke Joint Saturday Night" and recorded for the Earwig, M.C., Rooster Blues, and Fat Possum labels, concluding his career with some self-released CDs backed by the Cornlickers.

Johnson also went into the nightclub business with his wife Angenette at times, operating the Untouchables, Black Fox, and Possum Trot nightspots. In his final years he performed regularly here at Red's for his longtime friend Cornelius “Red” Paden. After Johnson died on March 14, 2011, a huge throng of friends, relatives and admirers filled the Pinnacle at Coahoma Community College for his funeral. He was buried at McLaurin Memorial Garden cemetery on Highway 61.

(Arts, Letters, Music • Entertainment • African Americans) Includes location, directions, 6 photos, GPS coordinates, map.

Riverside Hotel

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Mississippi, Coahoma County, Clarksdale

Front
Since 1944 the Riverside Hotel has provided lodging for traveling musicians. It was home to some, including Sonny Boy Williamson II, Ike Turner, and Robert Nighthawk. Before that, the building served African Americans of the Delta as the G.T. Thomas Hospital. Blues singer Bessie Smith died here in 1937 from injuries sustained in a car accident while traveling to Clarksdale for a performance.

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On the morning of September 26, 1937, Bessie Smith, "the empress of the blues," died here at the G.T. Thomas Afro American Hospital following an automobile accident on Highway 61 just outside of Clarksdale. Smith, known for her powerful voice and the raw emotion of her delivery, was the biggest star of the blues in the 1920s, and was in the process of making a comeback.

Born in Chattanooga, Tennessee, in the early 1890s, Smith lost both parents by the time she was nine, and she and her older sister were left caring for nine younger children. Smith and her brother Andrew began performing on the streets to earn money. She began her professional career in 1912 as a dancer with the Moses Stokes touring company, which also included Gertrude "Ma" Rainey (1886-1939), later dubbed the "mother of the blues." Rainey served as a mentor to Smith, who soon became an established performer on the African-American vaudeville circuit.

In 1923 Bessie Smith made her first recording for the Columbia label, "Downhearted Blues / Gulf Coast Blues." The single was the first in a string of hits, including "St. Louis Blues," and Smith soon became the highest paid African-American performer of the 1920s. At the time of her fatal accident, Smith was in her Packard on her way from Memphis to Clarksdale to spend the night. She was to appear the following day with the traveling show Broadway Rastus in the community of Darling, about 20 miles northeast of here. It was widely rumored that Smith’s death resulted from her being refused admission to Clarksdale’s "white" hospital, but the facts suggest otherwise. The reality was that during that time local ambulance drivers would not have considered taking an African-American patient to a "white" hospital in the first place.

Like hospitals, housing accommodations were segregated prior to the 1970s, and some hotels catered to touring musicians. In 1944 the building was opened as the Riverside Hotel, and regular guests in the '40s and '50s included local blues artists Sonny Boy Williamson II, Robert Nighthawk, Raymond Hill, Ike Turner, Joe Willie Wilkins, James "Peck" Curtis, Johnny O’Neal, and Robert "Dudlow" Taylor. Another notable guest in the hotel was John F. Kennedy, Jr., who stayed here in 1991.

(Industry & Commerce • Arts, Letters, Music • African Americans) Includes location, directions, 5 photos, GPS coordinates, map.

First Baptist M.B. Church

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Mississippi, Coahoma County, Clarksdale
In the late 1880s a group of African Americans established the Macedonia Missionary Baptist Church near the Sunflower River, under the leadership of their first pastor Minister A. O. Gaston. The church would be moved to this location in 1918, changing its name to First Baptist Missionary Baptist Church in 1927. Serving as a social, educational and cultural hub for the community, First Baptist housed a number of civil rights meetings and organizations in the summer of 1964.

(Churches, Etc. • Civil Rights • African Americans) Includes location, directions, 4 photos, GPS coordinates, map.

Aaron Henry

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Mississippi, Coahoma County, Clarksdale

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Aaron Henry, (1922-1977), Clarksdale pharmacist, was a major early grassroots activist in the civil rights movement. As local NAACP president, he led the early 1960s Clarksdale boycott campaign, during which he was arrested and his home and pharmacy were firebombed. At the 1964 National Democratic Convention, he headed the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party delegation, challenging the seating of the all-white delegation. Later, as a Mississippi legislator, he worked to build a strong, interracial state Democratic Party.

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Aaron E. Henry, born a sharecropper's son July 2, 1922, was a prominent Clarksdale pharmacist and an influential early civil rights activist. On this site stood Fourth Street Drug Store, which Henry owned with white Mississippian K. W. Walker.

As an early Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) board member, Henry became closely allied with its leader, Martin Luther King, Jr. In 1959 Henry became president of the state NAACP, which he led effectively for a third of a century, becoming close friends with NAACP field secretary Medgar Evers.

A 1960s Clarksdale boycott and direct action campaign won Henry national attention; Henry's home and pharmacy were firebombed, his wife fired from her teaching job in a Clarksdale school. After his arrest, Henry was assigned demeaning work on a garbage truck, but his performance of those duties only increased respect from his community. Henry worked to implement Head Start programs and improve housing and health service for black citizens. He was also a founder of COFO (Council of Federated Organizations), the umbrella organization for movement activities, and the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP).

In November 1963, Aaron Henry was the "Freedom Democrats" candidate for governor in a symbolic election; he was deemed the only person who could garner support from the black middle class and black militants. In 1964 he led the MFDP delegation to the Democratic National Convention in Atlantic City, challenging the seating of the all-white Mississippi delegation. When Lyndon Johnson proposed a "two-seat" compromise, seating only Henry and co-chair Ed King, the MFDP rejected the proposal. Henry and King, however supported it. As a result of the MFDP challenge, an integrated Democratic delegation from Mississippi was seated at the 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago, with Aaron Henry and Hodding Carter as co-chairmen.

Henry served in the Mississippi Legislature 1979-1995 and as co-chair of the Democratic Party. A lawsuit he filed let to reapportionment and the 1980 election of a dozen more black representatives. As state representative he called for the reopening of the murder cases of Medgar Evers and Vernon Dahmer, and he protested proposals to close two historically black colleges in the state. Aaron Henry died May 19, 1997.

(Civil Rights • Politics • African Americans) Includes location, directions, 7 photos, GPS coordinates, map.

Mound Bayou Blues

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Mississippi, Bolivar County, Mound Bayou

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Music has been one of the many facets of African American culture proudly nurtured by the community of Mound Bayou, ranging from blues and R&B in cafes, lounges, and juke joints to musical programs in schools, studios, and churches. Mound Bayou's cast of performers, both formally schooled and self-taught, has included the pioneer king of Delta blues, Charley Patton, fiddler Henry "Son" Simms, singers Nellie "Tiger" Travis and Sir Lattimore Brown, and guitarist Eddie El.

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Mound Bayou’s legacy in blues and rhythm & blues extends from the earliest Delta blues to 21st century southern soul. Charley Patton, who paved the way for Delta blues, lived, performed, and even preached in and around Mound Bayou at various times. Son Simms, a resident here in 1900, later performed and recorded with Patton and Muddy Waters after moving to Farrell. A dance band from Mound Bayou reported in a 1932 issue of the Chicago Defender was called the Southern Rangers. The town was also on the itinerary of many minstrel shows.

Several performers with Mound Bayou roots launched careers after leaving Mississippi, including Lattimore Brown, Eddie El, General Crook, and Sylvester Boines. In the 1960s and ’70s Brown recorded regularly, primarily in Nashville, and, although his career was plagued by misfortune, he enjoyed a late career revival after a soul music internet blogger tracked him down in Biloxi. El and guitarist Earl Drane from Eupora, Mississippi, recorded in Chicago as the Blues Rockers for the Aristocrat and Chess labels in 1949-50. Crook had six singles on the 1970-74 Billboard soul charts and later wrote songs for Syl Johnson, Willie Clayton, and others in Chicago. Boines was a Chicago blues bass player, and his brother Aaron played guitar and harmonica.

A younger generation of performers, including some alumni of the popular high school marching band and stage band, developed here under the guidance of R&B veteran Ed Townsend, co-author of the Marvin Gaye hit “Let's Get It On.” In 1984 Townsend founded a program not only to assemble a band and produce recordings but also to educate locals about the music business. The band, named SSIPP (after Mississippi) by vocalist Nellie Travis, included Linda Gillespie, who later recorded under the name Jaslynn, Joe Johnson (aka Joe Eagle), Gene Williams, Trenis Simmons, Grover Miller, Jr., Donald Grant, and Cedric Evans, later a band director in Cleveland. Travis, a former trombonist and majorette, became one of Chicago's most prominent blueswomen, with several CDs to her credit and a widespread international blues and soul following. Miller did blues session work in Clarksdale and composed “The Centennial Song: Happy Birthday, Mound Bayou” in 1987. Johnson played drums with Little Milton, Albert King, and Little Jimmy King and founded the Eagle Music & Media Academy in Mound Bayou in 1997 to carry on Townsend's mission.

Former residents of note include O. B. Buchana, a favorite on the southern soul circuit; organist and music instructor Harvey Marshall; gospel singer Ernestine Rundless; and Sam Cooke's mother, Annie Mae. A hotel here on Main Street owned by Tippy Hill was once a hot spot for blues bands, while the IBPOEW Elks Lodge and American Legion hall also presented musical events. Deejays and jukeboxes have usually provided the music at other venues such as the Paradise Lounge.

(Arts, Letters, Music • Entertainment • African Americans) Includes location, directions, 5 photos, GPS coordinates, map.

The Cleveland Chinese Mission School

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Mississippi, Bolivar County, Cleveland
Founded in 1937 by parents, Cleveland First Baptist Church, and community leaders to provide an education for children of Chinese descent who were excluded from area schools by the 1927 US Supreme Court decision, Gong Lum v. Rice. Students in grades 1-12 were instructed in English and Chinese. Enrollment declined by WWII, as Chinese began to be admitted to area schools. The school closed in 1951. The building continued as the Chinese Baptist Church, and was demolished in 2003.

(Churches, Etc. • Education) Includes location, directions, 4 photos, GPS coordinates, map.

Green River Brewery

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Wyoming, Sweetwater County, Green River
The National Register of Historic Places Wyoming Place No. 165

(Industry & Commerce) Includes location, directions, 4 photos, GPS coordinates, map.

The 24-Hour Town

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Wyoming, Sweetwater County, Green River
For the first 100 years of its history, Green River's population fluctuated between 2,000 and 4,000 people. Townspeople lived north of the Green River, staggered on both the north and south sides of the railroad tracks. In the 1970s, an increase in trona mining and processing resulted in new residential development south of the river. Trona miners worked then, as they do now, around the clock on several different shifts.

Side-bar on the right
The Trona Community
As nearby coal mines closed in the 1940s and 1950s, Westvaco (now FMC) began to hire coal miners at the experimental trona mine in Green River. By 1980, Green River's population had tripled. Trona companies helped to solve the resulting housing crisis. Texasgulf (now FMC Granger) spent $20 million building 235 houses, 142 apartments, a playground and a park, lighted tennis courts, and a Little League baseball field. Texasbgulf later offered their employees and the general public the chance to buy the homes. Other companies built entire neighborhoods along curvilinear streets south of the river and provided help with community development.

Side-bar on the left
Green River Ordinance
What happens when door-to-door salesmen wake shift workers? There are many unhappy people! To combat the problem, Green River passed an ordinance in 1931 that prohibited door-to-door solicitation. Following Green River's lead, many cities adopted their own ordinances. While the ordinance was revoked in 2013 after challenges by door-to-door sales companies, it helped shift workers to rest well for several decades.

(Industry & Commerce • Settlements & Settlers) Includes location, directions, 3 photos, GPS coordinates, map.

Cleveland

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Mississippi, Bolivar County, Cleveland
Named for President Grover Cleveland. Founded along Jones Bayou and Yazoo and Mississippi Valley R.R. in 1886. Downtown historic area listed in National Register of Historic Places in 1999.

(Settlements & Settlers • Railroads & Streetcars • Notable Places) Includes location, directions, 4 photos, GPS coordinates, map.

The Turntable, The Engine House, The Water Tower

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Wisconsin, Dane County, Mazomanie

The Turntable
The railroad yards included a turntable on which locomotives and their tenders could be either turned around or directed into an adjacent engine house. The turntable was built of wooden beams and planks resting on a lubricated shaft. Vertical trusses supported the edges. Once on the turntable, an engine and tender were turned by hand. Wooden bars, attached to the outer edge, improved the leverage so that only a few men were required to rotate the structure.

The first turntable, built in 1856, was located about halfway between Brodhead and Cramer Streets. It was replaced in 1875 and again in 1909, the second time with one previously used in Saginaw, Michigan. In 1933 another turntable of stronger construction was built to accommodate the newer, larger locomotives. When a wye was built on the Sauk Branch line in 1942, the turntable became obsolete and was removed.

The Engine House
An engine house, where minor repairs could be made on locomotives, was built in the Mazomanie railroad yards in 1856. Its location just easat of the turntable allowed placing a locomotive and its tender in either direction inside the house. In 1882 a larger structure was built on the same site for housing or servicing two locomotives at one time.

Between 1856 and 1874 Mazomanie was the home of a construction and repair train. On call at all times, a crew could be rushed to the aid of a derailed train or to repair a washed-out bridge. Runs were frequently made as far east as Madison and as far west as Prairie du Chien. The engine house was used until 1939 when it was removed for use as a cattle shed.

The Water Tower
Wood and coal burning locomotives needed to make frequent fuel and watering stops. Mazomanie had an abundant supply of water affored by the millpond. In 1856 the railroad built a water tower to service its steam locomotives. This facility at Mazomanie was the railroad's only source of water between Lone Rock, twenty-two miles to the west, and Madison, twenty-five miles to the east.

A flume from the lower millpond brought the water to an undershot waterwheel which raised the water into the water tower tank. When the water level in the millpond fell, making the wheel inoperative, a steam-powered water ram, located in an adjacent pump house, was used to fill the tank. When both systems failed, the local fire department was recruited to fill the locomotive tenders with water from their hand pumpers.

The first water tower was replaced in 1907 with a tank twenty-four feet in diameter. The tower was permanently removed in 1950 when the dam on Black Earth Creek was washed out as the result of a storm. Water from the village main was then used to fill the tenders until diesel engines replaced the steam locomotives in 1954.
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[Photo captions, from top, read]
Engine on turntable - about 1890

The construction train engine - 1878

The water tower - 1909

(Railroads & Streetcars • Man-Made Features) Includes location, directions, 4 photos, GPS coordinates, map.

The Enlightenment of W. C. Handy

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Mississippi, Bolivar County, Cleveland

Front
In W.C. Handy's famous account of his "enlightenment" in Cleveland, a ragged local trio was showered with coins after Handy's orchestra of trained musicians had been unable to similarly excite the crowd. In early manuscripts of his book Father of the Blues Handy identified the leader of the trio as Prince McCoy, but when the book went to press in 1941 McCoy's name had been removed. McCoy (c. 1882-1968) later led a popular orchestra in Greenville but never received public recognition for his role in inspiring Handy.

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W.C. Handy, who became known as the "Father of the Blues," had no intentions of composing and publishing blues when he arrived in the Delta in 1903. Stack Mangham, a member of Handy's Clarksdale-based band, told folklorists Alan Lomax and John W. Work III in a 1941 interview: "When Handy came here his ambition was to write marches . . . he was going to be the March King, another John Phillip Sousa." Handy (1873-1958) had heard embryonic and emerging forms of blues in his native Alabama and during his travels, but only in Mississippi did the music begin to affect him. He cited two events in particular: hearing a lone guitarist at the Tutwiler train station and witnessing the response to a trio's performance at the old courthouse that stood at this site in Cleveland.

"My own enlightenment came in Cleveland, Mississippi," Handy wrote in an early manuscript of his book Father of the Blues. "I was conducting the orchestra in a dance program when someone sent up an odd request. Would we play some of 'our native music' . . . later a second request came up. Would we object if a local colored band played a few dances? . . . We eased out gracefully as the newcomers entered. They were led by a long-legged chocolate boy called Prince McCoy, and their band consisted of just three pieces, a battered guitar, a mandolin and a bass. The musicians themselves were a sorry lot . . .They struck up one of those over-and-over strains . . . a kind of stuff that has long been associated with cane rows and levee camps . . . A rain of silver dollars began to fall around the outlandish, stomping feet. The dancers went wild. . . These boys had the stuff the people wanted . . . Folks would pay money for it . . .That night a composer was born, an American composer. Those country black boys at Cleveland had taught me something . . . My inspiration came from the sight of that silver money . . ." (In the final published text [1941], some of this wording was changed: most notably, McCoy's name was erased.)

Stack Mangham recalled that Handy's famous Memphis Blues, also known as Mister Crump, was "the same thing we heard that night in Cleveland." In one manuscript Handy wrote, "McCoy used to play a piece called I'm a Winding Ball and I Don't Deny My Name." Windin' Ball (aka Winin' Boy Blues) was a tune associated with New Orleans jazz legend and onetime Biloxi resident Jelly Roll Morton, who said that Windin' Ball was also his nickname in the early 1900s. McCoy was based in Greenville when Handy heard him but he also had Louisiana roots as a native of St. Joseph. He later moved to Winston-Salem, North Carolina, where he died in 1968. Some have speculated that Handy's editor or publisher deleted McCoy's name from the book because if Handy was to be the "Father of the Blues," a conflicting claim might arise if he identified another still-living musician whose blues preceded his own.

McCoy's trio is not the only one mentioned in discussions of the Cleveland dance. When John Quincy Wolf, a Memphis professor and folksong collector, interviewed some Cleveland old-timers in the 1960s, one recalled a young local trio featuring Willie Webb on guitar and musicians named Sherman on mandolin and "Snow" on bass.

(Arts, Letters, Music • Entertainment • African Americans) Includes location, directions, 5 photos, GPS coordinates, map.

Crescent Street Factories, Mazomanie Blacksmiths, Coal Buildings

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Wisconsin, Dane County, Mazomanie

Crescent Street Factories
Crescent Street, located just beyond the buildings to the north, was the principal industrial street in the village during the 1800s. In addition to a cheese factory and creamery, a number of other factories produced wood and iron products.

C.J. Trager operated a carriage and sleigh factory in the 1873 two-story brick and stone building which still stands at 38 Crescent Street. Further east, across the street, was Gramm's carpenter shop and a woodworking plant operated by Warren & Moulton. In 1867 George Davies opened a shop to make fanning mills. Later George and his brother, Nathaniel, set up a foundry to manufacture metal castings and drill presses of their own design. The Mazomanie Cabinet Manufacturing Company was established in 1894 by Albert Tinker and Charles Schlough. Tinker patented a line of kitchen cabinets which they produced and sold throughout the area.

Among other products made from wood, the Starck Manufacturing Company developed and manufactured a billiard-like game built inside a parlor table. Later a poultry business was established and remained in operation until the Mazomanie Egg Company moved to Middleton in 1957. The Village of Mazomanie now uses this area for municipal operations.

Mazomanie Blacksmiths
John Parman and Asa Preston, two prominent blacksmiths in the early village, operated their shops side-by-side on Crescent Street. John Parman started a shop in 1858 and in 1865 he built the brick building that remains today. His brick house stands across the street from the shop. Manufacturing wagons and carriages and performing general blacksmithing, he continued in business until 1877. The building continued to be used by blacksmiths until 1980.

John Warren built a small blacksmith shop next to the Parman shop in 1863. Asa Preston bought out Warren and operated the shop until he died in 1892. During this time, John F. Appleby, the inventor of the twine grain binder, began his experiments with binding devices while working in Preston's shop. After Appleby had attained success with his twine binder in Beloit, he employed Asa's son, David, to help him set up licensees of his patents in Wisconsin and Minnesota. David and his brother John operated in the Preston shop until John died in 1904. The building sat idle until 1930 when the property was sold to house a coal and wood business.

Coal Buildings
Along most railroad corridors, buildings were located next to side tracks where freight and coal cars could directly unload their contents. The height of the floor was on the same level as the floor of the freight car so that goods could be moved easily from one to the other. Some buildings were constructed with two levels so that a chute could be attached to the bottom hatch of a coal car and its contents unloaded directly into a building's lower storage area. Built between 1915 and 1929, the taller of these buildings has two levels. The lower section of the complex was restored in 1993.
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[Photo captions, from top, read]
Mazomanie Cabinet Factory - about 1895

John Parman Blacksmith Shop - about 1870

Asa Preston Blacksmith Shop - about 1876
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Freight and Coal Buildings
1915 - 1929
has been placed on the
National Register
of Historic Places

by the United States
Department of the Interior

(Industry & Commerce • Railroads & Streetcars • Man-Made Features) Includes location, directions, 5 photos, GPS coordinates, map.

Amzie Moore Home

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Mississippi, Bolivar County, Cleveland
Amzie Moore (1911-1982), a local Civil Rights leader, built this house in 1941. An army veteran, Moore also worked for the U.S. Postal Service. After returning from WWII, Moore dedicated himself to the civil rights movement, co-founding the Regional Council of Negro Leadership. His home served as a meeting place for many in the civil rights movement, including Bob Moses, Sam Block, Aaron Henry, Medgar Evers, Martin Luther King, Jr., Andrew Young, John Lewis and Thurgood Marshall.

(Civil Rights • African Americans) Includes location, directions, 4 photos, GPS coordinates, map.

West Capital Raceway

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California, Yolo County, West Sacramento
A quarter-mile "bullring", it was a whirlpool of horsepower as short track racers in jalopies and specially-built, high-horsepower machines, flew around the oval chasing the checkered flag in close, wheel to wheel action. It was a "tacky" place with clay as sticky as Mississippi mud to harness the fast, "hook-em up" action. For fans, the facing was up close and their lap, sometimes with dirt in their beer.

Known originally as Capitol Stadium, later Capital Speedway, and finally West Capital Raceway, the track continued a Sacramento racing tradition that began at Lazy "J" Raceway and Hughes Stadium. With its national reputation, it attracted some of the country's best short track racers as one of the most well known dirt tracks this side of Indiana.

Fans would watch their friends and neighbors, "weekend warriors", pit their high speed driving skills against one another on a track that required precision and left little room for error. Crewmen in starched white pants tended to fender-less "jalopy" coupes and mighty midgets cars in the beginning. Super-modified sprint cars, stock cars and motorcycles followed. Sometimes in special, multi-day events when the track was temporarily expanded to a half mile.

Thrills and spills, horsepower-flung clay against the fence, fans saving their traditional seats by spreading blankets on bleachers. It was Saturday night at West Sacramento's last great place to race.

(Sports) Includes location, directions, 2 photos, GPS coordinates, map.

The Train Wreck of 1906

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Wisconsin, Dane County, Mazomanie

"Wreck at Mazomanie, Two freight trains in head-on collision; No lives lost, engineers and trainmen save themselves by timely jumping."

A headline in the Sauk County News announced a collision between two freight trains on June 1, 1906, just east of the Mazomanie mill. The story continued, "The way freight from Prairie du Chien being train #96 in charge of Conductor T. Kane was coming toward Madison. It was being pulled by engine #830, John Harrington, Engineer, and Adolph Merz, Fireman. The freight from Milwaukee, a fast train known as the 'Cannon Ball,' was going west. It was in charge of Conductor James Luft and Engineer James McShane. The engine was #655 with Fred Bird as Fireman."

"The trains were going along under orders, each with its customary speed and the trainmen on each believing they were on their usual different tracks. A misplaced switch, however, sent them flying toward each other on the same track. Owing to a curve in the line at that place, the dangerous circumstances were not known to the crew of either train until too late to avoid the accident. Both engineers and other trainmen were able to save their lives by jumping."

Because the wreck occurred within the village, people quickly took advantage of the railroad's misfortune to use the wrecked cars and engines for a major photographic opportunity.

(Railroads & Streetcars • Man-Made Features • Disasters) Includes location, directions, 3 photos, GPS coordinates, map.

Confederate Burials in the National Cemetery

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New York, Chemung, Elmira

Elmira Prison Camp
Overcrowding at the military prison at Point Lookout, Maryland, led the U.S. Army to establish Elmira Military Prison in May 1864. Elmira, New York, initially a rendezvous point for enlisting Union soldiers, had barracks, hospitals, storehouses and stables. The first prisoners arrived on July 6, and by fall 1864, more than 9,000 prisoners occupied Elmira. Most lived in small canvas tents, as barracks would not be completed until New Year's Day 1865, too late for many prisoners.

More than 12,000 prisoners passed through the gates of the prison during the year it operated. Almost 3,000 men died, rendering Elmira's mortality rate the highest of any Union military prison. Most of the deaths were attributed to the harsh winter of 1864-1865.

The Cemetery
Almost immediately, the U.S. Army leased a half acre of land from Woodlawn Cemetery for the internment of Confederate prisoners and Union soldiers. The prison commandant hired John W. Jones, an escaped slave and caretaker of Woodlawn Cemetery, to bury the Confederates. When a prisoner died, his body was taken to the "dead house" and placed in a coffin. His name, rank, company, regiment, date of death, and grave number were written on the lid. At the cemetery, the coffin was placed in a trench and covered. Wooden headboards, painted with the information copied from the coffin lid, marked each grave. On a single day, Jones buried forty-eight men; he kept records on every burial.

In 1874, the federal government purchased two acres containing the graves of Union and Confederate dead to establish Woodlawn National Cemetery. The Commission for Marking Graves of Confederate Dead visited the cemetery in 1906. The Commission clerk spent a month documenting prison burials and wrote to Southern states asking for further information. Finally, a list of more than 2,000 names was compiled. In 1908, the Commission placed Confederate-style headstones inscribed with the deceased's name and regiment on the graves.

Toward Reconciliation
On May 30, 1868, the Grand Army of the Republic decorated Union and Confederate graves at Arlington National Cemetery. Thirty years later President William McKinley proclaimed:

The Union is once more the common altar of our live and loyalty, our devotion and sacrifice...Every soldier's grave made during out unfortunate Civil War is a tribute to American valor...in the spirit of fraternity we should share with you in the care of the graves of the Confederate soldiers.

The War Department created the Confederate section at Arlington in 1901, and marked the graves with distinctive pointed-top marble headstones. Five years later, Congress created the Commission for Marking Graves of Confederate Dead to identify and mark the graves of Confederates who died in Northern prisons. Its mission was later expanded to encompass all national cemeteries that contained Confederate burials.

Four former Confederate officers headed the Commission over its lifetime. By 1916, it had marked in excess of 25,000 graves and erected monuments in locations where individual groups could not be identified.

In 1930, the War Department authorized the addition of the Southern Cross of Honor to the Confederate headstone.

(War, US Civil • Cemeteries & Burial Sites) Includes location, directions, 10 photos, GPS coordinates, map.

Corner of 10 and 61

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Mississippi, Washington County, Leland

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A major source of income for blues artists in the first half of the 20th century was tips. This corner, formerly the intersection of highways 10 and 61, was a profitable spot, particularly on Saturdays when people from the country came to town. Passengers on the "Planter," a train that ran daily from New Orleans to Memphis, also stopped here to eat dinner and be entertained by Delta musicians.

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Today Highway 61 is widely known as the "blues highway," but early on Highway 10 was of equal importance to itinerant musicians. It crossed Greenville’s blues center and loosely followed the Southern Railway line through Leland, Dunleith, Holly Ridge, Indianola, Moorhead, Berclair, Itta Bena, Greenwood and on to points east. Highway 10’s importance declined somewhat with the completion of the considerably straighter Highway 82 in 1936.

Street corners were an important venue for blues artists in the Delta, particularly on Saturday afternoons when people from the country came to town to shop. Highways 61 and 10 met at this corner, making it a bustling center of commerce. Musicians played requests in exchange for tips, and street vendors sold hot tamales and fried fish to the gathered crowds. In the early 1900s Leland earned the nickname "the hellhole of the Delta" because of its many drinking and gambling establishments, which often featured blues. Even after Leland "cleaned up" it remained a hotbed for the blues, and this corner featured musicians regularly until the 1960s.

Early Delta blues performers who played here include master guitarist Eugene Powell (1908-1998), who recorded for Bluebird Records in 1936 under the name "Sonny Boy Nelson," and guitarist Charlie Booker (1919-1989), a native of Sunflower County who lived in Leland during WWII. Late in his career, Nelson was an early influence on younger artists such as Keb’ Mo’.

In January 1952, Booker recorded four songs for Los Angeles-based Modern Records at a session in Greenville that featured harmonica player Houston Boines, drummer "Cleanhead" Love, and pianist Ike Turner, who was also serving as producer. One of the songs was "No Ridin’ Blues," released on Modern subsidiary label Blues & Rhythm, a dark-themed song that suggested the influence of Charley Patton and referred to historic fires in Greenville and Leland. Booker’s record took on new meaning when, a month following its release, an entire block of Leland burned down. The song brought regional fame to Booker, who relocated to South Bend, Indiana, the following year.

(Industry & Commerce • Arts, Letters, Music • Entertainment • African Americans) Includes location, directions, 5 photos, GPS coordinates, map.

James “Son” Thomas

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Mississippi, Washington County, Leland

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James Henry “Son” Thomas, internationally famed blues musician and folk sculptor, worked as a porter at the Montgomery Hotel, which once occupied this site, after he moved to Leland in 1961. Born in the Yazoo County community of Eden on October 14, 1926, Thomas made his first recordings for folklorist Bill Ferris in 1968. He later traveled throughout the United States and Europe to perform at blues concerts and exhibit his artwork. Thomas died in Greenville on June 26, 1993.

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Thomas was one of the most recognized local musical figures in Mississippi during the 1970s and ’80s. He performed throughout the state at nightclubs, festivals, private parties, government social affairs, colleges, and juke joints. He also toured and recorded several blues albums in Europe, and his folk art was featured at galleries in New York, Washington, D.C., and elsewhere. Thomas learned guitar as a youngster after hearing his grandfather, Eddie Collins, and uncle, Joe Cooper, at house parties in Yazoo County. He later saw the two blues legends he regarded as his main influences, Elmore James and Arthur “Big Boy” Crudup, as well as Bentonia bluesman Jack Owens, from whom he learned the song “Nothin’ But the Devil.” After he began playing jukes with Cooper, Percy Lee, and others, Thomas became so well-known for his rendition of the Lil’ Son Jackson tune “Cairo Blues” that he earned the nickname “Cairo.” He was also known as “Sonny Ford,” so named for his childhood fondness for making clay models of Ford tractors.

In 1961, with a wife and six children to support on a sharecropper’s income, Thomas decided to move to Leland to find better-paying work. His mother got him a job at the Montgomery Hotel where she worked, but soon Thomas joined his stepfather as a gravedigger and later worked at a furniture store. His performances had been confined to juke joints and house parties until he met Bill Ferris, who began recording and filming Thomas and other local bluesmen in 1968. The Xtra label in England released the first recordings of Thomas, who later made albums for the Mississippi-based Southern Culture, Rustron, and Rooster Blues labels as well as companies in France, Holland, and Germany.

He also appeared in several documentary films. Despite his international renown and increased income, Thomas continued to lived in bare, dilapidated shotgun houses. It fit his image, he said, knowing that blues fans, art buyers, and photographers would come looking for him. The most important place for him to earn his living was often not out on the concert circuit but at his house, where visitors would show up at his doorstep with money to hear him play or buy a skull or coffin he had sculpted. Thomas’s gaunt appearance and the deathly themes of much of his artwork led to neighborhood rumors that he was a “hoodoo man.” But his magic lay in his ability to purvey his art and music, and his songs and stories were permeated by a droll sense of humor rather than darkness. His son Raymond “Pat” Thomas earned his own niche as an authentic bluesman and folk artisan, especially noted for his drawings of cats’ heads.

(Arts, Letters, Music • Entertainment • African Americans) Includes location, directions, 8 photos, GPS coordinates, map.

Johnny Winter

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Mississippi, Washington County, Leland

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Guitar icon Johnny Winter’s emergence on the national music scene in 1969 created a sensation among rock and blues audiences. The first of his many hit albums for Columbia Records featured the song “Leland, Mississippi Blues,” which paid tribute to his roots here. Winter’s grandfather and father, a former mayor of Leland, operated a cotton business, J. D. Winter & Son, at this site. Winter was born in Texas in 1944 but spent parts of his childhood in Leland.

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Guitar icon Johnny Winter’s emergence on the national music scene in 1969 created a sensation among rock and blues audiences. The first of his many hit albums for Columbia Records featured the song “Leland, Mississippi Blues,” which paid tribute to his roots here. Winter’s grandfather and father, a former mayor of Leland, operated a cotton business, J. D. Winter & Son, at this site. Winter was born in Texas in 1944 but spent parts of his childhood in Leland.

Johnny Winter and his younger brother Edgar were born into a prominent Leland family that was famed not only for its social, civic, and business leadership but also for its musical talent. Their father, Leland native John Dawson Winter, Jr. (1909-2001), played saxophone and guitar and sang at churches, weddings, Kiwanis and Rotary Club gatherings, and other events, including barbershop singing contests as a member of the Lamppost Quartet and front porch concerts with the Winters’ five-piece family band at the Winter home. His repertoire included pop songs such as “Ain’t She Sweet’ and “Bye Bye Blackbird,” along with comedy routines. Winter, Jr., who worked with his father, John D. Winter, Sr. (1879-1938), as a cotton classer, and later ran the family’s cotton brokerage firm, was elected mayor of Leland in 1936 and served until leaving for military service in 1941. John Dawson “Johnny” Winter III was born on February 23, 1944, while his father was away in the army. Although the family resided in Leland, his mother Edwina chose to go to her home town of Beaumont, Texas, for the birth of Johnny, as well as of Edgar on December 28, 1946. The Winters then permanently moved to Beaumont.

With encouragement from their parents, the Winter brothers, both albinos, began performing as youngsters and were already recording while still in their teens, playing rock ‘n’ roll, blues, and R&B. Despite his early childhood here in the heartland of Delta blues, Johnny only discovered the blues in Texas, listening to the radio in the kitchen with the Winters’ African American maid. Mississippi-born bluesmen Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf, B. B. King, and Robert Johnson became his favorite blues artists, along with Bobby Bland from Tennessee, and Winter developed a fiery electric synthesis of rock and blues that began to attract national attention in the late 1960s.

The self-titled 1969 album Johnny Winter, which featured guest appearances by Mississippi natives Willie Dixon and Big Walter Horton, established Winter as a premier figure in high-energy blues-rock circles. He went on to record several more albums for Columbia Records, all of which appeared on the national charts. Multi-instrumentalist Edgar Winter played on his brother’s Second Winter LP and began recording with his own groups, scoring 1970s pop hits with the singles “Frankenstein” and “Free Ride.” In later years Johnny Winter produced albums by his idol, Muddy Waters, and recorded in the company of the Muddy Waters band, James Cotton, John Lee Hooker, and other Mississippians. In 1988, after recording three albums for the blues label Alligator Records in Chicago, he became the first white musician elected to the Blues Hall of Fame.

(Arts, Letters, Music • Entertainment • African Americans) Includes location, directions, 7 photos, GPS coordinates, map.
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