Money, Mississippi
Encyclopedia
Unincorporated area
In law, an unincorporated area is a region of land that is not a part of any municipality.To "incorporate" in this context means to form a municipal corporation, a city, town, or village with its own government. An unincorporated community is usually not subject to or taxed by a municipal government...
Mississippi Delta
Mississippi Delta
The Mississippi Delta is the distinctive northwest section of the U.S. state of Mississippi that lies between the Mississippi and Yazoo Rivers. The region has been called "The Most Southern Place on Earth" because of its unique racial, cultural, and economic history...
community in Leflore County
Leflore County, Mississippi
-National protected area:*Mathews Brake National Wildlife Refuge*Theodore Roosevelt National Wildlife Refuge -Demographics:As of the census of 2000, there were 37,947 people, 12,956 households, and 8,887 families residing in the county. The population density was 64 people per square mile...
, Mississippi
Mississippi
Mississippi is a U.S. state located in the Southern United States. Jackson is the state capital and largest city. The name of the state derives from the Mississippi River, which flows along its western boundary, whose name comes from the Ojibwe word misi-ziibi...
, United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
, near Greenwood
Greenwood, Mississippi
Greenwood is a city in and the county seat of Leflore County, Mississippi, United States, located at the eastern edge of the Mississippi Delta approximately 96 miles north of Jackson, Mississippi, and 130 miles south of Memphis, Tennessee. The population was 15,205 at the 2010 census. It is the...
. It has a population of less than 100, down from 400 circa
Circa
Circa , usually abbreviated c. or ca. , means "approximately" in the English language, usually referring to a date...
1950 when a cotton mill
Cotton mill
A cotton mill is a factory that houses spinning and weaving machinery. Typically built between 1775 and 1930, mills spun cotton which was an important product during the Industrial Revolution....
operated in the community. It is on a railroad line and lies on the Tallahatchie River
Tallahatchie River
The Tallahatchie River flows from Tippah County, Mississippi to Leflore County, Mississippi, where it joins the Yalobusha River to form the Yazoo River.-History:Tallahatchie is a Choctaw name meaning "rock of waters"....
. It is part of the Greenwood, Mississippi micropolitan area
Greenwood, Mississippi micropolitan area
The Greenwood Micropolitan Statistical Area is a micropolitan area in the northwestern Delta region of Mississippi that covers two counties - Leflore and Carroll...
Notable events
Money became infamous as a symbol in the U.S. civil rights movement after Emmett TillEmmett Till
Emmett Louis "Bobo" Till was an African-American boy who was murdered in Mississippi at the age of 14 after reportedly flirting with a white woman. Till was from Chicago, Illinois visiting his relatives in the Mississippi Delta region when he spoke to 21-year-old Carolyn Bryant, the married...
, a 14-year-old native of Chicago, Illinois, was killed there while visiting relatives in August 1955. He reportedly made suggestive remarks or whistled at (accounts differ) Carolyn Bryant, a white woman working at her husband's store, Bryant's Grocery. Roy Bryant, husband of Carolyn, and his half-brother, J.W. Milam, were arrested for murdering Till, tried and speedily acquitted by an all-white jury. They confessed to the killing in an interview with William Bradford Huie
William Bradford Huie
William Bradford "Bill" Huie was an American journalist, editor, publisher, television interviewer, screenwriter, lecturer, and novelist.-Biography:...
in the January, 1956 issue of Look
Look (American magazine)
Look was a bi-weekly, general-interest magazine published in Des Moines, Iowa from 1937 to 1971, with more of an emphasis on photographs than articles...
magazine.
Till's mother, Mamie Till Bradley, insisted on an open casket funeral and allowed news photographs of the body to be published, thus raising nationwide awareness of lynching. Many Southern historians suggest that the Emmett Till murder helped spark the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s by drawing national attention to injustice.
Popular culture
A bridge crossing the Tallahatchie RiverTallahatchie River
The Tallahatchie River flows from Tippah County, Mississippi to Leflore County, Mississippi, where it joins the Yalobusha River to form the Yazoo River.-History:Tallahatchie is a Choctaw name meaning "rock of waters"....
at Money was famously the focus of Bobbie Gentry
Bobbie Gentry
Roberta Lee Streeter , professionally known as Bobbie Gentry, is a former American singer-songwriter notable as one of the first female country artists to compose and produce her own material...
's 1967 hit song "Ode to Billie Joe
Ode to Billie Joe
"Ode to Billie Joe" is a 1967 song written and recorded by Bobbie Gentry , a singer-songwriter from Chickasaw County, Mississippi. The single, released in late July, was a number-one hit in the United States, and became a big international seller. The song is ranked #412 on Rolling Stones list of...
". That bridge collapsed in June 1972 and has since been replaced. The November 10, 1967 issue of Life Magazine contained a photo of Gentry crossing the original bridge.
External links
- Rich Samuels' 1985 documentary, The Murder and the Movement: The Story of the Murder of Emmett Till
- "The Shocking Story of Approved Killing in Mississippi" by William Bradford Huie, Look Magazine, 1956