An Exploration of Land & Generational Freedom in Mississippi ca. approx. 1865
Davis Bend to Mound Bayou
📸: Labeled Item 21, ca. approx. 1865 sourced from the Mississippi Department of Archives & History
Mirror Moment(s): Land & Generation Freedom
Today’s archival exploration centers around the historical importance of land to achieve generational freedom. This page from an 1865 photo album features four prominent men. In the upper right, Benjamin Thorton Mongomery (B.T. Montgomery) set out to actualize his freedom dreams.
According to the Mississippi Department of Archives & History, Benjamin was a “gifted engineer, businessman, and ex-slave.” The person the law stated was his owner, Joseph Emory Davis (E. Davis)…the brother of the President of the Confederacy Jefferson Davis. Prior to the Civil War, 1861-1865, E. Davis was one of the wealthiest men in Mississippi. Despite some sources crediting E. Davis for his lenient slave-holding ways, the fact remains that he believed it to be right to own other people which is a disturbing & immoral ethic to possess. Benjamin was one of over 300 individuals E. Davis believed to have ownership over. Plantations are not “communities of cooperations” like E. Davis referred to them but centers of forced hierarchy & labor.
In 1867, Benjamin Thorton Montgomery “signed a ten-year mortgage with Joseph Davis for Hurricane and Brierfield to host a colony of tenant farmers.” On the same land Benjamin was enslaved on, he created a community founded by free Black people called Davis Bend. Like many places in the South, the new community was named after an enslaver. It’s unclear why the freedmen chose to continue to use E. Davis’ name once the colony was formed. However, it is clear from Benjamin’s story that acquiring land was a goal many newly freed people sought out.
Unfortunately, the freedmen colony ended due to economic issues, natural environmental issues, & the fact that the land returned to the Davis heirs after E. Davis’s death. While Davis Bend was Benjamin’s freedom dream, his son Isaiah Montgomery carried the vision of a completely self-governed & independent Black community to fruition. In 1887, Isaiah “brought together friends from Davis Bend and Vicksburg to purchase 30,000 acres and clear and develop it into Mound Bayou.”
These are my initial findings about Davis Bend. Like many other moments in history, I’m sure the founding of the freedmen community & how it was governed proved to be much more complicated. I’m excited to continue further researching both Davis Bend & Mound Bayou. I wonder what it felt like to be a community member of these two communities. I will continue to let my curiosity lead & may report back with more findings 🤎.