McComb, Mississippi
McComb, Mississippi
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McComb, Mississippi

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2281244

McComb, Mississippi

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McComb, Mississippi

McComb is a city in Pike County, Mississippi, United States. The city is approximately 80 miles (130 km) south of Jackson. As of the 2010 census, the city had a total population of 12,790. It is the principal city of the McComb, Mississippi Micropolitan Statistical Area.

McComb was founded in 1872 after Henry Simpson McComb of the New Orleans, Jackson and Great Northern Railroad, a predecessor of the Illinois Central Railroad (now part of the Canadian National Railway), decided to move the railroad's maintenance shops away from New Orleans, Louisiana, to avoid the attractions of that city's bars.[citation needed]

The railroad purchased land in Pike County. Three nearby communities, Elizabethtown, Burglund, and Harveytown, agreed to consolidate to form this town. Main Street developed with the downtown's shops, attractions, and business.[citation needed]

The rail center in McComb was one of flashpoints in the violent Illinois Central shopmen's strike of 1911. Riots took place here that resulted in many injuries, at least three black strikebreakers killed, and authorities bringing in state militia to suppress the emergency soon after the strike started on September 30.

During the 1960s, McComb and nearby areas were the sites of extreme violence by KKK and other white supremacist opponents to the Civil Rights Movement. In 1961, SNCC conducted its first voter registration project in Mississippi in this city. White officials and local KKK members countered it with violence and intimidation to suppress black voters.

In 1961, Brenda Travis, Robert Talbert, and Ike Lewis were arrested for staging a sit-in at a Greyhound station. They were charged with trespassing and kept in jail for 28 days. Following their release, Travis was expelled from school. In response to the expulsion and the murder of Herbert Lee, 115 students staged a walk out on October 4, 1961, known as the Burglund High School Walk Out. At the walk out, many students were beaten by the police and arrested. Students continued protesting by refusing to return to school until Travis was allowed to reenroll. As a result, they too were expelled. The 16 seniors who participated were unable to graduate. Travis' fate for participating in the march was more serious. Travis was arrested, again, and sent to a state juvenile facility without a trial. After 6+12 months, Travis was released by the governor and exiled from Mississippi.

After whites severely beat several staff members, staff members being jailed for their involvement with the walkout, and receiving backlash from the community for putting students on the "frontlines", SNCC pulled out of the region in early 1962. They moved north in Mississippi to work in slightly less dangerous conditions.

In 1964, civil rights activists began the Mississippi Project and what would be called Freedom Summer, with teams returning to southwest Mississippi. They sang, "We'll Never Turn Back." SNCC members of the Council of Federated Organizations (COFO) returned to McComb in mid-July 1964 to work on voter registration. From late August 1964 through September, after passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, McComb was the site of eleven bombings directed against African Americans. Malcolm Boyd took part of COFO's Freedom House as a member of a clerical delegation to assist African-American voter registration.

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