Audioguides Jackson

Jackson stands on the Pearl River at the center of a state whose history has been more contested than almost anywhere else in America. Medgar Evers, field secretary for the NAACP, was shot in his driveway on Guynes Street on June 12, 1963, after returning from a rally where President Kennedy had spoken about civil rights. His house is now a museum and National Historic Landmark, preserved nearly as it was that night, one of the most quietly devastating places in the American South.

Farish Street runs through what was Jackson's historic Black business and entertainment district, a six-block strip that supported restaurants, barbershops, jazz clubs, and insurance companies when segregation kept Black commerce separate.

The Alamo Theatre on Farish Street dates to 1941 and hosted some of the most important blues and R&B performers of the mid-20th century. The street has seen cycles of abandonment and revival, and its current state reflects both the difficulty and the determination of preservation in a city that has often been overlooked.