Mileston is an

unincorporated community An unincorporated area is a parcel of land that is not governed by a local general-purpose municipal corporation. (At p. 178.) They may be governed or serviced by an encompassing unit (such as a county) or another branch of the state (such as th ...

located in Holmes County,

Mississippi Mississippi ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the Southeastern United States, Southeastern and Deep South regions of the United States. It borders Tennessee to the north, Alabama to the east, the Gulf of Mexico to the south, Louisiana to the s ...

. Mileston is located on U.S. Highway 49E and Highway 12,Mission
" Mileston Elementary School. May 4, 2006. Retrieved on July 9, 2017. approximately south of Tchula, approximately north of Thornton and approximately southeast of Marcella. It is about north of Yazoo City. Mileston is located on the

Canadian National Railway The Canadian National Railway Company () is a Canadian Class I freight railway headquartered in Montreal, Quebec, which serves Canada and the Midwestern and Southern United States. CN is Canada's largest railway, in terms of both revenue a ...

History

Mileston is named for a former plantation. In 1940, the United States government purchased approximately ten-thousand acres of the former W. E. Jones estate as part of the

Resettlement Administration The Resettlement Administration (RA) was a New Deal U.S. federal agency created May 1, 1935. It relocated struggling urban and rural families to communities planned by the federal government. On September 1, 1937, it was succeeded by the Farm S ...

. The land was split into seventy individual plots with an additional cooperative farm that included thirty plots. The community was home to a cotton gin, school, store, blacksmith shop, and medical clinic. W. Ralph Eubanks' father taught

agronomy Agronomy is the science and technology of producing and using plants by agriculture for food, fuel, fiber, chemicals, recreation, or land conservation. Agronomy has come to include research of plant genetics, plant physiology, meteorology, and ...

at the Mileston school. A post office operated under the name Mileston from 1888 to 1953. Much of the land in Mileston is owned by descendants of the original African American sharecroppers. In 2000, the West Holmes Community Development Organization and the state of Mississippi began operating a

farmers' market A farmers' market (or farmers market according to the AP stylebook, also farmer's market in the Cambridge Dictionary) is a physical retail marketplace intended to sell foods directly by farmers to consumers. Farmers' markets may be indoors or ...

in Mileston.

Marion Post Wolcott Marion Post Wolcott (June 7, 1910 – November 24, 1990) was an American photographer who worked for the Farm Security Administration during the Great Depression, documenting poverty, the Jim Crow South, and deprivation. Early life Marion Po ...

documented people and scenes from the Mileston plantation in 1939 as part of her work with the

Farm Security Administration The Farm Security Administration (FSA) was a New Deal agency created in 1937 to combat rural poverty during the Great Depression in the United States. It succeeded the Resettlement Administration (1935–1937). The FSA is famous for its small but ...

Civil Rights Movement

Mileston was the epicenter of the Civil Rights Movement in Holmes County. In March 1963, the

Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, and later, the Student National Coordinating Committee (SNCC, pronounced ) was the principal channel of student commitment in the United States to the civil rights movement during the 1960s. Emer ...

began work in Holmes County after being contacted by residents of Mileston. The next month, fourteen African Americans from Mileston (known as the First Fourteen) traveled to Lexington and unsuccessfully registered to vote. One of the first citizenship schools in Mississippi was held at the Mileston community center and many attendees became members of the

Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party The Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP), also referred to simply as the Freedom Democratic Party, was an American political party that existed in the state of Mississippi from 1964 to 1968 during the Civil Rights Movement. Created as t ...

Transportation

Amtrak The National Railroad Passenger Corporation, Trade name, doing business as Amtrak (; ), is the national Passenger train, passenger railroad company of the United States. It operates intercity rail service in 46 of the 48 contiguous United Stat ...

’s '' City of New Orleans'', which operates between

New Orleans New Orleans (commonly known as NOLA or The Big Easy among other nicknames) is a Consolidated city-county, consolidated city-parish located along the Mississippi River in the U.S. state of Louisiana. With a population of 383,997 at the 2020 ...

and

Chicago Chicago is the List of municipalities in Illinois, most populous city in the U.S. state of Illinois and in the Midwestern United States. With a population of 2,746,388, as of the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, it is the List of Unite ...

, passes through the town on CN tracks, but makes no stop. The nearest station is located in Yazoo City, to the south.

Education

Residents are in the Holmes County School District, and are assigned to Holmes County Central High School. The school district previously operated a school in Mileston: previously Mileston Elementary School (K-6), later Mileston Middle School, which housed up to 130 students.

Notable person

* Hartman Turnbow, activist during the Civil Rights Movement

Images

References

{{authority control Unincorporated communities in Holmes County, Mississippi Unincorporated communities in Mississippi