Built with pride.

While the plantation system and the plantation mentality were a reality of the Mississippi Hills, small farming also flourished here, perhaps more than anywhere else in the state. At a time when sharecropping and tenant farming were miserable norms for many state residents, particularly African Americans, James Meredith’s father, Moses Meredith, owned an 85-acre farm. “The greatest intangible that the house had to offer was pride,” Meredith has said.

On the other hand, Oprah Winfrey’s great-great-grandfather, a former slave, was able to buy a large plot of land and build a school on it, while her great-grandmother helped raise money for a school for African American children.

After entering Ole Miss in 1962 to threats of violence and eventually deadly rioting, and after being shot during his March Against Fear only a year later, Meredith has gone on to create his own path that has been as unexpected as it has been uncompromising. Oprah has now, famously, opened a school for girls in South Africa, and here in Kosciusko, she has also donated the funds for the gleaming new Boys and Girl’s Club. The Club has become a surprisingly popular visitor attraction, as adults from around the nation have flocked to see both the attractive facility as well as the state-of-the-art approach to starting children on the right path to adulthood. Oprah Winfrey Road offers a parade of Oprah-related sites: the Buffalo Community Church, where Oprah first attended church, the Buffalo Community Center, the Winfrey family cemetery, and Oprah’s birthplace.

But there are plenty of other reasons to stop in Kosciusko, and you’ll see many of them in the historic Downtown Square.