This Town is 100% Black

Added: 2026-05-26

[00:00:10]Heat. Hey, Heat.

[00:00:43]Hello, this is Zie Boule and I hope you're having a beautiful day. Thank you for your support. Thank you for subscribing to the channel. Thank you for your thumbs up and thank you for your comments. Thank you for all you do to support the channel and yes, we are commanded to love one another whether we want to or not or whether we agree with each other or not.

[00:01:05]Yo, did you guys know there's a city for black people?

[00:01:08]>> There's a city in the United States where if you're not black, you might feel completely like an alien. Not because anyone will treat you differently, but because you could literally be the only one there. This city is nearly 100% black. Almost every single resident, and it's been like that for over a century. But here is the crazy part. This city runs almost entirely on its own. It has its own hospital, its own bank, and most major roles are held by black professionals.

[00:01:34]At one point, it even reached a 100% high school graduation rate, something almost no other city in America has ever achieved. And now for the wildest part, you can buy a full house here for under $60,000. Yes, an entire home for less than the price of a car. This place is Mound Bayou.

[00:01:54]This town is called Mount Bayou and is in Mississippi. Mount Bayou is one of the most important black founded towns in US history. Created in 1887 by formerly enslaved men Isaiah T.

[00:02:10]Montgomery and Benjamin T. Green specifically as a self-governing all black community. It became a national symbol of black self-determination, economic independence, and safety during Jim Crow. And if any time in black history it was needed, it was during the days of Jim Crow. And Mount Bayou is still all black today. Not legally all black. No town can be racially exclusive in the United States, but in practice, it is still one of the blackest towns in America with 96.8% black American population.

[00:02:52]It is a continuous legacy of black leadership, institutions, and land ownership. And it is historically known as the jewel of the Delta. And anybody from the south knows about the Mississippi Delta. Why Mount Bayou matters is because it was a safe haven from white violence during reconstruction and Jim Crow. It was a center of blackowned banks, schools, farms, and hospitals. A place where black people could vote, govern, and build wealth. It was praised by Book Washington and even visited by President Theodore Roosevelt for its success. So, Mount Bio has been in operation for a long time and a and it has been successful for a long time and there are several towns in the south, including my home state of Alabama, that have survived as all or overwhelmingly majority black towns and counties. There are several majority black counties in Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Virginia, Texas, Tennessee, Arkansas.

[00:04:09]There are majority black towns all over the South and majority black counties all over the South. That is why the South is so determined to take away our political voice because there are so many of us now. Many of the all black towns in the south did not survive, but Mount Bayou did. And Mount Bayou survived because it had advantages and protections that most black towns never had, especially strong leadership, land ownership, economic reliance, and strategic insulation from white interference. Whenever you can be insulated from white interference, you can survive if you want to. Now, that's just a fact because guess what? Most black towns founded after reconstruction were destroyed by white violence, economic strangulation, land theft, or railroad bypassing. Mount Bayou faced the same hostile environment, but it had unique structural advantages that kept it alive. The residents of Mount Value had strategic land acquisition that they bought before white elites realized its value because black people always got the worst land. But black people made the best of it and then what what do you have? Then white people want it. Once they realize that the land is worth something, they want it. But the people of Mount Bayou were educated and smart enough that they got their land in their name and they had their deeds and that makes the difference. They also had railroad partnership and that was unique. Unlike most black towns, Mound Bayou was actively recruited by the Louisville, New Orleans, and Texas Railroad. Now that's important. The railroad needed towns along its route.

[00:06:17]The railroad negotiated a mutual beneficial relationship with the people of Mount Bayou. This ensured steady money, steady jobs, transportation access, and population growth. Most black towns died when railroads bypassed them. Mount Bayou was on the line from day one. And that's one of the reasons.

[00:06:40]That's the main reason Mount Bayou survived. Because if those white people in Mississippi had had their way, they would have wiped that town out just like they did the other black towns. They would have destroyed it. Mount Bayou had exceptional leadership. Montgomery and Green were unusually skilled. These founders weren't just dreamers. They were trained in business, law, and administration at Davisbe. A unique plantation experience that gave enslaved people experience in cooperative economics, self-governance, legal processing, and agricultural management.

[00:07:24]This gave Mount Bayou a professional class from the start, something most black towns lacked. And I would be remiss in saying that Davis Bean was the plantation that Jefferson Davis, who was the president of the Confederacy, owned.

[00:07:42]That was the plantation that his family owned. And like many plantations, the slaves were running it because Jefferson Davis was in politics. He was in DC. He was in Montgomery. He was all over the place. So he let the slaves run the plantation just like they did in Go with the Wind. Gone with the Wind is a historical fiction novel. Historical fiction is based on fact. Gone with the Wind was also a blockbuster movie that was that came out in 1939. That was the movie where Hattie McDaniel was the first black actress to win an Oscar. And she was not able to sit inside that theater with her castmates. She had to sit in the basement and give her speech from the basement of the building. I just thought I would just add that. Back to Mount Bayou. They built their own systems instead of depending on white controlled ones. According to the inner quest institution of study, Mount Bayou survived because it built parallel black institutions in a region where white systems were designed to trap black people in debt and dependency. They had their own bank, their own school, their own hospital, and their own businesses and farms. This insulated the town from the croplean debt system which destroyed countless which destroyed countless black communities. Back to the train system, that train system gave them a security that most black people didn't have. So that was one of the reasons that black towns failed. And the interesting thing about Mount Bayou, when it was founded, it was surrounded by Delta plantations but not controlled by them because what? They had the agreement with the railroad. They had a contractual agreement with the railroad.

[00:09:43]Even the toughest of white people in Mississippi were not going to mess with the railroad. That is called corporate white America. And that was called that even then. So they weren't going to mess with them and that's how Mount Bayou survived because of that contract that they had with the railroad. So what we can say is that if other black towns had had some type of contractual agreement with a corporate company like a railroad company, they would have survived too.

[00:10:22]They would have survived too. All right, y'all. Thank you for listening and let me know what you think about this video.