JACKSON, Miss.—While summer brings soaring temperatures to Mississippi each year, Jackson residents like Dorothy Davis are working with others to cool down Farish Street in an effort to revitalize the historic Black neighborhood that once flourished there.
“Farish Street was the Mecca for Jackson, especially for the Black community,” Davis told the Mississippi Free Press. “This is where all your Black millionaires used to live and had their practices and businesses, and the poor people, too. And so it was a one-stop.”
Davis came of age in that era of the Farish Street neighborhood. Images of shopping among bustling crowds and eating Frosted Flakes at the corner restaurant remain scattered through her memories of the area…