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Elijah B. Odom
Elijah B. Odom (10 October 185924 February 1924) was an American physician and businessperson from Hernando, Mississippi. He was born into slavery in 1859. Despite the enactment of the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863, his descendants believe he was still kept a slave as a child, forced to pick berries by his owner. Elijah and his brothers eventually escaped to freedom, swimming across a narrow part of the Mississippi River. He attended LeMoyne Normal Institute in Memphis, Tennessee and graduated valedictorian in 1882. He later attended Meharry Medical College in Nashville, Tennessee, and became the only black doctor in Biscoe, Arkansas in 1899. He also owned a store and a pharmacy there. Elijah had 8 children, including Ruth Bonner, who on September 24, 2016, at the age of 99, joined President Barack Obama and four generations of her own family, including her 7-year-old great-granddaughter Christine, in ringing a bell dating back to the 1880s from First Baptist Chur ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hernando, Mississippi
Hernando is a city in, and the county seat of, DeSoto County, which is on the northwestern border of Mississippi, United States. The population was 14,090 at the 2010 census, up from 6,812 in 2000. DeSoto County is the second-most-populous county in the Memphis metropolitan area, which includes counties in Tennessee and Mississippi. U.S. Route 51 and the I-55 freeway traverse the city from north to south, and the I-69 freeway crosses the city from east to west. The county courthouse is located within Hernando's historic downtown square. It is located at the intersection of Commerce Street and present-day U.S. 51. History At the time of encounters by French and Spanish colonists, the Chickasaw people had long inhabited this area. France had developed colonial settlements along the Gulf Coast, to the north on the middle Mississippi River in what was called the Illinois Country, and in New France (present-day Quebec in Canada). An 18th-century French colonial log house (see first ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |