Davis Bend, Mississippi (now known as Davis Island), was a peninsula named after planter

Joseph Emory Davis Joseph Emory Davis (10 December 1784 – 18 September 1870) was an American lawyer who became one of the wealthiest planters in Mississippi in the antebellum era; he owned thousands of acres of land and was among the nine men in Mississippi who ...

, who owned most of the property. There he established the 5,000-acre

Hurricane Plantation Hurricane Plantation located near Vicksburg, Mississippi, was the home of Joseph Emory Davis (1784–1870), the oldest brother of Jefferson Davis. Located on a peninsula of the Mississippi River in Warren County, Mississippi, called Davis Bend a ...

as a model slave community. Davis Bend was about 15 miles south of

Vicksburg, Mississippi Vicksburg is a historic city in Warren County, Mississippi, United States. It is the county seat, and the population at the 2010 census was 23,856. Located on a high bluff on the east bank of the Mississippi River across from Louisiana, Vi ...

, and was surrounded by the

Mississippi River The Mississippi River is the second-longest river and chief river of the second-largest drainage system in North America, second only to the Hudson Bay drainage system. From its traditional source of Lake Itasca in northern Minnesota, it fl ...

on three sides. He gave his much younger brother Jefferson Davis the adjoining

Brierfield Plantation Brierfield Plantation was a large forced-labor cotton farm built in 1847 in Davis Bend, Mississippi, south of Vicksburg and the home of Confederate president Jefferson Davis. History The use of the plantation, with more than 1,000 acres, was ...

History

Joseph Davis was influenced by the

utopian socialist Utopian socialism is the term often used to describe the first current of modern socialism and socialist thought as exemplified by the work of Henri de Saint-Simon, Charles Fourier, Étienne Cabet, and Robert Owen. Utopian socialism is often de ...

ideas of Robert Owen, whom he met in the 1820s during Owen's tour in the United States. When Davis established his Hurricane Plantation at Davis Bend, he worked to create a model cooperative slave community. He hoped to show that a higher functioning and profitable community could be achieved within slavery. He allowed a high degree of self-government for his 350 slaves, provided better nutrition and health and dental care, and created a communal environment. He worked closely with Benjamin T. Montgomery, a brilliant and literate African American slave, whom he allowed to establish a store on the property and who managed much of the marketing of plantation produce. It took some effort for Davis to recover his property after the war, as it had been confiscated by the Freedman's Bureau. In 1867 the peninsula became an island after the flooding Mississippi River cut a new channel across its neck. Davis sold the property to his former slave, freedman Ben Montgomery. The community continued as a cooperative until the 1880s. At that time continually falling cotton prices, costs of transportation by water to the mainland, an economic depression, and hostility from the white community, finally caused it to fail.

Isaiah Montgomery Isaiah Thornton Montgomery (May 21, 1847 – March 5, 1924) was founder of Mound Bayou, Mississippi, an all-black community. A Republican, he was a delegate to the 1890 Mississippi Constitutional Convention and served as mayor of Mound Bayou. ...

, Benjamin's son, led many of the residents to a new black community, founding Mound Bayou in northwest Mississippi.

References

External links

* * * {{coord, 32.1432082, -91.1014979, display=title African-American history of Mississippi Geography of Warren County, Mississippi Intentional communities in the United States Populated places established by African Americans