Farish Street Neighborhood Historic District is a historic neighborhood in

Jackson, Mississippi Jackson, officially the City of Jackson, is the capital of and the most populous city in the U.S. state of Mississippi. The city is also one of two county seats of Hinds County, along with Raymond. The city had a population of 153,701 at t ...

, known as a hub for

Black Black is a color which results from the absence or complete absorption of visible light. It is an achromatic color, without hue, like white and grey. It is often used symbolically or figuratively to represent darkness. Black and white ...

-owned businesses up until the 1970s. Named after a family that lived and had businesses on that street for four generations, the street became a flourishing business area after the imposition of legal segregation under Jim Crow. As the black community thrived, by 1908 one third of the area of Jackson was black-owned, one third of the houses where blacks lived were black-owned, and half of black families owned their own homes. In 1915 the Farish Street neighborhood was well known as a progressive area in Jackson. Farish Street was home to

Trumpet Records Trumpet Records was an American record company founded by Lillian McMurry in Jackson, Mississippi in 1951. Although it existed for only four years, it was influential. History The goal of Trumpet Records was to record musicians from the Mississip ...

, Ace Records, and Speir Phonograph Company.

Jackson State University Jackson State University (Jackson State or JSU) is a public historically black research university in Jackson, Mississippi. It is one of the largest HBCUs in the United States and the fourth largest university in Mississippi in terms of studen ...

, a

historically Black university Historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs) are institutions of higher education in the United States that were established before the Civil Rights Act of 1964 with the intention of primarily serving the African-American community. Mo ...

, was located at the corner of Farish and Griffith for about a year until it moved to its new location. The Farish Street neighborhood was added as a historic district to the

National Register of Historic Places The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the United States federal government's official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures and objects deemed worthy of preservation for their historical significance or "great artistic ...

in 1980. The neighborhood is historically significant as an economically independent black community, and as of 1980 was the largest such community in Mississippi. Most of the properties in the district were built between 1890 and 1930.

References

African-American history of Mississippi Historic districts on the National Register of Historic Places in Mississippi Jackson, Mississippi Streets in Mississippi National Register of Historic Places in Jackson, Mississippi {{Mississippi-NRHP-stub