MOUND BAYOU, Miss.—Wash Sellers used to drive 15 minutes just to get an orange. A native of Merigold, Mississippi—a couple of miles north of Cleveland in Bolivar County—Sellers begins his year participating in the Daniel Fast, a 21-day religious-based diet that limits his eating to fruit, vegetables, beans and nuts. For years, Sellers would have to drive all of the way to Cleveland to get fresh produce for his fast. He doesn’t have to do that anymore.
On Dec. 19, 2025, the Taborian Farmacy Food Clinic held its grand opening in Mound Bayou, which is just north of Merigold, giving Sellers and other citizens a closer place to buy fresh produce.
“The Farmacy place is a really good deal for the community because, of course, in this area, it’s not a whole lot here. So bringing this Farmacy food stand here is a blessing for the community because it provides for people that don’t have vehicles … to travel so far for fruit and vegetables,” Sellers told the Mississippi Free Press on Jan. 19.
Sellers owns W. Sellers Enterprise Sanitation Service and Trucking Company. He purchases fresh fruit for his employees each morning to give them the energy they need for the day’s work because he recognizes the health disparities that are prevalent in the community.
“Having this stand helps provide breakfast and lunch for me and a little snack for my guys. In this area, health is important because we don’t have the facilities where we can go (for healthcare). I mean, we have a health center here, but not everyone is able to afford (healthcare),” Sellers told the Mississippi Free Press on Jan. 19.
‘People Need Access to Food’
Other Delta residents are also working to close the food insecurity gap. Marquitrice Mangham, a Tallahatchie County native, is the CEO and founder of In Her Shoes, Inc., a nonprofit organization that strives to meet the needs of low-income and low-access communities. For nearly a year, Mangham has operated a mobile food truck, the Farmacy Mobile, in Delta communities that lack access to fresh produce.
“We have a mobile grocery store and we had been coming for like eight months every Friday. We were getting a huge response. We were getting people from all of these communities and they would buy a lot of fresh fruit and meat,” Mangham told the Mississippi Free Press on Jan. 19.
While the mobile grocery store would do well on Fridays in Mound Bayou, the truck was only in the area from noon to 4 p.m., leaving many people without access to food because they were at work.
Mangham saw the need for a permanent grocery store in the Mound Bayou community. She connected with the International Order of Knights and Daughters of Tabor, the community organization that owns the historic Taborian Hospital, to place a brick-and-mortar store on their property.
“With just the response we got from coming here on our mobile truck every Friday for just 4-5 hours, we figured there needs to be something a little more stable. There needs to be something more consistent in the community,” Mangham said.
From Shipping Crate to Grocery Store
The food clinic is the first of its kind in the Mississippi Delta. Mangham researched ways to bring a grocery store to the Mound Bayou area that would be structurally affordable and efficient. She placed a renovated shipping crate on the property to house the store.
“When I initially started to research putting a grocery store here, one of the things I found is that there really isn’t adequate infrastructure,” Mangham said. “It would really just cost a lot. We wanted to find something that was long-term and sustainable. So, this is our first container store.”
Complete with electricity, food refrigerators, fruit and vegetable stands, and a cash register, the Farmacy store is a modernized take on the traditional grocery store format. Open Monday-Saturday from noon to 6 p.m., customers from all over the surrounding Delta community area are able to shop for their groceries at a competitively low price.
The innovative grocery store has fresh vegetables, fruit, meat, dairy products, snacks and miscellaneous food items for daily cooking and eating needs. Customers can visit the Farmacy store and pay for their groceries with cash, card, Cash App, EBT/SNAP and Humana benefits.
Mangham, a soybean farmer, also created opportunities to support local farmers and connect them with her organization. While local farmers supply some of the products in the clinic, it is primarily supplied by United Natural Foods, Inc., an organization that supports businesses through food delivery.
“We do source a small bit of our food from local farmers, but we’re one of the few small organizations that has wholesale providers… We’re able to source fresh fruit, vegetables, meat and other shelf items all year round through UNFI,” Mangham said..
While the Taborian Farmacy Food Clinic has become an integral part of access to healthy, fresh produce in Mound Bayou and surrounding areas, the grocery store has only been a permanent resource for about a month. Its novelty sparks a larger conversation about the lack of both access and investment in the Mississippi Delta for proper nutrition.
The Mississippi Delta, rich with her fields of fertile soil, is facing a food crisis. Mound Bayou, one of the nation’s first Black-founded towns, continues to fight against systemic injustices that have robbed the town of its historic eminence.
Mississippi’s First Black-Founded Town
Formerly enslaved Black men Isaiah T. Montgomery and Benjamin T. Green founded Mound Bayou in 1887. It was coined the “Jewel of the Delta” by President Theodore Roosevelt. In the wake of racism and segregation after the Civil War, Montgomery and Green became pioneers in the post-Reconstruction era South, creating a community for Black Americans to empower, employ and educate themselves without the outside pressures of radical whiteness.
The historic Black town was established on 840 acres of land in rural Mississippi. In Mound Bayou’s prime, the community was complete with Black-owned businesses, schools, churches and stores. The town also had its own bank, The Bank of Mound Bayou, and newspaper, The Mound Bayou Demonstrator. By the turn of the 20th century, Mound Bayou was successfully founded, funded, and operated by Black people, separate from white presence or influence.
One of the most notable fixtures in Mound Bayou was Taborian Hospital. Founded in 1942 by the International Order of Knights and Daughters of Tabor, an organization created to provide and promote service and social advocacy of African Americans. The hospital’s staff consisted entirely of Black nurses, doctors and staff members. T.R.M Howard, a civil rights activist, entrepreneur and doctor, served as the hospital’s first chief surgeon.
The quaint facility that included 42 beds and two operating rooms provided accessible healthcare to Black Americans in the midst of the Great Depression, the Civil Rights Movement, and economic uncertainty for 41 years before closing its doors in 1983 due to lack of funding
‘It was Divine Intervention’
Myrna Smith-Thompson, the executive director of the International Order of Knights and Daughters of Tabor and granddaughter to one of the organization’s earlier leaders, was born in Taborian Hospital in 1949. Smith-Thompson recalled the organization’s impact on Taborian Hospital in Mound Bayou and the surrounding Delta communities.
“(The International Order of Knights and Daughters of Tabor) was one of the many mutual aid organizations that Black people had for self-care, especially during the time of the Great Depression,” Smith-Thompson told the Mississippi Free Press on Jan. 20.
Taborian Hospital provided healthcare access to Black Americans all over the Mississippi Delta, and it served as a mecca for childbirth, with more than 3,000 deliveries inside its walls.
The hospital’s decline was caused by federal budget cuts and a decrease in patients. The surrounding Mound Bayou community suffered as well. The Great Depression and the Great Migration were detrimental to the historic Black town. Cotton prices declined, harming the agricultural economy, and a fire tore through most of the business district in 1941. Mound Bayou has never fully returned to its former economic glory.
Although Taborian Hospital closed in 1983, the order still owned the building and the land, and they wanted to continue serving the community. Mangham’s idea to sell food in the parking lot of the hospital was very favorable to members of the organization, specifically to Smith-Thompson.
“The one that we knew we wanted to do was Ms. Mangham’s (idea). Ms. Mangham asked if she could put a food truck in the parking lot of the Taborian Hospital with fresh produce and meat. After several months, the popularity and usage of the food truck increased so much (that) we started talking about doing something more permanent,” Smith-Thompson said.
Smith-Thompson was drawn to the Farmacy grocery store because she recalls people telling her about the garden behind Taborian Hospital during its operating days.
“It was divine intervention,” Smith-Thompson said.
The garden provided healthy fruits and vegetables to feed patients and community members who worked and visited the hospital.
“There was a lot behind (the hospital) and the kitchen staff, the dieticians grew vegetables to be served to patients in the hospital to meet whatever nutritional deficiencies the patients had while they were there,” Smith-Thompson said. “They were able to eat vegetables that (staff) grew out in the garden.”
Hope for the Hospital
The Mississippi Delta, though rich in agriculture, history, and culture, faces numerous systemic challenges. Food insecurity is one of its greatest barriers. Because of the lack of access to healthy fruit, vegetables and produce in so many rural areas, people are more prone to experience health disparities such as diabetes, congestive heart failure, obesity and more.
As a native of the Mississippi Delta, Smith-Thompson is aware of the health issues connected to a lack of fresh food access.
“There were some studies that pointed to the fact that all of the diseases and health maladies that existed amongst a lot of people were based on their inability to get the proper food,” Smith-Thompson said.
Given its prominence in the Mississippi Delta, city leaders sought to revitalize Taborian Hospital as an urgent care facility. After receiving a $3 million federal grant, the hospital reopened in 2016 but closed again almost a year later.
“The initial effort to restore the hospital for another use didn’t materialize,” Smith-Thompson said. “That didn’t mean we were not still working to try and find a way to provide a service to the community. We just keep praying, and in God’s time it will come.”
Although Taborian Hospital is closed, the order continues to support people in the Mississippi Delta through partnerships such as the one with Mangham.
Mangham is now waiting for funds to remodel parts of the hospital to house the grocery store. She understands that the Taborian Farmacy Food Clinic grocery store is essential in providing access to healthy food in the community.
“We’ve partnered with the International Order of Knights and Daughters of Tabor. They have given us permission to put this grocery store in a beautiful wing of the hospital, but we have to come up with money,” she said. “We’re going to do this in the interim until we get the money to open a full grocery store.”
The new Taborian Farmacy Food Clinic grocery store is a small but important step toward renewing access to healthy food for Delta residents. By supplying fresh fruits, vegetables, and other produce to the community, the business helps daily customers like Wash Sellers and his crew achieve a healthier standard of living by providing access to the food they deserve.