In McComb’s storied Burglund district, where generations have marched, sung, organized and shaped Mississippi history, two community spaces now rise as powerful bookends to a corridor once alive with Black excellence and determination. One block west of Summit Street stands the Black History Gallery on Wall Street; one block east, along the newly renamed Gertrude’s Garden Alley, grows Gertrude’s Garden. Together, they frame the historic thoroughfare, symbolizing a deliberate balance: one preserves the district’s past, the other cultivates its future.
Burglund’s roots run deep. Summit Street was once the vibrant core of Black McComb, home to cafés, ice cream parlors, nightclubs, hotels and family businesses that sustained a thriving commercial ecosystem. As a key stop on the Chitlin’ Circuit and a featured site along the Mississippi Blues Trail, the district welcomed entertainers like Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Red Fox, and B.B. King among countless others traveling between Chicago and New Orleans. During segregation, the area’s two Green Book sites offered essential refuge to African American travelers navigating a hostile landscape.
Yet Burglund’s cultural legacy is matched, if not surpassed, by its civil-rights history. The district holds four Mississippi Freedom Trail markers, each honoring McComb’s pivotal role in the national fight for justice. Burglund became a critical organizing base during Freedom Summer, where young volunteers and local residents took extraordinary risks to demand equality.
Historic Black churches, many over 100 years old, stand throughout the area as quiet sentinels of this legacy. Several served as Freedom Schools, teaching literacy, history, and civic empowerment; St. Paul United Methodist Church notably became Non-Violent High School, the first of its kind in Mississippi.
At the district’s center stands the former Burglund High School, now Higgins Middle School, the sacred site of the historic 1961 Burglund Walkout, Mississippi’s first mass youth-led demonstration. Sparked by young activists Brenda Travis, Ike Lewis, and Robert Talbert, this bold student action challenged the status quo and ignited a youth-led uprising that reverberated throughout the state, cementing Burglund as a focal point of student activism.
Woven into this landscape of enterprise and activism is Nobles Brothers Cleaners, a three-generation Black-owned business that played a vital role during the civil rights era. More than a dry-cleaning shop, it served as a discreet hub of support for activists, clergy, and community members, proof of how everyday Black businesses fortified the movement from within.
It is into this richly layered history that the Black History Gallery and Gertrude’s Garden have taken root.
The Black History Gallery serves as a careful steward of Burglund’s story. The Gallery was founded by Ms. Hilda Casin, a fifty year educator in local school systems and a staunch literacy advocate. Through archives, oral histories, artifacts, and exhibits, the gallery preserves the truths, triumphs and sacrifices that define the district. The gallery ensures that the bravery of students like Travis, Lewis, and Talbert, and the resilience of musicians, church leaders, families, and business owners remains alive in collective memory.
On the opposite side of Summit Street, Gertrude’s Garden transforms reclaimed land into a sanctuary of community wellness. Neighbors gather to plant and harvest, children learn to care for the earth and elders share knowledge and stories. The garden offers healing in the form of connection, demonstrating that revitalization grows from the ground up, literally and spiritually.
I champion these efforts through the founding of Gertrude’s Garden and as director of the Black History Gallery and chair of the McComb Historical Preservation Commission. I am the author of “Outside the Walls: Reclaiming History with Community Spaces,” a community advocate, historical curator and presenter for the Mississippi Humanities Council Speakers Bureau. My vision is to merge historical preservation with creative placemaking, ensuring Burglund’s past shapes its future with intention.
The Black History Gallery was recognized as a 2024 historical preservation award recipient by the Mississippi Historical Society. Gertrude’s Garden received first-place Civic Organization honors in 2024 from Keep Mississippi Beautiful. I will be recognized with a 2026 Public Humanities Partner award by the Mississippi Humanities Council at the Two Mississippi Museums on Friday March 20th.
Burglund has always stood on courage, from our churches and schools to family-owned businesses like Nobles Brothers Cleaners. The gallery safeguards the stories that built this district, and the garden grows the future those stories deserve. One protects our roots; the other nurtures new ones.
In a time when many historic Black districts face erasure or disinvestment, Burglund offers a different path: revitalization led from within. Through gardens, galleries, churches, schools, and long-standing businesses, the district continues to rise.
Burglund’s past is powerful; its present is blossoming; its future, rooted in resistance, watered by memory, and nurtured through community spaces, promises to honor those who came before while empowering those yet to come.
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