Russell Lee, "Railroad station, Mound Bayou, Mississippi" (1939)

The railroad that made the town, photographed fifty-two years after it made it.

Rights verified 2026-07-31 against the LOC JSON API (?fo=json), not the HTML page, which blocks fetch tools. The item record states:

“The contents of the Library of Congress Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information Black-and-White Negatives are in the public domain and are free to use and reuse.”

Required credit line, per the same record: Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information Black-and-White Negatives.

Why this frame and not another. Mound Bayou exists because the Louisville, New Orleans and Texas Railroad wanted a customer base in the Delta and believed only Black settlers could survive the ground (see nrhp-it-montgomery-house-mound-bayou-1976). The station is the instrument of the founding standing in the finished town. It is the same collection WR already draws on for COURTESY’s hero, so the provenance register is consistent.

⚠️ This is a photograph, not a caption. heroAlt and heroCaption may claim only what the frame shows. Open the file and look at it before writing either.