Cleveland, Mississippi
Cleveland, Mississippi is located in the heart of the Mississippi Delta, the flat and fertile floodplain of the Mississippi River. Since its founding in 1869, the city and surrounding county relied heavily on the cultivation of cotton. By 1960, Blacks made up 40 percent of the city’s population and nearly 70 percent of the population of Bolivar County. Amzie Moore, a local NAACP leader, kept the Movement alive during the forties and fifties. He was instrumental in bringing SNCC to Mississippi in the early sixties, and his guidance shaped SNCC’s work around voting rights in the state.
