Map of Drew city

Drew is a city in Sunflower County, Mississippi. The population was 1,927 at the 2010 census. Drew is in the vicinity of several plantations and the Mississippi State Penitentiary, a Mississippi Department of Corrections prison for men. It is noted for several racist murders, including the lynching of Emmett Till in 1955.

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Drew location map. Where is Drew city?

History

When the Yellow Dog Railroad was extended through what is now Drew, the post office was moved from the Promised Land Plantation to the Drew location. The settlement and Post Office were named for Miss Drew Daniel, daughter of Andrew Jackson Daniel.

A school called the Little Red Schoolhouse was built by matching funds from the Rosenwald Fund in 1928. In the 21st century it received a grant for renovation of the large school.

In the 1920s, a man named Joe Pullen was lynched near Drew after killing 13 members of his lynch mob and injuring 26 of them.

One historian wrote that the white residents of Drew had “traditionally been regarded as the most recalcitrant in the county on racial matters.” The author wrote that whites in Drew were “considered the most recalcitrant of Sunflower County, and perhaps the state.” He also claimed that Drew’s proximity to the Mississippi State Penitentiary made Drew “a dangerous place to be black”, and claimed that during the 1930s and 1940s many police officers arbitrarily shot blacks, saying that they appeared to look like escaped prisoners. That historian also claimed that during the Civil Rights Movement, when attempts were made to move Fannie Lou Hamer’s movement for poor people from Ruleville to Drew, the organizers “faced stiff resistance”. Mae Bertha Carter, a major figure in the area civil rights movement, was from Drew.

In August of 1955, 14 year old Emmett Till was tortured and murdered in a barn near Drew. His killers then disposed of his body in the nearby Tallahatchie River. The racist lynching became nationally known for its brutality, and because of Till’s mother’s choice to have an open-casket funeral for her son. According to the FBI agent assigned to the case, the killers chose the barn in Drew because they thought it was a place where no one who would object to the murder would see or overhear the events. However, a young man from Drew named Willie Reed witnessed the murder and testified in court. The accused murderers were acquitted in court, but later confessed to the killing in a magazine interview. The site of the killing is located on private property.

Joetha Collier, often misspelled by the media in the past as Jo Etha Collier, was one of many African-Americans to attend Drew High School starting in the fall of 1970, and was shot to death in 1971 at age 18.

Some locals have raised money to purchase the barn where Till was murdered, for the purpose of building a memorial. As of 2021 this is unfinished.

Drew Road Map

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Geography

According to the United States Census Bureau, the city has a total area of 1.1 square miles (2.8 km), all land. Because of its small size, Billy Turner of The Times-Picayune said “[y]ou can travel all over town in a few minutes.” Drew is in the vicinity of several plantations and the Mississippi State Penitentiary (Parchman), a Mississippi Department of Corrections prison for men.

Drew, in northern Sunflower County, is located on U.S. Route 49W, on the route between Jackson and Clarksdale. Drew is 8 miles (13 km) south of the Mississippi State Penitentiary, and it is north of Ruleville. Cleveland, Mississippi is 12 miles (19 km) from Drew. Drew is north of Yazoo City.

Many houses in Drew are government-owned. Some houses sold for $6,000 to $8,000 in the year until Saturday January 26, 2008. Some Drew residents said in 2008 that some houses, if put on the market, would sell for over $120,000.

See also