African American Military History Museum

The African American Military History Museum occupies a 1942 building on Mobile Street that was originally constructed as a United Service Organizations (USO) club specifically for Black servicemen — segregation applied to military recreation as firmly as to everything else in wartime Mississippi. The museum documents the service of African Americans in the US military from the Civil War through contemporary conflicts.

The exhibits draw on local stories: the Tuskegee Airmen trained partly at nearby Tuskegee, Alabama; the 761st Tank Battalion ("Black Panthers"), which served under Patton in Europe, included men who trained at Camp Shelby. The museum puts names and faces to history that was systematically excluded from mainstream military commemoration. It is one of the better small military museums in the South, honestly presented and genuinely moving. Mobile Street itself is worth a slow walk — it was Hattiesburg's historic African American commercial district.

things to do museum
A story
During World War II, hundreds of thousands of Black Americans served their country in segregated units — fighting abroad for freedoms they were denied at home. Hattiesburg was a training hub: Camp Shelby, just south of town, processed enormous numbers of troops. The museum, housed in a former USO club that served Black soldiers (they were barred from the white USO), documents this history with particular focus on the men who trained here in Mississippi and went on to fight in Europe and the Pacific.