Smith Drug Co.

Smith Drug Co. on Mobile Street is a historic African American-owned pharmacy that played a role in the Civil Rights Movement in Hattiesburg during the 1960s. The building is preserved as a museum and heritage site documenting the local civil rights struggle, with particular focus on the voter registration campaigns that made Hattiesburg a significant site in the broader Mississippi movement.

The store itself is small — a classic Depression-era drugstore counter — but the history attached to it is substantial. The exhibits document the courage required for Black citizens to attempt to register to vote in Forrest County (the courthouse was controlled by an openly hostile registrar for decades), the role of the local NAACP chapter, and the network of churches and businesses that supported the movement. The drugstore context is deliberate: pharmacies and barber shops on Black commercial streets were often the safest meeting places for movement organising.

things to do museum sight
A story
On 21 January 1964, Clyde Kennard's funeral was held in Hattiesburg while a group of Black citizens tried to register to vote at the Forrest County Courthouse. On the same day, a group of young people attempted to integrate the lunch counter at Kress's five-and-dime store nearby. These acts were part of the same organised civil rights campaign that would culminate in the Mississippi Freedom Summer of 1964, when hundreds of student volunteers came south to register voters and run Freedom Schools. Hattiesburg was one of the campaign's focal points.

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