Oktibbeha County is a community closely connected to its past, with landmarks coloring its landscape and illustrating its history to a revolving population of students and teachers at Mississippi State University. Beyond the classrooms and corridors is a small, Southern community with a rich and varied history, shaped by the great legacy of the Choctaw Indians, the plantation owners of the nineteenth

century, the farmers who struggled through the Great Depression, and the educators who sought to develop an institution of higher learning for the youth of Mississippi. Captured within these pages are the memories of Oktibbeha County as it once was, before America dove headfirst into an era of change and progress. Seen are simpler times, when policemen could place telephone calls from a light pole in the middle of town, and stores closed at noon on Wednesdays so that the local businessmen might spend the afternoon fishing together. The treasured

photographs of days gone by provide residents of Oktibbeha County, as well as visitors to the area, with a refreshing glimpse of life in the old days. Included are the county’s earliest schools, homes, and churches, as well as the residents who studied, lived, and prayed in them.