c. 1860; later alterations. 1461 Bell Rd.
At the end of the sunken Bell Road—the banks towering high above—this house represents the small post-emancipation landowning African American middle class. A white family built the hall-parlor planter’s cottage around 1860, and African American William Mosely purchased it in 1880. The roughly twelve-acre plot commands a high loess bluff overlooking Bell Road, the Yazoo River, and the delta lands beyond. According to family members, Mosely wanted easy access to the river “to be able to get out” if needed, recalling the dangerous period of night riders and Jim Crow, when a black person’s slightest misstep could mean deadly retribution.