Seeking Eva Pearl Green Francis (1870-1941): Founding mother and businesswoman of Mound Bayou, MS

Tamara Beauboeuf-Lafontant is a womanist sociologist and the Louise R. Noun ’29 Chair in Gender, Women’s, and Sexuality Studies at Grinnell College. The author of Behind the Mask of the Strong Black Woman: Voice and the Embodiment of Costly Performance (2009) and To Live More Abundantly: Black Collegiate Women, Howard University, and the Audacity of Dean Lucy Diggs Slowe (2022), she is completing a book manuscript on the matrilineal history of Edith Renfrow Smith, the first Black alumna of Grinnell College. 

In mid-July 2025, I traveled to the Stuart A. Rose Manuscript, Archives, and Rare Book Library in search of a photo of the woman referenced in the headline of a 1900 Marshalltown, IA newspaper article, “Colored Woman Worth $100,000.”  The woman was 30-year-old Eva Pearl Green Francis, a leading figure in the all-Black community of Mound Bayou, MS.  While the article focused on her wealth, I am drawn to the reason this founding mother of the Mississippi Delta town was in Iowa.  Orphaned at age 5 and raised by a step-uncle, Eva Pearl Green Francis (“Miss Eva Pearl”) was visiting the only blood family she had — her paternal aunt Eliza Jane Craig, and her three first cousins, Theodora, Anna Katharine, and Eva Pearl (known as Eva P.).  

My own entry point into Miss Eva Pearl’s story comes from my oral history and archival research focused on the matriline of Mrs. Edith Renfrow Smith (b. 1914).  A super-centenarian who enjoyed a full week of celebrations for her 111^th birthday on July 14, Mrs. Renfrow Smith is not only the first Black woman alumna of Grinnell College but her family’s oral historian, still.  This is a responsibility she took over from her mother, Eva P. (1875-1962), who was named after her first cousin, Miss Eva Pearl of Mound Bayou.  As the family story goes, Eva P. traveled to traveled to Mound Bayou in the 1890s to be a “governess” to her cousin’s children. 

Those familiar with Mound Bayou, one of the earliest and largest all-Black communities founded after the Civil War, will have heard about its co-founders, the cousins Isaiah T. (“I. T.”) Montgomery and Benjamin T. Green.  Formerly enslaved on the plantation of Joseph Davis, the elder brother of Confederate President Jefferson Davis, Montgomery and Green had a dream of founding a Black oasis. In 1887, they bought hundreds of acres of swampland (deemed unfit for white people) halfway between Memphis, TN and Vicksburg, MS from the Louisville, New Orleans & Texas Railway.  By 1907, Mound Bayou’s success as a cotton producing town made it both wealthy and deserving of President Theodore Roosevelt’s moniker for it, “The Jewel of the Delta.”

Eva Pearl Green Francis was the third wife of Benjamin T. Green.  When the 17-year-old married the 34-year-old Green, he was a widower twice over with three children under the age of 8.  Within the first year of their marriage, Miss Eva Pearl gave birth to the first child of Mound Bayou, Benjamin Allen Morris Green (1888-1960).  Her son would grow up to be educated at Fisk University and Harvard Law and after service in WW1 would lead his hometown as “Mayor Green” for more than 40 years (1919-1960).

Miss Eva Pearl is significant not only as a literal town mother but as a businesswoman in her own right. In January 1896, the 25-year-old was the mother of four children and three stepchildren.  When her youngest was just 2 ½ months old, her husband Benjamin T. Green was shot dead in their store, which stood just next door to their prominent house. Within days of his murder, Miss Eva Pearl placed ads in the Memphis and Vicksburg newspapers calmly informing readers that she would be taking over her husband’s businesses. And for the next 30 years, she self-identified in the census as a grocer, store owner, and merchant. She also owned and managed substantial real estate and farmland. 

Despite the enduring relevance of Mound Bayou, very little attention has been placed on the women, like Miss Eva Pearl, who were also drawn to and supportive of the town’s vision of Black freedom, self-support, and prosperity. Of the 98 original settlers (1887-1890), a full third were women. When Miss Eva Pearl spoke in 1900 about her town, her collective “we” included women like her — mothers, entrepreneurs, and citizens.  As she expressed, “We have a city that is exclusively for our race and they have all the advantages that are to be gained by such association. We are proud of what we have done, for it has demonstrated that colored people can govern themselves as well as they can be governed.”

Because of the support of a Franklin Research Grant from the American Philosophical Association, I was able to travel to Mound Bayou and the Rose Library in search of more information about Eva Pearl Green Francis. While her home and business no longer stand, there remains a Green Square and a Green Street. No direct descendants appear to live in Mound Bayou. However, among the churchwomen, business owners, and civil servants I met, when I told them about Miss Eva Pearl and her biography, they were impressed but not surprised. In her, they seemed to recognize the kind of self-possession and town pride they also carry.

The Rose Library houses the extensive Milbourn J. Crowe Collection. For over 40 years, Crowe (1933-2005) was known as Mound Bayou’s town historian, and he founded and served as president of the Mound Bayou Historical Society. Among the several boxes in the collection, of particular interest to me were town property records, several Founders Day celebration booklets, and a few thousand photographs and negatives.

While I did not find a studio portrait of Miss Eva Pearl, I did come across a group photo in which she is the only person named.  That the image was reprinted in the Centennial Celebration booklet of 1987 suggests that her prominence remained in local memory even 40 years after her death.

Attesting to her wealth and standing as a businesswoman were a couple promissory notes for farmland Crowe’s father had rented from her. 

Lastly, the Crowe Collection contained several photographs of Miss Eva Pearl’s son, Mayor Benjamin Green.  A particularly tender image shows an elderly Mayor Green holding a framed photo of Mound Bayou’s two founders, his father, Ben T. Green and I. T. Montgomery.

The research I conducted in Mound Bayou and at the Rose Library this summer are contributing to my book project, You May Call Me Eva P.: Portraits of a Willful Matriline, 1837-1937.  The text is emerging as a first-person narrative told in the voice of Miss Edith’s mother, Eva P.  As I’ve headed to archives and county recorder offices in several states, what I have found has largely corroborated what the family has known about itself, attesting to the accuracy and resiliency of its oral memory, which has been the documentary mode of choice in a family that has had literacy since the 1850s.

My project also speaks to the powerful synergies between oral history and archival collections.  In this regard, the Mound Bayou “Exposeum” is breaking new ground as a memory-keeping institution.  As founder Hermon Johnson, Jr., explains, an exposeum (combining ‘expose’ and ‘museum’) “isn’t just about putting history on display.  It’s about actively finding it, telling it, and making sure our truth is seen.”  In my own efforts to tell a story of overlooked actors and experiences in ways that can move beyond the academy, I am also deeply grateful to the Rose Library staff, especially Rachel Detzler (Reading Room Manager) and Gabrielle Dudley (Assistant Director of Public Services) who were not only helpful but interested in the meaning of their collection for my work.   

I see both the Mound Bayou Exposeum and the Rose Library as critical caretakers of memory, helping us tell more honest and complete stories of our past.  I am also humbled by the persistence of oral memories.  Not only can they give a person extended life, they can enable us to know what to look for in the archives.