Camp Shelby's Other Story: The African American Military History Museum

The African American Military History Museum in Hattiesburg occupies the old USO Club Number Two, the segregated facility built in nineteen forty-two to serve Black servicemen training at nearby Camp Shelby. The building itself tells the story. While white soldiers used a separate USO club, African American troops gathered here, and the performers who came through, played to segregated audiences in a segregated town while training to defend a country that did not fully extend its rights to them.

The museum, opened in two thousand nine, documents the service of African Americans in every branch of the military from the Revolutionary War through the present, with particular emphasis on the soldiers who trained at Camp Shelby during World War Two. The museum also features an exhibit on the Buffalo Soldiers. Many Black veterans who came back to Mississippi after the war went on to take part in the civil rights movement.