Bluff Park - Memorials and Louisiana Connections

Bluff Park - Memorials and Louisiana Connections. Natchez Trails. The Richard Wright historic marker recognizes the city’s most famous 20th-century writer. Born in 1908 on a cotton plantation near Natchez, Wright spent his early childhood in town in the home of his grandparents at 20 East Woodlawn Avenue (pictured above). In 1940, Wright’s novel Native Son was published and became the first book by an African American selected by the Book of the Month Club. , , The Rhythm Club monument in the Bluff Park is a memorial to 209 African Americans who died in one of America’s deadliest nightclub fires. A historic marker designates the site of the Rhythm Club on St. Catherine Street near the intersection with Martin Luther King Street. On April 23, 1940, a large crowd came to hear the popular Chicago jazz group, Walter Barnes and His Royal Creolians. The club blocked exit doors to keep out gatecrashers and decorated the interior with Spanish moss, sprayed with a flammable insect spray. The monument sits in the area of the bluff park that was more commonly used by African Americans. , , Concordia Parish and the City of Vidalia, Louisiana, on the west bank of the river, are named for the 1798 Post of Concord and its Spanish commandant, Don Jose Vidal. Vidalia was incorporated in 1811. The 1927 flood of the Mississippi River devastated the city (pictured above), and the U.S. Corps of Engineers relocated the town south of its original site in 1938-1939. , , In 1940, a bridge opened to traffic between Natchez and Vidalia, and the ferry that connected the cities ceased to operate. The bridge was initially a toll bridge, and the white columns that now frame the Canal Street entrance to the Natchez Visitor Center originally encircled the toll booth. In 1990, a south span, echoing the design of the first, opened to handle the increasing traffic between Mississippi and Louisiana.