Mississippi rarely tops American road trip lists, but a 450-mile drive from Mobile, Alabama to Nashville, Tennessee cuts straight through the heart of the state – and through some of the most important music and civil rights history in the country.
The logical first stop is Jackson, the state capital, home to the Civil Rights Museum, which traces Black resistance in Mississippi from slavery through to the 1970s. It's sobering stuff, but the city also rewards food lovers: Stamp's Super Burger, a family-run spot near Jackson State University, draws queues out the door, while Brent's Drugs does classic diner breakfasts and hides a speakeasy called Apothecary out back.
Heading north into the flat Delta farmland, Indianola is the town that raised B.B. King – its museum dedicated to the blues legend easily fills a few hours, with Southern food across the street at The Blue Biscuit. Nearby Greenwood has a lively main street and the slick Alluvian hotel, and sits close to Money, where 14-year-old Emmett Till was lynched in 1955; a statue of him in Greenwood's Rail Spike Park is one stop on the state's Freedom Trail.
Clarksdale is where the trip gets loud. Legendary juke joints like Red's and Ground Zero – part-owned by Morgan Freeman – keep live blues alive nightly. The quirky Shack Up Inn, a cluster of restored sharecroppers' shacks just outside town, is the most memorable place to sleep, and downtown is walkable enough to browse record shops like Cat Head between meals.
The mood shifts in Oxford, a handsome university town with Southern charm. There's the James Meredith statue on the Ole Miss campus (he was the university's first Black student, admitted amid violent resistance), William Faulkner's wooded home Rowan Oak, and Square Books, one of the best bookshops in the United States. Big Bad Breakfast lives up to its name.
Elvis fans should budget time for Tupelo, where Presley was born in 1935 and lived until his family moved to Memphis in 1948. The Elvis Birthplace Museum includes the small frame house where he was born, and Johnnie's Drive-In still lets fans sit in his old booth. Hotel Tupelo lends guests bikes for free – handy for a self-guided tour of the singer's early haunts.
Finally, skip the interstate and take the Natchez Trace Parkway, a 444-mile route following a pathway used for some 10,000 years by the Choctaw, Chickasaw and Natchez peoples. The 40mph speed limit forces a slower pace through forests, farmland and wildflowers – roughly 10 hours end to end, or pick it up in Tupelo as a scenic run into Tennessee.
For UK travellers, flying into Nashville, Memphis or New Orleans (all served by direct or one-stop routes) makes more sense than connecting flights into Mississippi itself, and an identical route works well starting from New Orleans. Amtrak also crosses the state's south if you'd rather see the coast by rail. This is a trip for travellers who like their holidays with substance: music heritage, civil rights history and genuinely good food, all strung along quiet roads.
