Prentiss, MS

Prentiss is the Jefferson Davis County seat, with 976 people at the 2020 census. The town was first called Blountville, received a railroad depot when the Pearl & Leaf Rivers Railroad was completed in 1903, and was renamed Prentiss that same year for landowner Prentiss Webb Berry. U.S. 84 passes around the town, while Mississippi 13 and 42 connect it with nearby communities.

Prentiss carries an important Black educational history. Jonas Edward and Bertha LaBranche Johnson founded the Prentiss Normal and Industrial Institute in June 1907; the school grew into a high school and junior college with hundreds of students, faculty, buildings, and farmland. The institute closed as an educational facility in 1989, but its historic district and alumni work keep the campus story present. The former railroad line now forms the Longleaf Trace, a 44-mile rail trail that begins in Hattiesburg and passes through Prentiss. A county seat, a school founded during Jim Crow, and a converted rail line give Prentiss several different histories in one town.