Greenville

Understand

Greenville was named after American Revolutionary War hero Nathanael Greene. Greenville is on the eastern bank of Lake Ferguson, an oxbow lake left from an old channel of the Mississippi River.

Get in

By plane

Mid Delta Regional Airport, northeast of downtown Greenville, serves the city and the Mississippi Delta region. It has commercial air service provided by Boutique Air to Dallas and Atlanta.

By car

U.S. Highway 82, U.S. Highway 61 and the Great River Road (Mississippi Highway 1) are the main transportation arteries through the Greenville area. U.S. Highway 82 is a major part of the Mississippi Delta's transportation network, as it connects to Interstate 55 and other major four-lane highways. In 2010, a new four-lane Greenville Bridge crossed the Mississippi River south of Greenville into Lake Village, Arkansas. This $206-million cable-stayed span, the longest of its kind in the continental United States, replaced the now-demolished Benjamin G. Humphreys Bridge as the primary bridge.

Get around

Rental cars are available at the airport. Car is the primary way to travel around Greenville. Limited taxi services operate throughout the city but are not common to find. There is also a bus station on Highway 82, although it is only open for a few hours each day and sends and receives a very limited number of buses. Walking around the downtown area can also an efficient way to get around, although the downtown area of Greenville is notoriously unsafe and crime-ridden even in the day.

Stay safe

Crime

The town is notorious for its bad crime, often considered to be among the worst in the country. The downtown area in particular and much of the town north of Highway 82 (this highway is often seen as a sort of "dividing line" by many) is continuously ridden with theft, assault and other crimes, sometimes even in daylight and in popular areas such as near the library or churches. If you must go into more dangerous parts of Greenville, do so in the day, and be accompanied with other people; it is less dangerous for a woman to go along with men. The most that can be done to protect yourself is to use the most common sense as possible, such as always locking your car and never leaving valuable items inside, staying away from dark and deserted areas and not taking dangerous routes when it isn't necessary, and not drawing too much attention to oneself (i.e., wearing expensive jewelry or wearing revealing clothes). While police have made some attempts to monitor and patrol downtown Greenville more, many residents complain that the town's police force is still very ineffective. Much of south Greenville - for example, along Highway 1 South near the Nelco Movie Theater and Country Club, South Main Street near the Bowmanor Subdivision and Bayou Road, and the area surrounding Cypress Road - is considered to be generally safe and inhabited by middle- to upper-class families, although some crime occasionally drifts into these areas as well.

Racism

Greenville is a town of ever-present and prominent racial discord, despite moderate progress since the 1950s. Many older, more upper-class whites (a small yet powerful minority) in particular still harbor views of varying degrees of racism, although this phenomenon is significantly less common in most middle-aged or younger whites (yet still very pronounced in others). Socializing and mixing with blacks too much could be discouraged by some middle-aged white parents today, though it would have been a lot more common a few decades ago.

Go next

• Cleveland
• Indianola