Emergency Biohazard Cleanup Services in Belzoni, MS

Belzoni is a city in Humphreys County, Mississippi, on the Yazoo River in the Mississippi Delta region, and it is the county seat of Humphreys County.

As of the 2020 census, Belzoni had a population of 1,938, with 758 households and 879 housing units.

Belzoni's motto is Heart of the Delta, and the city was named for the nineteenth-century Italian archaeologist and explorer Giovanni Battista Belzoni.

The area that became Belzoni was originally known as Greasy Row because of saloons along the Yazoo River, and a charter was granted for the village of Belzoni in 1895; it became the county seat when Humphreys County was formed in 1918.

Belzoni was named the Farm-Raised Catfish Capital of the World in 1976 by Governor Cliff Finch, and about 60 percent of farm-raised catfish in the United States are grown within a 65-mile radius of the city.

Belzoni is known for the World Catfish Festival held every April since 1976, which attracts over 10,000 visitors annually and includes a catfish eating contest and the Miss Catfish pageant.

Belzoni was the site of the 1955 murder of the Reverend George W. Lee, an African-American minister seeking voting rights for disenfranchised Black residents of the Delta, who is considered by many the first martyr of the modern civil rights movement, and a Mississippi Freedom Trail marker honors him near his burial site.

The Mississippi Blues Trail has two markers in Belzoni, one for singer Denise LaSalle, who spent her childhood there, and another for Turner's Drug Store, an early sponsor of radio shows broadcasting Delta blues where Sonny Boy Williamson II and Elmore James performed.

Belzoni's attractions include the Catfish Museum, the Jaketown Museum with artifacts from a nearby Native American mound, Mama's Dream World museum, and Wister Gardens, and the city sponsored the Catfish on Parade project of fiberglass catfish decorated by local artists.

Belzoni's own ZIP code is 39038.