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Sumner is an incorporated town in Tallahatchie County, Mississippi, and it is one of the county's two county seats, serving the western district on the west side of the Tallahatchie River, while Charleston serves the eastern district.

As of the 2020 census, Sumner had a population of 278, down from 316 in 2010, and the town covers 0.55 square miles of land.

Sumner was founded in 1872 by Joseph Burton Sumner, who donated land for the railroad right-of-way, the railroad park, and the courthouse square and jail lot, and the town was incorporated in 1900 and named for its founder and first mayor.

The Tallahatchie County Courthouse in Sumner was built in 1902 on a lot donated by Joseph B. Sumner, burned in 1908, and was rebuilt in 1909.

Sumner's courthouse was the site of the September 1955 murder trial of J. W. Milam and Roy Bryant, charged in the lynching and murder of Emmett Till, a teenage African-American boy from Chicago whose body was found on the bank of the Tallahatchie River, and the two men were acquitted by an all-male, all-white jury.

The brutality of Till's murder and the acquittal generated national outrage and activism, and Till became an icon of the Civil Rights Movement.

In 1990 the Sumner courthouse was designated a state landmark by the Mississippi Department of Archives and History, and in 2007 the Tallahatchie Board of Supervisors appointed the Emmett Till Memorial Commission, which made a formal apology to the Till family and undertook to restore the courthouse as an interpretive center.

The restored courthouse houses the Emmett Till Interpretive Center, which opened in 2012, and the courthouse and center were designated part of the Emmett Till and Mamie Till-Mobley National Monument in 2023.

Sumner's population peaked at 662 in the 1940 census, and its later decline reflected the Great Migration, as many African-American residents left for California and the West Coast during and after World War II and farm mechanization reduced the need for farm labor.

Sumner is served by the West Tallahatchie School District, with R. H. Bearden Elementary School and West Tallahatchie High School as the zoned schools, and Coahoma Community College is the designated community college.