24/7 Trauma & Biohazard Cleanup Near West Tchula Tchula, MS

Tchula is a town in Holmes County, Mississippi, in the Mississippi Delta, sitting along Tchula Lake, an old river channel from which it takes its name.

Tchula's first permanent settlement dates to the 1830s.

At the 2020 census, Tchula had a population of 1,652, down from 2,332 in 2000, with 667 households and 703 housing units.

U.S. Route 49E passes through the center of Tchula, and Mississippi Highway 12 leads southeast about 11 miles to Lexington, the Holmes County seat.

A 2015 Guardian article described Tchula as the poorest community in the United States, and in 2010 it had the fifth-lowest median household income of American places with more than 1,000 people.

Eddie James Carthan became Tchula's first Black mayor in 1982, and Yvonne Brown, mayor from 2001 to 2009, was the first Black Republican woman elected mayor in the country.

Amtrak's City of New Orleans passes through Tchula on Canadian National tracks but does not stop there, with the nearest station at Greenwood, about 25 miles to the north.

Tchula is served by the Holmes County School District, and the Holmes County Learning Center is located in Tchula.

A Mississippi Blues Trail marker documents Tchula's blues history, including musicians Woodrow Adams, Jimmy Dawkins, Lester Davenport, and Little Smokey Smothers.

Voting-rights pioneer Hartman Turnbow was from the Tchula area.