Civil Rights Tour

Jackson

Civil Rights Movement Driving Tour

DEAR JACKSONIANS AND VISITORS

Visit Jackson is the official Destination Marketing Organization for the City of Jackson. We count it as a privilege to have you in our great city and we welcome you!

The City of Jackson has been an integral part of the Civil Rights Movement over the years. We dedicate this Civil Rights Driving Tour to the memory and legacy of all who dedicated and lost their lives in the fight for freedom, the fight for change and the fight for equality.

The City of Jackson is a diverse community composed of artists, musicians, teachers, restaurateurs, doctors, lawyers, business people, hotel owners, moms and pops who call this place home. They all strive to take advantage of every opportunity to make Jackson the best it can be! Jackson is encircled by rich cultural events and activities that provide the perfect backdrop to remember the sacrifices of those before us, honor their perseverance, and celebrate their triumphant spirit. The people who work, play and live here do so with passion, grace and heart; they continue to resound the attitudes of progress and development that were exemplified during the Civil Rights Movement.

Jackson has faced and endured so many challenges and birthed so many historical marks that have shaped America, it’s exciting to see the progress that we’ve made. To make these strides without trepidation and to see this all culminate at the new Mississippi Civil Rights Museum is almost unfathomable.

Jackson has a great culinary offering that you can take advantage of while you’re here. You can enjoy a variety of food options from award winning soul food at Bully’s; authentic smokes, pig ears and tamales at Big Apple Inn; and even Cajun pasta at Johnny T’s, just to name a few.

Again we welcome you to the “City with Soul”!

T O U R T H E JACKSON CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT DRIVING TOUR A Project of the

City of Jackson, Mississippi The Civil Rights Driving Tour includes 81 key Jackson sites associated with four decades of civil rights activity in Jackson. Much of this activity has remained unacknowledged over the years, allowing the record of struggle and achievements of Jackson’s citizens to remain silent - silent to their bravery; silent to the history of injustice; silent to the possibilities of learning from those revolutionary events. With the release of this 4th edition of the tour, we have assured that Jackson’s historical legacy is acknowledged and used as a source of learning and understanding, and that those who stood for justice are honored.

The Jackson Civil Rights Movement Driving Tour features a variety of public buildings, businesses, churches, and residences associated with the movement in Jackson. Sites were selected for their historic significance as meeting places, locations where important events took place, and association with notable individuals and organizations involved with the Jackson Civil Rights Movement. While many homes and churches across the city provided crucial meeting space and a refuge for movement participants, limited space allows the mention of only a few.

Both primary and secondary sources were used to develop the content of the tour's narrative, which has been reviewed and commented on by a group of individuals associated with the movement. However, it should be noted that the Jackson Civil Rights Movement Driving Tour is a work in progress and will be revised as deemed necessary.

This edition of the brochure highlights the Jackson Nonviolent Movement (JNM), which was organized by Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) and Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). The movement encouraged high school and college students to carry out direct action protest against segregated public facilities in Jackson in 1961 and 1962. Among the major leaders were Diane Nash, Lester McKinnie, James Bevel and Bernard Lafayette from the successful Nashville, Tennessee lunch counter sit-in which ended May 10, 1960. The JNM leaders worked with the Jackson State College student rebellion which caused some student expulsions including Joyce and Dorie Ladner who transferred to Tougaloo and continued working the Nonviolent Action Group. Many of the JNM leaders were jailed and charged with contributing to the delinquency of minors.

T O U THE JAC KSON CIVIL RIGHTS

A

P r o j e c t

o f

t h e

C i t y

The tour also highlights the Jackson Movement (JM), which was the greatest grassroots upsurge in Mississippi history, and in many ways a continuation of the JNM. The JM started with the combined NAACP North & West Jackson Youth Councils both consisting of mostly high school and some college students. The students were encouraged by Medgar Evers, guided by John Salter, a Tougaloo professor, and supported by the local NAACP membership, community sympathizers, SNCC and CORE. The community was organized to support the boycotts and pickets, only when bail money was available. The JM began with the Christmas Boycott of downtown Jackson merchants in December, 1962, and ended on June 18, 1963, shortly after the assassination of Medgar Evers, when President John F. Kennedy and Attorney General Robert Kennedy negotiated a deal with Mayor Thompson to restore community order by granting the Black community several provisions (see Site 29).

Additional Legacy Sites are also noted along the tour route. These locations exhibit how the legacy of the Civil Rights Movement has continued in subsequent decades, as well as how veterans of the Civil Rights Movement have been honored and their work commemorated throughout Jackson.

Thank you for your participation in the Civil Rights Driving Tour. As with any historical document, oversights and differences in perspective are possible. We welcome your feedback and advice with regard to this fourth edition of the Tour brochure.

1

U R

MOVEM ENT DRIVING TOU R

o f

J a c k s o n ,

M i s s i s s i p p i

The tour covers four different geographical areas of the city:

Begins On

NEIGHBORHOOD ONE Downtown Jackson (Sites 1-32)

Page 3

NEIGHBORHOOD TWO The Jackson State University Community (Sites 33-60)

Page 25

NEIGHBORHOOD THREE The Medgar Evers Neighborhood (Sites 61-76)

Page 43

NEIGHBORHOOD FOUR The Tougaloo College Community (Sites 77-81)

Page 55

The complete tour leaves from Smith Robertson Museum and Cultural Center, which is located in the Farish Street Neighborhood Historic District of downtown Jackson. It is recommended that you begin with Downtown Jackson as an introduction and continue as time permits. Directions are included for visiting each of the geographical areas separately, leaving from the Smith Robertson Museum each time. A tour map is provided and blue tour signs are located along the tour route to identify each site.

To reach the Smith Robertson Museum, take the High Street exit off I-55 North. Continue on High Street across North State Street past the New Capitol. Continue across Lamar Street. Just before High Street curves to the right, bear left on Dr. Jessie Mosley Drive. The Smith Robertson Museum is directly ahead on the left.

2

O

N 22

21

23 24

20

19

18 17 16 14 1 13 12 11

15

2 3

10 4

9 25

5 6

26

27

28

32

29 30

31

8

3

N

E

LEGEND 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14

7

15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32

Smith Robertson Museum and Cultural Center Mississippi State Capitol (“New Capitol”) First Baptist Sanctuary Historic Galloway United Methodist Church Former Jackson Municipal Public Library Old Capitol Inn (Former YWCA) Mississippi State Fairgrounds WLBT Television Station (Channel 3) Former Greyhound Bus Station Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law Collins Funeral Home Civil Rights Groups’ Offices Historic Central United Methodist Church Central United Methodist Church Family Life Center (Former YWCA) Former Medical Office of Dr. Albert B. Britton, MD Former Law Offices Former Stevens Kitchen (note cornerstone on north corner) Farish Street Baptist Church The Site of the Poor People’s Corporation Greater Blair Street A.M.E. Zion Pentecostal Temple Church of our Lord Jesus Christ (Former Morning Star Baptist Church) Former Site of New Jerusalem Baptist Church Site of Famous Lee Edward Hotel (Demolished) George Washington Carver Library King Edward Hotel The Pinnacle Building and offices (Former site of F. W. Woolworth Store) Former Site of Walgreens Drug Store James O. Eastland Federal Courthouse Jackson City Hall Jail and Former Municipal Court Building Hinds County Courthouse Davis Planetarium (Former Trailways Bus Station)

4

NEIGHBORHOOD ONE: DOWNTOWN JACKSON 1

528 BLOOM STREET, SMITH ROBERTSON MUSEUM AND CULTURAL CENTER

Named for the successful barber Smith Robertson, Jackson’s first African American alderman, this 1894 structure was renovated in the late 1920s and was Jackson’s first public school for African Americans. The school was closed in 1971 after public school desegregation. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1977 and reopened through the efforts of Dr. Jessie Mosley and Dr. Alferdteen Harrison in 1984 as a museum to interpret the history of African American Mississippians. Its collection includes artifacts related to civil rights leaders Medgar Evers, Aaron Henry, James Meredith, Clarie Collins Harvey, and others. The African American author Richard Wright (1908 – 1960), who wrote Native Son and Black Boy, attended Smith Robertson School from 1923 until 1925.

As you exit the museum, note its setting in the historically segregated African American community near the state capitol building and downtown Jackson. Turn right on Dr. Jessie Mosley Drive. Go to the stop sign and bear right heading east on High Street through two traffic lights to the state capitol on your right. Drive into the capitol grounds.

2

400 HIGH STREET, MISSISSIPPI STATE CAPITOL (“New Capitol”) In the New Capitol building, completed in 1903, the Mississippi legislature institutionalized “Jim Crow” practices. For example, the legislature passed two bills in 1962 that kept the Jackson city bus line segregated.

In the late ‘50s and ‘60s, the Mississippi State Sovereignty Commission, a state-created and state-funded organization, coordinated its surveillance and disruption of civil rights activities from offices on the fourth floor of the Capitol, and later from the Woolfolk Building on West Street. From 1960 to 1964, under the leadership of Governor Ross Barnett, the Commission 5

also funded Citizens’ Councils of Mississippi, white supremacist organizations formed to protect “states’ rights and racial integrity” that opposed racial desegregation and those who supported it.

During the 1965 special summer session of the legislature, the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP) sponsored three weeks of demonstrations at the New Capitol demanding electoral reform. More than 600 demonstrators were arrested.

The James Meredith “March Against Fear” culminated here on June 26, 1966, with a rally of about 20,000 persons gathered on the north side. Speakers included Meredith, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., NAACP Field Secretary Charles Evers, and NAACP State Chairman Aaron Henry.

Meredith was shot June 5th during the “March,” and on June 16th in Greenwood, Stokely Carmichael shouted the slogan “We want Black Power,” which tended to temporarily alienate some whites, this caused African Americans to look at themselves in positive ways, which developed concepts like “Black Pride,” and Afro-centric educational programs.

Leaving the New Capitol grounds, turn right onto High Street, then right onto President Street. A block down on your left is the sanctuary of First Baptist Church.

3

431 NORTH STATE STREET, FIRST BAPTIST SANCTUARY Medgar Evers led the first attempt to integrate First Baptist in 1963. It was not until 1973 that Rev. R. L. T. Smith and Rev. Emmett Burns became the first African Americans to worship with the congregation since the end of the Civil War. Lawrence Manguary became its first African American member in 1976.

Take the first right turn onto Mississippi Street and the first left turn onto Congress Street. On your right is...

4

305 NORTH CONGRESS STREET, HISTORIC GALLOWAY UNITED METHODIST CHURCH

In 1963, contrary to the policy of the national United Methodist Church, Galloway’s board voted to bar African Americans from worship at their church. When five African Americans were denied admission to Galloway that spring, the pastor, Dr. W. B. Selah, and the associate minister, Jerry Furr, resigned. Others were 6

turned away and even jailed, but finally, in 1966, the Galloway board rescinded its race policy and permitted all to worship.

From Galloway, turn left onto Yazoo Street, go two blocks, and stop near the stop sign at State Street. On your left is...

5 301 NORTH STATE STREET, FORMER JACKSON MUNICIPAL PUBLIC LIBRARY On March 27, 1961, nine African American students who were members of the Tougaloo NAACP Youth Council participated in Mississippi’s first civil rights “read-in” at the whites-only Jackson Municipal Public Library. The “Tougaloo Nine” entered the library, and, after refusing police orders to “disperse and move on,” they were charged with breach of the peace and spent 32 hours in jail (Site 30).

Across State Street on the Southeast corner of Yazoo Street and State Street is...

226 NORTH STATE STREET, OLD CAPITOL INN BED AND BREAKFAST FORMER YWCA In the 1960s, this building was the Jackson headquarters for the YWCA. Though the national YWCA was a progressive institution, facilities at the headquarters in Jackson were available to whites only. However, Mrs. Barbara Barnes, director of the Y’s main office, and Mrs. Lillie Bell Jones, director of the Marino Jones Branch YWCA for African Americans, were gradually able to integrate the YWCA in Jackson. Dr. Cleopatra Thompson became the Y’s first African American board member in 1967, and Mrs. Gwendolyn Loper, also an African American, was elected president of the board in 1974.

6

Continue south on State Street to Amite Street. Turn left. At the corner of Amite Street and North Street is...

7

LEGACY SITE WILLIAM F. WINTER ARCHIVES AND HISTORY BUILDING, 200 NORTH STREET The Archives and Records Services Division of the Mississippi Department of Archives and History is located at this site. The division oversees the state archives and the public reading rooms, where documents, photographs, and other items from the state’s historical collections are made available.

One of the most prominent collections managed by MDAH is the digital archive of the records produced by the Mississippi State Sovereignty Commission, which functioned as the state’s official counter civil rights agency from 1956-1973. MDAH provides an indexed full text version of the collection at the agency’s website, consisting of over 133,000 pages from Commission files and 900 photographs.

The building is named after William F. Winter, who served the State of Mississippi as Governor from 1980 to 1984, Lieutenant Governor from 1972 to 1976, and Treasurer from 1964 to 1968. Call 601-576-6876 or visit www.mdah.state.ms.us to learn about the facility’s hours of operation, current exhibits, and special events, including their regular “History Is Lunch” lecture series.

At the corner of Jefferson and Amite Street is an entrance to the Mississippi State Fairgrounds. (From this entrance, the Livestock Barn and Arena buildings are 500 feet ahead to the left.)

7 MISSISSIPPI STATE FAIRGROUNDS - JEFFERSON STREET AT AMITE STREET For decades leading up to the 1960s, Mississippi staged two annual state fairs - one for whites only, followed by a “colored” fair. October 16 & 17, 1961 the Jackson Nonviolent Movement (JNM), along with the NAACP and its youth councils, demonstrated at the “colored” fair, carrying signs reading “No Jim Crow Fair for Us.” Police with dogs arrested seven protesters. Four of the seven protestors who were arrested were Tougaloo students. The 8

remaining three were JNM leaders Diane Nash, James Bevel and Bernard Lafayette, and they were charged with contributing to the delinquency of minors (Sites 46).

Again on October 16 & 17, 1962 the JM organized students to boycott & to picket the fair. Demonstrators outside the Fair were charged by German Shepard dogs. Bevels and Lafayette were given sentences of four consecutive 6-month jail terms and were asked to leave town. Diane Nash tried to abandon her appeal of the same conviction. She was later charged and given ten days for refusing to sit in “the colored” section of the courtroom.

In the spring of 1963, Mayor Allen Thompson boasted that he would cage 10,000 African Americans on the fairgrounds, where two livestock exhibit buildings had been converted into prison compounds with hog wire fences. On May 31, after a mass children’s meeting at Farish Street Baptist Church (Site 18), 400-500 students ages 11 to 20 were arrested and incarcerated here.

In 1965, the fairgrounds were again used as a detention center after the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP) staged a mass march to the legislature protesting the exclusion of African American candidates from the electoral process.

From the corner of Amite and Jefferson Streets, turn south on Jefferson Street and drive through four stoplights. On the right just before the intersection of Silas Brown and Jefferson Streets is...

8

715 SOUTH JEFFERSON STREET, WLBT TELEVISION STATION (Channel 3)

On April 15, 1965, the Office of Communication of the United Church of Christ petitioned the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to deny renewal of Lamar Life Insurance Company’s broadcast license to operate WLBT. The petition was filed on the grounds that the station had failed to serve Jackson’s African American community, which constituted 40 percent of its viewers at the time. It was the first such petition ever filed by a national religious denomination and included such charges as failure to use courtesy titles, discrimination in news and program content, and lack of African American entertainers. Portions of the documentation for the petition were secretly prepared by progressive white women.

Lamar Life Insurance Company eventually lost its broadcast license to Communications Improvement, Inc., a company with 91 percent African American ownership; it assumed operation of WLBT in June 1971 and 9

hired William H. Dilday as the first African American manager of a network-affiliated television station in the United States.

Leaving WLBT on Jefferson Street, turn right, go to the light, turn right onto Silas Brown Street, then right on State Street, and travel seven blocks to Amite Street. Turn left on Amite. Continuing west, at the intersection of Lamar Street and Amite Street, look to your right as you continue on Amite Street.

9 219 NORTH LAMAR STREET, FORMER GREYHOUND BUS STATION On May 24, 1961, nine Freedom Riders, who were taking part in protests throughout the South against segregation in interstate travel, were arrested at the Greyhound bus station. Freedom Riders continued to come to Jackson throughout the summer filling the jails while serving 39 days in an effort to appeal their conviction. On May 28th seventeen came bringing the total to more than 328 arrested in Jackson—two thirds college students, three-fourths men and more than half were black. They were housed in bad conditions at the city jail (Site 30) and the county prison farm in Raymond; and some were transported to the state penitentiary at Parchman.

On other occasions when the JNM/SNCC workers like James Bevel and Barnard Lafayette recruited local students, some who were younger than 18, to purchase interstate tickets and go into the white waiting room, the police arrested the students and the JNM/SNCC workers and charged JNM/ SNCC workers with contributing to the delinquency of minors. They had to serve six consecutive month jail terms.

Continue on Amite Street to Farish Street.

LEGACY SITE MCCOY FEDERAL BUILDING, 100 W. CAPITOL STREET On the southwest corner of Farish Street and Amite Street stands the McCoy Federal Building.

In 1983, this building was named in honor of Dr. A. H. McCoy and it became the first federal building in the nation to be named after an African American. The structure stands on the site where the Jackson Urban League, founded in 1967, was located, along with several African American professional offices including those of Dr. McCoy, Dr. Redmond, the Jackson Advocate, Security Life Insurance Company, 10

and civil rights attorneys R. Jess Brown, Carsie Hall, and Jack Young, Sr. (See Site 41 for more information.)

At the corner of Amite Street and Farish Street turn right onto Farish Street and go north into the main commercial area of the Farish Street Neighborhood Historic District.

LEGACY SITE FARISH STREET HISTORIC DISTRICT This area was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1980 and designated the Farish Street Neighborhood Historic District by the City of Jackson in 1994. Plans are now being developed to revitalize this important part of Jackson’s past.

It is currently being restored and refurbished to evoke the days when the intersection of Farish and Griffith Streets was the heart of Jackson’s African American community pride. This pride was regularly expressed in the pages of the Jackson Advocate and the Mississippi Enterprise, two African American community weekly newspapers. The Advocate, has operated on or near Farish Street for over 74 years.

In the Farish Street area in the 1960s, civil rights workers and members of the African American community were entertained at the historic Alamo Theater, Palace Auditorium, and the Crystal Palace; and dined at Stevens Kitchen, the Home Dining Room, the Big Apple Inn, and Peaches. Across from the Alamo, they bought peanuts from the Peanut Man and sassafras root from Mr. Amos, a blind street vendor.

About two-thirds of the way down the first block on the left was...

10 233 NORTH FARISH STREET, LAWYERS’ COMMITTEE FOR CIVIL RIGHTS UNDER LAW Founded in 1963 at the request of President John F. Kennedy and often called “the President’s Committee,” the Lawyers’ Committee was a group of volunteer attorneys from across the country that came to the state to represent persons who could not afford legal services in civil rights cases. When the Committee started its work, there were only three civil rights attorneys in Mississippi to handle the hundreds of cases that were clogging the court system. This group and those at Sites 12 and 16 made up an impressive legal advisory committee for the Mississippi Movement. When this office closed in 1985, nearly 200 Black attorneys were practicing in the state.

Continue north on Farish Street to...

11

11 415 NORTH FARISH STREET, COLLINS FUNERAL HOME In 1961, Mrs. Clarie Collins Harvey, owner of Collins Funeral Home, organized Woman Power Unlimited, along with other charter members Dr. Jessie Mosley and Mrs. AME Logan. The group ministered to the needs of Freedom Riders, sending food, clothes, linens, and reading materials to them in jail, and renting houses in which they could stay after their release (Sites 40, 41 & 46).

After Medgar Evers’ funeral at the Masonic Temple (Site 45), some 4,000 mourners marched to Collins Funeral Home, where Evers’ body was prepared for burial at Arlington National Cemetery. From the funeral home, some of the mourners headed toward Capitol Street singing freedom songs and were met by policemen carrying clubs and accompanied by dogs. Some marchers responded by throwing bricks, bottles, rocks, and other debris. David Dennis of CORE, Gloster Current of the NAACP, and Justice Department lawyer John Doar persuaded the crowd to disperse, but not before John Salter and Ed King had been beaten, jailed and charged with inciting a riot. Dorie Ladner of SNCC and a dozen other Jacksonians were also arrested. Later Salter and King were in a near-death car accident and Salter left town.

Continue along Farish Street to...

12 507 ½ NORTH FARISH STREET, CIVIL RIGHTS GROUPS’ OFFICES In 1955, the NAACP’s new Mississippi Field Secretary, Medgar Wiley Evers, opened his first office here with wife, Myrlie, as his secretary. Within a year, they moved to the Masonic Temple on Lynch Street.

Dr. Alvin Poussaint opened a medical clinic here and provided health services to activists. Also the Medical Committee for Human Rights MCHR was headquartered here (also see Site 48). It sponsored volunteer medical personnel who came to Mississippi for one to two weeks and often accompanied the 1964 summer college volunteers.

Legal organizations located at this site included the National Lawyers’ Guild, the Lawyers’ Constitutional Defense Committee (LCDC) and the American Civil Liberties Union. Other activists who occupied this site for a short time included COFO (Site 44), the Mississippi Freedom Democratic 12

Party, Friends of Children of the Mississippi Head Start program, and the Medical Committee for Human Rights. Dr. James Anderson and Dr. Robert Smith were among those who assisted the committee in its work, taking care of the medical needs of many of the civil rights workers.

Directly across the street is...

13 512 NORTH FARISH STREET, HISTORIC CENTRAL UNITED METHODIST CHURCH This church and its historically African American congregation were pioneers in the Jackson Civil Rights Movement, hosting an annual meeting of the Mississippi Negro Democrats Association as early as 1951. This church, Farish Street Baptist Church and Greater Blair Street A.M.E.Z. Church were among the 20 churches where nightly mass meeting were often held in support of 1962-63 boycott of Jackson merchants.

Freedom Schools or voter education classes were held at these churches during the 1964 Freedom Summer. Central United Methodist pastors who supported the movement included Rev. Wendell Taylor and Rev. Henry Clay.

14 517 NORTH FARISH STREET, CENTRAL UNITED METHODIST CHURCH FAMILY LIFE CENTER (FORMER YWCA) Constructed in 1965 after a major fund-raising effort, this building once housed the Marino Jones Branch YWCA, which had been organized since 1942 as the “colored” YWCA. Its director, Mrs. Lillie Bell Jones, supported the NAACP and the Jackson movement, and was a member of Woman Power Unlimited. She provided cold water and a resting place inside the YWCA during the May 31, 1963 children’s march and demonstrations on Farish Street. When children were chased onto the grounds, she sheltered them by telling police they could not arrest children on YWCA property.

13

15 527 ½ NORTH FARISH STREET, FORMER MEDICAL OFFICE OF DR. ALBERT B. BRITTON, MD Dr. Albert B. Britton, Jr. opened his medical practice here in 1948 after being decorated with the Bronze Star for Excellent Medical Service in the U. S. Army Combat Division, and completing medical training. His most famous patient was Medgar Evers who died June 12, 1963 at the University Medical Center while Britton looked on because he could not practice medicine in the segregated facility.

In 1965, Drs. Britton, James Anderson and Robert Smith became the first Black physicians admitted to membership in the Central Medical Association, the Mississippi State Medical Association, and the American Medical Association.

Because of segregation, the Delta Ministry rented office space here in 1967 for Representative Robert G. Clark, the first Black elected in 1966 to the Mississippi Legislature since Reconstruction.

Continue north on Farish Street to...

16 538 ½ NORTH FARISH STREET, FORMER LAW OFFICES The first use of this building as a civil rights law office began in 1964, when Marian Wright (now Edelman) set up the NAACP Legal Defense Fund (LDF) Office here. Wright helped Jack Young, Sr., R. Jess Brown and Carsie Hall secure bond and bail money until she became the first African American female admitted to the Mississippi Bar. Other LDF lawyers who worked here before 1970 included Henry Aronson, Paul & Iris Brest, Reuben Anderson, Melvyn Leventhal, and Fred Banks.

LDF provided counsel for Black civil rights in Jackson as early as the 1948 Gladys Noel Bates and R. Jess Brown case, and the 1962 James Meredith suit to integrate the University of Mississippi.

17 604 NORTH FARISH STREET, FORMER STEVENS KITCHEN (note cornerstone on north corner) From the late 1950s through the 1960s, the upscale restaurant at this location was the meeting place for local professionals and for many of those who came from out of town to help with the Civil Rights Movement.

14

Among the notable individuals who met at Stevens Kitchen were Sen. Robert Kennedy, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Mr. Andrew Young, and Mr. Vernon Jordan.

Connected to 604 Farish Street was the first and only existing site in Jackson of the Poor People’s Corporation organized in 1965 by SNCC activist, Jessie Morris. Here, the Liberty House Cooperative provided purchasing and marketing for the handicraft co-ops that sustained the self-help initiative for nonagricultural jobs for low-income persons. In its peak year, 1969, Liberty House grossed one and a quarter million dollars.

It closed in 1972 because of lack of capital.

18 619 NORTH FARISH STREET, FARISH STREET BAPTIST CHURCH Led by Pastor S. Leon Whitney during the 1960s, the Farish Street Baptist congregation supported the movement and welcomed mass meetings. In March 1961 Pastor Whitney was among those bitten by a police dog as he stood outside of the Hinds County Court House with a crowd of supporters for the Tougaloo nine. The church hosted weekly voter registration workshops during 1961 and was available for nightly meetings in support of the boycott of downtown merchants in 1962-63. I. S. Sanders organized the Citizens for Human Rights here.

On May 31, 1963, after an incident of police brutality was reported at Lanier High School, several hundred students gathered at Farish Street Baptist Church to receive instruction on nonviolent protest and to collect American flags. They left the church and marched down Farish Street toward Capitol Street, where some 400-500 people were arrested. African American prison trustees loaded them into city garbage trucks, and they were hauled to the “Fairgrounds Motel” in livestock buildings on the fairgrounds. Attorney General Robert Kennedy called for the release of the youth and an immediate investigation (Site 7).

Continue on North Farish Street; to your right is East Church Street where the former home of civil rights attorney Carsie Hall is located.

Carsie Hall, Jack Young, and R. Jess Brown were the only African American lawyers licensed to practice in the state in the early ‘60s who would take Civil Rights cases. They often served as local counsel with out-of-state attorneys who had not been admitted to the Mississippi bar (Sites 10, 12 & 16).

15

19 900 NORTH FARISH STREET, NE CORNER OF FARISH AND COHEA STREETS, THE SITE OF THE POOR PEOPLE’S CORPORATION (DEMOLISHED) This location was the third of four sites of the Poor People’s Corporation, organized in 1965 in Mississippi by SNCC and CORE workers. The Poor People’s Corporation was an early result of a change in focus of the Civil Rights Movement from confrontation and litigation to economic development. Through its headquarters here and a fund-raising office in New York City, the corporation collected financial support for enterprises providing jobs for Mississippi’s rural unemployed and underemployed.

Starting in 1968, this location housed Freedom Information Service, publisher of the F.I.S. Mississippi Newsletter, and an office of the Southern Courier, a movement newspaper published in Montgomery, Alabama.

Turn right on Cohea Street, and at the next intersection turn left onto North Blair Street. To your right is...

20 1106 NORTH BLAIR STREET, GREATER BLAIR STREET A.M.E. ZION Blair Street A.M.E. Zion Church, under the leadership of Rev. Raymond Richmond, was among the 20 churches where meetings were held in support of the 1962-63 boycott of Jackson merchants. He worked with Rev. Leon Whitney of Farish Street Baptist and was among the ministers who decided to meet and to march from Pearl Street A. M. E. Church the morning that Medgar Evers was assassinated. Half way downtown they were arrested, put in garbage trucks and taken to jail. After singing and praying they were let go without any bond or bail. Freedom Schools and voter education classes were held at this church during the 1964 Freedom Summer.

Turn left on East Davis Street, cross Farish Street, and the next street on the left is Kane Street. Turn left and note the Pentecostal Temple Church on the left.

16

21 960 KANE STREET, PENTECOSTAL TEMPLE CHURCH OF OUR LORD JESUS CHRIST (FORMER MORNING STAR BAPTIST CHURCH) In 1961, a group of Freedom Riders, including a priest, were permitted to stay overnight at Morning Star where they spread their blankets and sleeping bags on the floor. After that night, other groups came and slept at Morning Star.

Mass meetings were held here, and some marches started from this location.

In response to Gov. Paul B. Johnson’s Special Mid-June 1965 Legislative Session, on June 14, 1965 MFDP Chair Lawrence Guyot led 500 demonstrators from Morning Star Church to the State Capitol in protest of the special session. MFDP said the session was in violation of Federal law since Blacks had been denied the right to vote. About half of the demonstrators were teens, and about 75 were white summer volunteers. Half way to the Capitol, the police arrest 482 marchers for parading without a permit. They were crammed into paddy wagons and large caged trash trucks, and taken to the state fair grounds (Site 7).

After two weeks, about 1,000 demonstrators had been arrested and the press coverage had almost stopped. On June 30th the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals enjoined the City of Jackson from making further arrests of demonstrators. After a few peaceful protests in July, MFDP turned its attention to the Congressional challenge. The Mississippi Legislature repealed the state’s discriminatory voting laws hoping to keep Federal Registrars out of Mississippi.

Leaving Kane Street, turn right onto Cohea Street and right again onto Mill Street. Go seven blocks north to Whitfield Street and turn right before the pedestrian crossover. Continue east on Whitfield Street. To the left shortly after Blair Street you will pass the Former Site of New Jerusalem Baptist Church at 226 Whitfield Street.

22 226 WHITFIELD STREET, FORMER SITE OF NEW JERUSALEM BAPTIST CHURCH This is the last church Medgar Evers visited before his assassination. Evers attended a celebration at the church that night after leading a day where 10 youngsters wearing NAACP t-shirts walked up and down Capitol Street without being arrested for picketing.

The picketing was in protest of an injunction against all demonstrations.

17

LEGACY SITE BENJAMIN BROWN PARK, 1320 NORTH MILL STREET In 1995 the Jackson City Council named this Midtown Neighborhood park in honor of Benjamin Brown, a Civil Rights worker. Brown, who's a Jackson native, attended Rowan, the middle school on your right, when it was a junior high school.

On May 10, 1967, police pursued a student on to the JSU campus that set off a confrontation between more than 1,000 students and about 100 police and National Guardsmen. The next evening students gathered along the intersection of Lynch and Rose Streets. Near midnight, police tried to disperse the crowd by shooting in the air toward the college. 22-year old Benjamin Brown came out of the Kon Tiki Club (now the COFO building) and as he ran between the building and Mount Olive Cemetery he was shot in the back, and died on May 12. (See Site 49 for more information.)

Go one block to Lamar Street, turn left on Lamar, take another left onto Fairbanks Street, and return to Mill Street. Take a left on Mill Street, travel 10 blocks, and, after the light at Monument Street, look to your left down Church Street. Pause at the corner of Church and Mill and look left to...

23 144 WEST CHURCH STREET, SITE OF FAMOUS (LEE EDWARD HOTEL) (DEMOLISHED) The site of the Lee Edward Hotel, which was one of two commercial hotels where African Americans, Civil Rights dignitaries, and Black entertainers stayed during the 1960s, since they were not permitted in white hotels before the 1964 Public Accommodations Act. Its walls were plastered with the pictures of past entertainers and famous guests. The other African American owned hotel was the Summers Hotel located on West Pearl Street.

On the corner of Church Street and Mill Street is...

24 516 NORTH MILL STREET, GEORGE WASHINGTON CARVER LIBRARY This was a segregated library for Blacks from 1956 until 1975. The Tougaloo Nine gathered here and when they were unable to locate certain books, commenced their historic “read-in” at the Jackson Municipal Public Library. In 1950 Mrs. Ruby Lyles opened Jackson’s first branch library for Blacks in a remodeled house on East Davis Street (Site 37).

18

Continue south on Mill Street four blocks to Amite Street. Turn right on Amite, go one block and turn left on Gallatin Street and then left on Capitol Street. Immediately after the underpass, on the northwest corner of Mill and Capitol Street is...

Illinois Central Railroad Union Station, where a group of Freedom Riders, including Stokely Carmichael, were arrested in 1961. A recent $15,000,000 renovation has modernized Union Station and made it a regional multimodal transit hub.

On the southeast corner of Mill Street and Capitol Street is...

25 235 WEST CAPITOL STREET, KING EDWARD HOTEL Constructed in 1923, the King Edward Hotel was a hub of white political and social activity for many years. In the fall of 1964, the Mississippi Council on Human Relations, an integrated organization formed by the Southern Regional Council to promote racial understanding met at this hotel. By permitting this meeting, the hotel quietly began compliance with the 1964 Civil Rights Act passed earlier that summer to desegregate all public accommodations. Also, to test this Act, an integrated group from NAACP headquarters registered and stayed here as well as the Heidelberg Hotel. Local integrated groups and Blacks began to hold social events like weddings at the hotel. Senator Robert Kennedy held a 1967 Senatorial Hearing on Hunger here as part of his Delta Tour. Martin Luther King, Jr. and his entourage were among the Civil Rights personalities who stayed here. The hotel closed in 1967, but it was restored and reopened in 2009 as a mixed-use facility anchored by a Hilton Garden Inn. A number of businesses targeted by the Easter 1960 boycott of downtown businesses on Capitol Street were located near this site. The Easter 1960 boycott was the beginning of the most active phase of the Jackson Civil Rights Movement. The boycott was led by the NAACP and by the Campbell College dean of religion, Charles A. Jones, and student body president, Alfred Cook, with supporters from Jackson State University, Tougaloo College, and the African American community. The goal was to achieve equality in hiring and promotion, to abolish segregated drinking fountains, restrooms, and seating, and to promote the use of courtesy titles (Mrs., Mr., Miss) and service on a first-come first-served basis. Additional boycotts were staged in December 1962 and Easter 1963 as part of the Jackson Movement.

Ride east on Capitol Street and look left, just beyond a parking garage is the Pinnacle Building...

19

26 124 EAST CAPITOL STREET, THE PINNACLE BUILDING AND OFFICES (FORMER SITE OF F. W. WOOLWORTH STORE) After demands for the desegregation of commercial businesses went unanswered, the NAACP decided to engage in direct action. On May 28, 1963, three Tougaloo students - Anne Moody, Pearlena Lewis, and Memphis Norman - entered the back door of Woolworth’s and sat down at the lunch counter. When they tried to order refreshments, they were told to go to the Negro section. White students from nearby Central High School came in and assailed the group with racial epithets.

Several customers subjected them to three hours of hostility and abuse.

Norman was pulled to the floor, kicked, and beaten. After the group was joined by white supporters Joan Trumpauer, professors Lois Chafee and John Salter from Tougaloo College, the crowd continued to scream insults and poured mustard, catsup, pepper, and water on the group. Outside the store, Tougaloo President, Daniel Beittel, attempted to get the police to stop the beatings. Finally the store closed, and the protesters were taken to jail. The Jackson sit-in movement became a subject of national interest, attracting the attention of Roy Wilkins and other NAACP luminaries, many of whom came to Jackson and participated in the movement.

Mississippi Freedom Trail Marker Site.

At Lamar and Capitol streets on April 20, 1961, the JNM organized three Jackson State students - George Washington, Doris Bracey, and Walter Jones, and a Campbell College student Johnny Barbour, Jr. to board a city bus and sit in the white-only section. When they refused to move to the “colored” section, they were arrested and charged with breach of the peace and fined $100, those charges were later suspended.

On the southwest corner of Capitol and Lamar Streets is the former site of a Walgreen’s Drug Store.

27 137 EAST CAPITOL STREET, FORMER SITE OF WALGREENS DRUG STORE JNM inspired the first lunch counter sit-in on July 12, 1961 involving two Campbell College students Lavagh Brown and another, and Jimmie Travis, a Tougaloo student. Two days later Eddie Austin, Carl Hamilton, Charles Cox and William Baker from the Tougaloo Nonviolent Action Group also sat-in here.

In the next block on the right on the corner of Capitol Street and West Street is...

20

28 245 EAST CAPITOL STREET, JAMES O. EASTLAND FEDERAL COURTHOUSE Since Mississippi’s state, local governments and judicial system were supportive of segregation in the 1960s, civil rights activists had to rely on the federal courts for justice. The cases of Freedom Riders were appealed from this federal courthouse all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Because segregation had already been ruled unconstitutional, the cases dealt with the constitutionality of the arrests. Atty. R. Jess Brown worked with New York Atty. William Kunstler petitioned and appealed to Judge William Harold Cox, in the U. S. District Court of Mississippi to move cases from the State System to Federal System. Cox wouldn’t appeal to the 5th Circuit. Many Civil Rights demonstrators were out of jail on bond. Their cases either laid in limbo or were never brought to trial.

On the southeast corner of East Capitol Street and West Street is...

St. Andrew’s Episcopal Cathedral, or St. Andrew’s maintained an interracial “open door” policy during the 1960s. Under the leadership of Bishop Duncan M. Gray, Sr., Reverend Edward Harrison, and Reverend Christoph Keller, African Americans were allowed to worship there freely. The State Sovereignty Commission kept up with the parish’s activities and filed reports on integrated meetings, at which many St. Andrew’s members were present.

Pause on the right side of Capitol Street before turning right on Congress Street. Look toward the east end of Capitol Street where a recently restored Mississippi Capitol houses...

the Old Capitol Museum that had earlier been the home of the first exhibit in the state of the Mississippi Civil Rights Movement. That exhibit will be expanded in the planned Mississippi Civil Rights Museum.

Turn right on Congress Street and proceed to the middle of the second block. On the left is the rear of Jackson City Hall.

29 219 SOUTH PRESIDENT STREET, JACKSON CITY HALL Here at city hall, numerous ordinances were enacted over the decades to reinforce segregation in Jackson. In 1956, an ordinance was passed requiring “common carriers of persons” to maintain separate waiting rooms and restrooms for the white and “colored” races.

21

Allen C. Thompson, was mayor of Jackson from 1949-1969. As a member of the Citizen Council he defended the policies of segregation. He was named the defendant in the Supreme Court case Palmer v Thompson, which unsuccessfully sought to force the city to desegregate its swimming pools. When the mayor refused to set up a biracial committee to negotiate, the JM used legal and nonviolent tactics.

On May 27, 1963, JM leaders walked out of talks with the mayor. Talks later resumed and the JM ended three days after Evers’ funeral when President John F. Kennedy and Attorney General Robert Kennedy negotiated a deal with Mayor Thompson to restore order by granting the Black community six black policemen, crossing guards for their schools, promotions in the city sanitation unit and promise to listen to the Black community grievances (Site 34).

At that time, Jackson’s city government consisted of a mayor and two commissioners, all elected at large. In 1985 the citizens of Jackson voted to change to a mayor/council form of government, with city council members elected from individual wards. Soon thereafter, Jackson’s first Black city council members - E.C. Foster, Louis E. Armstrong, and Doris P. Smith - were elected. In 1997, Harvey Johnson, Jr., became the first African American to be elected mayor of Jackson.

On your right are the offices of the Clarion-Ledger, Jackson’s daily morning newspaper. For decades, the Clarion-Ledger and the now defunct evening paper, the Jackson Daily News, were published by a family-owned company that supported segregation and transmitted to the Sovereignty Commission reports on the Civil Rights Movement. The Clarion-Ledger was purchased by the Gannett Corporation in 1982.

Across Pascagoula Street on the right is...

30 327 EAST PASCAGOULA STREET, CITY JAIL AND FORMER MUNICIPAL COURT BUILDING

The city jail and municipal court building was the scene of significant legal events related to the Jackson Civil Rights Movement (see Site 5).

The Tougaloo Nine were incarcerated in the city jail on March 27, 1961, and held for 32 hours after they were arrested at the public library sit-in (Site 75). On March 29, the “colored” section of the courtroom filled up early, and the overflow crowd of supporters gathered in front of the 22

municipal court building. When the Nine appeared at the courthouse steps, the crowd broke into applause and cheers. In response, policemen with clubs, dogs, and tear gas charged the crowd. Many, including Medgar Evers, were struck and injured. The Federal Bureau of Investigation later investigated the tactics and procedures of the Jackson Police Department in this incident.

The Tougaloo Nine were found guilty of breach of the peace, fined $100 each, and granted 30-day suspended sentences after agreeing not to participate in future demonstrations. In the same jail two months later, the first 27 Freedom Riders arrested at the Trailways Bus station were incarcerated (see Site 32). They refused bond and remained in jail, with as many as 10 persons locked in cells designed for four. Some were even taken to the state penitentiary at Parchman. By the end of 1961, at least 320 protesters had been arrested, two-thirds of whom were college students.

Across Pascagoula Street on the left is...

31

407 EAST PASCAGOULA STREET, HINDS COUNTY COURTHOUSE

In Hinds County court, attorney R. Jess Brown represented Freedom Riders like Stokely Carmichael, Rita Carter, Catherine Burks, James L. Farmer, and Rev. Robert L. Pierson, the son-in-law of New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller. Rev. Pierson celebrated High Mass for 15 Episcopal clergy and two others while in jail in 1961. While some of the prisoners were able to arrange for bond money, others had to work off their payment at Parchman or the county farm at the rate of $3 per day.

In this courthouse, Byron De La Beckwith was tried twice in 1964 for the murder of Medgar Evers. Both trials ended in hung juries. Re-tried in 1994, Beckwith was finally convicted of Evers’ murder and sentenced to life imprisonment. Beckwith was denied parole and died January 21, 2001 at the University Medical Center of heart failure.

Go two blocks on Congress Street and turn right on Court Street in the front the new Federal Court House. Go three blocks to South Farish Street and turn right, then right on Pascagoula Street past the new Jackson Convention Center on the right.

23

32 201 EAST PASCAGOULA STREET, DAVIS PLANETARIUM (FORMER TRAILWAYS BUS STATION) On May 25, 1961 two buses boarded by Freedom Riders - the first with nine African American males, two African American females, and one white female - arrived here from Montgomery, Alabama. When they attempted to use the bus station’s white only facilities, they were arrested for breach of the peace. The 15 Freedom Riders on the second bus were also arrested.

This ends the Downtown Jackson tour. To continue to Neighborhood Two, proceed on East Pascagoula Street, turn left on West Street and left on Pearl Street, going west in the right lane. Go under the viaduct, cross Gallatin Street, and continue on Robert Smith, Sr. Parkway.

24

T

W

60

59

58

36 35 39 37 57

48 47 50 49

56 52

40 38

46 45

41 42

44

34

43

51 53 54

55

LEGEND 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43

Former Home of Jack and Aurelia Young Zion Travelers Baptist Church (Former Pearl Street A.M.E. Church) Former Home of Mrs. Gladys Noel Bates Former Headquarters for the Republic of New Africa (RNA) Former Home of Meredith Jerry & Ruby Elizabeth Stutts Lyells, (Circa 1900-1994) Pratt Memorial United Methodist Church Site of former home of Dr. Isaiah S. Sanders and Mrs. Thelma Sanders Civil Rights Freedom House Former home of Dr. A. H. McCoy & Dr. Rose E. McCoy Former home of Letter Carrier John W. Dixon Chambliss Shoe Hospital 25

33

W

O LEGEND

44 COFO Civil Rights Education Center, 1964 Freedom Summer 45 The Masonic Temple, Office of State NAACP & Jackson Movement, (JM) 46 Soul Scissors Barber Shop (Former Office of the Jackson Nonviolent Movement-JNM) 47 Site of Dr. William Miller’s Former Medical Offices 48 Former Office of Dr. Robert Smith, MD 49 Jackson State University (formerly Jackson College) 50 Site of Campbell College (Green Hall) Now Campbell College Suites, North & South, for Modern Student Living 51 Site of Former Home of Rev. R.L.T. Smith 52 SNCC & COFO House 53 College Hill Baptist Church 54 Home of Samuel Bailey 55 Former Medgar Evers Neighborhood Guild Community Center 56 Formerly an R.L.T. Smith Grocery Store and Office of the Mississippi Free Press 57 Former Home of Mrs. AME Logan 58 Former Home of Dr. Jessie B. Mosley and son Gene Mosley 59 Former Home of Mrs. Jane Schutt 60 First Jackson Home of James Meredith 26

NEIGHBORHOOD TWO: THE JACKSON STATE UNIVERSITY COMMUNITY

You are now beginning the tour of Neighborhood Two, the Jackson State University community. This tour takes approximately one hour.

To begin this tour from the Smith Robertson Museum, exit the museum on Dr. Jessie Mosley Drive, and turn right on High Street and then right on Lamar Street. Continue on Lamar to Pearl Street/Robert Smith, Sr. Parkway and turn right continuing onto Dr. Robert Smith, Sr. Parkway.

33 627 DR. ROBERT SMITH, SR. PARKWAY, FORMER HOME OF JACK AND AURELIA YOUNG During the 1960s, self-taught civil rights attorney Jack Young, Sr., lived here with his wife, Aurelia, and their two children.

A former letter carrier, Jack Young was admitted to the Mississippi bar in 1952 and became a point man in civil rights legal battles. Most African Americans engaged in civil rights activities in Jackson were protected from direct economic retaliation by whites through either federal civil service laws or by providing services directly to the black community. The Young home was a headquarters for activists who streamed in from across the country. Aurelia Young noted in her diary, “Our house is no longer like Grand Central Station; it seems more like International Airport. It is the only place in Jackson where people are integrated - they are even segregated in the jails.”

At the corner of Dr. Robert Smith, Sr. Parkway and Poindexter Street is...

St. Mark’s Episcopal Church, an African American church associated with St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church. St. Mark’s members participated in interracial fellowship during the 1960s.

Next to St. Mark’s is...

34 925 DR. ROBERT SMITH, SR. PARKWAY, ZION TRAVELERS BAPTIST CHURCH (FORMER PEARL STREET A.M.E. CHURCH) The Pearl Street A.M.E. Church was one of 20 local churches where meetings were held to support the boycott of downtown merchants. After one such meeting in 1963, the earlier list of demands (Site 46) was sent to Mayor Thompson before 27

the May 28 sit-in at Woolworth’s. The night after Evers’ assassination, a mass meeting here included Mrs. Evers. Earlier that day 14 ministers marched from this church toward Capitol Street, and all were arrested. That same day 200 persons marched down Rose Street toward Capitol Street. Police in several cars arrived and arrested the marchers, jerking American flags from their hands and shoving them into police wagons. When onlookers shouted encouragement to the marchers from houses along Rose Street, a police captain used his bullhorn to order people to disperse, and police charged into private yards with their nightsticks. John Salter was clubbed unconscious and arrested. Others in the neighborhood were beaten, and several were arrested before the marchers finally dispersed. At this church three days after Evers’ funeral Rev. G. R. Haughton’s presentation of the Mayor’s terms was reluctantly accepted: 1) a promise of six Negro policemen, 2) eight Negro school crossing guards, 3) eight Negro promotions in the city sanitation department, and 4) a promise to continue to hear Negro grievances (Site 29).

The Black negotiating committee reluctantly accepted the Mayor’s settlement offer which contained no original boycott demands stated above (Site 29).

At the first Dr. Robert Smith, Sr. Parkway roundabout at Rose Street, take a right on Rose Street to Deer Park and take a left to...

35 1087 DEER PARK STREET, FORMER HOME OF MRS. GLADYS NOEL BATES Mrs. Gladys Noel Bates was an eighth grade science teacher at Smith Robertson School in 1948 when she filed a lawsuit, later joined by R. Jess Brown, against the Jackson public school system for equalization of salaries for white and black teachers. A local NAACP board member, she and her husband, John, also a teacher, were fired from the school system later that year and blacklisted so that they could not teach in the South. The Mississippi Association of Teachers in Colored Schools paid Mrs. Bates’ salary for a year. Later, the couple moved to Denver, Colorado. Mrs. Bates’ father, A. J. Noel, was a leader in the Progressive Voters’ League in the 1950s and a NAACP local chapter board member.

Continue west on Deer Park Street to Ewing Street. Turn right on Ewing and take the next right onto Lewis Street.

36 1148 LEWIS STREET, FORMER HEADQUARTERS FOR THE REPUBLIC OF NEW AFRICA (RNA) This house served as headquarters for the Republic of New Africa (RNA), an African American nationalist organization that sought to secure lands in five southern states. At around sunrise on August 18, 28

1971, a shootout erupted during a police raid at this location, and Jackson police officer Lt. Louis Skinner was killed. Seven RNA activists were arrested here, and four others, including the RNA president, Imari Obadele, were arrested near 1320 J. R. Lynch Street in a building rented to the Republic of New Africa (RNA). Several were sentenced to lengthy jail terms. In response, Dr. Aaron Shirley formed the Committee of Black Jacksonians for Justice, which called for calm and an end to the violence.

Turn right on Line Street to Deer Park Street and take a left on Deer Park back to Rose Street. Turn right on Rose Street, turn right onto Dr. Robert Smith, Sr. Parkway, at the next roundabout go left (south) on Dalton Street, turn left at Isaiah Montgomery Street, continue to...

37 1116 ISAIAH MONTGOMERY STREET, FORMER HOME OF MEREDITH JERRY & RUBY ELIZABETH STUTTS LYELLS, (CIRCA 1900-1994) Mr. M. J. Lyles, Dr. William Miller, and Dr. I. S. Sanders shared ownership in the MLS Service Company and Drug Store at the corner of Lynch and Dalton (Sites 39 & 47). Mrs. Lyells, a wealthy heiress, was a former teacher at Alcorn College and Lanier High School, the first professional librarian in Mississippi, first African American to head the Jackson, Mississippi Segregated Library System, and founder of Jackson's first library for Blacks on Davis Street (Site 24).

Her emphasis on equality in public libraries met with apathy, hostility and resistance because she was calling for change in the Southern way of life. As the South Eastern Regional Director of the Black YWCA, she had an office for veterans near JSU, and hired Gladys Noel Bates, who had been fired from JPS, as her secretary (Site 35). She was the first African American Executive Director of Mississippi State Council of Human Rights, chairwoman of the Biracial Committee for the Jackson Municipal Separate School District, and was appointed by the Federal Courts to help implement the 1970 court ordered desegregation.

Continue on Isaiah Montgomery Street to Mary Lee Street, turn right and continue to the end of the street. Turn left onto West Pascagoula Street.

29

38 1047 WEST PASCAGOULA STREET, PRATT MEMORIAL UNITED METHODIST CHURCH This was also one of Jackson’s 20 churches where nightly meetings were held to support the boycott of downtown merchants. This church continued to be available for large meetings throughout the 1960s. On May 12, 1967, the day following the murder of Benjamin Brown, a group of 150, including Charles Evers, marched from this church to the steps of city hall in Brown’s memory.

Continue on Pascagoula Street to Rose Street, turn left on Rose Street go around the roundabout so that you turn back headed south on Rose Street. On the right, the southwest corner of Rose Street where the Sanders house once stood.

39 715 ROSE STREET, SITE OF FORMER HOME OF DR. ISAIAH S. SANDERS AND MRS. THELMA SANDERS NAACP members and 1960s civil rights leaders, Dr. I. S. & Mrs. Thelma Sanders along with their son I. S. Jr. lived here. This was the host home for celebrities like Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Mr. Roy Wilkins, Mr. Stokely Carmichael, Mr. Floyd McInnis, Ms. Lena Horne, Mr. Harry Bellefonte, and Rev. Ralph Abernathy. The celebrities were often chauffeured by Mrs. Sander’s brother, former Councilman William Brown. Medgar Evers stopped here the night of his assassination after a rally at the Masonic Temple (Site 45), before going to New Jerusalem Baptist Church (Site 22). In September of 1964 a bomb severely damaged this home and destroyed their automobile.

Across the street is...

40 714 ROSE STREET, CIVIL RIGHTS FREEDOM HOUSE Formerly the family home of Mr. Benjamin Newman, a postman, this house was one of the houses available to the 1961 Freedom Riders and later to SNCC, SCLC and CORE workers throughout the 1960s. Mrs. Barbara Beatle Barber, 30

a member of the local committee on housing, recalled that through-out the 1960s this house and the McCoy house across the street were always available at no cost to Civil Rights Workers.

Continuing south on Rose Street is...

41 727 ROSE STREET, FORMER HOME OF DR. A. H. MCCOY & DR. ROSE E. MCCOY This was the home of Dr. A. H. McCoy, a dentist, and wife Dr. Rose E. McCoy, a professor at Jackson State, and their daughter Rosaline. A. H. McCoy was a charter member of the state and Jackson Branch of the NAACP. During the summer and fall of 1955, as state president of the NAACP, he advocated for implementation of the 1954 school desegregation decision in Mississippi. Such a stance caused his family to receive hate mail and phone calls, and to have Molotov cocktails and bricks thrown through the windows of their home. For a while a group of men stood guard of their home twenty-four seven. Later, a few 1961 Freedom Riders were permitted to stay in their living room and sleep on the floor, so they would not be hit by bricks or flying glass. Among Dr. McCoy's many successes as a businessman, in 1938 he was the founder of the Security Life Insurance Company of the South; the development of the Ritz Theater on Farish Street next door to the Crystal Palace, and the Grand (later called the Ebony) Theater on Lynch Street. After the family moved to a home on Livingston Road, the Rose Street property was made available to civil rights workers.

Continuing west on Rose Street, on your right is...

42 817 ROSE STREET, FORMER HOME OF LETTER CARRIER JOHN W. DIXON This was the home of John W. Dixon, a Jackson postman (1913-1953) and a charter member in 1918-1919 of the Mississippi NAACP. As NAACP Treasurer he worked closely with Medgar Evers.

As a Simpson County farmer and Jackson real estate developer, he was a supporter of bringing about change in Mississippi by following its laws such as paying the $2 poll tax that was a requirement for voting. He often took the $2 poll tax to the Tax Office and paid it for individuals because they were afraid, or didn’t have transportation to go downtown to pay the tax. During the JM he was among those who pledged property bonds to get demonstrators out of jail.

31

Continue on Rose Street to John Roy Lynch Street, (named after an African American Reconstruction-era Congressman). Stop and look to the left to see...

43 932 J.R. LYNCH STREET, CHAMBLISS SHOE HOSPITAL The Chambliss shoe shop building, known as the Chambliss Shoe Hospital was owned and constructed by J.R. Chambliss Sr. around 1932-1934. As a layman in the Pearl Street African Methodist Episcopal Church he was supportive of the church’s involvement in the JM. His son Carey married Geraldine Spell, whose father, Hugh Spell, was the first president of the Rankin County NAACP during the 1940’s and 1950’s.

Geraldine Spell and fellow Isabel Elementary School teacher Ineva May Pittman, were among the first African American teachers in Jackson to join the NAACP in 1964 when some of the fear of joining had subsided.

She was one of the first Head Start teachers in 1965. She was present with her children at many of the mass meetings, marches and demonstrations, and led in the 1968 picketing of the Jackson Sears Roebuck store until they started hiring African Americans as sales persons. Carey and Geraldine’s daughter, Melba Sue Chambliss Brown was one of the eleven students who desegregated the Jackson Separate School System in 19651966 at Provine High School.

Across Lynch Street was the...

LEGACY SITE SITE OF OLD MT. CALVARY BAPTIST CHURCH AND THE 1971 RNA PUBLIC COURT, 901 J.R. LYNCH STREET Old Mt. Calvary Baptist Church moved to 1400 Robinson Road in 1975 and changed its name to Greater Mt. Calvary Baptist Church.

It was here the pastor, Rev. John E. Cameron, Sr., baptized the wife of Imari Obadele, president of the Republic of New Africa (RNA) a group that advocated carving out five southern states for an African American nation. Rev. Cameron later gave permission to the RNA to hold a plebiscite, people’s court, here on July 21, 1971. The plebiscite found Mason guilty of lying about a down payment the RNA had paid him for land they planned to purchase in Bolton, Mississippi (Site 36).

As you turn right on J.R. Lynch Street the COFO Building is on your left.

32

44

1017 J.R. LYNCH STREET, COFO CIVIL RIGHTS EDUCATION CENTER, 1964 FREEDOM SUMMER

The small commercial building once occupied by State Senator Henry J. Kirksey, was the headquarters for the 1964-1965 Freedom Summer Project, coordinated by the Council of Federated Organizations (COFO). COFO was initially conceived for a May 1961 meeting with Governor Ross Barnett to secure the release of the Freedom Riders. It was formally organized February 1962 during a meeting to coordinate the civil rights efforts in the state. Participants were Robert Moses of SNCC, Tom Gaiter of CORE, Medgar Evers and Aaron Henry of the NAACP, and members of SCLC along with other groups.

One of COFO’s major projects was planning and implementing the 1964 Freedom Summer. Over a thousand college students of which 90% were white, were invited to Mississippi to participate. From Jackson they spread out to other parts of the state and engaged in the direct action from local community centers where indigent citizens secured legal and medical assistance. A small staff coordinated the freedom schools (Sites 13, 20, & 70), mass meetings, voter education projects, voter registration, and housing for the summer volunteers (Sites 40, 41, & 52).

COFO also coordinated the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party’s (MFDP) challenge to the all-white Mississippi delegation at the national Democratic Party’s August 1964 convention in Atlantic City, New Jersey (Sites 2 & 21). Activities continued here until spring of 1965. During a state meeting held July 1965 at Tougaloo, COFO was dissolved, and the resources were given to the efforts of the MFDP under the leadership of Lawrence Guyot. MFDP continued the voter registration efforts with plans to again challenge the Mississippi Democratic Party in the Chicago Democratic Convention in 1968. At this location COFO volunteers met with constant harassment from the Jackson police who would ticket, arrest, and take them to jail (Site 30).

Continue west on J.R. Lynch Street

45

1072 J.R. LYNCH STREET, THE MASONIC TEMPLE, OFFICE OF STATE NAACP & JACKSON MOVEMENT, (JM) Since May 30, 1955 when Thurgood Marshall gave the dedication address, the Masonic Temple has been the state headquarters for the M.W. Stringer Grand Lodge, Prince Hall Masons, A & F M and its affiliates. In 1951, Marshall, represent33

ing the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, challenged Masons to establish and maintain a legal research and education bureau to fight for civil rights.

Since then, the Stringer Grand Lodge has contributed annually to the NAACP Legal Defense Fund.

The second Mississippi NAACP office (Site 12) is on the second floor from which Aaron Henry operated for 33 years. Here, as State Field Secretary, Medgar Evers managed the NAACP activities from 1954 until his death in 1963 (Site 69).

On Saturday, June 15, 1963, the temple overflowed with mourners for Evers’ 90-minute funeral service. Rev. Charles A. Jones, Dean of Religion at Campbell College, presided, with Roy Wilkins, Executive Secretary for the NAACP, as the major speaker. Dignitaries in attendance included Ralph Bunche, Assistant Secretary General of the United Nations; Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.; Rev. Ralph Abernathy; and entertainer Dick Gregory. The cover of this booklet shows scenes from Evers funeral recessional going east on Lynch, to Pascagoula, and to Farish streets. It then proceeded north on Farish Street to Collins Funeral Home (Site 11). The temple’s large auditorium was used for numerous civil rights meetings, training sessions in nonviolent protest methods, the funeral of Benjamin Brown, and strategy meetings for the NAACP, COFO, and MFDP. On June 7, 1963, a man said to resemble Byron De La Beckwith was asked to leave for smoking in the auditorium during an NAACP concert starring Lena Horne and Dick Gregory.

46 1104 J.R. LYNCH STREET, SOUL SCISSORS BARBER SHOP (FORMER OFFICE OF THE JACKSON NONVIOLENT MOVEMENT-JNM) In 1961 and 1962 the offices of SNCC, SCLC, and CORE were located here. They organized the Jackson Nonviolent Movement, (JNM) which provided free literature and tapes of Martin Luther Kings’ speeches, and sold recordings of protest music, showed movement films at churches, and published a newsletter, Voice of the Jackson Movement. While SCLC was present in Jackson, it worked primarily in voter education. The house at 804 Rose Street, often referred to as the first freedom house, was rented by the JNM for the early SNCC workers Diane Nash, James Bevel, Lester McKinnie, and Barnard Lafayette. They coordinated housing for the Freedom Riders, planned mass meetings at area churches, conducted voter registration, and nonviolent protest workshops. JNM direct action projects included 1) The April 20, 1961 bus sit-in at Lamar and Capitol streets; 2) The July 12, 1961 sit-in at Walgreen’s Drug Store, 3) The October 16 & 17, 1961 demonstration at the Mississippi State Fair (Site 7) where Nash, Bevels, and Lafayette were charged with contributing to the delinquency of minors.

34

You may choose to park and walk onto the Jackson State University Campus. As you pass through this former l960’s vibrant middle class business corner, note that during the 1960s the historic Penguin was on the southeast corner. Today on the north east corner of Lynch and Dalton are the new Penguin Restaurant, other shops, and apartments where once stood the Medical Office of Dr. William Miller. During the 1960s Lynch Street continued through the campus. Today this portion of Lynch Street has been converted to a pedestrian plaza on campus.

47 1040 DALTON STREET, SITE OF DR. WILLIAM MILLER’S FORMER MEDICAL OFFICES Dr. William Miller (1903-1981) is the son of the first African American woman doctor, Dr. Lucille Weathers Miller & Dr. S. A. Miller, who both practiced medicine on Farish Street at the turn of the 19th century. From 1951 to 1974 he had a private practice on Dalton Street and was the Jackson State campus physician for most of those years. An early member of the NAACP, he and Cornelius Turner, a Black businessman, posted the $2,000 bail for the Jackson and Campbell college students arrested in the April 20, 1961 bus sit-in at Capitol and Lamar. Additionally, to better serve the neighborhood, he became a founding member of the MLS Drug Store with I. S. Sanders and M. J. Lyles.

On the southwest corner was Jackson State University including the President’s home. At the northwest corner J.R. Lynch Street and Dalton Streets was the MLS Service station and Drug Store. Several other businesses significant to the Jackson Movement were located on this block, including Mississippi Teachers Association and...

48 1312 J.R. LYNCH STREET, FORMER OFFICE OF DR. ROBERT SMITH, MD Dr. Robert Smith, an activist and pioneer, began his practice of medicine at this location in 1963, the site of an office of Drs. John W. Davis and Fred Pinson. Dr. Smith assumed a major role in servicing local and out-of-state Civil Rights workers and many local citizens who were denied appropriate care. This site was where the founding of the southern arm of the Medical Committee for Human Rights took place, with a group that also included Drs. Leslie Falk, Albert Britton, James Anderson, and two ministers from the Delta Ministry - Reverend Art Thomas and Reverend Warren McKenna.

Dr. Smith, serving as a Southern field coordinator of MCHR, earned the designation of “doctor to the movement.” He later distinguished himself by becoming one of three principal founders, along with Drs. H. Jack Geiger and Count Gibson, of the community health center concept of health care that would become national and serve millions of patients.

35

49 1400 J.R. LYNCH STREET, JACKSON STATE UNIVERSITY (FORMERLY JACKSON COLLEGE)

Jackson State University, a historically black university, experienced significant milestones in the Civil Rights Movement in every respect, from health care, to veterans voting, and to violent retaliations for student activism. The college welcomed returning World War II veterans who earned college degrees on the G. I. Bill. One of those veterans, Earl Brown, organized the group to take advantage of a law that allowed them to register and to vote without paying poll taxes or passing a test.

They registered and voted in Jackson.

Four documented events show violent retaliation to student activist. One evening in March of 1961 after the arrest of the Tougaloo Nine, Medgar Evers led a prayer meeting in front of H. T. Sampson Library. Some 700 students singing hymns, praying, and chanting “we want freedom” were ordered to leave by school officials. After the arrival of 20 police, and threats of expulsion the students left. The next day, students boycotted classes and about 200 marched down J. R. Lynch Street toward the city jail until they were turned around by Jackson police with clubs, dogs, and tear gas.

In February 1964, a white motorist struck a student, Mamie Ballard, as she crossed Lynch Street. Angry students pelted white drivers with rocks, while hundreds roamed the college grounds, singing and chanting.

That night the city’s riot-control vehicle, “Thompson’s Tank,” broke up the demonstration, and police were forced to evacuate it when a tear-gas shell misfired inside. The next day, Mayor Thompson announced that a traffic light would be installed on J. R. Lynch Street.

On May 10, 1967, when two Black police officers attempted to arrest a speeding student who drove from J. R. Lynch Street onto the campus, they were harassed by swarms of students, setting off two days of unrest that culminated in the tragic death of Benjamin Brown on May 12th.

On the morning of May 15, 1970, 11 days after the Vietnam anti-war protests where four students were killed at Kent State University, state and local police were on campus in response to a disturbance near the ROTC building. While attempting to disperse the students, the police claiming to have seen a sniper in the dormitory window fired into the crowd at the dining hall and Alexander Hall. The gunshot volley killed Phillip Gibbs, 36

a pre-law major, and James Green, a Jim Hill High School student, and wounded 11 others. No evidence of a sniper was ever found. Some of the chipped concrete is still visible on the west end of Alexander Hall, along with a marker memorializes Phillip L. Gibbs and James Earl Green. The H. T. Sampson Library has clipping files and photographs that document the student campus activism. Also the Margaret Walker Center (formerly known as the Margaret Walker Alexander National Research Center for the Study of the 20th Century African American), in historic Ayer Hall, is a museum and archive that includes the Margaret Walker literary papers, oral histories, art collections, exhibits, and materials on the 20th century African American.

50 1450 J.R. LYNCH STREET, SITE OF CAMPBELL COLLEGE (GREEN HALL) NOW CAMPBELL COLLEGE SUITES, NORTH & SOUTH, FOR MODERN STUDENT LIVING Today, Jackson State University encompasses the former Campbell College, founded in 1890 in Vicksburg, Mississippi and moved to Jackson in 1898. It was supported by the African Methodist Episcopal Church until its last graduating class in 1964.

Since Campbell College was a church-supported school, many of its administrators and students openly participated in movement activities.

At an April 8, 1960, press conference at Campbell College, Medgar Evers announced the Easter boycott of downtown merchants. The Dean of Religion, Charles A. Jones, assumed leadership of the boycott (Site 45).

Members of the Campbell College NAACP Youth Council were the leaders of the 1961 picketing of the “colored” Mississippi State Fair (Sites 7 & 46).

Many of 100 McComb Burglund High School (now Higgins Junior High School) students were arrested and expelled in 1961 for protesting the September 25th murder of voter-registration activist Herbert Lee. Most of them who were seniors, enrolled at Campbell College where they completed the school term.

Turn left on Dalton Street and go to first street on the right after Walter Payton Drive.Turn right to...

51 1613 MOREHOUSE STREET, SITE OF FORMER HOME OF REV. R.L.T. SMITH Rev. R. L. T. Smith has been dubbed “the minister of the Jackson Civil Rights Movement.”

He pastored several churches during the 1960s, including New St. John Missionary Baptist Church, 37

now located on Page Avenue. The owner of two grocery stores and many rental houses, Rev. Smith provided bail for jailed demonstrators and participated in the U. S. District Court Case seeking to prevent the payment of tax dollars by the State Sovereignty Commission to the Citizens’ Council.

In 1961, Rev. Smith was the first African American to run for Congress since Reconstruction, he challenged the incumbent John Bell Williams.

From Morehouse Avenue turn left on Washington Avenue, then left on Shirley Avenue to...

52 1708 SHIRLEY AVENUE (FORMERLY EVERETT STREET), SNCC & COFO HOUSE Numerous Civil Rights workers lived at this location during Freedom Summer until mid1965. The Freedom Information Service archive was first housed here after the COFO office closed during a consensus meeting late July 1965 at Tougaloo College.

From Shirley Avenue turn right on to Lincoln Street. Stop to note the back and side of College Hill Baptist Church. Continue to Florence Avenue and the front of the Church on the right.

53 1600 FLORENCE AVENUE, COLLEGE HILL BAPTIST CHURCH The NAACP held a mass meeting of nearly 500 people here on March 18, 1961, the evening the Tougalo Nine were bonded out of jail. Their lawyer, Jack Young, Sr. secured the $500 bail money for each of them.

Turn left on Florence Avenue and go a short distance to...

54 1502 FLORENCE AVENUE, HOME OF SAMUEL BAILEY Sam Bailey was a leader of the Progressive Voters’ League as early as 1956. A strong supporter of the NAACP, he traveled the state with his close friend Medgar Evers. In 1961, Bailey, with Joseph Broadwater and

38

Burnett Jacob, filed a lawsuit challenging Jackson’s segregated public bus system. In 1962, Bailey joined Medgar and Myrlie Evers and several other parents in petitioning the Jackson school board to end segregation in the public schools.

Turn right off Florence Avenue onto Cleveland Street to Booker Street and take a right to...

55 1525 BOOKER STREET, FORMER MEDGAR EVERS NEIGHBORHOOD GUILD COMMUNITY CENTER In a structure developed by R.L.T. Smith, the Medgar Evers Neighborhood Guild Community Center was established by Ted Seaver, a white social worker from New England, who came to Jackson as a civil rights activist in the summers of 1964 and 1965. Through a project called Vermont in Mississippi, Seaver raised money to establish and operate a community center in Jackson to help organize political action. The Medgar Evers Neighborhood Guild Community Center was dedicated on September 27, 1965.

Continue west on Booker Street and travel several blocks west to Valley Street and turn right. As you cross the railroad tracks, to your left is…

56 1253 VALLEY STREET, FORMERLY AN R.L.T. SMITH GROCERY STORE AND OFFICE OF THE Mississippi Free Press This building also housed an office of the Mississippi Free Press, a four-page social and civil rights weekly newspaper written by several persons including Medgar Evers and John Salter. It was later edited by Henry J. Kirksey, printed in Holmes County by Mrs. Hazel Brannon Smith, and shipped to Jackson for distribution. Police often harassed newsboys who sold the paper.

Continue on Valley Street to J. R. Lynch Street. Turn right going east on J. R. Lynch Street to the roundabout, stay in the left lane and go back west on J. R. Lynch Street for two blocks, turn right on Biloxi Street to...

39

57 1142 BILOXI STREET, FORMER HOME OF MRS. AME LOGAN Mrs. Logan housed and fed many civil rights workers and was a founding member of Woman Power Unlimited and of Wednesdays in Mississippi (Sites 11, 39 & 58) As the official hospitality person for the NAACP, she greeted and provided rides for many civil rights workers and coordinated meals for Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., and others. Her home was the headquarters for the 1961 Jackson Southern Christian Leadership Conference's (SCLC) organizational efforts that included James Bevel, Rev. R. M. Richman, James Lafayette, and John Ross. SCLC referred to Mrs. Logan as “the mother of the Jackson Civil Rights Movement.”

Continue to the end of Biloxi Street, turn right on Deer Park Street and left onto Eastview Avenue to Central Street and turn left at Wingfield Circle to...

58 1968 WINGFIELD CIRCLE, FORMER HOME OF DR. JESSIE B. MOSLEY AND SON GENE MOSLEY Dr. Mosley was an organizing member and treasurer of Woman Power Unlimited, and as the founder of the Jackson Section of the National Council of Negro Women she along with Mrs. Holden, Ineva Pittman, Clarie H. Collins, and AME Logan participated in the “Wednesdays in Mississippi” where northern white women came to Jackson once a week to create better race relations through conversations and the distribution of clothes to needy families (Sites 11, 39 & 57). In addition, during the 1960s boycotts, Dr. Mosley was among the African American entrepreneurs who opened businesses as alternatives to shopping on Capitol Street. She opened a shoe store in the Masonic Temple building for the duration of the boycott. Also a supporter of the NAACP, her son Gene Mosley, a student during the early 1960s, served as president of the Jackson College NAACP Youth Council and collaborated with the North Jackson NAACP Youth Council activities during the JM. Continue to the stop sign at Central Street and turn left on Central Street which dead ends at Pecan Boulevard. In front of you is...

40

59 955 PECAN BOULEVARD, FORMER HOME OF MRS. JANE SCHUTT In December 1963, the Ku Klux Klan burned a cross in the yard of this home, which was then a white, middle-class neighborhood. In response, Mrs. Jane Schutt decorated the cross with Christmas tree lights. At a 1963 meeting of the Mississippi Council on Human Relations at Tougaloo College, Mrs. Schutt said, “The crisis approaching in Jackson is developing because of the long-time failure of the white community to cope realistically with the basic problems of Mississippi.”

Turn right on Pecan Boulevard, drive to Robinson Road, turn right, go to Eastview Street, then turn left and go down to...

60 427 EASTVIEW STREET, FIRST JACKSON HOME OF JAMES MEREDITH In the fall of 1962, with massive white protest during which two men were killed, James Meredith became the first African American to enroll at the University of Mississippi in Oxford. He graduated in 1963. Meredith was shot during his June 1966 “March Against Fear” from Memphis to Jackson.

Meredith lived at this address when he returned to Mississippi in 1972 and led several other marches during the early 1970s (Site 2).

Continue to 1st Avenue and turn right. Travel three blocks to South Prentiss Street and turn left. Turn right onto West Capitol Street.

LEGACY SITE R. JESS BROWN PARK, 1410 W. CAPITOL STREET Atty. R. Jess Brown, (1912-1989), was the only one of three Black Jackson, Mississippi Civil Rights Lawyers, He was fired from JPS when he joined the Gladys Noel Bates unsuccessful 1948 civil rights suit against Mississippi for the equalization of teachers’ salaries. Among Brown’s notable clients was James Meredith, who successfully enrolled at the University of Mississippi in 1962, and Mack Charles Parker who was lynched and thrown in the

41

Pearl River after Brown raised the question of jury selection discrimination before the trial. In the 1950s, he filed the first civil-rights lawsuit in Mississippi, on behalf of a minister in Jefferson Davis County, challenging laws that made it impossible for black residents to vote. Throughout the 1960s he worked with the NAACP Legal Defense Fund in fighting discrimination against Blacks in public accommodations law suits and in defense of protesters.

To continue the tour drive down Capitol Street to the traffic light at Monument and Capitol Streets, turn left on Monument Street to the next traffic light at Palmyra and turn left, cross Fortification Street to Martin Luther King Drive and turn left and continue to Lanier High School on the left at Maple Street & Martin Luther King Drive.

42

THR Queensroad

Milo

Montebello

Warner

Ohio

LEGEND

N Wabash

66

69 70

61 Lanier High School 62 New Mt. Zion M.B. Church 63 Elmwood Cemetery, NAACP State President Aaron Henry’s Burial Site 64 Former Black and Proud School 65 New St. John Missionary Baptist Church (Former Anderson United Methodist Church) 66 Medgar Evers Library and Statue 67 Former Home of Civil Rights worker Mrs. Doris Smith 68 Former Home of the JB & Stella Rean Harrington Family 69 Medgar Evers’ Home 70 Former home of Dr. Margaret Walker Alexander 71 Cade Chapel M.B. Church 72 Institutional A.M.E. Church 73 Former Home of Mr. Cleveland Donald, Sr. & Dr. Cleveland Donald, Jr. 74 Virden Grove Baptist Church 75 Home of Mrs. Hazel Palmer 76 Home of Colia Liddell and her brother Lewis Liddell

43

Parkway

California

Ross

Cammill

Slayton

Skyline

Troy

Obannon

68

Harper

Idaho

Newport

Overbrook

67

Utah

Brame

Bailey

Bishop

Lampton

Collier

Edwards

Geeston Cadillac

Fontaine

REE 76

Eminence

phis Mem Sears lle

Nashvi

Hume

Gun

Redmond

Mayes Howell

71

72 73 75

74

65

63

61

64 62

44

NEIGHBORHOOD THREE: THE MEDGAR EVERS NEIGHBORHOOD

From James Meredith’s house on Eastview Street, turn right onto First Avenue and left onto Prentiss Street; continue through the traffic light at Capitol Street and across the railroad tracks at Fortification Street. Turn right on Fortification, then left at the light onto Maple Street and continue to Lanier High School.

To begin this tour from Smith Robertson School, turn right onto Dr. Jessie Mosley Drive, right onto High Street, and left onto West Street.

Go north to Fortification Street and turn left (west) onto Fortification.

Continue on Fortification Street to Maple Street, turn right onto Maple and proceed to...

61 833 WEST MAPLE STREET, LANIER HIGH SCHOOL At lunchtime on May 30, 1963, in response to the treatment of Tougaloo students during the Woolworth’s store incident (Site 26), a student walkout took place at Lanier High. When students gathered on the school lawn to sing freedom songs, school officials called the police, who showed up with dogs. Students and parents alike were clubbed. The next day, students from the three black Jackson high schools (Lanier, Jim Hill, and Brinkley) met at Farish Street Baptist Church (Site 18) for nonviolent protest training, then marched south on Farish Street until they were met by police, arrested, and carried to the fairgrounds jail (Site 7).

Leaving Lanier High School, continue east on Maple Street through the stoplights at Martin Luther King, Jr., Drive and Bailey Avenue and continue to...

62 140 WEST MAPLE STREET, NEW MT. ZION M.B. CHURCH This church, pastored by Rev. D. B. Rushing, hosted a meeting of the Progressive Voters’ League on May 15, 1956. Later, to protest the shooting death of Ben Brown, this church urged Blacks to boycott Millers Shopping Plaza, Delta Mart Shopping Center, Capitol Street stores, and any branches of McRae’s and W. T. Grant’s.

Turn around and go two block west to the intersection of West Maple Street and Wood Street.

45

Located near this intersection was the home of Edna Mae Singleton, one of the plaintiffs in a 1963 lawsuit against the Jackson Public Schools’ segregationist policies. The suit failed, but the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in 1969 that Jackson Public Schools had to desegregate at all grade levels. In January 1970, integration of Jackson Public Schools began.

Continue on Maple Street, turning right onto Martin Luther King, Jr., Drive and right onto Erie Street.

63 ERIE STREET & WOODLAWN STREET, ELMWOOD CEMETERY, NAACP STATE PRESIDENT AARON HENRY’S BURIAL SITE The long-time NAACP president Aaron Henry (19211997) is among those buried here, along with his wife, Mrs. Noelle Michael Henry. Mr. Henry’s civil rights activities began in the 1950s and spanned four decades.

He was elected state president of the NAACP from 1960 to1992, and provided leadership in civil rights activities throughout Mississippi.

To visit the grave site, enter the cemetery on the road off Erie Street. The grave is located near the fifth raised brick tomb on the left side of the road before the road turns left. It is just beyond the second and third cedar trees in the middle of the Michael family graves.

Continue east on Erie Street and turn left. On your right is...

64 535 ERIE STREET, FORMER BLACK AND PROUD SCHOOL This address is among several locations of the “Georgetown Liberation School,” which changed its name to the “Black and Proud School” after James Brown’s 1968 recording, “Say It Loud: I’m Black and I’m Proud.”

The school provided structure for the community youth and taught them to take pride in their blackness. The four community segments were: former Civil Rights activists, parents concerned about persons teaching their children who previously didn’t want to integrate, the high school youth group called the Organization of Black African Youth (OBAY) and Tougaloo students. These segments came together with Howard Spencer, Frank Figgers, Charles Jones and others around 1968. The school sought to supplement regular elementary studies by teaching vocational skills, African American heritage, and sponsoring educational programs for par-

46

ents. This free elementary school met the Independent School Movement standards and was cooperating with the state to become accredited when it closed around 1986.

Take the next right on Maderia Street, then right on Maple Street, right on Rondo Street then left on Erie Street and right on Woodlawn Street beside the cemetery going north, left on Derrick Street and left on Page to...

65 812 PAGE AVENUE, NEW ST. JOHN MISSIONARY BAPTIST CHURCH (FORMER ANDERSON UNITED METHODIST CHURCH) New St. John Missionary Baptist Church was once pastored by the Rev. R. L. T. Smith (Sites 51 & 56). During the 1960s, this structure housed Anderson United Methodist Church, which is currently located on Hanging Moss Road. An April 3, 1960 NAACP meeting held here is documented in the Sovereignty Commission files. A police report cited that the purpose of the meeting was to increase NAACP memberships and to make plans for desegregation in Jackson. Officers reported speaking with Medgar Evers that night, when they also documented others in attendance at the meeting by their car tag numbers.

Continue west on Page Avenue, turn right on Martin Luther King, Jr. Drive, cross Woodrow Wilson Boulevard and continue several blocks to Plymouth Heights Boulevard on the right, go to Medgar Evers Boulevard. Take the next right into the driveway at...

LEGACY SITE ORIGINAL SITE OF JACKSON-HINDS COMPREHENSIVE HEALTH CARE CENTER, 2875 MEDGAR EVERS BOULEVARD

Dedicated in 1970 at this location, the Jackson-Hinds County Comprehensive Health Center emerged out of the 1964 Freedom Summer awareness of the health care needs of low income, uninsured, and underserved populations in Hinds County. Under the leadership of Dr. Aaron Shirley as Director and Dr. James Anderson as Medical Director, 47

they expanded their services beyond their offices on Whitfield Mills Road to the Sunday School class rooms at Cade Chapel Church. By the fall of 1970 the Health Center had used some of their Office of Economic Opportunity (OEO) grant to construct this new site, and they moved into it. Then due to increased demand for services in 1976 they relocated to 4433 Medgar Evers Boulevard to accommodate more patients and added additional services such as on-site x-ray, laboratory and pharmacy. As the demand for services continued to grow, the Center moved to the state of the art facility at 3502 West Northside Drive, named in honor of one of its founders, retired Dr. James Anderson. It is the largest community health center in the state with fifteen sites in three counties.

Continue going east on Medgar Evers Boulevard. Go past traffic light on Ridgeway Street and turn left on Liberty Street, then right on Ivanhoe Avenue. Just past the Medgar Evers Library, turn right into the parking lot and go straight ahead to...

66 4215 MEDGAR EVERS BLVD., MEDGAR EVERS LIBRARY AND STATUE The Medgar Evers Statue Fund Committee, led by Mrs. Mirtes Gregory, Andrew Lee, E. J. Ivory, and others, raised $60,000 to commission this life-sized statue of Medgar Evers. T. Jay Warren, a white artist formerly of Rolling Fork, Mississippi, created this bronze artwork, dedicated in 1991.

Leaving the parking lot, return to Medgar Evers Boulevard, turn left onto Ivanhoe Avenue, right onto Liberty Street, then turn left onto Medgar Evers Boulevard to the traffic light at Sunset Drive, turn right and continue to Utah Street and turn right. Continue to...

67 2432 UTAH STREET, FORMER HOME OF CIVIL RIGHTS WORKER MRS. DORIS SMITH Mrs. Doris Smith, the twin sister of Dorothy Palmer Williams, was known as a fearless woman of courage who not only taught school in Hinds County, but was also one of the teachers who attended night NAACP meetings with Medgar Evers at the Masonic Temple. She walked the picket line on Capitol Street, Delta Mart, Sears and other businesses. After the May 31, 1963 demonstration by school children (Site 18), Mrs. Smith accompanied some of them to Parchman when the fairgrounds became too crowded. Mrs. Smith was

48

a founding member of the Jackson Urban League, and was among those who marched from Tougaloo to the State Capitol to complete the Meredith “March Against Fear”. She testified for Hinds County school integration effort, was elected president of the Jackson Branch NAACP in 1982, and was the first Black woman elected to the City Council in 1985.

Continue on Utah Street to...

68 2261 UTAH STREET, FORMER HOME OF THE JB & STELLA REAN HARRINGTON FAMILY Registered voters since 1956 and NAACP members since the late fifties, JB and Stella Harrington made their home a hub of social and political change for those who wanted freedom and justice. On behalf of the NAACP the Harringtons got signatures from parents who would send their children to desegregated schools, and helped in the selective buying campaigns that led to hiring Blacks in retail stores. The Harringtons helped coordinate Jackson’s participation in the 1963 March on Washington where JB was a Marshall. Their children, Lee Roy, Shirley, and Orbra joined the May 31, 1963 student march that drew national attention when hundreds of youth (including Shirley and Lee Roy) were jailed (Site 18).

Continuing on Utah Street to Warner Avenue and turn right.

Continue on Warner Avenue to Ridgeway Street and turn right, go to Missouri Street and turn left, then take an immediate left on Margaret Walker Alexander Drive.

69 2332 MARGARET WALKER ALEXANDER DRIVE (FORMERLY GUYNES STREET), MEDGAR EVERS’ HOME

Medgar and Myrlie Evers used a GI mortgage in 1957 to purchase this home in a new subdivision developed by and for African Americans. It was just off Missouri Street, which separated black and white neighborhoods at the time.

As Evers’ civil rights activities increased in the early 1960s, threats to his safety and that of his family also increased. In May 1963, a Molotov cocktail thrown at the Evers home was put out by Mrs. Evers with a garden hose.

49

On June 12, 1963, around 12:20 a.m., Evers arrived home from New Jerusalem Baptist Church (Site 22), where he had attended a meeting. As he got out of his car carrying an armload of “Jim Crow Must Go” T-shirts, Evers was killed by a rifle bullet fired from bushes across the street. Evers died from loss of blood and internal injuries. His personal physician, Dr. A. B. Britton, could only watch the attending doctors, because African Americans were not permitted to practice medicine in the segregated emergency room at the University of Mississippi Medical Center.

This site is on the National Registry of Historic Places. The Evers home was donated to Tougaloo College, which now operates the house as a museum. The museum is open to the public by appointment. Please call 601-977-7839 or 601-977-7710 for more information. In 1994 the neighborhood was locally designated as the Medgar Evers Neighborhood Historic District, and Congress named Jackson’s new main post office the Medgar Wiley Evers Building. In 2011 the Jackson City Council named the airport “The Jackson Medgar Wiley Evers International Airport.”

Continue down Margaret Walker Alexander Drive going east.

70 2205 MARGARET WALKER ALEXANDER DRIVE, FORMER HOME OF DR. MARGARET WALKER ALEXANDER

Writer, poet, and teacher Dr. Margaret Walker Alexander (1915-1998) was to scholars and interpreters of culture what Medgar Evers was to activists of the movement. Her poem “For My People” expresses the spirit and goals of the Civil Rights Movement, and she saluted Medgar Evers and other African American leaders in her book Prophets for a New Day. She is perhaps most well known for her 1966 novel Jubilee. Dr. Margaret Walker Alexander organized the Institute for the Study of Black People at Jackson State University, which was renamed the Margaret Walker Alexander National Research Center for the Study of the 20th Century African American, now called the Margaret Walker Center. The Margaret Walker Alexander Library on Robinson Road is also named in her honor.

Continue to the end of Margaret Walker Alexander Drive, and turn left on Miami Street. Turn right on Ridgeway Street and continue east past Brinkley Middle School on the right. When you cross the railroad tracks, turn left at the traffic light onto Livingston Road. Take the second right onto the continuation of Ridgeway Street to...

50

71 1000 RIDGEWAY STREET, CADE CHAPEL M.B. CHURCH Cade Chapel M. B. Church was one of the churches where large Civil Rights meetings were held. Many of its members took active roles in the civil rights movement. Mr. J. B. Harrington was among the Trustees who supported giving the planner of the Jackson-Hinds County Comprehensive Health Center permission to use the church’s Sunday School class rooms as temporary quarters. Monday through Friday they served from 70 to 80 poor and underserved patients for dental, mental and preventative medical disorders. On March 13, 1970, Director Aaron Shirley, Medical Director James Anderson, and Pastor Horace Buckley dedicated the Center at 2875 Medgar Evers Boulevard.

Continue east on Ridgeway Street through the light at Bailey Avenue to...

72 3032 BISHOP AVENUE, INSTITUTIONAL A.M.E. CHURCH During the Ministry of Pastor G. S. James the Church District governing body gave permission for Mrs. Hazel Palmer (Site 73) to direct one of COFO’s 1964 Summer Freedom Schools at this location (Site 44). The Institutional A. M. E. Church Freedom School was one of the 40 or 50 held in Mississippi between July and August of 1964. The schools were designed to educate Blacks on social change, and political and economic equality. They also focused on voter education, registration and voting. Participants ranged from small children to the elderly. In Jackson, Freedom Schools were also scheduled at Blair Street A. M. E. Z., Cade Chapel, New Bethel Baptist, Pratt Memorial United Methodist, Pearl Street A. M. E., St. John M. B., St. Peters M. B., New Hope Baptist, and Mt. Nebo Baptist churches.

Continue on Ridgeway to Marion Dunbar Street, turn right, on the left is...

51

73 3030 MARION DUNBAR STREET, FORMER HOME OF MR. CLEVELAND DONALD, SR. & DR. CLEVELAND DONALD, JR. Home of Cleveland Donald Sr. and son Dr. Cleveland Donald, Jr., supporters of the North Jackson NAACP Youth Council, allowed them to meet here ofter until the group became too large. Fifteenyear-old Cleveland Donald, Jr. was one of the founders and youth leaders of the Youth Council. He was at the front of the May 31, 1963 students march from Farish Street Baptist Church when they were put in garbage trucks and taken to the fairgrounds where he stayed until they were bonded out (Sites 7, 18 & 44). In 1964 he was the second Black to enter and later to graduate from the University of Mississippi under Federal protection. After receiving a Ph.D. in Black Studies from Cornell he became a professor at the University of Mississippi in 1978 and set up their Black Studies program.

Continue on Marion Dunbar to Dr. Moton Street, turn right, go one block take left to Randolph Street and to...

74 2945 RANDOLPH STREET, VIRDEN GROVE BAPTIST CHURCH Virden Grove is one of several churches in this community that were active in the Jackson Civil Rights Movement and took part in various civil rights planning meetings. Many of the activities at these churches were held in secret; no announcements were printed and no records kept. The North Jackson NAACP Youth Council met in the Marion Dunbar Street home of Dr. Donald Cleveland, Jr. and later in the attic of this church. Formed in 1962 by the NAACP, the North Jackson Youth Council was composed of local high school and college students who spearheaded what became known as the Jackson Movement.

Tougaloo Professor John Salter worked closely with the students and the leadership of the Jackson Movement.

Continue south on Randolph Street to Stonewall Street, turn right onto Stonewall and follow it under the Bailey Avenue overpass to Bailey Avenue. Take a left at the light onto Bailey. The first house on the right, after the small commercial building, is...

52

75 2924 BAILEY AVENUE, HOME OF MRS. HAZEL PALMER An elementary school maid, Mrs. Hazel Palmer was an activist for the MFDP (Site 44). In 1965, she and her husband filed a lawsuit challenging the 1963 closing of Jackson’s municipal swimming pools. A federal court upheld the pool closings, reasoning that since the city had closed all pools, neither whites nor blacks were victims of discrimination. New city swimming pools were constructed and reopened in 1975 under the administration of Mayor Russell C. Davis.

In 1964 Mrs. Palmer facilitated a Freedom School in her church, the Bonner Institutional A. M. E. Church at 3032 Bishop Avenue (Site 70).

Continue down Bailey Avenue to Eminence Row and turn right, then the next left to Bishop Street. On the left is…

76 3527 BISHOP STREET, HOME OF COLIA LIDDELL AND HER BROTHER LEWIS LIDDELL This is the home of the first two presidents of the North Jackson Youth Council, Colia Liddell and her brother, Lewis Liddell who lived here with their parents, Eugene & Colia Liddell and seven other brothers. They were guided by Medgar Evers and John Salter.

Their parents, who were registered voters, were supportive of their children’s involvement and were a part of the grassroots surge for the JM. In the fall of 1961, Colia asked Salter, her US. Government teacher to speak at the NAACP mass meeting at the Virden Grove Church on October 30th and he agreed. Two days later she asked him to be the adviser of the North Jackson NAACP Youth Council. When Colia became the special assistant to Evers, her brother Lewis Liddell took over the youth Council as president. In 1962 she resigned from the NAACP and joined the SNCC to do voter registration work (Sites 45, 73 & 74).

Continue on Bishop Street to Collier Street, turn left on Collier Street and next right on Bailey Avenue. Continue north on Bailey Avenue/Watkins Drive for about four miles to County Line Road, take a right, and go about two miles to the campus of Tougaloo College, which is on the left.

53

NOTES

54

F O LEGEND 77 Tougaloo College 78 SNCC Freedom House & Literacy House 79 Former site of Tougaloo Child Development Group of Mississippi 80 Former Home of Rabbi Perry Nussbaum 81 Millsaps College

80

81

55

U R 77

78

79

56

NEIGHBORHOOD FOUR:

THE TOUGALOO COLLEGE COMMUNITY You are now beginning the tour of Neighborhood Four, which takes approximately 30 minutes.

To reach Tougaloo College from the Smith Robertson Museum, exit the museum on Dr. Jessie Mosley Drive and go east on High Street to North State Street. Turn left on North State Street and travel to Tougaloo Village Road, approximately five miles, turn left.

(Becomes West County Line Road) The Tougaloo campus is several blocks west on the right. Continue west on County Line Road, past the original entrance, to the current entrance opposite Grant Street.

77 500 WEST COUNTY LINE ROAD, TOUGALOO COLLEGE Tougaloo College was founded in 1869 by the American Missionary Association on land formerly occupied by an antebellum cotton plantation that was worked by slaves.

One structure that remains from that time is the building known as the “Mansion.” The campus was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1998.

As a private, church-supported institution, Tougaloo and its administration, faculty, and students were able to take strong stands for the Jackson Civil Rights Movement. The campus was the location for countless meetings, including the biracial social science forums organized by Professor Ernst Borinski. Those meetings, planning sessions, conferences, and rallies attracted activists, dignitaries, and entertainers from across the country, including Martin Luther King, Jr., Andrew Young, Bayard Rustin, James Farmer, James Forman, Medgar Evers, Fannie Lou Hamer, Ralph Bunche, Julian Bond, Robert Kennedy, James Baldwin, Marlon Brando, Sammy Davis Jr., Burt Lancaster, Dick Gregory, Joan Baez, and others.

The Tougaloo Nine initiated Mississippi’s first read-in at the whites-only Jackson Municipal Public Library on March 27, 1961 (Site 5), and Tougaloo College was the final staging area for James Meredith’s 1966 “March Against Fear” (Site 2).

Off campus sympathy demonstrations by Tougaloo College students after the May 12, 1967 murder of Ben Brown caused them to be reprimanded

57

for taking a college bus. Campus protests called for Black Studies courses and more black professors, a precursor to the Black Studies Movement.

The Zenobia Coleman Library at Tougaloo maintains a vast collection of documents, tapes, and artifacts related to the movement, along with the personal papers of many Mississippi activists. The Civil Rights documents and papers are now stored at the Mississippi Department of Archives and History.

Exit Tougaloo College and turn left on the right is…

78 433 WEST COUNTY LINE ROAD, SNCC FREEDOM HOUSE & LITERACY HOUSE A freedom house in the Tougaloo community, also referred to as “The Literacy House,” served as a residence for a number of activists and writers from the mid-60s to the mid-70s. It was the earlier home of Civil Rights workers, Theodore and Annie Seaton Smith, founders of the CDGM Project, a day care facility in the community (Site 79).

Continue on County Line Road to the Stop Sign and turn right onto Tougaloo Village Drive crossing the railroad tracks, turn right on North State Street and go approximately 1/3 mile to Vine Street.

79 132 VINE STREET, FORMER SITE OF TOUGALOO CHILD DEVELOPMENT GROUP OF MISSISSIPPI Formerly located on this site was a house owned by Mrs. Annie Smith. Mrs. Smith, a civil rights activist, was instrumental in founding the Tougaloo Center of the Child Development Group of Mississippi (CDGM) around 1965. The Child Development Group of Mississippi was one of the nation’s pioneer Head Start programs. This Center still serves as a head start center for the Tougaloo community.

Return to North State Street and turn left.

Located within the 5000 block of North State Street was the former office of Pulitzer Prize-winning editor Mrs. Hazel Brannon Smith’s progressive weekly newspaper, which was bombed in 1964 by Ku Klux Klan night riders. In 1973, Wilson F. “Bill” Minor, a political correspondent for the New Orleans Times-Picayune who resided in Jackson purchased the

58

paper. The paper became The Reporter, formally The Capitol Reporter.

Its offices were moved to Wesley Avenue, where night riders smashed windows, burned a cross, and shot into the building. Minor’s crusading reporting and syndicated column have covered minority viewpoints and exposed bigotry and corruption for more than 50 years.

Continue south on North State Street, past Northside Drive to Meadowbrook Road. Turn left on Meadowbrook Road. Just before I-55, turn right onto Old Canton Road. Near the intersection of Old Canton Road and Duling Avenue is…

80 3140 OLD CANTON ROAD, FORMER HOME OF RABBI PERRY NUSSBAUM The former home of Rabbi Perry Nussbaum of Temple Beth Israel.

Rabbi Nussbaum’s home was bombed on November 21, 1967. He and his wife were home at the time but escaped injury. Rabbi Nussbaum, together with the Catholic Bishop Joseph Brunini, and the Episcopal Bishop, Duncan Gray, led whites in interracial, interfaith efforts. Temple Beth Israel (located at 5315 Old Canton Road) was the scene of a bombing on September 18, 1967. The bomb destroyed the temple, but it was rebuilt.

Continue south on Old Canton Road to the point at which it joins North State Street, and continue past the University of Mississippi Medical Center, where Medgar Evers, Benjamin Brown, Phillip Gibbs, and Earl Green died. Proceed south on North State Street across Woodrow Wilson Boulevard to...

81 1701 NORTH STATE STREET, MILLSAPS COLLEGE In the 1950s, students from Millsaps College and Tougaloo College held meetings attended by Medgar Evers to discuss race relations. This cooperation was the result of the efforts of Tougaloo sociologist Ernst Borinski, who in the 1930s immigrated to the United States from Nazi Germany and was an outspoken opponent of segregation. Millsaps College was eventually pressured by the Citizen Council to discontinue interracial meetings. Despite the college’s policy of segregation, several Millsaps faculty members and students were active in the movement. Called “perhaps the most courageous institution in the nation” by Greenville 59

Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Hodding Carter III, Millsaps College admitted African American students in 1965 to much public disapproval. After the 1967 murder of Benjamin Brown, Millsaps students and others marched from the campus to city hall in a show of condemnation of the J. R. Lynch Street shooting. In 1979, Millsaps College and Tougaloo College jointly sponsored an event commemorating the fifteenth anniversary of Freedom Summer.

Continue south on North State Street.

Several blocks south of Millsaps College, at the corner of North State Street and Poplar Boulevard, once stood the home of Robert B. Kochtitzky, a religious worker and civil rights sympathizer. The house was bombed on November 18, 1967. No one inside was injured.

From North State Street, turn right at High Street and continue down the hill past the New Capitol, Dr. Jessie Mosley Drive is just before the curve on High Street, bear left to Smith Robertson Museum.

60

COMMON ABBREVIATIONS

ACLU – American Civil Liberties Union CAP – Community Action Programs CDGM – Child Development Group of Mississippi COFO – Council of Federated Organizations CORE – Congress of Racial Equality JM – Jackson Movement JNM – Jackson Non-Violent Movement LCDC – Lawyers’ Constitutional Defense Committee LDEF – Legal Defense and Education Fund (of the NAACP) MAP – Mississippi Action for Progress MFDP – Mississippi Freedom and Democratic Party NAACP – National Association for the Advancement of Colored People RNA – Republic of New Africa SNCC – Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee SCLC – Southern Christian Leadership Conference

SIGNIFICANT DATES May 17, 1954 – Supreme Court issued Brown v Board of Education ruling July, 1954 – White Citizens’ Councils began to form in response to Brown v Board ruling August 28, 1954 – Emmitt Till was lynched in Money, Mississippi March 29, 1956 – Mississippi Sovereignty Commission was created by the State Legislature (Site 2) April, 1960 – African American citizens led the Easter Boycott of downtown Jackson merchants on Capitol Street March 27, 1961 – “Tougaloo Nine” Read-In occurred at the Jackson Municipal Public Library (Site 5) April 20, 1961 - Bus Sit-In took place at Lamar and Capitol streets in Jackson (Site 47) May 24, 1961 – 9 Freedom Riders arrested at the Greyhound Bus Station (Site 9) May 25, 1961 – 24 Freedom Riders arrested at the Trailways Bus Station (Site 32) May 28, 1961 – 17 more Freedom Riders arrested at the Greyhound Bus Station (Site 9) June 4, 1961 – Stokely Carmichael and others arrested at Illinois Central Union Station (Site 25) July 12-14, 1961 – First lunch counter Sit-Ins in Jackson occurred at Walgreens Drug Store (Site 27) October 16-17, 1961 – Demonstrations took place at the segregated Mississippi State Fair (Site 7) October 16-17, 1962 – Protesters boycotted and picketed the segregated Mississippi State Fair (Site 7) December, 1962 – African American citizens led the Christmas Boycott of downtown Jackson merchants

61

May 28, 1963 – Local students participated in a Sit-in at the Woolworth Store’s lunch counter (Site 26) May 30, 1963 – Lanier High School students staged a Walkout in response to Woolworth Sit-In (Site 61) May 31, 1963 – Students led a march on Farish Street in response to other nonviolent activities (Site 18) June 12, 1963 –Medgar Evers was assassinated at his home (Site 69) June 15, 1963 –Funeral service for Medgar Evers occurred at the Masonic Temple (Site 45) June 18, 1963 – JM ended with a deal between Mayor Allen Thompson and Movement leaders (Site 29) November 2, 1963 – President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, TX July 2, 1964 – President Lyndon Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 August 4, 1964 – The bodies of missing Civil Rights workers Michael Schwerner, Andrew Goodman, and James Chaney were found in Neshoba County, Mississippi August 6, 1965 – President Lyndon Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act of 1965 June 26, 1966 – “March Against Fear” arrived in Jackson at State Capitol (Site 2) May 10, 1967 – Jackson State campus demonstrations led to confrontations with law enforcement (Site 49) May 12, 1967 – Benjamin Brown was killed near Jackson State campus (Site 49) September 18, 1967 – Temple Beth Israel in Jackson was bombed and destroyed November 21, 1967 – Home of Rabbi Nussbaum was bombed (Site 80) April 4, 1968 – Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated in Memphis, TN January, 1970 – All Jackson Public School facilities were desegregated May 15, 1970 – Phillip Gibbs and James Green were shot and killed on Jackson State campus (Site 49) December 9, 2017 – Opening of the 2 Mississippi Museums (The Museum of Mississippi History and the Mississippi Civil Rights Museum)

62

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Researcher and Consultant: Dr. Alferdteen Harrison Citizens Committee Members: Dr. James Anderson Mr. Rims Barber Ms. Eddie Jean Carr Ms. Alyce Clarke Dr. LC Dorsey Dr. Ed King Mr. HT Drake Ms. Gwendolyn Loper Ms. Othella Moman Dr. John Peoples Mr. George Smith Mrs. Kennie Smith Mr. Hollis Watkins

PHOTOGRAPHY Richard Henry Beadle Collection Mississippi Department of Archives and History Smith Robertson Museum and Cultural Center Jackson State University Margaret Walker Center H.T. Sampson Library Tougaloo College Archives Mrs. Aurelia N. Young Mrs. Helene Rotwein The Associated Press Institute of Southern Jewish Life Ms. Edna Patrina Harris

We would also like to thank Former Mayor Harvey Johnson, Jr. for initiating this project.

The information presented in this brochure is as accurate as we can verify at the time of this printing. Please notify us of any factual errors as you become aware of them. 5/17 63

COVER PHOTO: Following the assassination of Medgar Evers on June 11, 1963, 1,400 mourners marched from his memorial service at the Masonic Temple to Collins Funeral Home.

For additional copies, contact Visit Jackson www.visitjackson.com or call 1-800-354-7695