THE STORY CONTINUES IN MISSISSIPPI

By MAK MILLARD

As is the case across the country, and especially in the South, Black history and the history of the civil rights movement extend far beyond any state or county line. Connections abound between regions to tell stories of tragedy, struggle, hope and success, even into the present day.

In 2018, Mississippi added a portion of Highway 82 to the Delta Rhythm & Bayous Highway. After intersecting Highway 65 on the Arkansas side of the Mississippi River, the highway passes through the historic Mississippi towns of Greenville and Leland. Greenville’s Nelson Street was home to a flourishing strip of blues clubs in the 1940s and 1950s; the site is now commemorated as a landmark on the Mississippi Blues Trail. Greenville is also the birthplace of Mary Wilson, Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee and founding member of the Supremes, the best-charting female group in U.S. history.

Leland has five Blues Trail markers of its own, including two celebrating musician and sculptor James “Son Ford” Thomas and famed blues and soul artist Tyrone Davis, whose hits spanned more than 20 years. Another Leland notable, journalist Douglas A. Blackmon, was actually born in Stuttgart, Arkansas, and worked as a reporter and editor in Little Rock early in his career. In 2009, Blackmon won a Pulitzer Prize for his book, “Slavery by Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II.”

Mississippi has eight destinations on the United States Civil Rights Trail covering a variety of pivotal and infamous events. Many of the sites memorialized on the national trail overlap with Mississippi’s own Freedom Trail. Created in 2011, the Freedom Trail consists of markers all over the state recognizing people and places that played a significant role in the civil rights movement.

Jackson is home to the Mississippi Civil Rights Museum. Exhibits cover the entire civil rights movement, with particular attention paid to the murders and legacies of Medgar Evers and Emmett Till. Evers, the first NAACP field secretary and a prominent civil rights activist and organizer, was assassinated at his home in 1963. The Evers family home in Jackson, designated a National Historic Landmark in 2017, has been restored and turned into a museum.

Also in Jackson is Tougaloo College, which served as a refuge for activists and became a key gathering place for organizers and leaders in Mississippi. In 1961, a group of students known as the Tougaloo Nine staged a “read-in” at the Jackson Public Library and were arrested, sparking protests and demonstrations on their behalf. In response, the American Library Association released a statement saying its members must welcome everyone, regardless of race. As a result, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia and Louisiana withdrew their memberships.

One of the most abhorrent moments in the state’s history is the murder of 14-year-old Emmett Till. A historical marker stands in the community of Money at the former site of Bryant’s Grocery & Meat Market, where, in 1955, Till was accused of whistling at a white woman. His subsequent abduction, torture and murder made headlines across the country after Till’s mother, Mamie Till-Bradley, insisted on holding a public, open-casket funeral. Emmett’s killers, Roy Bryant and J.W. Milam, were found not guilty by an all-white jury. Photos of Till’s mutilated body were published by Jet magazine, one of the publications owned by Arkansas-born John H. Johnson. The case brought intense scrutiny onto the plight and treatment of Black people in Mississippi and across the South.

In nearby Glendora is the building that once held the cotton gin from which Till’s killers stole a fan and wire used to weigh the boy’s body down before throwing him into the Tallahatchie River. The site is now home to the Emmett Till Historic Intrepid Center, telling the story of Till’s life, death and the civil rights movement in Glendora. In Sumner, 30 miles south of Money, the Tallahatchie County Courthouse where the murder trial took place has been preserved as a museum, and an interpretive center across the street helps to tell the story.

The effects of Till’s legacy – and the subsequent failure of the justice system to hold his killers accountable – is still being felt today, especially as Black people continue to face disproportionately high rates of police violence. In 2022, the film “Till” was released, telling the story of Mamie Till-Bradley as an educator and activist after her son’s murder. Also in 2022, the U.S. Senate unanimously passed the Emmett Till Anti-Lynching Act, making lynching a federal hate crime punishable by up to 30 years in prison.

Just 30 minutes away in Ruleville is the Fannie Lou Hamer Memorial Statue. Hamer, the youngest child of sharecropper parents, was one of 17 individuals who traveled to Indianola, Mississippi, in an attempt to register to vote. She faced severe backlash for her actions but went on to join the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and helped organize the 1964 Freedom Summer voter registration campaign.

One of the most prominent and ambitious civil rights campaigns, the Freedom Summer campaign was built on years of organizing work by SNCC and the local Black community. To combat racist voter suppression tactics and other societal barriers, thousands of volunteers flocked to Mississippi to help register as many Black voters as possible. Volunteers also taught in Freedom Schools throughout the state. In Canton, the Freedom House held volunteers and served as the local headquarters for the Congress of Racial Equality. The Freedom House was bombed in 1964, just one of countless instances of violence faced by the organizers and the community. Today, the restored structure of the Canton Freedom House is a civil rights museum housing photographs, articles and civil rights memorabilia.

In the eastern part of the state, Neshoba County holds several historic sites related to three other martyrs of the civil rights movement. The deaths of Michael Schwerner, Andrew Good- man and James Chaney in 1964, known as the Freedom Summer murders, were initially treated as a missing persons case. Schwerner, Goodman and Chaney were traveling to the CORE office in Meridian when they were stopped by county deputy sheriff and Ku Klux Klan member Cecil Price. The three men were later killed by Price and a group of Klansmen.

After an extensive FBI investigation, 19 men, including Price, were indicted by the federal government for civil rights violations. In 1967, an all-white jury found Price and six other men guilty, acquitting nine others and deadlocking on three more. Though none of the accused spent more than six years in prison, it was the first time anyone in the state had been convicted on civil rights violations. In 2005, Edgar Ray Killen, a former Klansman and Baptist preacher, was sentenced to 60 years in prison for his role in orchestrating the murders. Killen, the last person serving time for a civil rights-era death, died in 2018 at age 92.

The final stop on the Mississippi portion of the national Civil Rights Trail is in Oxford where, in 1961, James Meredith, a Black man, applied for admission to the University of Mississippi. After two rejections and a long battle between the state and federal governments, 500 U.S. marshals escorted Meredith to his registration at the behest of U.S. Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy.

Despite riots that broke out on campus after the police presence was removed, Meredith officially became the first African American student to enroll at the University of Mississippi. He graduated with a degree in political science on August 18, 1963. A historical marker at the university designates the site of the rioting and a statue of Meredith stands in the university’s Circle Historic District.

It is worth taking the time to learn this history in Arkansas, Mississippi and across the United States, not only to celebrate its heroes and remember its martyrs, but to bring awareness to the ongoing struggles faced by the Black community today. Visiting these sites and becoming familiar with their stories allows everyone to connect the past to the present – a necessary task as we look toward our future.

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