Miles total: 2100
Today, we spent the morning in the archives at the University of Mississippi. This stop was our first archival one, and the special collections at Ole Miss have extensive Civil Rights holdings, including an audio Blues collection and the papers of James Meredith.
After a quick lunch, we headed southeast to Philadelphia, MS. The students had watched Mississippi Burning (1988) over the weekend and were anxious to see some of the associated sites. Philadelphia is where three Civil Rights workers (two white men, Michael Schwerner and Andrew Goodman, and one Black man, James Chaney) traveled to investigate the burning of a church during Freedom Summer in 1964. [There were 67 church burnings/bombings in Mississippi during 1964 alone.] While there, the local sheriff arrested them late in the afternoon. Released later that night, they were never seen alive again. Their bodies were found a couple of months later in an earthen dam outside of town. After the release of the factually inaccurate but highly emotional and compelling Mississippi Burning, a sign was erected at the Mt Zion church (the church they came to town to investigate) to commemorate the three men. We met the pastor of the church who encouraged us to come back on a Sunday sometime to speak to the many congregation members who remember the 1964 burning and subsequent murders. They told us that the grave of James Chaney, located several towns over, is still regularly desecrated. We made our way to Jackson later in the evening.
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