NATCHEZ — The Natchez Tricentennial will commemorate this month the lives of three local activists who suffered violence at the hands of white supremacists during the Civil Rights Movement in Natchez.

A commemoration for Archie Curtis and Willie Jackson will be at 2 p.m. today at King Solomon Baptist Church, located at 6 Spring St.

A commemoration for Wharlest Jackson is scheduled for 3 p.m. Feb. 27 at St. Paul AME Church at 99 Pinemount Road.

Archie Curtis and Willie Jackson

In February 1964, local mortician and chairman of Natchez Business and Civic League’s voter registration drive Archie Curtis received a phone call to pick up a body. Upon arriving at the call, Curtis and his assistant, Willie Jackson, are taken and brutally beaten by a group of hooded men waiting for them.

“They suffered injuries they never recovered from,” commemoration organizer Betty Cade said.

Wharlest Jackson

In February 1967, after accepting a coveted promotion at Armstrong Rubber Company, making him a target of the local Ku Klux Klan, Wharlest Jackson is murdered after a bomb planted in his truck detonated on Minor Street.

Commemorating the past

The commemorations of the lives and sacrifices of Curtis, Willie Jackson and Wharlest Jackson seek to keep their stories alive and include their stories in the telling of Natchez’s 300 years of history during the Tricentennial, Cade said.

“This history has to be told, good or bad,” Cade said. “I think once the history is out there, people can make a choice to forgive or make a choice to still be angry, but we have to live with the choices we make. We are hoping that by sharing this history and commemorating these lives, there can be reconciliation of the races in the city.”

Natchez Tricentennial Director Jennifer Ogden Combs said the inclusion of the civil rights commemorations in the tricentennial is critical.

“It is, in my view, of the utmost importance,” she said. “2016 is about commemorating our past. We’ve got lots of celebrations this year. But some of our history isn’t necessarily to be celebrated, but it is absolutely to be commemorated, and acknowledged and learned from so that we may go on to create a more unified future.”