Fifty years ago our nation and our community were wracked with growing pains as the systems that imposed racial segregation and denied basic civil rights were being boldly challenged by some and violently defended by others.

A historical symposium sponsored by Natchez National Historical Park that will be held in the parish hall of Holy Family Church at 16 Orange Avenue on Saturday Oct. 3 from 3 4:30 p.m. will provide the community an opportunity to learn more about what happened in our town and how it related to the broader movement.

The sponsorship by Natchez National Historical Park is significant. As the National Park Service prepares to celebrate its 100th birthday in 2016, national parks across the United States are encouraged to discover and bring to light the untold civil rights stories of their gateway communities.

The locale is also significant because of the many civil rights planning meetings that were held at Holy Family in 1965 under the leadership of Father William J. Morrisey, SSJ. The park thanks Father James Fallon, Valencia Hall and the Holy Family parish for their gracious hospitality.

The historical symposium is part of a series of events being held in Natchez this weekend to show honor and respect for those brave souls who stepped out of Beulah and China Grove Baptist churches in early October 1965 to march in support of their voting rights, but were instead marshalled into paddy wagons and taken away to jails or to the City auditorium.

From the City auditorium, more than 200 people aged 12 and older were put onto trailways busses and hauled to the Mississippi State Penitentiary at Parchman where they suffered days of unspeakable intimidation and abuse.

Symposium speakers providing context for the Natchez activities will include Dr. Ted Ownby, director of the University of Mississippi Center for the Study of Southern Culture (“The Natchez Civil Rights Movement: The List of Demands, The Marches, The Boycott, and The Responses”), and Stanley Nelson, editor of The Concordia Sentinel (“Mission Miscalculation: How the Klan’s Well-Planned Effort to Kill George Metcalfe & Stop the Civil Rights Movement Backfired!”).

Local participants in the movement who will make remarks include Judge Mary Lee Toles, Ms. Jessie Bernard Williams and Mr. Ronald Coleman.

The event is free and open to the public. For more information, call the Melrose Visitor Center desk at 601-446-5790.

 

Kathleen M. Bond is Superintendent of Natchez National Historical Park.