LC Meridian

Issue date: 5/5/08 Section: News

Media Credit: www.loc.gov

The 44th Annual Mississippi Civil Rights Martyrs Conference will be held in Philadelphia, Mississippi from June 21 to June 22, where there will be a caravan, a rally, and a conference to commemorate the lives of three of the civil rights movement's heroes.

The student newspaper at Lehman derives its name from a town in Mississippi called Meridian, a base for the Freedom Riders. The group, formed in 1961, was comprised of black and white men, women, and children who traveled to the South to test the 1960 Supreme Court Law that outlawed segregation at interstate public facilities.

On the evening of June 16, 1964, some members of the Ku Klux Klan severely beat and held hostage several patrons of the Mount Zion United Methodist Church and then burned the church to the ground.

Three civil rights workers, James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner, heard the news and decided to travel to Philadelphia to investigate the church burning and to help the area's African Americans register to vote. They departed Meridian for Philadelphia and were traveling on a Mississippi highway when they were forced off the road by a deputy who was also a Klansman. Under pressure from President Lyndon B. Johnson, the FBI located the dead and beaten bodies of the three men 44 days later.

At the time, John Steele was an 11 year old resident of Meridian. "This event inspired the movie Mississippi Burning," Steele noted.

His father, Pastor Cornelius Steele, was one of many organizers who rallied for voter registration in Mississippi. Steele found it appropriate that the Lehman student newspaper was named after the Mississippi town.

"I invite Lehman College to attend the Annual Mississippi Civil Rights Martyrs Memorial Service and show your support," Steele said. "We are anticipating groups coming from Minnesota, Indiana, East Tennessee State University, the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and other places. And, of course, there will be folks coming in ones, twos, threes, etcetera, from all over Mississippi and the country."

For more information contact John Steele at (925) 497-9868 or via email at johnora32@msn.com.

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