This spring break 12 ETSU students will journey to rural Neshoba County, Miss., to work in solidarity with the African-American community of Longdale.
Community members, working with veterans of the Mississippi Civil Rights Movement and contemporary activists from across the nation, are venturing to rebuild the Longdale Community Center – destroyed in a mysterious fire in 1982.
The Longdale Community Center once served the community with a head-start program, after-school enrichment programs, and space for community fellowship and discussion of community issues.
The fire that destroyed the center was never investigated, but community members believe it was destroyed for much the same reason that another community structure was burned decades earlier – to prevent the community from organizing.
On June 16, 1964, the Mt. Zion Methodist Church was burned to the ground by members of the Mississippi White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan who were looking for Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) worker Michael Schwerner.
CORE workers James Chaney and Michael Schwerner had recruited the Mt. Zion Church as the location of a Freedom School to teach Longdale residents the literacy and citizenship skills they needed in order to register to vote.
When Chaney and Schwerner returned to that community along with new recruit, Andrew Goodman, to investigate the church burning and assure the community they would not abandon them in such a crisis, they were arrested on trumped-up charges and held in jail until a Klan mob could organize.
After the trio was released from jail, their car was chased by the Klan mob to a dirt road where they were murdered and later buried in an earthen dam.
The “Mississippi Burning” case is one of the most well known cases of its kind, though there are more than 50 others in Mississippi alone.
Despite the best efforts of the Klan and their uptown supporters, the Mt. Zion Church was rebuilt and continues to be an integral part of Longdale.
In recent years, community members have once again begun utilizing the site of the Longdale Community Center for education, community organizing, and discussion of community issues.
Unfortunately, this kind of safe haven, free of racism and discrimination is hard to come by in Neshoba County, Mississippi.
Last year as we sat at the Longdale Center, a young man pulled up in a truck and proceeded to yell racial slurs at the gathering.
This occurred just hours after one of our fellow participants was run down by a driver who was upset that we were participating in a “Caravan for Justice,” calling for the prosecution of the remaining living murder suspects in the Chaney, Goodman and Schwerner case.
Because of these issues, we feel the need to work in solidarity with the contemporary civil rights movement in Mississippi.
We, along with the other members of the Alternative Spring Break (ASB), will spend a week in Mississippi creating a space where the new Longdale Community and Education Center will be built.
We’ll be landscaping and tearing down what’s left of the center after the devastating fire.
We’ll also be meeting and working in solidarity with community members to learn about what specific issues they are facing.
Also, we’ll attend a community meeting in Hattiesburg, Miss., where there is a strong contemporary civil rights movement, with citizens who are demanding environmental justice and equality.
This spring break promises to be a powerful, possibly life changing experience.
If you’re interested in learning more about ASB, there will be an opportunity to meet with the Mississippi group (and our other ABS group that will be working at Camp Boggy Creek, Fla.) post-break presentation of what we accomplished. Be there.

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