Civil Rights in Mississippi

The Rev. Ed King, a United Methodist Church minister and co-founder of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP), is remembered by the Mississippi Department of Archives and History as a key figure in the Civil Rights Movement. 

King died July 4, 2026, at the age of 89.

Born Ralph Edwin King, he joined the ministry as a young man and enrolled at Boston University, where he volunteered for civil rights causes. In 1963, he accepted a position as chaplain at Tougaloo College and joined the Jackson Freedom Movement, organizing a downtown Jackson boycott with Mississippi NAACP field secretary Medgar Wiley Evers and John Salter, a professor at Tougaloo College. King served as an “observer” during the 1963 Jackson Woolworth sit-in, reporting the demonstration’s ensuing violence to Evers.

The day after the sit-in, police arrested King and others for trespassing when they attempted a kneel-in on the steps of the Federal Building on Capitol Street in Jackson. King’s civil rights activism provoked White ministers to expel him from his home church. He continued fighting for equal voting rights in the state, serving as Aaron Henry’s running mate in 1963’s Freedom Vote, a mock election opposing disenfranchisement among African Americans, and as a challenger to the seating of an all-White Mississippi delegation at the Democratic National Convention in Atlantic City. Despite facing attacks and threats from White supremacists, King advocated for solidarity between White and Black churches in Mississippi. His journey as a civil rights veteran is featured in the Mississippi Civil Rights Museum of the Two Mississippi Museums.

“Ed King was a quintessential civil rights activist,” said Barry White, director of the Mississippi Department of Archives and History. “His resilience in efforts to desegregate churches and to fight for equal voting rights in the state remain a shining testament to his courage.” 

Christina J. Thomas, PhD, will conduct research to support her upcoming digital project, “Digitizing Freedom Summer” 

Christina J. Thomas, a post doctorate fellow at the Center for Civil Rights History and Research at the University of South Carolina, is the recipient of the inaugural Robert “Bob” Moses Civil Rights Research Fellowship, offered by the Mississippi Department of Archives and History.

Thomas will conduct research in the MDAH archives this summer to support her forthcoming “Digitizing Freedom Summer” project, featuring an interactive map that locates and documents the stories of volunteers of Mississippi Freedom Summer in 1964.

This new fellowship is named for Moses, who is widely credited as the architect of Freedom Summer 1964, when hundreds of college students from around the country came to Mississippi to register Black people to vote and establish school classrooms for Black children. Thomas’s project focuses on the volunteers, including the local people who opened their homes to the activists. 

“I am honored to receive this fellowship and to continue sharing Moses’ legacy and that of those who carried the Mississippi movement forward,” Thomas said.

The project’s interactive map, which is in development alongside a database, will showcase the stories of Freedom Summer through biographical profiles of volunteers. When available, the profiles will also include the volunteers’ Freedom Summer applications and links to primary sources, such as oral histories or newspaper articles.

“Through this fellowship, I aim to finalize the database, which serves as the foundation of the map,” Thomas said. “The first prototype will be sent to Civil Rights Movement scholars and veterans for critical feedback in late fall 2026 before its public launch next year.”

Moses was an organizer with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) in the 1960s. The fellowship that bears his name seeks to nurture scholars at the beginning of their academic careers to increase their lifelong interest in history and promote continued academic and public appreciation of the Civil Rights Movement in Mississippi, and the struggle for human rights, said Laura Heller, MDAH acquisitions and collections coordinator. 

“The MDAH archives hold some of the country’s richest primary sources related to the Civil Rights Movement,” Heller said. “We welcome the opportunity to host a fellow whose ongoing work can be bolstered by our archival materials.”

Thomas will use the $5,000 fellowship to cover travel, housing, and other expenses incurred while conducting research at the archives.  

In addition to her work at the Center for Civil Rights History and Research, Thomas previously was an Andrew W. Mellon Visiting Scholar at the Margaret Walker Center at Jackson State University. Thomas also was a historian for the History Department of the National Portrait Gallery at the Smithsonian Institute.

Thomas received a doctoral degree in History from Johns Hopkins University and Master of Art in History from the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. She received her Bachelor of Art in History from Messiah University.

Chelsea McNutt, a Cornell University doctoral student, will research the role of Black women and their care work within the NAACP during the Civil Rights Movement in Mississippi 

Chelsea McNutt, a doctoral student at Cornell University, has been named the Mississippi Department of Archives and History’s Medgar and Myrlie Evers Research Fellow for 2026. McNutt will explore the Medgar Wiley and Myrlie Beasley Evers Papers at MDAH this summer to pursue research related to the care work of Black women within local NAACP branches – work she describes as “foundational” to sustaining the Civil Rights Movement. 

“I am deeply grateful to the selection committee for their confidence in my project,” McNutt said. “The opportunity to conduct research in the Medgar and Myrlie Evers Papers at the Mississippi Department of Archives and History is incredibly meaningful, and I look forward to engaging these collections in ways that will strengthen my current work.”

McNutt’s research will center on the organizing networks that surrounded Myrlie Evers, exploring how women within those networks cultivated relationships, managed organizational responsibilities and maintained the continuity of civil rights work amid persistent threats of violence and surveillance. McNutt will examine correspondence, organizational materials, and personal papers housed at MDAH.

McNutt received a Bachelor of Arts in History and a Master of Arts in History from Arkansas State University. She also received a Master of Arts in History from Cornell University. She’s working toward a PhD with the dissertation, “Hidden Architects: Black Women NAACP Activists in the Jim Crow South 1935-1970.”

McNutt will use the $5,000 fellowship to cover travel, housing, and other expenses incurred while doing primary research at the archives.  

Laura Heller, MDAH acquisitions and collections coordinator, said the department welcomes the opportunity to host a fellow each summer, and credits the partnership with the Medgar and Myrlie Evers Institute for making it possible.

“McNutt will have access to an extensive collection of archival material to support her research this summer,” Heller said. “The fellowship also seeks to increase scholars’ lifelong interest in history and to promote continued academic and public appreciation of Medgar and Myrlie Evers’ life and work, the Civil Rights Movement in Mississippi, and the struggle for human rights.”

The Medgar Wiley and Myrlie Beasley Evers Papers may be accessed at the William F. Winter Archives and History Building in Jackson. For more information on the fellowship or about the collection, contact Heller at 601-576-6889, or by email at fellowships@mdah.ms.gov. 

The family of Fannie Lou Hamer has donated the civil rights leader’s Presidential Medal of Freedom to the Mississippi Department of Archives and History to ensure her legacy of activism is shared with future generations.

Then-President Joe Biden awarded the nation’s highest civilian honor posthumously to Hamer in January 2025, describing her as “one of the most powerful voices of the Civil Rights Movement.” Hamer fought tirelessly for voting rights – enduring brutal beatings and arrests – in pursuit of Black people’s constitutional right to vote.

“We feel this is an honor that should be shared with everyone,” said Monica Land, Hamer’s niece and producer of the award-winning film, Fannie Lou Hamer’s America. “Our hope is that others will see it and want to learn more about Aunt Fannie Lou, her life, her legacy and the tremendous sacrifices she made on behalf of others.”

The medal will be displayed at the Two Mississippi Museums, which is administered by MDAH. The museums recently commemorated Hamer’s 108th birth date on Oct. 6.

"We are incredibly thankful to the family of Fannie Lou Hamer for donating this medal to the people of Mississippi,” said Michael Morris, director of the Two Mississippi Museums – The Museum of Mississippi History and the Mississippi Civil Rights Museum. “The medal demonstrates the national significance of Hamer and commemorates her enduring legacy."

Hamer was born Fannie Lou Townsend in 1917 in rural Mississippi into a family of sharecroppers, and she grew up working on a plantation. After she attended a meeting held by members of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) in 1962, she eventually became a SNCC organizer.

In 1963, Hamer and several others were severely beaten by local law enforcement after they returned from a voter registration workshop in South Carolina. The assault left Hamer with lifelong injuries.

“Her activism was fueled by her own experiences with racial oppression and injustice,” Land said.

Hamer was co-founder of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP), which attempted to seat an interracial delegation at the 1964 Democratic National Convention. In her testimony before the credentials committee, she vividly described the opposition and threats she and other Black people faced for attempting to vote, before declaring: “I question America.”

That testimony and the activities of Freedom Summer 1964, which she also helped organize, were among the factors leading to the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. And, years later, Hamer was a member of the first integrated Mississippi state delegation at the DNC in 1968.

“Our museums already trace much of her life’s work,” Morris said. “The medal symbolizes the impact her courageous activism has had on the lives of Black people in Mississippi and across the nation.”

Hamer died in 1977 at the age of 59.

Morris said curators will determine where the medal will be exhibited in the museum and the artifact will go on display within a few months.

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Photo attached
Fannie Lou Hamer Presidential Medal of Freedom

Theron Wilkerson, Auburn University doctoral student, will research the connection between Medgar Evers, environmental policy, and racial segregation 

Theron Wilkerson, the 2025 Medgar and Myrlie Evers Research Fellow.

Theron Wilkerson, a doctoral student at Auburn University, has been named the Medgar and Myrlie Evers Research Fellow for 2025. Wilkerson will conduct research this summer in the Medgar Wiley and Myrlie Beasley Evers Papers housed at the Mississippi Department of Archives and History in Jackson. 

“It is an honor to carry forward the legacy of Medgar and Myrlie Evers through research that centers Black civic life, environmental memory, and public history in central Mississippi,” said Wilkerson.  

By examining the records and correspondence of Medgar Evers during his time as Mississippi field secretary for the NAACP, among other archival collections at MDAH, Wilkerson will explore how environmental policy and racial segregation shaped civic life for Black communities in central Mississippi, focusing on the Ross Barnett Reservoir and the legacy of Medgar and Myrlie Evers. 

After completing his Bachelor of Arts in History from Jackson State University, Wilkerson received his Master of Arts in African American Studies from Georgia State University. He is working toward his doctoral degree in Administration of Higher Education. Wilkerson will use the $5,000 fellowship to cover travel, housing, and other expenses incurred while doing primary research at the archives.   

Laura Heller, MDAH acquisitions and collections coordinator, said the department’s partnership with the Medgar and Myrlie Evers Institute makes the fellowship possible.   

“Our collaboration with the Medgar and Myrlie Evers Institute guides scholars in their pursuit of history and research,” Heller said. “Theron will gain valuable insight using the Medgar and Myrlie Beasley Evers Papers this summer.” 

The fellowship also seeks to increase scholars’ lifelong interest in history and to promote continued academic and public appreciation of Medgar and Myrlie Evers’ life and work, the Civil Rights Movement in Mississippi, and the struggle for human rights.

The Medgar Wiley and Myrlie Beasley Evers Papers may be accessed at the William F. Winter Archives and History Building in Jackson. For more information on the fellowship or about the collection, contact Heller at 601-576-6889, or by email at fellowships@mdah.ms.gov.  

The Mississippi Civil Rights Museum (MCRM) has been nominated – for the second consecutive time – for the Best History Museum in the United States in USA TODAY’s 10Best Readers’ Choice Awards.  

Voting begins on Monday, Jan. 13, at noon EST and ends on Monday, Feb. 10, at 11:59 a.m. EST. The top 10 winners, as ranked by USA TODAY 10Best readers, will be announced on Wednesday, Feb. 19, at noon EST. Readers can vote here. 

“We are honored that the Mississippi Civil Rights Museum has been nominated again in the category of Best History Museum,” said Michael Morris, director of the Two Mississippi Museums – The Museum of Mississippi History and the Mississippi Civil Rights Museum. “This recognition comes from the collective efforts of staff and visitors to elevate this museum among top institutions in the country.” 

Visitors to MCRM are greeted with a timeline of African American history in Mississippi before moving to interactive exhibits that chronicle the events of the Mississippi Civil Rights Movement from World War II through 1975. 

The museum also embraces complex stories of Mississippians like Medgar Evers, James Meredith, Fannie Lou Hamer, Joan Trumpauer Mulholland, and Vernon Dahmer with unflinching academic rigor, engaging visitors through historic records, artifacts, impactful programming, curated exhibits, and archival photographs and footage.

The Mississippi Civil Rights Museum opened in tandem with the Museum of Mississippi History on Dec. 9, 2017, in celebration of the state's bicentennial and is administered by MDAH. The Mississippi Civil Rights Museum explores the period from 1945 to 1976 when Mississippi was ground zero for the Civil Rights Movement nationally. The Museum of Mississippi History explores the entire sweep of Mississippi’s territorial and state history and the inhabitants of its land. 

For more information, call 601-576-6850 or email info@mdah.ms.gov.  
 

The Mississippi Civil Rights Museum has been recognized in Tripadvisor’s® Travelers’ Choice® Awards for 2024. The award honors businesses that consistently earn great reviews, placing them among the top 10 percent of listings around the world on Tripadvisor.

As the world’s largest travel guidance platform, Tripadvisor has unparalleled authority with travelers and diners. This award is based on genuine feedback from anyone in the community who has visited and left an authentic, firsthand review on Tripadvisor over a 12-month period, making it a valuable and trustworthy designation of great places to visit.

“We are honored to be included among travelers’ favorites this year,” said Michael Morris, director of the Two Mississippi Museums – the Mississippi Civil Rights Museum and Museum of Mississippi History. “While we’re grateful to all our visitors, this recognition also reflects the commitment of our staff, donors, and members who support our work to tell Mississippi’s stories.”

“Congratulations to the Mississippi Civil Rights Museum on its recognition in Tripadvisor’s Travelers’ Choice Awards for 2024,” said John Boris, chief growth officer at Tripadvisor. “Travelers’ Choice honors businesses that consistently demonstrate a commitment to hospitality excellence. This means you have made such a memorable impact on your visitors that many of them took the time to go online and leave a great review about their experience. We hope this recognition continues to drive business to you in 2024 and beyond.”

Check out all the reviews and discover more about the Mississippi Civil Rights Museum here.

The Mississippi Civil Rights Museum opened in tandem with the Museum of Mississippi History on December 9, 2017, in celebration of the state's bicentennial. The Mississippi Civil Rights Museum explores the period from 1945 to 1976, when Mississippi was ground zero for the Civil Rights Movement nationally. The Museum of Mississippi History explores the entire sweep of Mississippi’s territorial and state history and inhabitants of its land. 
The Mississippi State Legislature provides majority of the funding for the museums, with visitor fees and private donations supplementing the operation of the facilities. The Legislature also provided $90 million for construction; another 20 million was raised privately for exhibits and endowment.

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Keon Burns, a dual doctoral candidate in history and Africana studies at Pennsylvania State University, has been named the Medgar and Myrlie Evers Research Fellow for 2024. Burns will conduct research this summer in the Medgar Wiley and Myrlie Beasley Evers Papers housed at the Mississippi Department of Archives and History (MDAH) in Jackson.

By examining the records and correspondence of Medgar Evers during his time as Mississippi field secretary for the NAACP, among other archival collections at MDAH, Burns hopes to gain insight into the role of Black businesspeople, particularly grocery store owners, and their impact as grassroots activists during the Civil Rights Movement.

“I will use the Evers Papers and other MDAH holdings as the basis for a dissertation chapter that builds off my master’s thesis,” said Burns. “The chapter will highlight the role of Black grocers in the Civil Rights Movement. I will use Mississippi and the grocery industry as a case study for the impact of Black-owned businesses on community organizing, resistance, and uplift.”

The Medgar and Myrlie Evers Research Scholars Program is a collaboration between MDAH and the Medgar and Myrlie Evers Institute. The program seeks to nurture upper-level graduate students and faculty scholars at the beginning of their academic careers to increase their life-long interest in history, and to promote continued academic and public appreciation of Medgar and Myrlie Evers’s life and works, the Civil Rights Movement in Mississippi, and the struggle for human rights.

Burns will use the $5,000 fellowship to cover travel, housing, and other expenses incurred while doing primary research at the archives.

The Medgar Wiley and Myrlie Beasley Evers Papers may be accessed at the William F. Winter Archives and History Building, 200 North Street, in Jackson. For more information on the fellowship or about the collection, contact Laura Heller at 601-576-6850 or by email at lheller@mdah.ms.gov.

The Mississippi Civil Rights Museum (MCRM) placed fourth in USA Today’s 10Best Readers’ Choice Travel Awards contest for Best History Museum in the United States. MCRM placed among 20 prestigious American museums, such as the Heinz History Center, the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center, the National Air and Space Museum, and the Cincinnati History Museum among others.    

USA TODAY 10Best Readers' Choice Awards first nominated MCRM in the fall of 2023. The online contest ran January 15 through February 12, with contest rules allowing the public to vote online for one nominee per category, per day.     

“We are honored that the museum placed so high in the 2024 USA TODAY 10Best Readers' Choice Travel Award Contest for Best History Museum,” said Michael Morris, director for the Two Mississippi Museums of the Mississippi Department of Archives and History (MDAH). “We are grateful for this national recognition of excellence.”  

Visitors to MCRM are greeted with a timeline of African American history in Mississippi before moving to interactive exhibits that chronicle the events of Mississippi’s Civil Rights Movement, from World War II through 1975.

The museum embraces complex stories and tells them with unflinching academic rigor, engaging visitors with the deeply witnessed truths of historic records, artifacts, and archival photographs and footage.

Visitors learn the stories of Mississippians like Medgar Evers, James Meredith, Fannie Lou Hamer, Joan Trumpauer Mulholland, and Vernon Dahmer and stories of those who traveled many miles to walk beside them in the journey toward equality.

The Two Mississippi Museums—the Museum of Mississippi History and the Mississippi Civil Rights Museum—opened in December 2017. The Mississippi Legislature funded construction of the $100 million complex along with generous support from private donors.  

The Mississippi Department of Archives and History (MDAH) is pleased to announce Joy-Ann Reid as the 2024 Medgar Wiley Evers Lecture Series speaker. The program will be held on Tuesday, February 13, at 6 p.m. in the Craig H. Neilsen Auditorium of the Two Mississippi Museums.

The event is free and open to the public. Registration is not required. Weapons and large bags are prohibited. Attendees will undergo a quick security screening.

Reid, a New York Times bestselling author, political commentator, and host of MSNBC’s The ReidOut, will discuss her latest book Medgar and Myrlie: Medgar Evers and the Love Story That Awakened America with event moderator Ebony Lumumba, chair of the English department at Jackson State University. A book signing will be hosted by Lemuria Books before the program at 5 p.m. in the auditorium. 

Medgar and Myrlie: Medgar Evers and the Love Story That Awakened America traces the lives and legacy of civil rights icons Medgar and Myrlie Evers, situating Medgar Evers's assassination as a catalyzing moment in American history. 

“MDAH is excited to welcome journalist and author Joy-Ann Reid to Mississippi to deliver the 2024 Medgar Wiley Evers Lecture,” said Katie Blount, director of MDAH. “This will be the first lecture in the series to focus on the historic accomplishments of Medgar and Myrlie Evers.” 

The Medgar Wiley Evers Lecture Series was established in 2003 to honor the legacy of civil rights leader Medgar Evers, one year after Myrlie Evers made an extraordinary gift to the people of Mississippi when she presented the Medgar and Myrlie Evers papers to MDAH.  

One of the most significant collections in the department’s care, the Evers Collection has been an invaluable resource as MDAH has worked to develop exhibits for the Museum of Mississippi History and the Mississippi Civil Rights Museum.  

Previous Evers lecturers include Lonnie Bunch, Henry Louis Gates Jr., Eddie Glaude Jr., Manning Marable, Robert P. Moses, and Isabel Wilkerson. The series is supported by W.K. Kellogg Foundation and the Medgar and Myrlie Evers Institute.   

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