Spring Break
ETSU students head south to Mississippi for spring break of service, community interaction
Jared Story and Ash-Lee Henderson
Issue date: 2/25/08 Section: The Other
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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.