First Presbyterian Church

In 1954, the year of Brown v. Board of Education, First Presbyterian's session committed the congregation to remaining segregated and to barring African Americans from worship. That position governed who could enter the sanctuary for decades. In May 2016 the session voted to rescind and repudiate the actions of the 1950s and 1960s that excluded Black worshippers, and it released a public statement acknowledging the harm done to the church's neighbors and to its witness.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Mississippi Civil Rights Museum — steps away
  A state museum in downtown Jackson, opened in 2017 beside the Museum of Mississippi History, that tells the movement from 1945 to 1970 through the people who made it.
• Old Capitol Museum — steps away
  Mississippi's Greek Revival statehouse of 1839, where the legislature voted to secede, Hiram Revels was elected to the U.S. Senate and the 1890 constitution was written, now a free state museum.
• Farish Street Historic District — 0.5 mi
  Jackson's Black business and cultural center, where Medgar Evers kept the NAACP office and furniture-store owners recorded the blues, now a quiet National Register district.
• Medgar and Myrlie Evers Home National Monument — 3.4 mi
  A modest ranch house in Jackson's Elraine neighborhood where Medgar Evers was shot in the driveway in 1963, now a unit of the National Park Service.

More markers nearby

• Galloway Memorial United Methodist Church — steps away
• Hal & Mal's — 0.3 mi
• Greenwood Cemetery — 0.3 mi
• Mount Helm Baptist Church - Original Site — 0.4 mi