St. Paul Methodist Church

Hattiesburg's Freedom Day began here. COFO meetings held in this church prepared the day of January 22, 1964, built to register as many Black voters as possible in a single day despite the rules written to keep them off the rolls. Under Pastor E. E. Grinnett the brick sanctuary also served as a mass-meeting hall and a Freedom School. Few churches in the Mobile-Bouie area stand where they always have, and St. Paul is one of them. Charles Davis narrates its history on the city's audio tour, recorded with the University of Southern Mississippi oral history center.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• African American Military History Museum — steps away
  The wooden USO club that opened in March 1942 for Black soldiers training at Camp Shelby, now a museum of African American military service from the Revolutionary War to Iraq.
• Forrest County Courthouse and Dahmer Memorial — 0.4 mi
  The courthouse where Hattiesburg held Freedom Day on January 22, 1964, and where a memorial now honors Vernon Dahmer, killed by Klansmen in 1966.
• Hub City Historic District — 0.5 mi
  Hattiesburg's twelve-block downtown, a railroad town laid out in 1880s pine country, with the Saenger Theater, the courthouse and the 1910 depot.
• Mount Zion Baptist Church — 1.4 mi
  Hattiesburg's "Civil Rights Church," a Freedom School site in 1964 where Pete Seeger taught music and Martin Luther King Jr. spoke weeks before his death.

More markers nearby

• Eureka School — 0.2 mi
• Old Hattiesburg High School — 0.3 mi
• Roots of Rock 'n' Roll — 0.3 mi
• William Harris Hardy — 0.5 mi