A Mississippi Freedom Trail marker will be unveiled on Saturday, June 8, at 10:30 a.m. during a ceremony at Winona Baptist Church. The public is invited to attend the unveiling of the new marker as well as a reception following a brief program commemorating the events that took place in Winona on June 9, 1963. Following the reception, at 2 p.m., local actors will put on the play, "Voice of Freedom: Fannie Lou Hamer, Spirit of the Civil Rights Movement" at the Montgomery County Performing Arts Center at 208 Summit Street in Winona.
Six men and women returning to Greenwood from a voter education workshop in South Carolina were arrested outside of Staley's Cafe on Highway 51 on Sunday, June 9, 1963. Annell Ponder, Fannie Lou Hamer, James West, Rosemary Freeman, June Johnson, and Euvester Simpson were arrested and charged with resisting arrest. They were later forced to sign false confessions. Ponder, Hamer, West, and Johnson were badly beaten in the Montgomery County Jail at the corner of Oak and Sterling; they were denied medical care. Later that same day, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee's Lawrence Guyot was badly beaten at the Montgomery County Courthouse after he inquired about the group's bail.
The seven were eventually bonded out of jail on June 12, 1963, by Andrew Young, the same day Medgar Evers was assassinated in his driveway in Jackson. Mrs. Hamer would make her beating in Winona the central narrative of her experience as a civil rights activist in Mississippi, horrifying the nation with her testimony before the Credentials Committee at the Democratic National Convention in August of 1964.
Created in 2011, the Mississippi Freedom Trail "was created to commemorate the people and places in the state that played a pivotal role in the American Civil Rights Movement." This will be the state's 31st marker and the first MFT marker in Winona.
