The church has played an important role in the history of our relatively young city and the lives of its families, including my own. For the Jones family, that would be the Mount Carmel Baptist Church in its historic former location at the corner of Mobile and Seventh streets.
At my house on Fairley Street during the school months, weekdays meant waking up, having breakfast and getting dressed for the walk down Seventh Street and on to Eureka Elementary School. With weekends off, we looked forward to watching our Saturday morning cartoon favorites. And then there was Sunday. That meant putting on our "good clothes" for the walk to Sunday School at Mount Carmel.
Attending Sunday School was as much a matter of fact as going to school during the week. The route we walked to church was the same as the one we took to school since Mount Carmel was just around the corner from Eureka Elementary in the heart of what was then Hattiesburg's African American business community.
As a grade schooler, I was too young to appreciate the history of my church. But what a rich history it has. My entire family, including my grandfather after whom I am named, the Rev. Elijah L. Jones, were members.
I can remember sitting on the pews at Mount Carmel swinging my legs back and forth because, at that age, my feet didn't touch the floor. That's how far my life at Mount Carmel goes back. I was baptized there in 1965 by the Rev. Joseph Dossett.
The church building still stands at the corner of Mobile and Seventh which is now home to another congregation. Mount Carmel has since relocated to the former Main Street Baptist Church campus. Still, my fondest memories of the church are from its Mobile Street location.
Mount Carmel was born out of another historic Black congregation, Shady Grove Baptist Church in the Kelly Settlement community, just north of Hattiesburg off Monroe Road. That church has a rich and interesting history of its own.
In pre-Civil War days, Mississippi's cotton fields in the Delta weren't the only farmlands worked by slaves. Though smaller in number, slaves toiled the rich agricultural fields that make up today's Pine Belt counties, including Forrest and Jones.
In the days before the Civil War, slaves attended one of the oldest churches in our area, Providence Baptist Church, which is still there on Eatonville Road in Forrest County. The congregation was white but included a small section where Blacks, referred to then as "colored people," could attend. As the end of the Civil War approached, it became apparent the South was not going to win the conflict, and in 1863, President Abraham Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation declared the end of legalized slavery in the United States.
The slaves who attended Providence Baptist wanted a church to call their own, and the land was donated by the Kellys, a white family for whom the community is named. A log cabin was built on the site and, in 1864, Shady Grove Baptist Church was born. It was named for the large grove of oak trees that surrounded it. As the church and the area around Shady Grove grew, some of the members wanted to establish a congregation in the new city that had been incorporated nearby, Hattiesburg.
In 1886, four years after the city of Hattiesburg was founded, Mount Carmel Baptist Church was born, the oldest African American congregation in our city. The original church building, a simple log cabin, was built on the spot where the former church building stands. As Hattiesburg grew, so did Mount Carmel. A red brick building would replace the log cabin and would grow from there. A two-story wing was added, housing space for the pastor's study and church functions on the first floor, with classroom space where I attended Sunday School on the second.
C.E. Roy, an icon in the history of Hattiesburg's African American leaders, was our Sunday School superintendent. The Fifth Street Community Center is named in his honor. Known as "Mr. Roy" to us, he was a band director and coach at Eureka School and would later become principal at both Eureka and W.H. Jones Schools. He was a great music lover, and you'll see a mural of him painted on the C.E. Roy Community Center pictured with one of his former students, nationally known trumpeter Bobby Bryant. Bryant graduated from Royal Street High in 1962. It’s now Rowan Elementary School.
Mount Carmel was known for the number of school teachers who were members of our church. They include such names as Valeria Fountain and Ruth Houze, who both served as church musicians. We had a pair of husband-and-wife school teachers, Winfred and Maude Hudson, along with Samuel and Fannie Lou Knight. And there was my mother, Della Ruth Jones, who would follow in Roy's footsteps, later becoming principal at both Eureka and W.H. Jones schools.
Some of the Black-owned businesses that lined Mobile Street were owned by Mount Carmel members — businesses that no longer exist, like Fountain's Grocery and Home Cleaners. They may be gone now but live on in memory for the important roles they played in our lives and the history of Hattiesburg's Black business community.
Today, the history of Mount Carmel Baptist Church is incomplete without mention of how the church left its historic location on Mobile Street. In 2000, Mount Carmel moved into the former Main Street Baptist Church, which had chosen to join the exodus of Hattiesburg's largest white Baptist congregations, leaving our city center for Lamar County. With a new sanctuary planned for the U.S. 98 West business corridor, Main Street Baptist would have to sell its own historic church property. Two Black congregations on Hattiesburg's east side were interested including it seems, Mount Carmel, which would eventually take possession of the church. But not without a legal battle.
Several members objected to Mount Carmel's surprising decision to leave Mobile Street. The Baptist Church works much like a democracy and there had been no formal vote by the congregation to move to Main Street. According to the church's by-laws, such a decision could not have been made without a church vote held during a scheduled business meeting, a practice Mount Carmel had long ago abandoned.
Those members asking questions wanted more input on the decision to abandon Mount Carmel's more than 100-year history on Mobile Street, along with the move's financial details. The group met with church leadership to have those questions answered, but to no avail. Desperate to keep their church in its historic location, though small in number, the group would file a lawsuit in Forrest County Chancery Court. That lawsuit did not attempt to prevent those who wanted to move to Main Street from doing so, only desiring the church property and its name remain on Mobile Street, continuing the legacy of a church that had begun in 1886.
The plaintiffs included some of the church's most stalwart members, like Henry Brown, Sr., Mount Carmel's oldest member, who was well into his 90s when he joined the lawsuit. Mr. Brown may have been almost a century old but was as sharp and feisty as a man in his 20s.
My mother and I were also plaintiffs, along with Vaughnceil Woods, a lifelong friend of my family's and one of the strongest women of my youth. When I was growing up at Mount Carmel, she was one of our church mothers. If one of us mischievous children started misbehaving in church, Mrs. Woods could turn and make you straighten up — with only a look.
Sadly, several of my former co-plaintiffs have left this world, including Mr. Brown, who lived past the ripe old age of 100 and earned a salute from Willard Scott on NBC's Today program. My mother passed away about 10 years later and Mrs. Woods, who was like my second mother, joined them in Heaven last year.
That leaves me and the other "younger" plaintiffs, who've all taken up membership at other churches. Criticized by some for our actions, we sometimes felt like David taking on Goliath. That was OK with us. The struggle to save our church and maintain its history was that important. Things may not have turned out the way we'd prayed for but, as with all things, we never questioned God's plan.
Still though, to this day, whenever I pass the old church building, I think about that kid swinging his legs back and forth on the pews of what will always be, to me, Mount Carmel Baptist Church. At the corner of Mobile and Seventh Streets.
Elijah Jones is a proud Hattiesburg native who enjoys writing. Email him at edjhubtown@aol.com.
Cover photo from The Hattiesburg American archives. The newly constructed Mount Carmel Baptist Church was dedicated in 1953.
