Charles Darden, a pioneering civil rights leader, served as president of the Mississippi NAACP branch from 1955 to 1960 and was a founding father of the Meridian Freedom Movement.

By 1963, as Mississippi prepared for Freedom Summer, the Meridian project established its headquarters at the Fielder & Brooks Drug Store, which had once been located at the corner of 25^th and 5th Street. Organizers Michael and Rita Schwerner, sent by the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), worked alongside local leaders, including James Chaney, Sue Brown, Reverend Charles Johnson, Polly Heidelberg, Agnes Smith, and others who emerged from the local community.