Meridian Federal Courthouse To Close

JACKSON, Miss. (AP) – The federal judiciary says it will close the courthouse in Meridian where trials were held for Ku Klux Klansmen on charges in the 1964 deaths of three civil right workers and where James H. Meredith filed his lawsuit in 1961 to integrate the University of Mississippi.

The Meridian building is among six courthouses in the South to be closed because of inadequate federal funding.

None of the facilities to be closed has a judge who is based there. Instead, judges travel from larger cities as needed.

Stanley Dearman, retired editor of The Neshoba Democrat newspaper, told The Associated Press that the courthouse contains too much history to be closed.

The courthouse was built in 1933 and takes up an entire city block in downtown Meridian.