Occupying the northeast quadrant of the city and separated from downtown by the railroad tracks, Burglund became an African American community soon after the Civil War, its settlers drawn by railroad and industrial work. From 1961 to 1964, the neighborhood fostered nationally important civil rights activity organized by the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) led by Robert Moses. SNCC’s office and Freedom School operated in the two-story concrete-block Masonic Temple (c. 1955) at 630 Warren Street. In 1964, more than a dozen Ku Klux Klan-initiated bombings occurred in McComb, most of them in Burglund, and none of them resulting in arrests.
Although today pocked with vacant lots, Summit Street was the neighborhood’s primary corridor until the 1970s, with masonry commercial buildings interspersed with frame detached houses. Black-owned businesses included the two-story concrete-block Desoto Hotel (c. 1950; 534–536 Summit), and the street’s nightclubs hosted artists on the “chitlin circuit” between New Orleans and Chicago. At 906 Summit, the concrete-block and brick veneered Flowery Mount Missionary Baptist Church (1921–1924) hosted several civil rights meetings, and deacons took turns guarding the building every night to deter Ku Klux Klan attacks.
Burglund Heights, which opened in 1940 as one of Mississippi’s earliest public housing complexes, stretches along Warren and St. Augustine streets and is identical in design to the formerly whites-only White Acres (named after Hugh White) on the west side of the railroad. Most of the older houses in the neighborhood date from the 1920s. It was these Craftsman bungalows and small ranch houses that bore the brunt of violence against black Mississippi Movement leaders, including the homes of Fred Bates (928 Summit), Dock Owens (528 Warren), and Aylene Quin (304 Martin Luther King Jr. Drive), all of which were either shot into or bombed during the violent years between 1961 and 1964.