Mt. Zion Memorial Fund
The Mt. Zion Memorial Fund is a non-profit corporation formed in 1989 and named after the Mount Zion Missionary Baptist Church in Morgan City, Mississippi, United States. The fund was organized by Raymond 'Skip' Henderson, a former social worker turned vintage guitar dealer and event promoter (New York Guitar Show) in order to create a legal conduit to get financial support to rural African-American church communities in Mississippi and to memorialize the contributions of numerous musicians interred in rural cemeteries without grave markers. For work with the Mt. Zion Memorial Fund Henderson received the W.C. Handy Award for historic preservation "Keeping the Blues Alive" in May 1995.
Over a 12-year period from 1990 to 2001, the Mount Zion Memorial Fund erected twelve memorials to blues musicians across the state of Mississippi. Founded in Clarksdale, Mississippi, from November 1997 until August 2013 the Mt. Zion Memorial Fund worked from New Orleans, Louisiana. In September 2013 the organization moved operation to Oxford, Mississippi where it continues operation under the direction of Executive Director, Tyler DeWayne Moore of the University of Mississippi, with Skip Henderson and Euphus Ruth Jr. of Greenville, Mississippi serving as Co-Chairmen of the board of directors.
The renewed efforts of the Mt. Zion Memorial Fund since 2010 have been spearheaded by T. DeWayne Moore, a historian and scholar based out of Oxford, Mississippi. The relatives of Tommy Johnson and other interments in Warm Springs CME Church Cemetery obtained a permanent fifteen foot wide and half-a-mile long easement to the important site due in large part to efforts and compelling arguments of Moore, who took over as executive director in January 2014. Under his leadership, the military markers of Henry "Son" Simms and Jackie Brenston were located and restored. The MZMF has dedicated five new memorials--the headstone of Frank Stokes in the abandoned Hollywood Cemetery, Memphis, TN; the flat companion stone of Ernest "Lil' Son Joe" Lawlars in Walls, MS; and in Greenville, MS, the flat markers of T-Model Ford and Eddie Cusic, and the unique, yet humble, headstone of Mamie "Galore" Davis. In addition, the MZMF monitors legal actions involving cemeteries and provides technical assistance to cemetery corporations and community preservationists in Oklahoma, Tennessee, Mississippi, and South Carolina, such as the Friends of Hollywood/Mt. Carmel Cemeteries, which assists in restoring these two massive and abandoned African American cemeteries in Memphis "back to a beautiful place of rest for all" interments, including Frank Stokes and Furry Lewis.
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