Tougaloo College Woodworth Chapel
— the room where the movement met.
Not only on a wall.
Tougaloo College Woodworth Chapel, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
Each tile ships in a kraft box, tied with cream ribbon, with a handwritten note from the studio if you'd like to add one.
Three or five different vistas, hung together — a chapter of places you've been, or want to go.
“Woodworth Chapel is the brick and white-trim chapel at the centre of Tougaloo College, the historically Black college founded in 1869 on a former cotton plantation north of Jackson. The building dates to the turn of the twentieth century and carries a particular weight in the Civil Rights Movement: in the 1960s, when no other meeting space in central Mississippi was safe, Tougaloo's campus and this chapel hosted Medgar Evers, Martin Luther King Jr., and the planners of the Jackson Movement. The room is plain. It listens well. from the studio
The place, in three passes.
Tougaloo College was founded in 1869 by the American Missionary Association on a 500-acre former cotton plantation about seven miles north of Jackson, Mississippi. It is a private, historically Black, four-year liberal arts college affiliated with the United Church of Christ and the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ). Woodworth Chapel, the central place of worship and assembly on the campus, was built in 1901 and named for Frank G. Woodworth, who served as the college's president from 1887 to 1912. The chapel is a contributing building in the Tougaloo College Historic District, listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
Through the early 1960s Tougaloo's campus was one of the few places in central Mississippi where Black and white organisers, students, and visiting clergy could meet without immediate threat, and Woodworth Chapel served as the room. Martin Luther King Jr. spoke there in 1958 and again in 1966 during the Meredith March Against Fear. The chapel hosted memorial services, mass meetings during the Jackson Movement, and the planning sessions that put Tougaloo students at the lunch-counter sit-ins of 1961 and the Freedom Rides. Medgar Evers worked closely with the college until his murder in 1963.
The campus sits along West County Line Road in the town of Tougaloo, immediately off Interstate 55 at exit 105. Visitors are welcome; the campus is open to the public during daylight hours, and the Tougaloo College Civil Rights Collection and the Tougaloo Art Colony Gallery are open to researchers by appointment. The chapel itself is in active use for college services and concerts, and the public is welcome at scheduled events; private tours can be arranged through the office of college relations. Jackson-Medgar Wiley Evers International Airport is about 14 miles south.
