MDAH Remembers Ed King As Key Figure in Mississippi’s Civil Rights Movement

The Rev. Ed King, a United Methodist Church minister and co-founder of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP), is remembered by the Mississippi Department of Archives and History as a key figure in the Civil Rights Movement. 

King died July 4, 2026, at the age of 89.

Born Ralph Edwin King, he joined the ministry as a young man and enrolled at Boston University, where he volunteered for civil rights causes. In 1963, he accepted a position as chaplain at Tougaloo College and joined the Jackson Freedom Movement, organizing a downtown Jackson boycott with Mississippi NAACP field secretary Medgar Wiley Evers and John Salter, a professor at Tougaloo College. King served as an “observer” during the 1963 Jackson Woolworth sit-in, reporting the demonstration’s ensuing violence to Evers.

The day after the sit-in, police arrested King and others for trespassing when they attempted a kneel-in on the steps of the Federal Building on Capitol Street in Jackson. King’s civil rights activism provoked White ministers to expel him from his home church. He continued fighting for equal voting rights in the state, serving as Aaron Henry’s running mate in 1963’s Freedom Vote, a mock election opposing disenfranchisement among African Americans, and as a challenger to the seating of an all-White Mississippi delegation at the Democratic National Convention in Atlantic City. Despite facing attacks and threats from White supremacists, King advocated for solidarity between White and Black churches in Mississippi. His journey as a civil rights veteran is featured in the Mississippi Civil Rights Museum of the Two Mississippi Museums.

“Ed King was a quintessential civil rights activist,” said Barry White, director of the Mississippi Department of Archives and History. “His resilience in efforts to desegregate churches and to fight for equal voting rights in the state remain a shining testament to his courage.”