Woods Guest House / Hattiesburg COFO Headquarters Collection

The Woods Guest House was built between 1895 and 1900 and it was located within the historic Mobile Street District in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, and it has also been called the Freedom House of Hattiesburg. This was one of Hattiesburg’s first hotels open to African Americans during segregation. The hotel housed several musicians like Gladys Knight, Bobby Blue Bland, and B.B. King. It also had an important role in the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s by housing civil rights workers who helped register African Americans to vote and establish freedom schools, and this includes civil rights activists such as Bob Moses and Fannie Lou Hamer. Many of the workers were a part of the Council of Federated Organizations (COFO), and during Freedom Summer COFO was responsible for organizing volunteers that came from all over the country including those from the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and Congress of Racial Equality (CORE). During Freedom Summer, establishing freedom schools was an important goal and the city of Hattiesburg contained more freedom schools than in other parts of the state, and the Woods Guest House was home to a freedom school and library. The Woods Guest House also acted as a headquarters for the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP). This collection would be of interest to someone interested in the Civil Rights Movement and important historical sites in the city of Hattiesburg. In 1998, the Woods Guest House was destroyed in a fire, and the brick in this collection is all that is left of the establishment.