Delta Ministry

It was begun in September 1964, by the National Council of Churches as a civil rights project operating in Mississippi to support the southern black freedom struggle.

Among the local civil rights groups including the SNCC, NAACP and CORE, the Delta Ministry became Mississippi's largest and provided numerous services and programs for area black people through the 1980s.

It also supervised the establishment of federally funded health clinics in Mound Bayou and Greenville, and registered some 70,000 black people to vote.

[2]These were causes of the failure of the ambitious Freedom City commune project of 94 residents on 400 acres (1.6 km2) near Greenville in 1966 which was planned to be an alternative to the out-migration of displaced black field hands, and to teach economic self-sufficiency and political independence.

Under Owen Brooks, a black northerner who the NCC appointed DM director in 1967, the group split over philosophical and personality issues into two separate units.