| Designed by architects P. J. Krouse and Frank Fort, architects, the Meridian post office and federal courthouse, built in 1932-33, is one of the finest Art Deco public buildings in Mississippi. It was designed and built under the administration of James A. Wetmore (1863-1940), Acting Supervising Architect of the Treasury from 1915 to 1933. In 1967 this building was the location of the trial of 18 Ku Klux Klan members (US v. Price et al) for the murder of three civil rights workers near Philadelphia, Miss., in 1964. It was individually listed on the National Register of Historic Places on 17 May 1984. In its "Mississippi Civil Rights Sites Special Resource Study" (2022), the National Park Service determined the courthouse to be NHL-eligible as a contributing element in a discontiguous district related to the 1964 Freedom Summer Sites. This building is included in "Buildings of Mississippi" (2020) (p.219, EM17). |