Collection Details:

Collection Name and Number: Florence Mars Papers (Z/2326).
Creator/Collector: Florence Mars.
Date(s): 1893-2001; n.d.
Size: 1.25 cubic feet.
Language(s): English.
Processed by: MDAH staff, Tyson Koenig, 2014.
Provenance: Gift of William Montgomery Mars of Philadelphia, MS, on April 14, 2013; Z/U/2013.032.
Repository: Archives & Records Services Division, Mississippi Department of Archives & History.

 

Rights and Access:

Access restrictions: Collection is open for research.

Publication rights: Copyright assigned to the MDAH. All requests for permission to publish or quote from manuscripts must be submitted in writing to Reference Services. Permission for publication is given on behalf of the MDAH as the owner of the physical items and as the owner of the copyright in items created by the donor. Although the copyright was transferred by the donor, the respective creator may still hold copyright in some items in the collection. For further information, contact Reference Services.

Copyright notice: This material may be protected by copyright law (Title 17, U.S. Code).

Preferred citation:  Florence Mars Papers (Z/2326), Mississippi Department of Archives & History.

 

Biography:

Florence Latimer Mars

Florence Latimer Mars was born in Philadelphia, Neshoba County, Mississippi, on January 1, 1923, the only child of Adam Longino Mars, an attorney, and Emily Geneva Johnson Mars, who worked in local offices, most notably at Philadelphia’s First United Methodist Church. Both were part of long-established, landowning Neshoba County families. Florence Mars graduated from Philadelphia High School in 1940 and attended Millsaps College in Jackson, Mississippi, before transferring to the University of Mississippi in Oxford, Lafayette County. She graduated in 1944 with a degree in business.

Mars worked for Delta Airlines in Atlanta during World War II, moving back to Philadelphia at the war’s end. Over the next fifteen years, she built a cattle farm there on inherited land and bought a stockyard, the Neshoba County Livestock Sale. Mars lived for some of this time in New Orleans, where she established a freelance photography career. In 1956, she took an extended trip to Europe with an art class from the University of Alabama. After years of frequent moves between New Orleans and Philadelphia, Mars returned permanently to Philadelphia in late 1962. She soon became active in First United Methodist Church, leading multiple Bible study groups.

Mars’s interest in the Civil Rights Movement began as early as 1955, when she attended the trial of the men accused of lynching Emmett Till in Tallahatchie County, Mississippi. She is most well known for her actions during the investigation of the Neshoba County murders of James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner, civil rights workers with the Mississippi Freedom Summer Project of 1964. Mars was an informant to the Federal Bureau of Investigation during the summer and in October testified before a federal grand jury in Biloxi, Harrison County, Mississippi, that was considering indictments of police brutality as part of the case.

The White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan led a boycott against Mars’s stockyard, forcing her to sell it in February 1965. That August, Mars was arrested by Neshoba County sheriff Lawrence Rainey and held in jail overnight on spurious drunken driving charges. Rainey would later be tried for his alleged role in the conspiracy to murder the civil rights workers. Under pressure from congregation members, Mars resigned her church positions in April 1966. By that time, she was involved with the Philadelphia to Philadelphia Project, which promoted cross-cultural understanding between the Mississippi and Pennsylvania cities.

Mars attended daily the 1967 trial of those accused of the civil rights workers’ murders. Having sold her farm in 1965, she then primarily devoted her time to researching and writing a book about her experiences during the previous few years. She was especially encouraged to write by Rev. Clay Lee, then pastor of First United Methodist; and Turner Catledge, then an editor at the New York Times and a Neshoba County native. Catledge wrote the foreword for her book, Witness in Philadelphia, which was published in 1977 by Louisiana State University Press.

Mars later self-published three further books. The largely autobiographical The Bell Returns to Mt. Zion, which she considered a “sequel” to Witness in Philadelphia, was published in 1996, as was The Lake Place Burnside Family Story: A Neshoba County History. The Fair: A Personal History, published in 2001, contains personal and family remembrances and photographs of the Neshoba County Fair. Mars was in the courtroom in 2005 when Edgar Ray Killen was convicted of manslaughter for the 1964 civil rights workers’ murders.

Florence L. Mars died of congestive heart failure on April 23, 2006, at her family home on Poplar Avenue in Philadelphia, after suffering from Bell’s palsy and diabetes. Her funeral was conducted by Rev. Lee, by then a retired Methodist bishop, and she was buried at Cedar Lawn Cemetery in Philadelphia.

 

Scope and Content Note:

This collection primarily consists of research notes, calendars, book drafts, photographs, and travel materials created or compiled by Neshoba County, Mississippi, author Florence Latimer Mars. Of particular interest are the research notes compiled during the writing of Mars’s book Witness in Philadelphia, which gives a firsthand account of her experiences when three workers with the Freedom Summer Project were murdered in Neshoba County during the Civil Rights Movement.

 

Series Identification:

Series 1: Research Notes and Calendars, 1959-1976; n.d.
This series consists of fifteen spiral-bound notebooks (folders 1-15), thirteen steno-type notebooks (folders 16-22), one legal pad (folder 23), 313 notecards (folders 24-25), and four daily calendars for the years 1964, 1966, 1967, and 1971 (folders 26-28). The first four spiral-bound notebooks are clearly labeled “Books I-IV” and follow a general chronological order. The rest are arranged within each type roughly chronologically, but are largely undated and overlap in both chronology and contents. Some notebooks are labeled, but the labels are not fully descriptive of the books’ contents. The notecards are left in order as originally arranged by Mars; the twenty-one larger-sized cards form a separate set from the rest.

The notebooks, notecards, and legal pad contain notes taken by Mars, first while teaching Bible study classes at First United Methodist Church in Philadelphia, and then while researching and writing Witness in Philadelphia. The Bible study portions include notes on preparatory readings and notes for use while teaching. Many of Mars’s general research notes are unclear or illegible. They cover the wide range of topics discussed in Witness in Philadelphia, beyond the civil rights workers’ murders and related events. These topics include early Neshoba County history; the history of Mt. Zion Methodist Church; the Emmett Till trial; the Neshoba County Fair; the Burnside family; Philadelphia policeman Willie “Tripp” Windham; Mt. Zion members Bud and Beatrice Cole; and civil rights worker Alan Schiffman. Some of the notebooks also contain material unrelated to research, most notably about the Philadelphia to Philadelphia Project.

Many notebooks and notecards contain whole or partial transcriptions of newspaper articles, mostly from the Neshoba Democrat. Several notebooks contain rough drafts or outlines of portions of the book. These sections are generally not clearly labeled or distinguished from other material. One notebook (folder 15) contains a draft chapter annotated with another reader’s editorial comments and Mars’s responses.

The calendars were used only sporadically; the 1964 calendar appears to have been used for note-taking in a similar manner to the notebooks. The others do contain some information about daily events, most notably Mars’s departure from her church positions in 1966, the progress of the civil rights trials in 1966 and 1967, and work on her book.

Box 1

 

Series 2: Drafts and Photographs, 1893-2001; n.d.
This series contains an annotated early draft of The Bell Returns to Mt. Zion (folders 1-5) and drafts and photographs related to Mars’s final book, The Fair: A Personal History. These include a draft of The Fair’s text and a portion of an earlier handwritten draft (folder 6); a full final draft of the book (folder 8); and a typed manuscript entitled Neshoba County Fair ’81: The Year of the Wedding, written by New Orleans-based journalist Iris Turner Kelso, a Neshoba County native and friend of Mars (folders 9-10).

Also included in the series are most of the original photographs reproduced in The Fair; two postcards; and two photographs unrelated to the fair (folder 7). The fair photographs show scenes of the event from its beginnings through the mid-twentieth century; the earliest dates from 1893. One of the postcards shows an aerial view of the fairgrounds; the other, unrelated to the fair, was sent to Mars from Oxford by a relative in 1993. One of the two non-fair photographs, of a posed group of people, is unlabeled; the other is labeled by Mars as a building in Kemper County, Mississippi.

Box 2, folders 1-10

 

Series 3: Travel Materials, 1956-1979.
This series consists of materials collected and created by Mars while on the University of Alabama 1956 European Art Tour, including schedules, a travel journal, and souvenirs (folders 1-2); a travel journal kept by Mars’s mother during her own trip to Europe in 1960; and two of Mars’s passports (folder 3). The travel journals recount daily activities and give cultural and historical information.

Box 2, folders 11-13