NEW FOUND YOUTH DEVELOPMENT CENTER

    Another CSO was the Algebra Project directed by Robert Moses. His son Omo ran an outfit called the Young Peoples Project, and helped publicize the Kellogg project with his contacts in Kosciusko and Duck Hill, Mississippi. By the time I reached Mississippi his phone was no longer in service, and we were unable to rendezvous. I was heading up the Natchez Trace Parkway for Kosciusko, where Mamie Cotton was trying to start the New Found Youth Development Center, which was located in a Baptist seminary on the edge of town. I went in the public library, left my drivers license after signing a users agreement where I promised not to look at any information that was not in keeping with the standards of the town. I then checked the weather sites for more up-to-date tornado warnings. Satisfied that my path would be clear until the evening I called Mamie Cotton who told me to wait for her outside the library. It was a busy intersection, and during the half hour wait, I passed the time by counting the cars and noted that out of 200 only three drivers wore a seat belt. Cotton drove up and I followed her to the seminary tucked onto a knoll in a residential area on the outskirts of Kosciusco.

Inside a large windowless basement were a couple of computers and a few desks. The other MIRA computers were being used elsewhere in the seminar. One each wall was affixed an 8 1/2 by 11 inch sign announcing the name New Found Youth Development Center. While it was not very inviting for kids, or even adults, it was clear that Cotton did not have a lot of resources at her disposal. Mamie told me about her own involvement. Originally from Carthage, she moved to Kosciusko and raised four kids there. Her background was working in activist and social justice organizations like Southern Echo, which in the early 90's was involved in resisting the placement of waste treatment facilities in black areas. Later she worked in Jackson and joined the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. When the MIRA teams were being formed she was very involved with kids. It was hard to tell how much activity took place in this center. White plans for this to become a sort of enrichment center where they will read together, supplement school activity with after school projects such as an oral history of local civil rights activists. She also expects help from Robert Moses' Algebra Project in science and math tutoring, and with the computers, all the children will leave the center with more computer skills.