This city of hills will host the mountaintop Wednesday through Friday as an exhibit honoring the era of the freedom riders comes to Vicksburg.

The Mountaintop Civil Rights Traveling Exhibit will be featured at the Southern Cultural Heritage Center, helping mark Black History Month.

“This exhibit will be unique to the area and represent a learning experience for the community, a chance to learn more about the civil rights era,” said SCHC director Annette Kirklin.

Comprising more than 2,000 artifacts, the exhibit includes oil paintings, portraits, posters, figurines, wall plaques and other memorabilia collected over 30 years by curator Michael O. Hollowell.

Clarence Douglas, coordinator for the Memphis-based exhibit, emphasized the teaching aspect of the collection, especially for young people and school groups.

“That’s our goal — to teach the youth that they can channel violence into nonviolence to get things done,” he said.

“We also have items related to the Freedom Riders showing whites and blacks working together,” said Douglas. “When you talk about the Civil Rights Era it’s important that people realize it was blacks, whites, Jewish people, many different ethnic groups working together. It took all of us in that movement.”

Kirklin said the group contacted SCHC and worked with the locals to get dates during Black History Month. “Their schedule was pretty booked in February but they did squeeze us in,” she said.

Other venues that have hosted the exhibit include the Health and Wellness Center and the Medgar Evers Library in Jackson and the LeMoyne-Owen College in Memphis.

Hollowell began collecting newspaper articles in 1973, Douglas said, and over the years continued to add items to his collection.

Recent additions include articles, photographs and other items related to President Barack Obama and his election. “Barack Obama is actually living the dream of Dr. King,” Douglas said.

Hollowell will be lecturing at noon on Wednesday about the collection, the era and his own personal experiences growing up in Memphis. Admission to the exhibit that day includes the lecture.

Hollowell has an honorary doctorate in Christian Education from McKinley Theological Seminary and has been an ordained Baptist minister since 1984. He attended the University of Memphis and the University of Mississippi with degrees in education. He has written more than 20 books.

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Contact Pamela Hitchins at phitchins@vicksburgpost.com