By Pamela Hitchins

phitchins@vicksburgpost.com

Margaret’s Grocery, the iconic folk art “Bible castle” on North Washington Street, will be moved piece by piece south to downtown Vicksburg if a group working for its preservation has its way.

“We’re trying to secure federal funding to move Margaret’s Grocery so everyone can become familiar with the folk art and its continued influence on the city and the state,” said Jackson photographer Suzi Altman, who is with a group known as Save Margaret’s Grocery.

The group hopes to purchase a site on the east side of Washington Street between Jackson and China streets that previously was slated to be used for condominiums, a project that was canceled after the local economy began to suffer.

Altman said the City of Vicksburg owns the property for use as part of the Federal Urban Renewal Program and she and city officials have begun preliminary discussions about its potential use.

To that end, Altman said, she and the group of supporters will meet at 4 p.m. Sunday with U.S. Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., and the public for a discussion and the showing of a brief presentation about the site. The meeting will be at the Kings Community Empowerment Center off North Washington Street at 224 R.L. Chase Circle.

“We requested a meeting with the congressman, and we were lucky that he is familiar with Margaret’s Grocery and he agreed to meet with us to help us secure federal funding,” Altman said Friday.

She also said Gov. Haley Barbour has signed a State of Mississippi proclamation, designating the week of March 20-26 “Reverend Herman D. Dennis and Margaret’s Grocery Awareness and Preservation Week.”

To honor his wife, the late Margaret Rogers Dennis who was the store’s original owner, Dennis decorated the old grocery inside and out in the 1980s and 1990s as a “Bible castle to God.”

They used such materials as hand-lettered signs; homemade towers of cinderblock, cardboard and Styrofoam painted pink, yellow and red; sacred objects such as Menorahs and replicas of the Ark of the Covenant and the tablets that bore the 10 Commandments; strips of moulding and trim; Mardi Gras beads; little girls’ hairbands; plastic bottle caps; and many other everyday materials.

The move south on Washington Street would include the old grocery store, all the outside artwork and the bus-chapel. It would be housed in a building “would preserve all parts of the site from the elements and weather,” Altman said.

The new Margaret’s Grocery site also would include an African-American cultural heritage and interpretive center.

Dennis, often called “Preacher” because he turned a former school bus into a chapel where he delivered sermons to visitors at the grocery, has lived in a Vicksburg nursing home for several years but is frequently taken on outings to his former home and is expected to attend Sunday.

He will turn 96 on March 25.

Much of the complex, including the store and bus, has deteriorated over the last few years.

The Mississippi Arts Commission has also been involved in the cause of preserving it, a site American architect and MacArthur Fellow Samuel Mockbee has called one of the 10 most significant architectural sites in the South.

Sunday’s meeting is open to the public, and will include refreshments and a chance to meet Dennis and the congressman.

Altman said Dennis will be honored at the Mississippi State Capitol in Jackson on March 22, MSA’s Arts Advocacy Day.

Altman said her group’s center would not be affiliated with an African-American museum proposed last month by Vicksburg resident Malcolm Carson, who has purchased a building at Jackson and Washington streets.