The streets of Meridian are steeped in history, with Civil Rights legends having walked down many of the roads in the Queen City that now bear their names. Yet one name has yet to be memorialized as a street name, and resident Ruth Jones is on a mission to change that.

In a work session on Tuesday, Jones told the Meridian City Council that the city needs a street named after Polly Glover Heidelberg.

“We should have had a street named after Ms. Heidelberg years ago,” she said.

Heidelberg, the youngest of three children, was raised in Meridian by an aunt, who served as the live-in maid to then Mayor Clint Vincent. She grew up in the mayor’s Poplar Springs home helping to take care of the household and working other odd jobs.

In the 1960s, Heidelberg joined the Council of Federated Organizations, which was a coalition of local, state and national movements to get Blacks registered to vote, and later became close with Civil Rights workers Andrew Goodman, James Chaney and Michael Schwerner.

The Rev. Charles Johnson, who was also a COFO member, told The Meridian Star in 1992 that Chaney and Schwerner were especially close and came to view Heidelberg almost as a surrogate mother. Their murders, along with that of Andrew Goodman, at the hands of the Ku Klux Klan in Philadelphia in 1964, was hard for her to bear.

But Heidelberg’s involvement with the struggle for Civil Rights didn’t end. She, along with other COFO members, were arrested multiple times for their activism.

Heidelberg cemented her place in Meridian history when a Klansman who had scared her during a picket rally at the then Winn-Dixie on 18th Avenue appeared several years later at her church, St. John Baptist Church, as a candidate for Justice Court judge. Using the public forum of the political meeting, she recalled the fear of her first meeting the Klansman and asked how he could ask for her vote after what he had done.

Throughout the years, Heidelberg has received recognition for her efforts including being featured in the New York Times Magazine in July 1989, receiving the Fannie Lou Hamer Award from the Mississippi NAACP and having a scholarship established in her name by the Mississippi NAACP. She died Nov. 6, 1995 at age 82.

While the names of several prominent Civil Rights activists are well known, including Young, Chaney, Carnegie and more, Heidelberg’s name has not traveled as far, Jones said. Yet many of those men credit Heidelberg as not only a participant, she said, but a leader in Meridian’s Civil Rights movement.

Councilwoman Romande Walker said the first step in renaming a street would be to hear from the city’s Community Development department, which is working through a similar process to rename a street in honor of fallen Meridian Police Officer Kennis Croom.

Once the council understands what needs to happen, she said, it will be easier to see where and how council members may be able to help.

Tuesday’s discussion was not the first time someone has attempted to name a street after Heidelberg, but previous efforts have fizzled out, Jones said. This time, she said, she intends to see it through.

“We have got to do this,” she said. “Ms. Polly, she deserves this.”