Bishop remembered as civil rights pioneer

Published 11:36 pm Friday, March 3, 2006

As the tension surrounding the struggle to register black voters increased in the 1960s, James Bishop risked his life to ensure his people were given the rights afforded to them by the U.S. Constitution.

Many times, the owner of Enterprise Funeral Home smuggled civil rights pioneers such as Martin Luther King Jr., Stokely Carmichael and Ralph Abernathy to Philadelphia to help register black voters. He was able to make it through roadblocks set up by the Ku Klux Klan and local police by hiding workers in the back of his hearse.

“He also was the one who drove to Philadelphia to retrieve the bodies of James Chaney, Michael Schwerner and Andrew Goodman from the earthen dam where their bodies were found,” said Althea Pringle, Bishop’s daughter. “It was hard for him, but he knew they had to be brought back and given a dignified burial. In that situation, his fear took a back seat.”

Bishop, who was known to many as “the Godfather” or “Bish,” died early Friday morning at Jeff Anderson Regional Medical Center. He was 99.

Pringle said Enterprise Funeral Home, which her father owned and operated since 1950, was in charge of Chaney’s funeral, and it was her father who prepared Schwerner’s and Goodman’s bodies and shipped them home to New York for burial.

The three civil rights workers were killed in the summer of 1964. Edgar Ray Killen was convicted of their murders last year.

Pringle believes the secret to her father’s longevity was his belief in God. She said he believed in doing what was right for his fellow man, black or white.

In addition to his funeral home business in Meridian, Bishop served an interim term on the Lauderdale County Board of Supervisors in the 1970s. He also owned Bishop’s DeKalb Funeral Home in DeKalb and Bishop Cook Funeral Home in Picayune.

Pringle said her father also owned Sunset Memorial Gardens Cemetery, which is where he will be buried. Funeral arrangements were not complete for her father on Friday, but she said the funeral will most likely be held Wednesday.

Meridian attorney Bill Ready Sr. remembered his friend “Bish” on Friday as an amazing man who was ahead of his time, very successful in business and very dignified in all his endeavors.

“He used his talents and his finances to improve the community,” Ready said. “He believed everyone had a right to partake in the American Dream.”

Bishop’s survivors include his daughters, Althea Pringle and her husband, Nathaniel, and Diane Bishop, all of Meridian; and a grandson, James Emory Bishop II of Hawaii.

He was preceded in death by his wife, Hortense McGhee Bishop, who was Meridian’s first black librarian.