Jim Heathman pulls his car up to the locked gate of Mount Zion Heathman Missionary Baptist Church.
It’s a crystal-clear Sunday morning, about an hour or so before church services are set to start.
The Indianola native and now Jackson resident climbs over the short gate and makes a right into the cemetery of the oldest African American church in Sunflower County.
Heathman, a direct descendant of the original owners of the Heathman Plantation, walks among the gravestones, pointing out the names of those who have long passed, as if they were blood relatives.
As the genealogist Heathman tells it, they were family, even if not related by blood.
Mount Zion Heathman was founded in 1866, right after the end of the American Civil War.
As the late Ivory Jordan Strong put in his oral history of the church, James Heathman Sr., owner then of the Heathman Plantation, gave his tenants and their families the land so they could build a church where they could worship and have other gatherings.
He also provided the lumber, cut from the trees that were on the land at the time, a short history of the church reads.
“The original church was a wooden structure, painted white and was rather small,” the account suggests. “It was built not far from Indian Bayou which ran through the acreage just behind the church.”
It was thought for decades that the church owned the building and the surrounding property, but when the members voted to do an expansion in 1965, the bank turned them down for the loan because they did not technically own either.
Strong told Alexander Crawford Heathman Sr. about the church’s dilemma, who then informed his mother, Inamay Heathman (wife of the late James Martin Heathman Jr.).
“She picked up the telephone and called both her lawyer and the president of the bank,” Heathman said. “She told her lawyer to write up a warranty deed, which she signed, transferring the property and immediately had it sent to the bank. She then called the bank and told them that the Mt. Zion Heathman Missionary Baptist Church did indeed own the building and the land.”
Heathman and his father were lay leaders in the Episcopal Church, and they attended St. Stephen’s in Indianola, but they were often asked to come lead services at Mount Zion.
This past Sunday, Mount Zion Heathman celebrated its 155th anniversary, and Heathman was in attendance. He brought a small token from the family, a cake commemorating the event.
He also brought them a copy of something they had been looking for — the deed to the church and the land.
“He gave us the deed,” said Mount Zion Heathman Pastor Joe Hodges. “He informed us that we have just about right at 20 acres. We did not know it. That was the greatest gift we could receive. “We were just looking for the deeds to the church. We knew we had them, but we couldn’t find them. God brought him there and gave us exactly what we were looking for, so that was a blessing.”
Hodges said that he grew up at Mount Zion. He’s been a member for 37 years, and he’s been the church’s leader for the past six.
“It’s a privilege and an honor just to be able to pastor a historic church, the oldest church in Sunflower County,” Hodges said.
Mount Zion is not just a historic church to Hodges, it’s the place where he became a Christian and grew in his faith.
“I accepted Christ there,” he said. “Growing up in Mount Zion was life-changing. Just to experience the love and support from everyone there, and everyone embraced me growing up. It wasn’t just my mother or my grandmother raising me, I feel like I was raised by the whole church community.”
Hodges said he grew up playing instruments like the drums and participating in worship through music.
These days, he’s passing that tradition along to the young children who are being raised in the church.
Hodges said the church meets every week, with the second and fourth Sundays starting at 8:30 a.m. and the first and third Sundays at 11 a.m.
Even through the COVID-19 pandemic, Hodges said Mount Zion still found ways to worship.
“The doors never closed, not one Sunday, whether it was two or three or 25 or 30, we praised God anyhow,” Hodges said.
Here’s to another 155 years for Mount Zion Heathman.
