Arriving in the steamy climate of the unfamiliar Deep South in 1965, the young man from northern Indiana was eager to serve domestically, just like the Service Opportunities for Older People (SOOP) volunteers he welcomes to his ministry today.
But to a then-19-year-old Larry Miller, Mississippi was more like a mission assignment in a foreign land.
Larry had arrived in Mashulaville, Miss., from Topeka, Ind., to fulfill his Civilian Public Service obligation as a conscientious objector to the Vietnam War.
Serving at the Choctaw Indian mission established by Mennonites years earlier, Larry soon came face-to-face with legal segregation and overt white oppression of Native Americans and blacks.
Larry found himself in the midst of the struggle, like the time he was the lone white person at the front of a black march for voting rights.
“I was the white target on the front line. ‘Grab the white boy and put him up front,’ they said. I actually thought it was fun,” Miller says with a chuckle. “Until I saw those piercing eyes and the drooling mouths of the Klan holding ax handles. No mission board ever really prepared us for that.”
It was 1969 when a young Maxine Miller joined her newly wedded husband in the South. After taking a few years off after high school in Indiana, she had discovered her call was to teach. The local Noxubee County school board had other plans, though.
“At that time it was an all-white school board, and they didn’t look that kindly on our activities [helping the Choctaws and black residents],” Maxine says. “They came right out and said, “You’re Yankees and you’re Mennonites and you’re not getting a job here.” Eventually, God changed things through the civil rights movement.
After more than 40 years of marriage, three grown children and retiring after 25 years of teaching, the Millers are still on this domestic mission together. Their nonprofit Mennonite Service Center provides a variety of services, including nutritious meals, adult and youth tutoring, and health and human service advocacy for locals, regardless of race. For the past three years, the center has been associated with SOOP, a Mennonite Mission Network program that provides adults and families with service opportunities.
Mashulaville is a small community outside Macon, Miss., in Noxubee County. The county’s population is about 12,000, 70 percent of whom are black. Hundreds of years before Europeans arrived, the Choctaws farmed the land, until they were forcibly removed by the U.S. government in 1830 in what is known as the Trail of Tears.
Mennonites arrived in Mashulaville in the early 1960s, establishing the Choctaw Indian mission, where Larry served from 1965 to 1969. He took people to the doctor, helped with the boys and girls clubs and taught Sunday school.
Larry’s late parents, Andrew and Sara Miller, moved to Mashulaville and began a children’s home in 1967, which has evolved to the current center. The Mashulaville Dormitory building, a nearly 100-year-old former schoolhouse, is where the summer program is held.
“Mashulaville is a very poor community. We have virtually no industry in the county,” Maxine says. “Unemployment is nearly 20 percent.”
The Millers share the gospel through building relationships and meeting people’s needs as best they can.
“When people are needing a friend, it doesn’t matter what color they are,” Larry says.
Times have changed for the better. Larry recalls a Klan meeting a couple of years ago where so few Klan members showed up that they were outnumbered by police.
“The change is almost unbelievable that we’re actually rejecting overt racism, … but the scary part is that we still have racially divided schools in all our black-majority counties,” Larry says. “Our children always attended public schools here. White people in Noxubee don’t send their kids to the public schools at all. This is appalling to me.”
“It has been a good life,” Maxine says. “We’ve faced dangers. It hasn’t always been comfortable, but I think about the relationships we’ve had with the black community in our neighborhood here. They protected our family. I’m really grateful for that.”
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Mennonite Mission Network, the mission agency of Mennonite Church USA, leads, mobilizes and equips the church to participate in holistic witness to Jesus Christ in a broken world. Media may contact Andrew Clouse at andrewc@mmnworld.net, 574-523-3024 or 866-866-2872, ext. 23024.
