Black-owned hotel razed; was safe haven during segregation

MERIDIAN, Miss. (AP) — A Mississippi hotel that historically gave a safe place for Black travelers during segregation and once welcomed such notables as the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. has been torn down. The owners said the E.F. Young Jr. Hotel in Meridian had fallen into disrepair and that rehabilitating it would have been too expensive. The Meridian Star reports a small crowd watched Monday as the building was demolished. The hotel was opened in 1946 by E.F. Young Jr., a Black entrepreneur, whose family still owned the building. It remained open as a hotel until 1978 and was subsequently as office space but then sat vacant in recent years.