impact resulted in a population decline as workers left for other areas. The population has since continued to decrease as the city has struggled to create a modern economy based on newer industries. Civil Rights Movement During the height of the American Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s, Meridian was a major center of organizing and activism. The Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) had a field office there, with members including James Chaney and other local residents, along with Michael and Rita Schwerner and Andrew Goodman, volunteers from the North. They worked on creating a community center, preparing people in the area for voter registration, and organizing a boycott of a variety store that had yet to hire its first black worker. The activism from Northerners was not widely accepted among local residents; it caused great tension between not only white and black citizens of Meridian, but whites and blacks throughout the South. Racial tension often translated to violence. In June 1964 Chaney, Schwerner and Goodman went to Neshoba County, Mississippi, to meet with members of a black church which had been bombed and burned. The three young men disappeared that night on their way back to Meridian. Two months later authorities discovered the bodies of the men buried in an earthen dam. The federal government indicted seventeen Klansmen, and tried ten for conspiracy under the Enforcement Act of 1870. Seven men were convicted and three were acquitted. In 2005 the case was reopened; Edgar Ray Killen, one of the Klansmen, was convicted of three counts of manslaughter and sentenced to three terms of 20 years each. The murders of Chaney, Goodman, and Schwerner — along with years of work from other activists — helped gain national support for Federal legislation to end segregation and protect civil and voting rights of all citizens. Meridian later honored Chaney by renaming a portion of 49th Ave after him. The city has also held a Mississippi Civil Rights Martyrs Memorial Service each year since 1964 and built a memorial at his gravesite located in Okatibee Cemetery, by Okatibee Baptist Church. In 2014, the Meridian/Lauderdale County Tourism Bureau in cooperation with a committee of local residents, created the Civil Rights Trail. It is a self-guided tour consisting of eighteen stops beginning with the African-American Business District and ending with Chaney's gravesite. Downtown Revitalization Meridian's downtown core had begun to disappear after World War II.