NATCHEZ — With an appreciation for the past and an eye on the future, current and former denizens of the Minorville community gathered Saturday to celebrate both.

For the last 23 years, the residents of Minor Street and the surrounding neighborhood have gathered for the Minorville Jubilee, a block party that spans the length of the street and draws pilgrims from across the country.

“When I was growing up, the neighborhood took care of the neighborhood,” former resident Joseph Jones said. “We had a store on one end of the street, people who would sell sweets if you wanted them and a church right over there. The only reason to leave the neighborhood was to go to school or make groceries — that’s kind of why we called it Minorville, because it was like its own little town.”

That arrangement made for a tight-knit community that wasn’t easy to leave, Jones said, and the Minorville Jubilee is a chance to revisit the old home site.

“Even if I just came back and walked from one end of the street to the other, I have to see my neighborhood,” he said.

Jubilee festivities included not only cook-outs and children dancing in the spray of an opened fire hydrant, but a church service and a voter registration drive.

Jubilee committee member Felicia Irving said organizers wanted to take this year’s festivities and use them as a launching point for neighborhood revitalization.

Minorville was at one time “the most productive neighborhood in Natchez,” said Irving, populated with people who worked at Armstrong Tire just around the corner on Kelly Avenue or at International Paper out in the county.

With the closure of the plants, many of the neighborhood’s blue-collar families had to move, and older folks started dying off, leaving properties to absentee heirs. There’s no denying a decline in the neighborhood, Irving said, but the Jubilee committee wants to work with residents to steer the area into a recovery.

Those in attendance wore shirts reading, “Minorville has hope.”

“We are trying to motivate the community to come together as one, because where there is unity there is strength,” Irving said.

The committee will seek a 501(c)3 nonprofit status in the coming weeks, and will work with residents to develop a plan from there, Irving said.

“I have a vision for a computer center where we can do after school tutoring for the children and GED classes for adults, and where people can come fill out job applications without having to go all the way out to the WIN Job Center (across town),” she said.

The group can also offer personal enrichment classes and partner with the church in the neighborhood — Greater Macedonia Baptist Church — to spiritually enrich the area, Irving said.

The Jubilee committee runs an official site at the east end of the street, but all along the span residents were in their yards grilling, selling snoball cups for a quarter and sharing good times with anybody who would stop by.

At the west end of the street, Sean Crockett’s house served as an anchor for that end of the party. He had a big pit grill parked out front, and offered grilled meat — wild hog, fish and deer — to those who passed.

“I am all about the outdoors, hunting and fishing, and I feed my family with this meat, but I have an extra deep freeze, and I keep a lot of it just for this occasion,” Crockett said.

“For a lot of people who grew up here, this gives them a chance to come back and see the children of the people they grew up with who are coming up here now.”

Anthony Riggs and his son Anthony Jr. were at Crockett’s house, and Riggs and Crockett said they’d seen nearly three dozen people who’d moved away from Natchez at the Jubilee.

“I’d say 90 percent of the Natchez population came through Minor Street at some point,” Riggs said.

The Minorville Jubilee will conclude this morning with a special Sunday school at Greater Macedonia Baptist Church.