Birthplace of Jackson State University

Natchez Seminary was founded for newly freed Black Mississippians. The American Baptist Home Mission Society of New York funded it to train Christian leaders, and it stayed a private school for sixty-three years. The society moved it to Jackson in 1883 as Jackson College, which awarded its first bachelor's degree in 1924. The state took it over in 1940. On 14 May 1970 law enforcement officers fired on students gathered on a campus lawn, killing a Jackson State student and a high school student and wounding twelve. No one was ever charged.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Natchez Museum of African American History and Culture — 0.9 mi
  A museum in the old 1904 post office on Main Street, opened in 1991, covering slavery, Reconstruction and the Natchez civil rights movement.
• William Johnson House — 1.0 mi
  The brick home and shop block of a free Black barber and diarist in Natchez, who enslaved others himself and was shot by a neighbor in 1851.
• Fort Rosalie — 1.4 mi
  The bluff where the French built Fort Rosalie in 1716 and the Natchez attacked it in 1729, now a free Natchez National Historical Park site beside the southern end of the Natchez Trace.
• Forks of the Road — 1.4 mi
  The 1832-1863 slave market a mile east of downtown Natchez, the second busiest in the Deep South, now a Natchez National Historical Park site with exhibit panels.

More markers nearby

• Natchez City Cemetery — steps away
• Richard Wright — 0.5 mi
• Andrew Marschalk — 0.9 mi
• Natchez Burning — 0.9 mi