Eureka School

Eureka was Hattiesburg's only public school for Black students from 1921 to 1949, teaching grades one through twelve in a two-story brick building paid for with a $75,000 bond issue. Enrollment climbed from about 800 in 1940 to 1,400 in 1947. A new Black high school opened by 1949 and Eureka continued as an elementary school until 1987. The building then served as an adult literacy center and storage space, took roof damage in the February 2013 EF-4 tornado, and now houses a civil rights museum.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• African American Military History Museum — steps away
  The wooden USO club that opened in March 1942 for Black soldiers training at Camp Shelby, now a museum of African American military service from the Revolutionary War to Iraq.
• Forrest County Courthouse and Dahmer Memorial — 0.5 mi
  The courthouse where Hattiesburg held Freedom Day on January 22, 1964, and where a memorial now honors Vernon Dahmer, killed by Klansmen in 1966.
• Hub City Historic District — 0.6 mi
  Hattiesburg's twelve-block downtown, a railroad town laid out in 1880s pine country, with the Saenger Theater, the courthouse and the 1910 depot.
• Mount Zion Baptist Church — 1.5 mi
  Hattiesburg's "Civil Rights Church," a Freedom School site in 1964 where Pete Seeger taught music and Martin Luther King Jr. spoke weeks before his death.

More markers nearby

• Roots of Rock 'n' Roll — steps away
• St. Paul Methodist Church — 0.2 mi
• Old Hattiesburg High School — 0.4 mi
• William Harris Hardy — 0.6 mi