Holy Family Catholic Church

Holy Family exists because the Catholic hierarchy chose separate parishes. In 1885 the Third Plenary Council authorized Black parishes in hopes of evangelizing African Americans, and this brick Gothic Revival church, built in 1894, was among the first results and the first Black Catholic church in Mississippi. Natchez had been a diocese seat since 1837. Decades later the parish became a center of the city's civil rights activism under its priest, William J. Morrissey. The church is still in use.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Natchez Museum of African American History and Culture — 0.4 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 — 0.5 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 — 0.8 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 — 0.8 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

• Trinity Episcopal Church — 0.4 mi
• Andrew Marschalk — 0.4 mi
• Natchez Burning — 0.4 mi
• Commercial Bank Building — 0.5 mi