Holy Ghost Catholic School

Mother Katharine Drexel paid for the school. The banker's daughter received a large inheritance when her father died in 1885 and founded the Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament in 1891 to serve Black and Native Americans; she was canonized in 2000. In 1915 she opened a New Orleans high school that became Xavier University of Louisiana. In Marksville, Father Nicholas Juderman founded this school for Black Catholic children, and the Daughters of the Cross gave the land and first staffed it. Bishop Durier had opened six schools for Black children in the diocese by 1894.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Avoyelles Parish Courthouse: Solomon Northup Marker — 0.3 mi
  The Marksville courthouse where Solomon Northup was freed in January 1853, with a marker and a 2026 bronze that shows him rising from the mud.
• Tunica-Biloxi Museum — 0.9 mi
  The Tunica-Biloxi Tribe of Louisiana's own museum at Marksville, built around the Tunica Treasure that the tribe won back in court.
• Epps House: Solomon Northup's Gateway to Freedom — 21 mi
  The Creole cottage Solomon Northup helped build for the man who enslaved him, moved twice and now a small museum on the LSU Alexandria campus.
• Arna Bontemps African American Museum — 26 mi
  The restored Alexandria house where the Harlem Renaissance writer Arna Bontemps was born in 1902, on the Louisiana African American Heritage Trail.

More markers nearby

• Holy Ghost Catholic Church — steps away
• Louisiana's Atchafalaya Basin — 0.2 mi
• Fort De Russy — 0.3 mi
• The First Bowie Knife — 0.3 mi