Lee High School

The school stands on part of the property of Stephen D. Lee's old home and carries the Confederate general's name. It opened in 1953 for white students. A Black school designed by the same architect, R. E. Hunt High, opened across town the same decade. In 2018 the state declared Lee a Mississippi Landmark but did not grant the same status to Hunt, and a local newspaper editorial asked why a former white high school counted as more historically significant than a Black one. Lee remained a school until the city consolidated its high schools in 1992.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Tennessee Williams Welcome Center — 1.6 mi
  The 1875 Episcopal rectory where Tennessee Williams was born in 1911, moved to Main Street in the 1990s and now Columbus's welcome center and a National Literary Landmark.
• Waverley Mansion — 6.2 mi
  A National Historic Landmark mansion above the Tombigbee River, home of a plantation family that enslaved more than a hundred people, left empty for half a century before a family restored it.
• Howlin' Wolf Memorial and Blues Trail Marker — 15 mi
  A Mississippi Blues Trail marker and granite memorial on East Broad Street honoring Chester Burnett, who was born nearby in 1910 and became the Chicago blues giant Howlin' Wolf.
• Sam D. Hamilton Noxubee National Wildlife Refuge — 27 mi
  A 48,000-acre refuge of bottomland forest and lakes in Noxubee, Oktibbeha and Winston counties, rebuilt from worn-out farmland, with red-cockaded woodpeckers, alligators and winter eagles.

More markers nearby

• Military Road — 0.6 mi
• R.E. Hunt High School — 0.7 mi
• Queen City Hotel (Blues Trail) — 0.8 mi
• Missionary Union Baptist Church — 1.0 mi