Magnolia High School

Edgar Smith, class of 1951, went on to a chemistry doctorate and a career teaching at major medical schools, and he credited a Magnolia Avenue High School chemistry teacher and the school as his foundation. It ran from 1923 to 1958 as Vicksburg's second Black high school, led for 38 years by J. G. H. Bowman. From 1940 it was the only Mississippi school in a Rockefeller-funded study of sixteen Black high schools. Orelia Peterson Crump later said it was community-run and that it was for us. The building is now vacant.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Old Court House Museum — 0.9 mi
  Vicksburg's Greek Revival courthouse of 1860, raised on a hilltop with the labor of enslaved artisans and now a private local-history museum heavy on Confederate relics.
• Vicksburg National Military Park — 1.8 mi
  A 16-mile tour road through the trenches of the 47-day siege of 1863, with a national cemetery and the story of the thousands of enslaved people who reached freedom behind Union lines.
• USS Cairo Gunboat and Museum — 2.7 mi
  The raised hull of a Union river ironclad sunk by a mine in the Yazoo in 1862, displayed at Vicksburg National Military Park with the artifacts the river mud preserved.

More markers nearby

• Marcus Bottom — 0.4 mi
• Bowmar Avenue Elementary School — 0.4 mi
• Alpha Kappa Alpha National Presidents — 0.4 mi
• Frank Crump, Jr. — 0.5 mi