The Oakes House

The Oakes family's story starts with a purchase. John Oakes bought the freedom of his wife Mary and her two children, and the family came from South Carolina to Yazoo City in 1853. They bought a lot with a one-room structure in 1866, and by 1930 it had grown into the two-story house. Augustus Oakes founded a private academy for Black students, Oakes Academy, in 1884. Family members lived in the house until 1989, and in 1990 A.J. Oakes III deeded it to the Yazoo County Fair and Civic League, which runs it as a cultural center.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Triangle Cultural Center — 0.4 mi
  A 1904 school on Main Street in Yazoo City that survived the great fire of that May and now holds the county's historical museum, in a town rebuilt in brick on the same lots.
• Blue Front Cafe — 14 mi
  A cinder-block juke joint in Bentonia, opened in 1948 by Carey and Mary Holmes, home of the Bentonia school of blues and a stop on the Mississippi Blues Trail.
• Delta National Forest — 22 mi
  The only bottomland hardwood forest in the national forest system, some 60,000 acres of oak, ash and cypress in Sharkey County, run with the state as Sunflower Wildlife Management Area.

More markers nearby

• Bethel A.M.E. Church — steps away
• Yazoo County Courthouse — 0.2 mi
• Bank of Yazoo City — 0.2 mi
• B.S. Ricks Memorial Library — 0.4 mi