St. Mary's Catholic School

St. Mary School opened with the parish in 1906, in houses on the lot; a Greek Revival building went up in 1908 with funds from Katharine Drexel. A high school building followed in 1948, built largely with a local contractor's money and materials. The teachers were the Sisters of the Holy Spirit, German nuns who needed more degrees from DePaul University in Chicago to teach in Mississippi. They taught Black children in Jim Crow Vicksburg and met hostility for it. The high school closed in 1964 and the elementary school in 1970.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Old Court House Museum — 0.4 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 — 1.3 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 — 1.6 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

• St. Mary's Catholic Church — steps away
• Dr. Jane Ellen McAllister — steps away
• Jackson Street MB Church — steps away
• Newit Vick's Original Vicksburg — 0.3 mi