Walthall County Training School

Training schools like this one were set up from about 1910 to give Black children elementary and, slowly, high school lessons, and their best work was producing rural teachers. In Walthall County, Black residents had a long habit of building their own institutions, first churches and schools, then a Universal Negro Improvement Association chapter in the 1920s and 1930s. Cleopatra Thompson, who later taught at Jackson State from the 1940s through the 1970s, spent part of her early career teaching at this school. After Brown v. Board of Education the county's NAACP chapter challenged segregated schools at once.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• John Ford Home — 21 mi
  A frontier house on the Pearl River where the 1816 Pearl River Convention met, kept by the Marion County Historical Society and open to the public since 1963.

More markers nearby

• Walthall County Courthouse and Jail — 3.2 mi
• Conerly's P. O. and Lampton's Store — 3.4 mi
• Holmesville — 13 mi
• Creation of Pike County — 13 mi