The Jacqueline House Museum

The Jacqueline House African American Museum is Vicksburg’s only museum for the exclusive study of history and culture of people of African descent in the Vicksburg-Warren County area. The collection of over 20,000 items has material in all formats: Photographs, books, manuscripts, music, posters, newspapers and rare ephemera. In addition, the collections house selected artifacts, including items dating back to the slave period.

Vicksburg was not only the largest black community in the state in the nineteenth century, but was for years the commercial center for the heavily black populated Yazoo-Mississippi Delta. Its prominence in state and regional history and culture continues today.

Vicksburg can boast of well-known African Americans such as jazz artist Milt Hinton, blues artist Willie Dixon, actress Beah Richards, artist William Tolliver, fashion designer Patrick Kelly and Myrlie Evers, widow of the slain civil rights leader Medgar Evers. Dr. Jane Ellen McAllister, the first African American to earn a Ph.D. in Education from Columbia University, is also from Vicksburg.

African American out-migration during the 20th century has created another need that the Jacqueline House fulfills. Many expatriate Vicksburgers and their descendants are finding the museum’s archives an invaluable source for discovering and re-connecting with their heritage.