
Established by the School Sisters of St. Francis of Milwaukee, this campus served Yazoo City’s black community during segregation. The campus occupies a bluff that had to be reduced by sixty feet before construction could begin. The three front buildings—St. Francis Church, the two-story convent, and the one-story brick school building—all date to 1939–1942. Jackson architect James T. Canizaro gave the church a spare Romanesque style; the other two buildings are probably also his designs. Four buildings to the rear reflect the school’s growth after World War II from its original eighty students to over three hundred in the 1950s. The one-story school building behind the original school was finished around 1946, and the first class graduated in 1947. By 1960, a cafeteria, rectory, and gymnasium had rounded out the campus. In 1986, alumnus Mike Espy became the first African American Mississippian elected to the U.S. Congress since Reconstruction. The school closed in 1970 and now houses a Head Start center and other community groups.