VICKSBURG, Miss. — The Vicksburg, Miss., home of the first Black woman in the United States to receive a doctorate in education could be preserved and turned into an African-American museum if a state grant is awarded.
The Vicksburg Board of Mayor and Aldermen on Monday accepted transfer of the home, which belonged to the late Dr. Jane McAllister, from its current owner, Yolande Robbins, in an effort to restore it through a grant program focusing on the preservation of the Civil Rights Era.
“This is a great opportunity for us to take a dinosaur of a building and bring life back to it,” says mayor Paul Winfield. “I saw it as a great opportunity for us to preserve a significant history of Vicksburg.”
The City of Vicksburg is applying for up to $210,000 of a $2 million pool of the 2010 Civil Rights Historic Sites grant program, offered through the Mississippi Department of Archives and History.
The grant, which requires a 20 percent local match in either cash or in-kind funding, is to be used for renovations, repairs and improvements to sites or properties associated with the civil rights era.
“It would be a splendid opportunity if the city can obtain this grant,” says Robbins, who owns the Jacqueline House African-American Museum across the street. “It would be a tremendous boon for our neighborhood. We envisioned this to be a part of the Jacqueline House. We’re bursting at the seams there.”
Once renovated, the McAllister home would be used as an extension of the Jacqueline House, housing African-American artifacts, or as a home for Black scholars, Robbins says.
