MS Humanities Council: MHC Grant Will Help Highlight Cultural History of Natchez’s ‘Black Wall Street’

Pictured above is Rasberry Grocery Store: Doris Rasberry, right, with customers inside Quality Grocery and Market on St. Catherine Street. This business is one of many that will be featured in the St. Catherine Street history project, “St. Catherine Street, Natchez, MS: Yesteryear through Today.” Doris and her husband, Robert, opened the store at 158-160 St. Catherine St. at the end of World War II. For almost 40 years, it served the residents of the St. Catherine area. Photo courtesy of Rasberry Collection, Historic Natchez Foundation.

Editor's Note: I was happy to see this news reported in the Mississippi Humanities Council Newsletter - November 2022.

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The Mississippi Humanities Council recently awarded a project grant to the staff of the Dr. John Bowman Banks Museum for a project that highlights the cultural history of St. Catherine Street.

The project is titled “St. Catherine Street, Natchez, MS: Yesteryear through Today” and will use tours, photographs, oral history, and a brochure to share the rare and untold history of the people, buildings, culture, and businesses on the street from as far back as the 1930s, according to Project Director Thelma Newsome.

“Some people view St. Catherine as a mini version of ‘Black Wall Street’ of Tulsa, Oklahoma, because of its thriving black businesses and cultural development in the past,” said Newsome. “The small business is what helped to carry the people along all these many years. They were especially vital in a time of heightened racism and discrimination.”

Newsome, a lifelong resident of St. Catherine, said the street once boasted of thriving businesses that included barbershops, restaurants, grocery stores, laundromats, drycleaners, service stations, shoe repair shop, and beauty shops.

Although many of those businesses are gone, they had stories that need to be told about their existence and the impact they had on the community, Newsome said.

“This is a project whose time has come,” said Dora P. Hawkins, one of the organizers. “The Dr. John Bowman Banks Museum staff is elated to introduce St. Catherine Street, Natchez, to the world and to reintroduce the street to Natchez. In our research, we are finding so many interesting facts about this street and, it appears, we are only at the tip of what’s available.”

The tour experience will begin at Forks of the Road and end at the Rhythm Night Club Memorial Museum.