Vicksburg Catholic School to Break Ground on New Performing Arts and Athletic Complex

VICKSBURG, Miss. (VDN) — As the City of Vicksburg marks the 200th anniversary of its incorporation this year, timing is perfect to discuss one of the most formidable forces driving the city’s history and future: Vicksburg Catholic School.

The future for Vicksburg Catholic School is focused today on a multimillion-dollar Multipurpose Performing Arts and Athletic Complex. It will include a hall for stage performances and practices.

The groundbreaking will be at 11 a.m. Friday at the complex along Clay, Hayes and Grove streets on property that formerly housed a grocery store, County Market, and years before, a discount store, Howard Brothers.

The groundbreaking comes as current and former students celebrate homecoming week, culminating with a football matchup Friday night between the St. Aloysius Flashes and Amite School Center(Liberty, Mississippi).

City and county officials, as well as alumni, are quick to speak of the school system’s successes.

Vicksburg’s new mayor, Willis Thompson, said the Catholic schools “have played a significant role in educating our students for over a century” and the new complex “will be an asset to our community.”

“St. Francis and St. Al have nurtured our children from kindergarten through the 12th grade and provided for them an invaluable opportunity to not only attain a wonderful education, but to strengthen their faith in God and serve our community,” he said.

Kelle Barfield, president of the Warren County Board of Supervisors, said she, too, is proud of the school.

“Warren County is fortunate to have outstanding school options for parents to choose from, led by the dedicated staff and administration of Vicksburg Catholic School,” she said. “We are surrounded by civic leaders who were shaped by their educations at VCS.”

The history of Vicksburg Catholic School is long and storied.

The Sisters of Mercy came to the city, opening St. Francis Xavier Academy on Crawford Street in 1860; the Brothers of the Sacred Heart came 19 years later and opened St. Aloysius on Grove Street; and finally, the Society of the Divine Word opened St. Mary Catholic School on Main Street in 1906. It was operated by the Missionary Sisters Servants of the Holy Spirit. Today, those schools are combined and operated by the Catholic Diocese of Jackson in the complex on Grove, Clay and Hayes streets.

The Sisters of Mercy, who had been in the city for only a year when the Civil War broke out, were forced to temporarily close the school until after the Confederate surrender of Vicksburg in 1863. During the war, however, the sisters served as front-line nurses to wounded soldiers and civilians.

Kristi Pantin Smith, director of development for Vicksburg Catholic School, is the push behind attempts to raise the money and pledges to build and outfit the additions to the burgeoning school.

“St. Francis started in 1860 with only a few students, today we have more than 500. But it’s not about just the enrollment; it’s about success stories,” Smith said.

She pointed out that each year the school’s graduates are offered an average of $4 million in academic scholarships and 30 percent of each senior class scores a 30 or above on the ACT college-entrance exam that carries a maximum score of 36. She also pointed out that the school has graduated numerous community and state leaders.

“The current secretary of state for Mississippi, Delbert Hosemann, is a graduate of St. Aloysius; we have numerous physicians, attorneys, highly successful entrepreneurs and investors who graduated from Vicksburg Catholic School, either before the merger of the high schools or after, and we believe we’re helping position the current students to perform just as successfully in a few short years.”

In the earliest days of Catholic education in Vicksburg, the Sisters of Mercy operated St. Francis Xavier Academy and later St. Francis Xavier Elementary while the Brothers of the Sacred Heart operated St. Aloysius, a high school and college. Four Holy Spirit sisters from Holland operated St. Mary grammar school and eventually undertook the construction of an adjacent building that was Mississippi’s first four-year parochial high school for African-Americans.

All of the Catholic schools merged in 1968.

“It’s a legacy,” Smith said. “We have students enrolled today whose parents, grandparents, great-grandparents and great-great-grandparents graduated from this school. And, again, it’s not just being enrolled and graduating, it’s about embracing the community that they carry with them throughout their lives.

“We have an alumni banquet every year just before graduation, and we have men and women returning for the banquet who graduated in the 1940s – that’s nearly 80 years ago. The reason they come is the connection they feel to the community of which they’ve been a part since the first grade,” Smith said.

Jane Lauderdale Flowers is a 1971 graduate of St. Aloysius High School and holds the “legacy” of the schools close.

“Hanging on the wall in my study is my Grandma Janie Rafferty Barber O’Neill’s high school diploma from when she graduated from St. Francis Xavier Academy in 1921, 104 years ago,” she said.

“My family, including my parents, my siblings, my children and I graduated from St. Francis and St. Aloysius,” Flowers said. “Now my grandchildren attend Vicksburg Catholic School.

“In looking back, I appreciate the quality Catholic, Christian and academic education I received and the emphasis of faith, hope and love.”

Cheryl Israel Grant graduated from St. Francis Xavier Academy before the high schools merged. Her large immediate family and larger extended family, beginning with grandparents John Murray Pinkston and Corean Stafford Pinkston, have been students of and graduated from the Catholic schools for five generations.

“The children have found educational growth and success as graduates of VCS,” she said. In addition, she said, “What consistently drew my family to its dedication to VCS was a staunch belief in the significance of an education rooted in our Catholic faith.

“Equally important was that Vicksburg Catholic School offered a superior education and thus an advantage in attaining success in life,” Grant said.

She said the Pinkston family, through the investment of parents and grandparents, has produced “outstanding members in the areas of the arts, business, education, finance, insurance, journalism, law, medicine and technology.”

Dr. Josephine Williams Calloway is a retired 35-year educator who attended St. Mary Catholic School until the 12th grade. She’s quick to tell the story of her family’s dedication, particularly her father’s, to Catholic education.

“My father, Joseph Williams Sr., was from a Baptist family that was determined he would get a good education, so they enrolled him at St. Mary Catholic School in kindergarten,” she said.

“He soon told his family he wanted to become a Catholic, but they made him wait until he graduated from high school,” she said. “So he waited 12 years to be baptized, and even when he was older and in failing health, he went to Mass at St. Mary every time he could get there.

“He cherished his Catholic education so highly that when St. Mary’s closed and St. Aloysius and St. Francis wouldn’t accept my sisters because they were black, he would get off his job at Illinois Central Railroad in the mornings and drive them to Yazoo City so they could attend St. Francis Catholic School there. It was the nearest Catholic school that would accept them.”

Calloway’s three brothers were younger and, by the time they were high school age, they were accepted at St. Aloysius. All three, Joseph Jr., Gus and Francis Williams, graduated from St. Al. Calloway’s two children also graduated from St. Al, and her granddaughter attended St. Francis.

After high school, Calloway went on to graduate from Barat College in Lake Forest, Ill., another Catholic school.

Today, Vicksburg Catholic School operates St. Aloysius High School for grades 7 through 12, the elementary school for grades 1-6, kindergarten, Montessori and the newest addition, the Sisters of Mercy Early Learning Center, which cares for children as young as 8 weeks old.

Academically, the school victoriously participates in robotics, science and speaking competitions. On the athletic fields, St. Al and St. Francis students can choose among 26 sports from football and soccer to softball, volleyball and archery.

“It’s all about the whole child, not just academically, but physically and competitively,” Smith said.

Joseph Kopacz, bishop of the Jackson Diocese of the Catholic Church, visits the Vicksburg school often.

“You know I love to go to Vicksburg and walk along the murals at the riverfront, where I see the work of the sisters and the brothers and I feel a real community cohesiveness,” Kopacz said. “It’s respect that I feel everywhere in the community. It’s the school community, the alumni, the town and the town officials.”

Kopacz said he feels the new complex is Vicksburg Catholic School’s “ticket to the next level with facilities to match the schools’ longstanding commitment to education.”

He called it “the culmination” of a yearslong improvement in offerings and facilities: the establishment of the Sisters of Mercy Early Learning Center, which opened in 2021; the upgrade of athletic facilities two years ago; and an upgrade of the high school’s academic areas last year.

“It’s a great moment for the Vicksburg Catholic community and for the community at large,” the bishop said.