The Farish Street Historic District is one of Jackson, Mississippi's oldest and most culturally significant Black neighborhoods. More than a point on the map, it is a living record of African American heritage that helped shape the city itself.

Education has long been central to this neighborhood's identity. When Jackson State University—then Jackson College—relocated from Natchez in 1883, it made its first home in the basement of Mt. Helm Missionary Baptist Church on Lamar Street. Nearly a century later, in 1982, Dr. Alferdteen Harrison of Jackson State's Institute for the Study of the History, Life, and Culture of Black People (now the Margaret Walker Center) returned to the district with a team of scholars to capture its stories through oral histories and photography. That work created a lasting archive of memory and images that continues to illuminate the community's past.

One of the gems in the Farish Street District is Smith Robertson school. It was built in 1894 as a school for Black children and was originally known as West Jackson Colored School. It was later bought by a formerly enslaved man named Smith Robertson who named the school after himself. The school remained open and operated until 1971. Being the only school for Black students in Jackson, Smith Robertson brought in students from all over the city. In a 1978 oral history interview, Julia Young, who worked at the school from 1951-1971, said, “Smith Robertson has always been a very proud school. In fact, that was the school that started all of the Black children going to school, they came from everywhere. They came from out this way, far out this way as they could come. They came from across the river to Smith Robertson School. They came from out west where there were no schools out there.”

Dr. W.E. Miller attended Smith Robertson from 1908-1913. He said this about his time at the school: “In what way do you think Smith Robertson helped you? Well, in numerous ways. We learned how to read. I learned to read at home, I knew the alphabet and I could stumble on a few words when I got there. Those things helped me…I think the reading program helped me.”

Smith Robertson closed in 1971, after Mississippi finally desegregated public schools. Verna Anderson, who taught second grade at the school from 1936 until 1971, said, “I think that after the school desegregated no one wanted Smith Robertson. It was in the slum area and didn't anyone-the white kids didn't want to go there, that's my opinion. They closed these schools so that they could integrate. Smith Robertson wasn't the only school that closed.”

Smith Robertson sat dormant until 1984 when it was reopened as a museum. It is now known as Smith Robertson Museum and Cultural Center and hosts a wide variety of events as well several permanent and traveling exhibits.
 

By 1982, when Dr. Harrison organized the oral history and photography project, Farish Street had already begun to decline. The 1970s brought major changes: school desegregation, while essential, contributed to the closing of many Black businesses as customers gained access to other parts of the city. Farish Street, like other Black business districts across the South, struggled in this new landscape.

Photographer Roland Freeman documented this transition in powerful images that show both hardship and resilience in the early 1980s.

In 1980, Farish Street was added to the National Register of Historic Places. Today, more than four decades later, its homes, churches, and businesses continue to stand as reminders of a community that has shaped Jackson’s past and continues to inspire its future.