While grateful for The Vicksburg Post coverage of The Jacqueline House’s 15th anniversary, I must make correction of several misstatements in that story.

First, my sister, Jacqueline Rose, was never the owner of the house and property now called The Jacqueline House. She resided there when she and her husband returned to Vicksburg in 1985 because it was next door to the funeral home. But my father had acquired two separate properties for Jacqueline and myself, and Jacqueline’s property was sold by her family soon after her death.

I am now, and have been since my father’s death, the sole heir and owner of The Jacqueline House property. I happily donated its use as a museum in my sister’s honor 15 years ago. But I still retain title to the house and the property on which it sits.

Soon after my sister’s death, I became active with a fledgling group called “The Vicksburg African American Historical Preservation Foundation” that was seeking a place to begin collecting and cataloguing local black history.

Members of that group — and co-founders of The Jacqueline House — included myself, Thelma Rush, the late Reverend James Metcalf of Bethel AME Church, Dr. Josephine Calloway who, with her children and family helped paint and prepare The House for its opening on Mothers’ Day, 1995; Dorothy Whitley, our artist-in-residence who made curtains, did all our interior art work, and contributed her own unique art; Leona Stringer, our most generous donor, who owned and contributed the largest single collection, the St. Mary’s Collection, to The Jacqueline House, and our curator since the beginning, Tillman Whitley, whose consuming passion has always been an African American Museum here at home, and whose extraordinary generosity benefits it even now.

Others without whose help, work, and talent The Jacqueline House would not exist were the Marshall Brothers, James and David, who re-configured the space inside and built a new exterior for it; Simon Amos who painted the House outside and re-did its cabinets inside; and Francis Williams and his friend who hung the new door that his sister had bought for us hours before we opened. Francis had worked on his hands and knees all through the night, staining and getting the old floors ready. But Foundation money bought and installed new floors for The Jacqueline House.

This year — and every year — The Jacqueline House celebrates all these people and all the things they have done. The Jacqueline House is, and remains, the work of many hands.

Yolande Robbins

Vicksburg