Dr. John Banks House - 9 St. Catherine Street

Dr. John Banks House - 9 St. Catherine Street. Natchez Trails. , The Dr. John Banks House was built in the Queen Anne style about 1890 and was slightly remodeled in the Colonial Style after about 1905. Frank Robinson, grandson of Dr. John Banks, retired part time to Natchez and restored the house in the mid-1990's.

Dr. John Bowman Banks (second row, far left) stands on the front steps of his St. Catherine Street house with Booker T. Washington (center front) in 1904.

Dr. Banks was the first African-American doctor in Natchez. He graduated from Meharry Medical College in Nashville, Tennessee, and received his Mississippi medical license in 1885.

He began practicing medicine in Natchez in 1889. By 1892 he had built his St. Catherine Street residence. His love of hunting led him to purchase Duncannon Plantation south of Natchez.

Dr. Banks recruited the city's second African American doctor, Albert Woods Dumas. The two doctors were involved in every aspect of civic improvement in the African American community

Dr. Banks and Dr. Dumas were also founders of the Bluff City Savings Bank, the only African American owned bank in the city, and Dr. Banks served as its president. Dr. Banks died in 1911 at the age of 49.

The John Banks House served as headquarters for the local chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) during the Civil Rights Movement. Pictured above (left) in the front yard of the house is activist Bill Ware of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). Pictured in the office inside the house are nationally known activist Charles Evers and local activist Jessie Bernard. The youth and women were the movers and shakers and were often impatient with movement elders like Evers., Top Right Photo Caption , This photograph of Dr. John Banks appeared with a biographical entry in a 1900 publication entitled, Progress of a Race: Or the Remarkable Advancement of the American Negro from the Bondage of Slavery, Ignorance and Poverty to the Freedom of Citizenship, Intelligence, Affluence, Honor and Trust.