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One of four remaining houses in Lauderdale County's "Little Georgia" community, the longtime elementary school of one of Jackson's oldest neighborhoods, an antebellum plantation house in Tate County, a late-nineteenth century Methodist church in Lowndes County, and a historic district in Raymond have been recommended for inclusion in the National Register of Historic Places by the Historic Preservation Professional Review Board. The board's decisions will be forwarded to the U.S. Department of the Interior for final review.

The William Austin Lacy House is a crucial part of Lauderdale County's "Little Georgia" community, which dates to the 1830s. The founders and early settlers came from Georgia, bringing the area's architectural traditions with them. The Lacy House, constructed 1902-03, is the community's most intact domestic building. The house is laid out on a rectangle with two rooms on each side of a central hallway. Interior chimneys are set between the paired rooms. A kitchen and dining room were added to the back of the house around 1920.

The Lorena Duling School in Jackson was built in 1927 and served as the neighborhood elementary school for the developing community of Fondren. The school was designed by architect Claude H. Lindsley in the popular Tudor Revival style. Lindsley would go on to design Jackson's Central High School and Standard Life Building. The Duling School was used for educational purposes until 2005, at which time it was vacated.

The McGehee Plantation is located south of Senatobia in Tate County. The grand two-story Greek Revival house features fourteen-foot ceilings and original plaster walls, heart pine floors, and faux wood grain finishes. Abner F. McGehee purchased the land on March 16, 1854. There is no architect of record or existing plans. The house was constructed with slave labor and finished in 1855. Stark Young, author of So Red the Rose, was raised on the plantation and used it as the setting for the 1934 novel.

The Mt. Pleasant United Methodist Church, near Columbus in Lowndes County, is a rare surviving example of a church built in the Rural Carpenter Gothic style. Constructed 1892-94 by local church builder David Parker Tunnell, the wooden building features a steeply pitched roof and four evenly spaced eight-foot-high Gothic-arch windows along each side wall. The interior is architecturally intact, with walls and ceiling of unpainted four-inch tongue-and-groove pine boards in a herringbone pattern, pine floors, and pine pews presumed to be original to the building. Although active until 1980, the church never had heating, electricity, or water utilities installed. The building is still used annually for Homecoming and Decoration day and for weddings and funerals.

Raymond was founded in 1829 as the seat of the newly formed Hinds County. The Raymond Historic District includes 126 buildings, a water tank and tower, and a Confederate monument. The district illustrates both popular and vernacular architectural styles of the years from 1830—the date the Keith Press Building was constructed—to 1957.

The Department of the Interior will review the nominations and notify MDAH when they are listed on the National Register. MDAH will notify the property owners and local governments.

The Mississippi Historic Preservation Professional Review Board is an independent board composed of professionals in fields related to historic preservation. Board members are chairman James F. Barnett, vice chairman Samuel H. Kaye, Michael W. Fazio, E. Jackson Garner, Arthur H. Kinnard Jr., Alferdteen Harrison, Jay K. Johnson, Elizabeth M. Boggess, and H.T. Holmes.

The Department of Archives and History is the official State Historic Preservation Office in Mississippi and handles all requests for National Register information and assistance. Congress established the National Register of Historic Places in 1966 as a list of federally recognized properties especially worthy of protection and preservation. Mississippi has more than 1,200 National Register properties, including archaeological sites, battlefields, bridges, buildings, cemeteries, forts, houses, and historic districts. For more information call 601-576-6940.

A training session for historic preservation commissions has been scheduled for July 13 in Eupora. Topics covered will include federal and state tax credit programs, the Secretary of the Interior's Standards for Rehabilitation, local tax abatement/exemption programs, historically appropriate roofing material, and best practices for ensuring local historic districts are in compliance with approved Certificates of Appropriateness.

The free workshop fulfills the annual training requirement for Certified Local Government participants, but all interested parties are invited to attend. A subsequent training session is scheduled for Eupora in July. Contact Todd Sanders, 601-576-6950 or by email at tsanders@mdah.state.ms.us, for more information or to reserve a space.

The Certified Local Government program is a federal-state-local partnership designed to build strong local historic preservation programs. Members are eligible for special annual grants and technical assistance from MDAH. To become a CLG, a community must adopt a preservation ordinance establishing a preservation commission in accordance with federal and state guidelines. Once the commission has been established, application for CLG status may be made to the National Park Service through the Department of Archives and History. For more information call 601-576-6950.

The fifty-one CLG communities in Mississippi are Aberdeen, Amory, Baldwyn, Biloxi, Blue Mountain, Brandon, Canton, Carrollton, Centreville, Claiborne County, Clarksdale, Cleveland, Columbia, Columbus, Como, Corinth, Eupora, Friars Point, Greenwood, Hattiesburg, Hernando, Holly Springs, Indianola, Jackson, Kosciusko, Laurel, Leland, Lexington, Louisville, Magnolia, McComb, Meridian, Mound Bayou, Natchez, Newton, Ocean Springs, Osyka, Oxford, Pascagoula, Philadelphia, Port Gibson, Raymond, Ripley, Tunica, Tupelo, Vaiden, Vicksburg, West, Winona, Woodville and Yazoo City.

Blue Mountain, Magnolia, Newton, and Osyka are the latest Mississippi communities to enroll in a preservation program that makes members eligible for special annual grants and technical assistance from the Mississippi Department of Archives and History. The Certified Local Government program enables participants to work with MDAH to strengthen the historic preservation programs in their communities.

The Certified Local Government program is a federal-state-local partnership designed to permit communities maximum flexibility in dealing with diverse preservation needs and to reward those local governments that have established commissions to address the preservation of their local historic properties.

A percentage of the national Historic Preservation Fund is dedicated each year to grants for projects in CLG communities. Also, when applying for Community Heritage Preservation grants, participants are not limited to preservation projects related to historic schoolhouses and courthouses.

To become a CLG, a community must adopt a preservation ordinance establishing a preservation commission in accordance with federal and state guidelines. Once the commission has been established, application for CLG status may be made to the National Park Service through the Department of Archives and History. MDAH works closely with local government officials and citizens to help them create and manage a workable local historic preservation program. To learn more about the CLG program, contact Todd Sanders in the Historic Preservation Division of MDAH, 601-576-6950.

The courthouse where the Emmett Till murder trial took place, an early twentieth-century house in Columbus, an American Legion hut built in the Rustic style, and a Gulf Coast community established by newly emancipated African Americans during Reconstruction have been recommended for inclusion in the National Register of Historic Places at a January 18, 2007, meeting of the Historic Preservation Professional Review Board. The board's decisions will be forwarded to the U.S. Department of the Interior for final review.

The Tallahatchie County Second District Courthouse in Sumner was built in 1910 in the Richardsonian Romanesque style, which is characterized by masonry construction, broad proportions, and a sense of massiveness. The building has a four-story clock tower on one corner and two-story towers on the three other corners. The courthouse is perhaps more significant as the site of the 1955 Emmett Till murder trial. Roy Bryant and J.W. Milam were accused of murdering Till, a fourteen-year-old African American youth from Chicago. Many historians cite the Till murder and the exoneration of his killers as the beginning of the civil rights era.

The Owen-Richardson-Owen House was built in 1907 in Columbus for Thomas Goronwy Owen, a cotton buyer and florist who would go on to operate one of the largest commercial nurseries in the United States. The three-story house, clad in brick, is an excellent example of late Neo-Classical residential design and remains largely unchanged from its original appearance. After serving as the residence to three families through 2003, the house has been converted to a bed-and-breakfast.

The Newton County American Legion Post No. 89 Hut, located near Decatur, was constructed in 1934. The characteristics of the Rustic style are clearly seen in the hut's log construction, use of peeled logs, and wide overhanging roof with exposed rafters. It also features plank floors, two large ironstone fireplaces with fieldstone surrounds, a raised stage, and a kitchen.

The Turkey Creek Community Historic District, located in the north part of Gulfport, dates to the 1870s. Founded by freed slaves, the community largely retains its geographic boundaries, residential nature, architectural heritage, and sense of community. The district features sixty-one contributing properties, most residential but also including the Mt. Pleasant United Methodist Church, circa 1950, and the Turkey Creek Consolidated School buildings, circa 1948-50. In 2001 Turkey Creek was named one of Mississippi's Ten Most Endangered Historic Places by the Mississippi Heritage Trust due to threats from outside development, highway construction, and airport expansion.

The Department of the Interior will review the nominations and notify MDAH when they are listed on the National Register. MDAH will notify the property owners and local governments.

The Department of Archives and History is the official State Historic Preservation Office in Mississippi and handles all requests for National Register information and assistance. Congress established the National Register of Historic Places in 1966 as a list of federally recognized properties especially worthy of protection and preservation. Mississippi has more than 1200 National Register properties, including archaeological sites, battlefields, bridges, buildings, cemeteries, forts, houses, and historic districts.

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