Jackson Middle School

What is now Jackson Middle School was originally the third high school building. The first high school was Central School formerly located on Broadway Street between the Lillian E. Jones Museum and the First Baptist Church. The second building was Kinison School, which was located directly behind Central on the same lot. Construction on the third building began in 1931, during the Depression, and was finished the following year in 1932. The building served as the city's high school until 2004 when it was replaced by the current and fourth high school building a few hundred yards away on Vaughn Street.

The history of Jackson's high school dates back well over a hundred years. The first high school was Central School, built in 1853 and razed in 1931. Central was originally built as a grade school but was later adopted as the city's high school. The second building was Kinison School, later renamed Kinison Elementary after it was replaced by the third building in 1932. Of the four buildings that served as the city's high school, Kinison's term was the shortest. Construction began on Kinison in 1909, and three years later in 1912, the first class graduated from Kinison. At the time, only one classroom was operational, and the graduating class only attended their last year in Kinison, grades nine through eleven were still being taught at Central directly behind Kinison. This pattern of the graduating class only spending their last year at Kinison continued until the late 1910s. Kinison only served as a fully functioning high school for a little over a decade before it was replaced in 1932.

 Our Town: Jackson. United States of America. WOUB Public Media, 2017. DVD. https://woub.org/2017/03/27/woubs-our-town-series-selects-location-of-next-episode/