A nonprofit group is working to restore an historic building to educate people about a tragedy.

The Delissa Development Corporation received a state grant for $50,000 recently to go toward restoring Club Delissa, board president Dr. J.R. Todd said Monday.

The building will serve as an interpretive center for the destruction of another club across the street. In 1940, the Rhythm Night Club burned down, trapping and killing more than 200 people.

“And ultimately, we want to have markers along the way between here and the Forks of the Road, maybe where each of (the victims) who died in the fire lived on St. Catherine Street,” he said.

Restoring Delissa to honor and interpret the history of the Rhythm Night Club is important “because of the number of people killed in the fire,” Todd said. “The fire was really tragic — it was mostly young people who died in the fire.”

The money is aimed at stabilizing the existing club, and the corporation will contribute $12,500 to the project, too, he said.

The center will be named Natchez-on-Top-of-the-Hill Conflagration Interpretive Center, he said.

“We’re going up (to Jackson) Feb. 2 to get instructions” on how the grant may be used, Todd said. “As soon as we get the instructions, we will start.”

The group, which is associated with Zion Chapel AME Church, has been trying to get funding for some time.

“It’s been worked on for a couple years,” he said. “We were turned down for the first two years. We finally got it through.”

The church has owned the building for several years, he said, and the project will also honor Hiram Revels, the first black Mississippi senator and a former pastor of Zion AME.

The building has had many uses in its time. Built in the 1860s, he said, it has served as a grocery store, a junk shop and a club, among other things.

And soon, if all goes as planned, it will serve as a place of learning and a memorial to honor those who died.