At the behest of the Greenwood Women’s Club, Andrew Carnegie donated $10,000 toward Greenwood’s first public library, while the club and the J. Z. George Chapter of the United Daughters of the Confederacy (UDC) contributed the same toward the adjacent Confederate Memorial Building. Local architect McGeoy designed the latter, and perhaps the former. Both buildings, featuring red brick Flemish bond walls, stone window frames and belt courses, and prominent chimneys are mildly Jacobean Revival. The Confederate building’s porch facing Washington Street features memorial plaques listing the names of Leflore County’s Confederate dead.
The first eight hundred books for the library came from the collection of J. Z. George, whose daughter helped fund construction. A 1955 addition to the library’s east end fits seamlessly with the older building.