Many historical figures have visited the courthouse over the years, including Jefferson Davis, Booker T. Washington, William McKinley, and Theodore Roosevelt.

One was of freed slave Holt Collier, who in 1867 was arrested and charged with the murder of a white police officer from North Mississippi.

On December 7, 1874, during the Reconstruction-era, the Warren County Courthouse was the site of the first brutal event related to the Vicksburg massacre, when Black citizens were attempting to reinstate the newly elected Black sheriff Peter Crosby who had been coerced at gunpoint by a White militant group to sign a paper of resignation.

Throughout the early 1940s, Eva Whitaker Davis, founder of the Vicksburg and Warren County Historical Society, conducted a letter-writing campaign and other public efforts to preserve the old courthouse.

With the approval of the county board of supervisors, supervised prison inmates helped Davis clean and repair the building for use as a museum.