The Jackson Free-Press (Mississippi) reported that Senator Cindy Hyde-Smith attended an all-white segregation academy in her high school years.
The story was picked up by Huffington Post.
It’s important to remember that segregation academies were created as the first statewide examples of school choice. Their purpose was to allow white students to avoid being forced by federal courts to go to school with black students after the Brown vs, Board of Education decision in 1954.
Senator Hyde-Smith’s alma mater, Lawrence County Academy, “was established in 1970, one year after the U.S. Supreme Court ordered Mississippi to desegregate its schools. For 15 years after desegregation became law of the land, Mississippi dragged its feet on integrating black and white students.”
It was part of the school choice movement across the South whose purpose was to avoid and defeat desegregation.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Mississippi wasn’t alone in continuing segregation by using private religious schools. All through the South this happened. Now we have a perversion of the intent of charter schools being used to segregate, not just in the South.
I agree, it happened and is continuing to happen in every state (only now they’re called charter schools). It’s just more obvious in Mississippi (if you don’t live in Mississippi).
I was going to write that in some states, especially in the South, charter schools are the new segregation academies but decided that readers of this blog would deduce that.
When I have traveled South, school superintendents have called them segregation academies. Now, it is okay (again) to have all-black and all-white schools. Call them charter schools. That’s what the Southern governors told us in the 1960s and 1970s.
There is no lack of segregated schools in the North.
I don’t know of any that fly the Confederate flag, as did Senator Hyde-Smith’s School more than a century after the end of the Civil War and about 20 years after the Brown decision.
Not a good whataboutism topic.
Why is it “whataboutism” to point out that segregation is hardly confined to the South? Read about Chicago’s history of the Black Belt housing projects and race riots sometime. To this day Chicago remains one of the most segregated cities in the country and Rahm did (and is still doing) his best to address that problem by kicking out as many black people as he could. I’ve met many people from the South that tell me that Chicago is far more segregated than where they come from.
During the run-up to the 50 school closings, CTU organized a march that went through all the neighborhoods affected by the closings. I joined one branch of the march and it became so obvious just how much of a land-grab the closings were – they were designed to target black neighborhoods for the benefit of the gentrifying white neighborhoods that were already taking over. It reminded me of white settlers taking over Indian lands. The fact that there still are “black neighborhoods” with shoddy schools right next to “white neighborhoods” with brand new fancy schools in the 21st century is beyond sick. The fact that blacks are systematically being expelled from the ghettos they’ve been forced into smacks of a form of genocide.
Confederate flags are only one example of race hatred.
Abigail Shure, “segregation academies” are different.
Sure, everywhere you have residential segregation combined with high-density population, there are de facto segregated schools, incl in North. Cheek-by-jowl urban towns and town-sized nbhds going way back were segregated by race/ ethnics, following pattern of immigrant ghettoes. But in Northern small towns/ cities/ rural areas, public schools were zoned acc to geography. There were not enough blacks/ ethnics/ industry [money] to make segregated schools practical. So there is a tradition of integrated schools in lower-pop-density Northern areas.
In small towns/ cities/ rural areas of pre-’69 South, where geo-zoned schools would have resulted in racial integration, school zones were ‘gerrymandered’ for segregation. The economic challenges were met by spending little on black students, & this continued past ’54 laws until ’69 SCOTUS-ordered desegregation. Hence the creation of private “segregation academies” in places like Hyde-Smith’s small town of Monticello MS.
brethee5,
I take you are not familiar with the practice of redlining. Racial segregation in the North is far from benign. New Jersey is currently one of the most segregated states in the nation. As an aside, I recently visited the Crane House in Montclair, New Jersey, (in the North) and I learned that the Crane family had slaves.
By the way, we did abolish slavery.
Correct. The same thing happened in Nashville. In 1970, segregation academies popped up in church basements all over the city. Those schools are so prolific and large today, they contribute to middle class families disinvestment in Metro Nashville’s public schools.
an essential factor in understanding the separation of cultural thought
Isolation academies breed mistrust and misunderstanding So-called choice systems increase unhealthy segregation which may become racism. I cannot understand how a nation that aspires to equality can allow public money to be taken from the common schools that educate all students in order to support privatized racism or any group providing religious education. It promotes a continuation of segregation, which is contrary to our laws and values in a civil society.
I like the term “isolation academies”… for charter schools DO isolate children of highly engaged or highly motivated parents from the children of parents who cannot jump though the hoops required to enroll in them… And, come to think of it, zoning laws and housing prices do the same thing across the country. In the south some of the parents are motivated to isolate their child from contact with children of other races and cultures… but, in effect, parents across the country accomplish the same thing by moving into affluent enclaves…. and this isolation of children from each other IS “…contrary to our laws and values in a civil society.”
“A nation that aspires to equality”… Maybe that should be put in past tense. Lip service aside, govtl policies IRL– ever since globalism reared its head in late ’70’s– have reflected a mad scramble by those w/most power/$ to grab the biggest pieces of a shrinking pie. And, put to the test of declining wages/ uncertain future, once-thriving middle & working classes too have been quick to jump on whatever bandwagon seems to promise hanging onto what they can at the expense of those they can kick further down.
US history is replete with examples that run counter to the aspires to equality narrative.
US history is replete with examples of people striving to improve the nation.
You are a “glass empty” kind of person. I see the US as striving to make the nation better against forces of darkness now in power.
An Incomplete List
1) Decimation of Native American Population
2) Slavery
3) Jim Crow
4) Internment of Japanese Americans
5) Mass Incarceration
6) Detention of Migrant Children
Abigail,
You could make an even longer list of positive things about the US. If we were such a terrible country, we wouldn’t be fighting so hard todaycagainst the forces of Trump and darkness.
Freedom of religion
Free press
Rule of law
Civil rights protections
Free public education for all
Marshall Plan to rebuild Europe
Equal rights for women
Regular elections
Clean air (until Trump)
Social Security
Much more that we take for granted.
Young unarmed African American men are being shot to death with impunity across the country. Voting rights are being severely restricted. The type of free public education provided is largely determined by social class membership. There are numerous proposals to downgrade Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid entitlements. I recognize the benefts of White Privilege.
Good to know. Sun Tzu said to know your enemy better than you know yourself.
It’s actually worse than even the Huffington Post makes it sound. Not only did Hyde-Smith go to a segregation academy herself (which might have been her parents idea, though testimony from other students there with her makes it pretty clear she knew why and agreed with it), but she also sent her daughter to another segregation academy, Brookhaven Academy, as revealed by the Jackson Free Press. This is a school that is still pretty much all white (in 2015-16 they had five Asian-American students and one African-American student in a 392 student body, in a community that is 55% African-American.) So if there was any doubt that Hyde-Smith still flies the old flag of white supremacy, it can be laid to rest.
Not surprising. Racism is very hard to eradicate.
Argghhhhh! Sorry for not being more articulate, but argghhhh!
The Republican party is the part of white nationalism and white supremacy, led by the Racist-in-Chief. Cindy Hyde-Smith, given her high school career, is its chief cheerleader.
Well we knnow that whites did not want to go school then and now with blacks. The only thing hat has changed in.Ms is the year. Blacks built this country off our back. She been prejudice and wiill always be. We can show her ass at the pole on Tuesday. Make America great again my ass.