civil rights and the private school movement in mississippi, 1964–1971

Civil Rights and the Private School Movement in Mississippi, 1964- 197 1

Michael W Fuquay

The signing of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was heralded as a tremendous victory for the civil rights movement, the fulfillment of a decade-long strug- gle to enforce the Brown v. Board of Education decision. Along with measures against job and housing discrimination, the Civil Rights Act included provisions specifically designed to overcome the white South’s massive resistance campaign and enforce school desegregation.’ Despite the continued intransigence of segregationists, these measures proved successful and white public schools across the South opened their doors to black children. With segregationists in retreat and the Voting Rights Act on the horizon, this was a time of celebration for civil rights activists. But this was not the end of the story.

Begrnning in 1964, segregationists, led by the White Citizens’ Coun- cils, shifted their energres from blocking public school integration to cre- ating an alternative, all-white private school system. Thus, the integration of public schools in the South after 1964 was accompanied by a prolifera- tion of segregated private academies. Private schools had already been used to evade integration in Prince Edward County, Virginia, with some success.‘ But after 1964, the pressures of federal legislation and the organizational commitment of the Citizens’ Councils transformed this educational experiment into a thoroughgoing private school movement. Undertaken at a time when most contemporary observers and historians believed their movement was rapidly declining into irrelevance, the private school system

Michael W. Fuquay is a fellow a t the Institute for Social and Economic Research and Policy at Columbia University. He would like to thank the Institute for its support of his research and Jonathan Zimmerman for his encouragement. He would also like to thank Barbara Fields, Chris Capozzola, Martha Jones and Ellen Saoud for reading and offering valuable criticisms of this article in its various stages of development. This essay won the History of Education Society’s Henry Barnard Prize as the best essay by a graduate student.

‘There were two important enforcement provisions with regard to schools. The first allowed the Department of Justice to file suit directly against local school districts. The second required that non-compliant schools lose federal education funding.

‘Robert Collins Smith, They Closed Their Schools: Prince Edward County, Virginia, 1 9 S I - 1961 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1965) idem., “Prince Edward Coun- ty: Revisited and Revitalized,” Virginia Qmrter& Rariez 73 (Winter 1997):l-27; Wilbur B. Brookover, “Education in Prince Edward County, Virgmia, 1953-1993,”Journal of Negro Edu- cation 62 (Spring 1993): 149-61.

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created by the Citizens’ Councils may well be their most significant and lasting endeavor.)

This article looks at the phenomenon of segregation academies by focusing on the private school movement in Mississippi from 1964 to 197 1. It puts forward three primary arguments. First, that the private school movement was a direct outgrowth of, and in many respects indistinguishable from, the segregationist movement of the White Citizens’ Councils. In this respect, private schools were simply a new strategy in an ongoing contest over school de~egregation.~ More importantly, this essay demonstrates that Mississippi’s private school system was built using public funds, both legal- ly and illegally. Thus the “private” nature of Mississippi’s segregation academies was largely a semantic subterfuge, designed to evade the requirements of federal law without sacrificing the benefits of public support.

Secondly, this essay argues that the segregation academies were designed to protect segregationist beliefs from a national political culture that increasingly viewed white supremacy as evil and its defenders as un- Ameri~an.~ White Mississippians had long used their public schools to promote their racial ideology, while at the same time reinforcing it by severely limiting the educational opportunities available to black children. Segre- gationists believed that integrated schools would undermine the viability of white supremacy as a value system and feared that the federal government might use the schools to promote alternative values. Segregationist parents hoped to recreate the social, cultural, and ideological environment of their own upbringing and thus nurture in their children a set of beliefs then being rejected by the outside world.

Finally, this essay concludes that private schools played an important role in the shaping of modern conservatism. Through much of the 1950s and 1960s, segregationists invoked states’ rights ideology in their battles with the federal government and local control was a frequent defense for segregated schools. Prior to 1965, local control in Mississippi had been synonymous with white control. However, after the Voting Rights Act, dra-

’Robert Patterson, interview by author, 24 March 1999, Itta Bena, Mississippi, tape recording in possession of author; Neil McMillen, The Citizen’s Council: Organized Resistance to the Second Reconstrmction, 1954-1964 2md ed., (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1994); Numan V. Bartley, The Rise ofMassive Resistance: Race and Politics in the South during the 1950s, 2nd ed., (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1997), 340-345.

‘This point may seem obvious and unnecessary to make here, but it is contested, or rather denied, by many contemporary private school advocates and by a smaller number of academics. See Peter Skerry, “Christian Schools, Racial Quotas, and the IRS,” Ethicsand Pub- lic Poliry (December 1980).

’Anthony Lewis and the New York Times, Portrait of a Decade: The Second American Revolution (New York: Random House, 1964), 6-14, 32-45, provides an excellent example of the attitudes towards civil rights that prevailed amongst national opinion makers. William J. Simmons, interview by author, 9 March 2000, Jackson, Mississippi, notes in possession of author.

Private School Movement in Mississippi 161

matic increases in black political power led segregationists to view all government with suspicion. Private schools, created for the purpose of maintaining segregation, came to be seen as an effective means to reduce the power of interracial local governments while decreasing the tax burden of white citizens. As states’ rights gave way to more comprehensive antigovernment attitudes, segregationists came to share ideological common ground with the free market, antigovernment ideas of western conservatives.6 This paved the way for the eventual union of southern segregationists and western conservatives, thus shaping the modern conservative movement.

*****

After the Brown v. Board of Education decision in 1954, segregationists in the Mssissippi Delta founded the first White Citizens’ Council chapter in Indianola, Mississippi, in an effort to prevent school desegregation. The organization quickly spread across the South and became the most powerful manifestation of massive resistance and the segregation movement. From 1954 to 1964, the Citizens’ Councils engaged in a two-pronged defense of white supremacy. First, they mobilized white voters in a grassroots campaign that pressured elected officials to offer a unified defense of “racial integrity and states rights.”‘

The Citizens’ Councils used this same grassroots organization to mobilize the resources of the white community to repress dissent and crush any efforts by black citizens to press for the equal protection of the law. Prior to 1964, any challenge to segregation had to be made through the courts on a case-by-case basis. The Citizens’ Councils systematically elim- inated black plaintiffs with a campaign of repression that relied primarily on economic intimidation, but was not beyond resorting to outright ter- rorism when necessary.9 This strategy was effective, particularly in the Coun-

“he idea of privatizing public education was first put forward by in a famous essay by Milton Friedman. Southern segregationists were the first, and to this date the largest, group to act on this call. Other suggestions by Friedman, such as the use of tuition vouchers, were also used by segregationists. Milton Friedman, Capitalism and Freedom (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1962); Friedrich Hayek, The Road to Swfom (Chicago: University of Chica- go Press, 1944); Lee Edwards, The Conseiwativc Revolution in America (New York: The Free Press, 1999); Lisa McGirr, Suburban Wairiors: The Origins of the New Americaz Right (Prince- ton: Princeton University Press, 2001).

-“Dixie Manifesto Presents a Solid Front for Battle,” The Citizens’ Council, 1 (April 1956), 1-3; James 0. Eastland, <We’ve Reached the Era of Judicial Tyranny,” Association of Citizens’ Councils, Greenwood (Special Collections, iMitchell Memorial Library, Mississip- pi State University (MSU), Citizens’ Council collection, folder 12), 14.

Citizens’ Council leaders have always emphatically rejected charges that their group participated in or encouraged violence. Officially the Council denounced the use of violence, but their decentralized administration left local Council groups largely to their own devices, one of which was murder. Citizens’ Council members have been linked directly to a number of civil rights murders, including those of Medgar Evers, George Lee, and Lamar Smith. On violence see Greg Kelly, “You Don’t Need a Rope for a Lynching: Voting and Violence in

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cil stronghold of Mississippi, where not a single school had been desegre- gated ten years after Brown.

Without effective civil rights legislation, the only enforcement mech- anism available to federal officials was the use of armed force, a politically unpalatable course of action. After the 1963 integration riot in Oxford, Cit- izens’ Council leader William Simmons declared that James Meredith would remain at Ole Miss “only as long as the Kennedy Administration is willing to keep him there by force of arms.” Simmons gleefully speculated about how long President Kennedy could afford the military occupation of Oxford, much less the number of troops that would be necessary to desegregate the rest of the South in this manner. However, massive resistance in Missis- sippi relied heavily, and as it turns out fatally, on the ability of elected officials to provide the political and social space in which “local control” could operate free from outside interference. The Civil Rights Act provided clear legal guidelines and viable enforcement provisions, thus undermining resistance to federal authority and ending any realistic hope of maintaining segregated public schools in the South.’

The Citizens’ Councils responded to the Civil Rights Act with defiance. They announced a nationwide campaign to repeal the act and urged their members to resist its enforcement until a constitutional test could work its way through the courts.“’ The Councils offered to support individuals involved in anticivil rights litigation with a White Citizens Legal Fund.” The Jackson Citizens’ Council called on its members to boycott integrated businesses and oust wavering politicians proclaiming, “We can

Humphreys County,” Masters Thesis, Mississippi College, 2000; on repression of petitions see Bartley, Massive Resistance, 82, 180; Wilson F. Minor, “The Citizens’ Councils-An Incred- ible Decade of Defiance,” (unpublished manuscript, MSU, Minor Collection, Box 2, Citizens’ Council folder), 14; Willie Morris, Yazoo: Integvation in a Deep-Sozithem Town, (New York: Harpers, 1971), 17-18; Willie Morris, The Courting of Ma~czu Dupree, (Jackson: University Press of Missisippi, 1983), 88-89.

’William Simmons, “Victory at Oxford,” The Citizen, v. 6 (September 1962), 2-4; Nadine Cohodas, The Band Pkzyed Dixie: Race and the Liberal Conscience at Ole Miss, (New York: Free Press, 1997), 57-127; Tony A. Freyer, The Little Rock Crisis: A Constitutional Interpreta- tion, (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1984); United States Commission on Civil Rights, “Federal Enforcement of School Desegregation,” (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, September 11, 1969), 26-27.

‘“Association of Citizens’ Councils, “Statement on Civil Rights Act,” folder 5, Citi- zens’ Council Collection, MSU; Association of Citizens’ Councils, “Statement on Desegre- gation,” 2 1 January 1965, folder 5, Citizens’ Council Collection, MSU; Association of Citizens’ Councils, “Statement on Hospital Discrimination,” June 1966, folder 5, Citizens’ Council Collection, MSU; Greenwood Citizens’ Council, “Bulliten [sic],” February 1965, folder 6, Citizens’ Council Collection, MSU.

“This fund had originally been created to provide a legal defense for terrorist Byron de la Beckwith for the murder of Medgar Evers. T . A. Rarrentine and J. T. Thomas, corre- spondence, undated, (Archives and Special Collections, J. D. Williams Library, University of Mississippi (UM) Race Relations Collection, Box 2, folder 15.


buy white-we can vote white.”” Ironically, the Councils found themselves in the position of advocating the very civil disobedience tactics they had been condemning as dangerous when employed by civil rights activists. The Citizens’ Councils’ bold calls for repeal and the continued rhetorical defiance by the state’s political leaders convinced many Mississippians that “Never!” still meant never. But careful observers could see that the prog- nosis for Jim Crow’s survival was grim. Federal courts had consistently ruled in favor of civil rights plaintiffs, repeal by Congress was unlikely at best, and the Johnson administration, which had played a decisive role in break- ing the southern filibuster, would be in charge of enforcement.

While urpng defiance of the Civil Rights Act, the national leadership of the Citizens’ Councils took steps in a new direction. Correctly rec- o p z i n g that the battle in the public sphere was lost, Council leaders urged their members to abandon the public schools in favor of a system of segregated academies. The entire September 1964 edition of The Citizen, the Council’s monthly magazine, was dedicated to the promotion of a private school movement. In a strident editorial titled “Government Schools,” William Simmons lambasted the public schools as a hopeless loss, infect- ed by the lethal virus of race mixing. Simmons had long maintained that integration would render education impossible because of what he deemed the moral and mental inferiority of black people. Now Simmons also argued that the Civil Rights Act set a dangerous precedent for federal control of public education, saylng that school systems “can no longer be considered public-they have become government school

The language that Simmons chose to attack public education is significant because it is suggestive of the more radical antigovernment attitudes being incubated in the segregationist movement. Starting in the 1830s, white southerners routinely employed states’ rights ideology in contests over which government should exercise power. Simmons had used these notions to argue that the federal government should leave important decisions about education to local government officials. However, in “Gov- ernment Schools,” Simmons made no such federalist distinctions. According to Simmons, the fundamental problem with public schools was not that the federal government had intervened, as a moniker of “federal schools” might have implied, but rather that they were, and always had been, run by the government. This represented a significant shift in Simmons’ thinking and presaged the future direction of the segregation movement. Most segregationists continued their fight for segregated public schools. From this point

‘:“Repeal it!-Official Council Statements on the ‘Civil Rights Act,”’ The Citizen, 8 (July-Aug. 1964), 6-9; Hollis, “Never!,” 26; Ross R. Rarnett, “Why the South Will Win this Fight,” The Citizen, 8 (July-Aug. 1964), 14.

”Simmons, interview by author; William Simmons, “Government Schools,” The Czt- zzen, 8 (September 1964), 2.

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on though, Simmons dedicated himself solely to the cause of the private school movement and his editorial page consistently emphasized the folly of staying within the public system.’”

Simmons was particularly concerned about the political and ideological values that might be taught in integrated “government” schools and urged parents to abandon the public schools “until the conservative white majority can recapture national political power.”” Council staff member Medford Evans apocalyptically likened the progress of integration to the barbarians who had swept across Europe, destroying Roman civilization. He argued that private schools would preserve an “island of segregation” just as “monasteries saved the Greek and Roman classics” during the “Dark Ages.”16

To stave off the onslaught of the new, integrationist barbarians, the Citizens’ Councils opened their own school in Jackson that fall. Council School No. 1 was created as a pilot program, the model on which an entire- ly new system would be based. Citizens’ Council leaders envisioned a comprehensive system of private academies which would replace the public schools for white children and perhaps lead to the elimination of public education altogether. The Citizens’ Councils had spent the preceding decade developing a vast network of segregationist activists and had valuable experience in mobilizing community resources and marshaling political support. Without the preexisting organizational work of the Citizens’ Councils, the rapid creation of segregation academies in many small southern communities simply would not have been possible.”

The Jackson Citizens’ Council gave valuable financial assistance to the school and provided an effective fund-raising network. The Council school used the same network to recruit teachers and parents to take part in its educational experiment. Council member and former governor Ross Barnett pitched in by hosting a fund-raiser a t his home for the school’s library. Influence within the Jackson business community helped secure loans for $600,000 from two of Jackson’s largest banks. The Council’s continued political muscle proved invaluable to its school’s cause. In 1964, a t the Council’s urging, the Mississippi legislature passed legislation appro- priating $185 per child in vouchers for private school tuition and allowing the free use of state textbooks in private institutions. In 1968, the voucher

“Simmons, “Government Schools.” ”Simmons, interview by author; Simmons, “Government Schools.” “<Medford Evans, “Council School No. 1-As New as Childhood, and as Old as Truth,”

The Citizen, 9 (July-August 1965), 6. ”Terry Doyle Carroll, “Mississippi Private Education: An Historical, Descriptive, and

Normative Study,” (Ph.D. diss., University of Southern Mississippi, 1981), 113-125; Sini- mons, “Government Schools,” 2; Simmons, “The Citizens’ Councils and Private Education,” The Citize7z, lO(February 1965), 11; John J. Synon, “Why Not ‘Free Enterprise’ Schools?,” The CitZze77, 8 (October 1965), 18; Evans, “Council School No. 1.”


was increased to $240. Although these vouchers were eventually ruled uncon- stitutional, the availability of public funding encouraged schools to open and provided a crucial financial base in their tenuous early years.I8

Although the Citizens’ Councils were well-endowed with the organizational resources necessary to quickly get a school off the ground and filled with students, Council leaders frankly admitted that they knew nothing about how a school should be run. They hoped to use their new school as a living laboratory where they would gain valuable experience before expanding their system. Remarkably, although private school advocates emphasized that their primary interest was educational quality, no one expressed concerns about the quality of education that would be provided by an under-resourced, upstart school run by admitted novices. Segrega- tion was the first and last word in educational “quality.””

T o make up for their lack of useful educational experience, the Cit- izens’ Council hired John T . Griffin, a retired school administrator, as their school’s first principal. They also took their staff on a trip to Prince Edward County, Virginia, where local segregationist leaders had shut down their public school system and provided private schools for the white community in a scorched-earth approach to massive resistance. Besides Griffin, three full-time teachers were hired for the six-grade school. The biggest initial obstacle to opening the school was securing adequate classroom space. The Council School Foundation purchased a large house in a white neighbor- hood for this purpose, but when renovations had not been completed a month into the school year, classes had to be held in the home of a board member. The school added two new teachers, expanded to the seventh and eighth grades, and broke ground on a new high school facility in the fall of 196.5.’’

The Council School’s enrollment began small, but grew steadily, a remarkable feat considering that its public school competitors were free and still segregated. The Citizens’ Council organization proved essential in efforts to recruit parents. Council publicist Dick Morphew sent three of his children to the school and urged other parents to do the same. Mor- phew explained, “I have my own set of beliefs, values, and prejudices, which I believe are worth handing down to niy children. . . . [Alnd, quite honest- ly, the Council School has made our task much easier.” That so many par-

”Carroll, “iMississippi Private Education,” 133- 134; “Citizens Councils-A Brief His- tory,” The Citizen, 12 (Nov. 1968), 18; Simmons, interview by author; Wilson F. Minor, “Pri- vate School Grants Boosted,” Times Piruy~ne, 13 July 1968; Evans, “Council School No. I-As New As Childhood,” 1 1.

“’William J. Simmons, Interview by Orley B. Caudil, 1979, vol. 372, (Mississippi Oral History Program, University of Southern Mississippi (USM); Carroll, “Mississippi Private Education,”l20- 12 5.

”‘Evans. “Council School No. 1 .”

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ents were willing to pay close to $400 a year for an unproven school before any integration had taken place is a testament to the Citizens’ Council’s propaganda efforts and to the members’ trust in and commitment to the organization.z’

While building their pilot school in Jackson, the Citizens’ Council organization worked to spread segregation academies across the South. In 1964, The Citizen ran an article simply titled, “HOW to Start a Private School.” Subsequent issues carried advice on management, fund-raising, and recruit- ment. One issue even carried an architectural blueprint for an inexpensive school building. The Citizen also kept its readers apprised of legislative and judicial developments that might affect private schools.”

In addition to their publishing endeavors, Citizens’ Council leaders crisscrossed the South, proselytizing on behalf of their new movement. In 1966, the Citizens’ Councils dedicated their annual Leadership Confer- ence to the fledgling school movement and attracted the highest attendance in years. Private school boards traveled to Jackson to observe the operation of the Council School at first hand. Between 1964 and 1970, Council School leaders were kept on the road as many as five nights a week consulting with local groups interested in forming their own schools. Simmons advised prospective school founders that “a good, strong Citizens’ Council should be the first essential for the organization of a private school . . . the active backing of an organization capable of financing the school, supplyng many of its students, and mobilizing community support, . . . would seem to be not only desirable but essential.” Some schools sought to directly affiliate with the Council School system, which eventually grew to twelve schools. Most preferred to run things locally, but the Citizens’ Councils were cm- cia1 in the establishment of all of Mississippi’s segregation academies. Horace Harned, a Council leader in Starhlle, described the organization of the local academy saying, “the Citizens’ Councils didn’t found that school, but Citizens’ Council people did.””

?‘Marvin Wayne Lishman, ‘‘An Historical and Status Survey of the Member Schools of the Mississippi Private School Association from 1974-1989,” (Ph.D. diss., University of Mississippi, 1989), 24-26; James Allen Sansing, “A Descriptive Study of Mississippi’s Private, Segregated Elementary and Secondary Schools in 197 I,” (Ed.D. diss., Mississippi State Uni- versity, 1971), 12, 49-71; Richard D. Morphew, “A Parent Compares Private and Public Schools,” The Citizen, 10 (May 1966); Evans, “Council School No. I.”

:?Medford Evans, “How to Start a Private School,” The Citizen, 8 (September 1964), 6-19; William J. Simmons, “How to Organize a Private School,” The Citizen, 14 (January 1970), 6; “Picture of Success,’’ The Citizen, 14 (April 1970), 12-13; Carroll, “Mississippi Pri- vate Education,”l2 1.

”Robert Patterson, “The Truth Cries Out,” Association of Citizens’ Council, Green- wood, (MSU, Citizens’ Council collection, folder 10); Simmons, interview by author; Pat- terson, interview by author; Carroll, “Mississippi Private Education,” 120-12 3; “How Can We Educate Our Children?,” The Citizen, 10 (November 1965), 7; William J. Simmons, “The Citizens’ Councils and Private Education,” The Citizen, 10 (February 1966), 11; Horace Harned, interview by author, 19 March 1999, tape recording in possession of author.


The organizational efforts of Citizens’ Council activists generated widespread interest in the private school movement. In the first two years following passage of the Civil k g h t s Act, fifty-five private school founda- tions were incorporated in the state of Mississippi. By 1970 that number had grown to 158. Despite this frenzied activity, the number of operating private schools in Mississippi grew slowly. One early student of academies estimated that between two and seven new schools opened each year from 1964 to 1969.*’ Enrollments were small and many schools offered only elementary classes-both because they were easier to create and because federal guidelines initially only required the integration of grades one through four.?j

There are several reasons for this slow growth. Founding a private school was a complicated and expensive endeavor. While every community had a few wealthy individuals who could help financially in establishing a school, most white Mississippians were simply too poor to afford tuition. State-sponsored vouchers were a boon while they remained legal, but Cit- izens’ Council leaders readily admitted that the tuition grants were insuf- ficient for the operation of a viable school. In Jackson, the Council Schools thrived because they could ignore the worhng class and serve only those able to pay, but most Mississippi communities were simply too small for this approach. For a private school to be economically viable in a rural or small-town district required that a large percentage of white students attend. Political viability often required that the school be accessible to all white residents, particularly in class-conscious hill districts. These necessities raised the initial requirements for starting a school. Community members with means had to be willing to shoulder the burden for those without. Fur- thermore, broad community consensus had to be reached before a course of action was decided. Segregationists routinely demonstrated that these barriers were surmountable, but they served to slow the pace of school expansion and allowed a broader range of community input than was necessary in the more elitist schools of Jackson.L6

”Carroll, “Mississippi Private Education,” 5-6, 109, 113. Carroll indicates that his figures may underestimate the number of new schools in this period. Accurate figures are diff- cult to come by because private school founders tended to be very secretive due to fear of lawsuits. A number of schools deliberately kept no written records that might be subpoenaed in court. Nonetheless, Carroll’s figures demonstrate a considerable gap between the number of schools receiving state charters and the number actually opening.

:’U. S. Commission on Civil Rights, Southem School Desepegation, (1967), 11, 75-76; Medford Evans, “This Manual Will Help You Get Started,” The Citizen, 8 (September 1964), 9; “List of Private Schools Incorporated in the State of Mississippi in Recent Years,” Educa- tion-Schools-Private folder, Box 3 , Minor Collection, MSU.

‘“Evans, “This Manual Will Help You Get Started,” 12-14; David Nevin and R.E. Bills, The Schools That Fear- Built: Segregationist Academies in the South, (Washington, DC: Acropo- lis Books, 1976), 71-83.


h addition to the sipficant economic sacrifices required to found a private school, long-standing cultural attachments made many white residents reluctant to abandon public education. The local white school had long been the most important public institution in small southern communities. Community meetings were held at the high school gym, and community events were planned around the schedules of varsity sports and proms. Chil- dren attending the local high school meant the repetition of generational rit- uals that brought families together and reaffirmed the community‘s psychological investment in itself. The improvement of public education had been a central political battleground since the days of Populist Governor, then Senator James Vardaman. Having struggled to wring school improvements from the wealthy but parsimonious Delta, hill-country whites were hesitant to give up hard-won victories such as free textbooks. The small pockets of organized opposition to the school closure amendment of 1954 had come from counties in the northeast and southwest where small farmers, timber employees, and mill workers predominated. Segregationist editor James Kilpatrick aptly described the dilemma of abandoning public schools for academies in the rural South. “Those who know such counties also will understand the importance of the consolidated whte school to the white community. . . it is the meeting place, social center, the object of cake sales and the small philan- thropies of rural life. To abandon such a school costs a wrenching of the heart strings. To take on the heavy financial burdens of a private school operation, especially for families with more than one child of school age, represents a task of formidable dimensions.” Economic interests, cultural ties, and political traditions offered rejoinders to segregationist calls for private ed~cation.~’

Because of these obstacles, and because Mississippi leaders had proven adept at preventing integration in the ten years after Brown, most communities did not respond to the Civil Rights Act by forming a private school. However, in the private schools that did open, clear patterns are discernible. Public records indicate that in 1968, forty-two academies were receiving state tuition vouchers. Of these, eighteen were from urban areas-Jackson, Hattiesburg, Vicksburg, Meridian, Columbus, and the Gulf Coast-and twenty-two were in the Delta. Of the remaining three, two were in the plantation-rich districts of Natchez and West Point and the third, in Ashland, enrolled only 43 students.**

’James J. Kilpatrick, “The Rural South and Private Schools,” 7 (September 1963), 13- 14; James S. Coleman and Kathryn S. Schiller, “A Comparison of Public and Private Schools: The Impact of Community Values,” in Independent Schools, Independent Thinkers, Pearl Rock Kane, ed. (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Publishers, 1992), 223-224; Joel Blass, “The School Abolition Amendment,” Radio Address, 17 December 1954, WSLI Jackson, transcript in (Race Relations Collection, box 2, folder 4, Archives and Special Collections, J. D. Williams Library, University of Mississippi).

**“Private Schools-Fourth 9 Weeks Quarter, 1967-68,” Minor Collection, Box 3, Education-Schools-Private folder, MSU.


Why were the early segregation academies so geographically focused? Urban districts had obvious advantages for private schools. Population den- sity and relative wealth allowed those schools to charge higher tuition without jeopardizing enrollment. In rural areas the creation of a white academy could be seen as a threat to the existence of the white public school and community consensus was needed before action could be taken. This was less of a concern in larger districts, and a determined minority with financial resources and organizational shll could create a school, without these constraints. The Citizens’ Councils provided those organizational skills and resources. Jackson, which boasted eight academies in 1968, had the state’s strongest local chapter and hosted the Citizens’ Council’s national head- quarters. In cities, the Citizens’ Council recruited students, teachers, and administrators from its membership and used its considerable influence in the business community to secure donations and loans. Most importantly, the Councils provided the sense of crisis and fear that propelled the segregation academies. Council newsletters and publications disseminated information about the prospects for integration locally and rumors about the disastrous effects of integration el~ewhere.’~

If Council organization was important in cities like Jackson, it was absolutely essential in the rural districts of the Mississippi Delta. While the Citizens’ Council’s national leadership was focused on their pilot school in Jackson, segregationist leaders in the black majority Delta were quietly founding schools of their own. The first, Cruger-Tchula Academy, was created before the ink had dried on the Civil Rights Act. Always at the fore- front of segregationist activism-from lynchings to Dixiecrats to Citizens’ Councils-Delta planters were also on the cumng edge of segregated private education. Unlike most Mississippians, who held their public schools to be sacrosanct, white Delta residents had been historically ambivalent about public education. Their political leaders had opposed the founding of public schools during Reconstruction, and they had consistently opposed efforts to fund these schools ever since. This long-standing opposition was born of a desire to avoid the taxes required to maintain schools in poorer sections of the state and out of a fear that any education might undermine their control of black labor. In the aftermath of Brown, Delta leaders were only too happy to abandon public education and recommended an immediate switch to private schools. They- were unable to mobilize sufficient political support for the idea at the time and settled for a constitutional

-”Nevin and Bills, The Schools That Fear Built, 25-17, 71-83; Neil McMillan, The Citi- zens’ Cozmcil: Organized Resi.rtance to the Second Reconstniction, 1954-1 964, (Urbana: Universi- ty of Illinois Press, 1971), 123-126, 301-303; Simmons, “The Citizens’ Councils and Private Education,” 11; T h e Jackson Citizens’ Council published a monthly newsletter that focused on local events related to integration. An incomplete set is available in the Sovereignty Com- mission Papers, Mississippi Deparment of Archives and History, Jackson, MS.

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amendment giving the legislature the power to abolish the public schools system if integration became imminent.;’

In addition to an ideological predisposition, the Delta had other traits that encouraged the formation of schools. Most obvious was the region’s overwhelming black majority, which had been a source of obsessive fear for white residents since slave labor had carved the first cotton plantation from the primordial swamps. Black Delta residents had been intellectually impov- erished by generations of deliberate educational neglect, and their white neighbors were loathe to reap the harvest of ignorance by allowing black children into the superior schools attended by their privileged chi1dren.j’

Equally important was the extraordinary affluence of white Deltans. Poor whites had been driven from the region by planters’ refusal to hire white tenants and croppers, who were harder to control than their black competitors. Likewise, the high cost of land and the vagaries of cotton plant- ing limited the number of small farms. As a result, a large percentage of the white population could afford tuition payments. Large planters made gifts of land and cash to provide facilities for new schools, their generosity spurred by tax exemptions and the hope of future reductions in property taxes.j2

The combination of ideological predisposition, superior resources, and large black majorities quickly made segregation academies a going concern in the Delta. Not only did the Delta found more schools more quickly than other areas of the state, their schools boasted the largest enrollments. Because of their extraordinary strength in the Delta, Citizens’ Councils were able to quickly unite the white community behind local academies, thus assuring the high enrollments and financial backing to make Delta private schools a success. Delta school leaders worked hand in hand with the Council School’s leaders, sharing information and traveling to consult fledgling schools.33

While private schools in cities and the Delta met with quick successes, they received only lukewarm receptions elsewhere. In many towns, local segregationists applied for state incorporation, but they had much more

’“Friends of Segregated Public Schools, “The Motives Behind the School Abolition Amendment,” (1954); Humphrey A. Olsen, Press Releases for Friends for Segregated Public Schools, (December 11, 14, 18, 2 1, 1954); Joel Blass, “The School Abolition Amendent,” all documents in: Race Relations Collection, box 2, folder 4, Archives and Special Collections, J. D. Williams Library, University of Mississippi; James C. Cobb, The Most Southem Place on Earth: The Mississippi Delta a77d the Roots of Regional Identity (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992), 144; Hodding Carter, The South Strikes Back, (New York: Doubleday, 1959), 4- 47; Charles C. Bolton, “Mississippi’s School Equalization Program, 1945-1954: ‘A Last Gasp to Try to Maintain a Segregated Educational System,”Jozimaf of Sozithem History, 66 (Novem- ber ZOOO), 781-814.

”John Dollard, Caste a77d Class in a Sonthem Town, (New York: Harper, 1937), 188- 204, 316-321.

”Cobb, The Most Soiithern Place on Earth, 194; Robert Patterson, interview with author. ”“Private Schools, 1967-68,” Minor Collection, MSU.


difficulty in rallying their fellow citizens behind private education. Most white Mississippians preferred the status quo and, given their past successes in turning back the civil rights movement, they preferred to bide their time. However, the enforcement of federal legslation substantially altered the playing field and the efforts of local civil rights activists began achiev- ing unfamiliar success. The presence of black students in formerly white schools dramatically increased community support for private education and led to a steady increase in segregation academies through the remain- der of the decade. Patterns of private school growth in Mississippi closely followed the progress of public school integration. The creation and expansion of academies outside the Delta were almost universally linked to specific court orders. For this reason the story of public school integration and the story of private education are inextricably linked.

Local Citizens’ Council leaders led the fight against the integration of local public schools, but when integration came, they were prepared to build private schools. Citizens’ Council publications exploited fears of integration by keeping up a steady drumbeat of antiblack and antipublic education propaganda while encouraging parents to send their children to a segregated academy. In many communities they succeeded in mobilizing a total white boycott of the public school.3-’

Following the Civil Rights Act in 1964, Citizens’ Cound chapters worked to make sure that their local school boards would not cave in to integration. Segregationists used a variety of political, economic, and social threats to pressure local school boards into noncompliance. The Citizens’ Councils promised to use their political influence to eliminate school board members who demonstrated anythmg short of total intransigence to federal officials. In Jackson, segregationist newsletters attacked State Superintendent of Education Jack Tubb and the Jackson Board of Education for taking steps to comply with federal court orders. In the delta town of Itta Bena, Superintendent Otis Allen was attacked in an anonymous h e r that ominously pledged to maintain segregation “by any means necessary.” Although Allen had done nodung to integrate the schools, he was accused of attending an integrated movie theater and thus demonstrating his sympathy “with such a Communist cause as integration and mongrelization of the races.” One school official in the delta complained of the “enormous political pressure put on the school board.” Some school officials even expressed fear for their safety if they allowed the schools to integrate.”

”Nevin and Bills, The Schools That Fear Built, 1-3; Willie Morris, Yuzoo, 30; Hazel How- ell, interview by author, 7 March 2000, Canton, Mississippi, notes in possession of author.

”Michael Aiken and N. J. Demerath 11, “The Politics of Tokenism in Mississippi’s Delta,” The Changing Sot&, ed. Raymond W. Mack, (Chicago: Aldine Publishing, 1970), 44; ‘‘A Delta Discussion-Special Itta Bena edition,” (UM, Race Relations Collection, Box 3, folder 2) ; Christian Comeruative Communique, 10 March 1965; Jackson Citizens’ Council, Aspect, 1 (March 1964), in Sovereignty Commission Papers (SCP), Mississippi Depament of Archives and History (MDAH), acc. no. 99-30-0-89-1-1-1.

172 History of Education Quarter4

While segregationist pressure was effective, the federal government had considerable coercive power as well, and it brought these forces to bear on recalcitrant school boards. The Civil Rights Act gave the Justice Depart- ment new powers with which to enforce desegregation mandates. The most important of these was the power to withhold federal education funds, a threat that increased in significance as President Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society vastly expanded federal education spending. Equally important, the Justice Department could initiate legal proceedings against school districts without revealing the names of black complainants, thus undercutting the ability of segregationists to mete out reprisals. Finally, the increasingly visible presence of the Federal Bureau of Investigation(FB1) in Mississippi after 1964 raised the specter of prosecution to would-be vigilantes. As Jus- tice Department bureaucrats became more adept at using the powers at their disposal, it became clear that segregationists could only hope to delay, not deny, black aspirations.’6

School districts delayed integration as long as possible using dilato- r y legal tactics, but when court orders arrived, they moved cautiously to comply with them, preferring the hope of tightly controlled integration to the alternative of shutting down the schools altogether. Federal courts and the Justice Department encouraged this type of pragmatism by allowing flexibility in the structure and timing of desegregation plans. School officials took advantage of this and worked to formulate desegregation plans that would meet federal approval without fundamentally altering access to education. The most popular approach in Mississippi was called the “freedom of choice plan.” This plan called for the maintenance of the existing dual system of schools, under which students would continue to attend their same school (i.e., segregated) unless they requested a transfer, which the district would then accommodate as facilities allowed. Federal officials apparently believed that large numbers of black students would transfer, leading to significant integration. They were wrong.” Even under the most hospitable of circumstances, a potential transfer student would be forced to attend a new, strange school-a proposition that few children would nor- mally find inviting-and segregationists worked to ensure an inhospitable atmosphere. By standing forward, black transfer students became the focus

“Victor S. Navasky, Kennedy Jtistice, (New York: Atheneum, 1971), 96-159; George Metcalf, From Little Rock to Boston: The Histoiy of School Desepgation, (Westport, CT: Green- wood Press, 1983), 4; Frank T. Read and Lucy S. McGough, Let Them BeJzidged: TheJudi- cia1 Integration of the Deep South, (Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow Press, 1978); Robert L. Crain, The Politics of School Desegregation: Comparative Case Studies of Community Snzlctnre and Poliqi- Making, (Chicago: Aldine Publishing, 1968).

”United States Commission on Civil Rights, “Federal Enforcement of School Deseg- regation,” 35-47; United States Commission on Civil Rights, “Southern School Desegrega- tion, 1966-67,” 46-48; Constance Curry, Silver Rights (Chapel Hill, NC: Algonquin Books, 1995), 25; Lishman, “Mississippi Private School Association,” 36.


of white hostility. Students in most schools suffered a daily barrage of petty meanness from students and teachers, ranging from insults, to thumb tacks in chairs, to social ostracism. In some towns, segregationists encouraged white students to pick fights in an attempt to have the black interlopers expelled. In other districts a more genteel, but equally hurtful tactic-the silent treatment-prevailed. One proud principal declared, “At our high school they get the deep freeze treatment. Not one white student has spo- ken to them. It’s been 100 percent.”l8

The requirement that families request a school transfer opened the door to the same coercive tactics that had been used to prevent desegregation lawsuits in the 1950s, an approach with which Citizens’ Council members had great experience. Reports of economic and physical retaliation against the families of black transfer students were legion. In Durant, the families of thirty-two children lost their jobs after applymg for admittance to the white school. In Panola County, tenant farmers and sharecroppers who sent their children to white schools were fired and evicted. A woman in Panola was threatened by her welfare caseworker. In Carthage, Minnie Pearl Boyd withdrew her children’s transfer request after a visit from two local businessmen. When asked by a New York Times reporter why she decided against the white school, she demurred, saylng only that she was most worried about getting along ec~nomically.’~

While “respectable” segregationists made a distinction between economic threats and that of violence lurkmg in the background, a resurgent Ku Klux Klan was untroubled by such semantics. The Klan took public school desegregation particularly seriously because, unlike middle-class businessmen who could afford private school tuition, their members tended to be less prosperous and often had little choice but to keep their children in public schools. In one Mississippi county the local Klan distributed a flier promising “to kill the parents of the negro children now attending white schools.” And while business leaders seemed content to focus their energies on quietly targeting the families of black students, more restive segregationists were not averse to targeting white people whom they per- ceived as suspect. In one town, an anonymous flier called the Rebel Press listed the names, businesses, and home phone numbers for the employers of black parents who were sending their children to the white school. The distribution of phone numbers led to harassing phone calls and, in the charged atmosphere of il/lississippi, carried a subtle threat of violence. A

’“‘Rebel Resistance: Strategy for the Students at Oxford,” (UM, Race Relations Col- lection, Box 1, folder 27); Aiken and Denierath, “Politics ofTokenism,” 45; “Federal Enforce- ment of School Desegregation,” Appendix R; Curry, Silver Rights, 5, 11 1-12 1.

‘”Metcalf, From Little Rock t o K o s t o ~ , 44; United States Commission on Civil Rights (USCCR), Southem S r h o o / D ~ , s e ~ e ~ ~ t r o n , 1966-67, (1967), 3 1,4755; John Herhers, “ A N e g o Mother Depicts Pressure,” N m York Times, 3 September 1964.

174 Histoy of Education Quarterly

less subtle flier accused local white teachers of being kind to their black pupils and threatened that race traitors might expect to find themselves “hanging from some cottonwood tree.” Over two-thirds of black families involved in desegregation received threatening phone calls and almost one- third reported nightriders shooting into their homes.40

But while the intimidation tactics employed by segregationists continued to enjoy some success, a changrng social calculus brought on by civil rights activists and the federal government was challenging the traditional prerogatives of white power. In the Sunflower County town of Drew, the local school board adopted a freedom-of-choice plan in order to avoid los- ing a quarter of a million dollars in federal aid. Drew had a long history of racial violence, and its leaders were so confident that no local black people would dare to integrate the white schools that they opened all twelve grades to freedom of choice, rather than the three then required. Much to their consternation, on August 12,1965, sharecroppers Matthew and Mae Bertha Carter marched into high school Principal C. M. Reid’s office and handed him freedom of choice papers for their seven school-age children. The Carters chose to send their children to the white schools in order to ben- efit from their superior resources. Sunflower County’s black schools still opened only five months a year to accommodate local planters and only a few of their teachers had college degrees. Mrs. Carter explained that “I was tired of my kids coming home with pages torn out of worn-out books that come from the white school. I was tired of them riding on these old raggedy buses after the white children didn’t want to ride on them anymore. I was just tired.” Looking at the Carter’s papers, Principal Reid turned bright red. He already knew what the Carters could not-they were the only family in Sunflower County to exercise freedom of choi~e .~’

Early the next morning, Mr. Thorton, the plantation overseer, paid a personal visit to the Carter’s cabin. Thorton warned the Carters of the seriousness of their actions, suggesting that local poor whites might cause them a lot of trouble. As Thorton offered to drive her husband into town to withdraw the children from school, Mrs. Carter began playing a recording of John Kennedy’s nationally televised speech calling for a Civil Rights Act. With the backing of the President, the Carters politely refused Mr. Thorton’s entreaties.4’

’“USCCR, Southern School Desegi-egation, 1966-67, 47-56; “Rebel Press,” undated; Sharkey Underground, “Sharkey County News,” (March 1967); Parents for Segregation, “To All White Teachers,” undated; Ku Klux Klan, “To the Negroes of Chickasaw and Calhoun Counties,” undated; all in Duke University Perkins Library, Ku Klux Klan Collection; “Delta Discussion,” no. 5 (undated); “Nocturnal Messenger,” undated; both in UM, Race Relations Collection, Box 3 , folder 2 .

I’Curry, Silver Rights, xx, 3 - 3 5 . ”Ibid., 3 5 - 3 7 .


In the early morning hours of August 16, the Carter cabin was rid- dled by gunfire. Rather than give up, the Carters contacted the new FBI office in Jackson. One can imagme the surprise of Deputy Sheriff John Sid- ney Parker when he received a call at home summoning him to aid the FBI investigation of the shooting. While no charges resulted from that investigation, the willingness of the FBI to investigate white-on-black crime in United States Senator Jim Eastland’s backyard sent a powerful message. There would be no more nightriders a t the Carter home. Two weeks later, the FBI showed up again, this time to monitor the behavior of local white people on the first day of integrated classes.”

However, physical violence was but one of white supremacy’s tools. The plantation store, which usually supplied the Carters with food on cred- it, refused to provision them until their children dropped out of school. With ten mouths to feed and no savings, the Carters’ challenge to Drew’s segregated schools was in jeopardy. Student Nonviolent Coordinating Com- mittee workers spread word of the crisis. Local black activists provided short-term subsistence, but more importantly they told national civil rights groups and white northern church groups about the Carters’ dilemma. Many of these groups-National Association for the Advancement of Col- ored People, Delta Ministry, Operation Freedom, American Friends Ser- vice Committee (AFSC), and a variety of smaller groups-“adopted” the struggling family and provided them with an economic subsistence. At set- tlement time, Mr. Carter was told that he owed money to the plantation and that he and his family were being evicted. This time the AFSC came to the rescue, not only providing the funds, but by surreptitiously arrang- ing the purchase of a house when it became clear that no locals would sell or rent to the Carters. The economic dependence of black families had long been a bulwark Jim Crow’s internal cohesion. Ten years earlier, the Carter’s challenge to segregation would have been doomed to failure, but with the backing of the civil rights movement and federal power, a few of Missis- sippi’s black citizens were learning that they could confront white power and succeed.*

Although intimidation failed to prevent integration altogether, i t helped limit black transfer requests to token levels. In Drew, the Carters remained the only black children in the white schools until court orders required more significant integration in 1969, after which the white community opened North Sunflower Academy to educate its children. In most communities, freedom of choice plans allowed white school leaders to choose their tokens. This maintained access to education as a white prerogative, rather than a black right, a distinction of crucial importance to white

“Ibid., 23-24, 37-38. “Ibid., 40-43, 132-138.

176 Histoly of Education Quarterly

leaders fearful of the shifkng power relations brought on by federal legislation. This ability to control and limit integration was used by school officials to defend themselves from segregationist attacks and to counter Citizens’ Council propaganda which hysterically predicted disaster if even one black student was allowed into a white

Even when school integration plans were undertaken in good faith, they were designed in an attempt to balance local white fears with federal requirements. Mississippi school officials tried to negotiate these compet- ing demands by keeping integration to token levels and thus breahng barriers without fundamentally altering access to education.%

Freedom-of-choice plans fell out of favor with federal officials when it became clear that the choices involved were far from free. Federal officials began insisting the sole criterion of an integration plan’s success was the extent to which it increased the number of black students in white schools. School officials continued to wrangle with the Justice Department and the courts over the precise guidelines for school populations on a case- by-case basis, but decisions consistently favored more integration. This last- ed until Alexander v. Holmes CounQ Board of Education, in December of 1969, when the Fifth United States District Court mandated immediate, full integration through the use of unitary school systems. Unlike previous school cases, the Alexander decision applied to all Mississippi school districts and left no alternative but for school districts to place all students a t the same grade level in the same school. Clearly frustrated with delaying tactics, the court turned aside desperate appeals from white school administrators. The decision required that schools comply with its mandates by the beginning of the spring semester of 1970. A public school crisis ensued.“

The Alexander decision led to an explosion of private schools across Mississippi. One student of the movement estimated that 61 schools were founded in that year, a number that is certainly understated. By 1973 there were 125 segregation academies operating in Mississippi. In the 30 districts specifically named by the Alexander decision, the number of academies increased from 6 to 30. Incredibly, most of these schools were created between the time of the court order in December and its implementation date on January 7. Already existing schools were in a position to take full advantage of the advent of “mass integration’’ and they saw their enroll-

“Association of Citzens’ Councils, “How to Save Our Public Schools,” MSU, Citi- zens’ Council collection, folder 1 1; Henry E. Garret, “Violent Insanity in Public Education,” The Citizen, 13 (February 1965).

“Lishman, “Mississippi Private School Association,” 36-37. .”ibid., 36-37; Sansing, “Mississippi’s Private, Segregated Elementary and Secondary

Schools,” 4-5; Metcalf, From Little Rock to Boston, 47-49; Read and McGough, Let Them Be Judged, 437; Leon E. Panetta and Peter Gall, Bring Us Together: The Nixon Team and the Civil Rights Retreat, (Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott Company, 1971), 295-3 12.


ments skyrocket. Enrollment a t the Council schools in Jackson climbed to 6,000 students on 6 campuses while white enrollment in the Jackson Pub- lic School System dropped from 2 1,000 to less than 9,000.’8

In Canton, segregationists founded a private elementary school in 1964. For five years that academy struggled along with economic support from the local Citizens’ Council, unable to expand beyond the first four grades and attracting only a small cadre of parents, described by their friends as right-wing zealots. With the advent of mass integration, Canton Acade- my exploded, expanding to twelve grades and serving over 1,200 students. Lacking an adequate facility, the school moved into an abandoned tent factory owned by a local Citizens’ Council member. The transformation of a factory into a school involved a massive volunteer effort which white Can- ton residents still speak of with visible pride. Businesses donated building materials, workers donated their time and skill, and women’s groups brought sandwiches and lemonade. Seemingly everyone pitched in for what must have been a white supremacist version of an Amish barn raising.”

White Canton residents thought of their academy as a white public school. The Academy’s board declared that it would accept all white children, regardless of their ability to pay tuition. This policy helped make the white boycott of public education almost total. Only six white students remained, all of them seniors, most of them athletes concerned about los- ing college scholarships. Though they had abandoned the existing public system, academy supporters continued to enjoy the benefits of public resources and support. The school district sold a 1967 model school bus, which cost $7000 new, to the academy for $250. Graduating seniors were promised diplomas from the public school in case the academy could not secure accreditation in time. Not all of this support was above board. One of the only white teachers who remained with the public schools reported that when she returned to her classroom after Christmas, it appeared to have been looted by vandals and every piece of lab equipment was missing or destroyed. The same was true for the library. Charlotte Brown, an elementary school teacher, transferred with all of her students to the academy, taking with them their books, desks, and supplies. When classes reconvened after Christmas, the only difference in Mrs. Brown’s class was the location. Ths not only provided much-needed resources, but also offered

“Lishman, “Mississippi Private School Association,”3 6-3 7 ; Carroll, “Mississippi Pri- vate Education,” 129; Nevin and Bills The Schools Thut Feur Built, 3, 13; “List of Private Schools Incorporated in the State of Mississippi in Recent Years,” Education-Schools-Private folder, Box 3, Minor Collection, MSU.

“Charlotte Brown, Interview byM.G. Trend, 24 May 1982, v. 041, Madison County Oral History Collection (MCOHC), Madison County-Canton Public Library, 2-4; Lamar Fortenberry, Interview byM.G. Trend, 4 May 1982, v. 033, MCOHC, 2-3,19-20; Nina Dink- ins, Interview by M.G. Trend, 29 April 1982, v. 032, MCOHC, 32; James Jones, Jr., Inter- view with M.G. Trend, 13 April 1982, v. 024, MCOHC, 20.


a sense of continuity between the old segregated public system and the new segregated private one.j0

This sort of activity was not limited to Canton. Across Mississippi, presumably independent, antigovernment academies received books, supplies, sports equipment, organizational resources, facilities, and funds directly from the public system. In Tunica and Clay counties, private school teachers were kept on the public school payrolls. In Forrest County, private school students were transported on public school buses. In Yazoo City, a school bus was sold to the local segregation academy for $126. In Amite, Madison, and Yazoo counties, “surplus” supplies were auctioned off, with desks going for only fifty cents apiece. This type of support was crucial to schools attempting to build from the ground up. There was also no apparent irony in the public funding of these private schools. After all, in a state where political power and public institutions had always been segregated, tax dollars, by definition, were white. There seemed nothing incon- gruous in using “white” tax dollars to help white people, especially when they were so politically powerful. In Tchula, this attitude was so stubbornly held that local leaders continued to divert public school funds and supplies to the private school more than a decade after the courts declared this type of action i1legal.j’

The tension between public and private is crucial to understanding Mississippi’s segregated academies. When William Simmons began to attack public education in 1964, the most vicious epithet he could hurl was to asso- ciate schools with the government. From its inception in 1955, the Coun- cil’s organ The Citizen interspersed defenses of white supremacy with screeds against the federal government, broadly linking all of its activities to a secret attempt to impose a totalitarian state and institute a socialist system. In a 1965 article, Council staff member John Synon described public education as “socialism in its purest form.” He maintained that the use of tax money for public education was immoral and that all public schools should be shut down, then reopened as private corporations, leaving individuals to buy whatever education they could afford. Synon’s opposition to the existence of public education is interesting because it succeeded in wedding the southern planter class’s historic antipathy to the expense of public education with

’“Brown, Interview by M.G. Trend; Fortenberry, Interview by M.G. Trend; Betty Lutz, telephone interview by author, 22 February 2000, notes in possession of author; Morris, Yazoo, 42-43.

”Carroll, “Mississippi Private Education,” 136-1 37; Brown, Interview by M.G. Trend, 11; Morris, Yazoo, 109-1 10; John Kincaid, “Beyond the Voting Rights Act: White Respons- es to Black Political Power in Tchula, Mississippi,” Publiw: TbeJournal of Federalim vol. 16 (Fall 1986): 155-172; W.W. Drake, “At the Grass Roots: Report by a Local Council’s Presi- dent,” The Citizens’ Council, 2aune 1957), 4; Jimmy Swan, Interview by Michael Gamey, 1981, v. 187, Mississippi Oral History Program of the University of Southern Mississippi (MOHP), 81.


the anticommunist, free-market ideology which was becoming prominent in the right wing of the national Republican Party. Citizens’ Council leaders found it politically inconvenient to indulge Synon’s frontal assault on public education and most of their membership remained committed to promoting segregated public schools. However, as integration progressed across the South, segregationists would see Synon’s arguments in an increasingly attractive light.”

Private school advocates frequently argued that they simply wanted to eliminate federal interference and maintain local control of public education. Of course, local control in Mississippi had a very specific meaning- the ability to maintain segregated schools. Even within those definitional bounds, calls for local control of schools should not be taken at face value. While federal intervention was a real concern, a still greater threat to segregationists was the changing constitution of local control. The civil rights movement had transformed social definitions of citizenship in Mississippi. Historically disenfranchisement and overwhelming economic power had made local control synonymous with white power. Voting rights legislation and aggressive voter regstration campaigns had dramatically expanded voter roles and a coordinated campaign of boycotts had demonstrated that black people were emboldened to exercise their economic muscle as well. In this context, the real threat to segregationists was that the very local control they held sacred would now vest considerable power in an expanded, inter-racial civic community.”

Southern public schools had played a significant role in propagating traditional southern social mores-from race to religion to gender roles. Central to this education system was a heroic history of the white, Protes- tant South that emphasized the Lost Cause, the horrors of Reconstruction, and the essential nobility of the southern whte people. This worldview was under attack by the civil rights movement and there was serious concern that an integrated society based on integrated education would severely undermine these values and thus the viability of a set of social relations rest- ing upon them. The success of the civil rights movement led the nation to

”Nevin and Bills, The Schools That Fear Built, 25-36; Carleton Pumam, Race and Rea- son; Louis Hollis, “Never!,” The Citizen, 10 (March 1966); Henry E. Garrett, “Violent Insan- ity in Public Education,” The Citizen, 13 (February 1969); Staff report, “HOW to Disorganize the Public Schools,” The Citizen, 14 (January 1970); John J. Synon, “Why Not Try ‘Free Enterprise’ Schools?,” The Citizen, 10 (October 1965), 18.

“William Simmons, “How to Organize a Private School,” 5; Carroll, “Mississippi Pri- vate Education,” 22 , 117; Kincaid, “Beyond the Voting Rights Act,” 155-172; Robert C . Weaver, “Federal Aid, Local Control, and Negro Pamcipation,” J o ~ m a l of Negro Education, lloanuary 1942), 47-59; David Colby, “The Voting Rights Act Black Registration in Mis- sissippi,” Publius: TheJoumal ofFederalism, 16 (Fall 1986), 122-137; Erle Johnston, Interview with Yasuhiro Katagire, 1993, v. 276, part 2, MOHP, 3 5 ; \Villiam J. Simmons, Interview with Orley B. Caudill, 1979, v. 372, MOHP, 46; Frank R. Parker, Black Votes Count: Political Empow- erment in Mississippi after 196F, (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1990).


see southern racial values as immoral and un-American, while racism was elevated to America’s most popular cultural metaphor for evil. Integrated schools not only threatened the intermingling of black and white children; they posed a substantial threat to southern white identity.j4

Private education allowed segregationists to avoid many of these threats. Private schools removed the threat of actual integration while allowing school patrons to have absolute control over the ideological content of curriculum. Furthermore, in communities where the academy became the defacto white public school, white elites who had always resented the expense of public education, suddenly found it possible to dramatically slash property tax assessments.” Segregationists accustomed to dominating the public sphere chose to withdraw to private enclaves rather than compromise by sharing public space with black citizens. Private schools became the physical embodiment of the segregation movement and created an institution- al space where white supremacist values could be passed to a new generation.

In addition to their cultural importance, the segregation academies signaled an important shift in the political ideology of white Mississippi- ans. The passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 had been met by angry defenses of states’ rights. This idea has a long history in the South, but the antigovernment ideology that emerged from the civil rights era was more far-reaching than any that had preceded it. The dramatic expansion of black voting after 1965 and the resulting increase in political power for black southerners led segregationists to regard all government with suspicion, whether federal, state, or local. In this climate they came to see wide-scale privatization of government functions as an attractive option. The privatization of education was the earliest example of this trend. The successes of segregationists in private education encouraged them to think about privatization as a broader solution to the threat of interracial government power. These ideas dovetailed easily with the free market, antigovernment ideas of western conservatives and went on to form the nucleus of modern conservative ideology.

T u r r y , Silver Rights, 115-1 18; Carroll, “Mississippi Private Education,” 22; Lewis, Portrait of a Decade, 5; Pat Waters, “Encounter with the Future,” (Atlanta: Southern Region- al Council, 1965), 4; Dinkins, Interview with M.G. Trend, 36; Fred Powledge,joz~meys Through the South, (New York: Vanguard Press, 1979), 124.

”Carroll, “Mississippi Private Education,” 2 1-22; R.B. Layton, Interview with Thomas Healey, 1977, v. 538, MOHP, 27; Medford Evans, “The Future of Private Education,” The Citizen, 10 (April 1966), 18; Cobb, The Most Southern Place on Earth, 144.

civil rights and the private school movement in mississippi, 1964–1971

Documents