Segregation academies were private schools
in the Southern United States founded in the
mid-20th century by white parents to avoid
having their children in desegregated public
schools. Often dubbed freedom of choice schools
by their proponents, they were founded between
1954, when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that
segregated public schools were unconstitutional,
and 1976, when the court ruled similarly about
private schools.
While some of these schools still exist — most
with low percentages of minority students
even today — they are not, legally speaking,
segregation academies. The laws that permitted
their operation, including government subsidies
and tax exemption, were invalidated by U.S.
Supreme Court decisions. After Runyon v. McCrary
(1976), and all of these private schools were
forced to accept African-American students.
As a result, segregation academies changed
their admission policies, ceased operations,
or merged with other private schools.
== History ==
The first segregation academies were created
by white parents in the late 1950s in response
to the U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Brown
v. Board of Education (1954), which required
public school boards to eliminate segregation
"with all deliberate speed" (Brown II). Because
the ruling did not apply to private schools,
founding new academies provided parents a
way to continue to educate their children
separately from blacks. At that time, most
adult blacks were still disfranchised in the
South, excluded from politics and oppressed
under Jim Crow laws. Private academies operated
outside the scope of the Brown v. Board of
Education ruling and could therefore have
racial segregation. Virginia's massive resistance
to integration resulted in Prince Edward County,
Virginia closing all public schools from 1959
to 1964; the only education in the county
was a segregation academy, funded by state
"tuition grants."
A 1972 report on school desegregation noted
that segregation academies could usually be
identified by the word "christian" or "church"
in the school's name. The report observed
that while individual protestant churches
were often deeply involved in the establishment
of segregation academies, Catholic dioceses
usually indicated that their schools were
not meant to be havens from desegregation.
Many segregation academies claimed they were
established to provide a "Christian education"
but the sociologist Jennifer Dyer has argued
that such claims were simply a "guise" for
the schools' actual objective of allowing
parents to avoid enrolling their children
in racially integrated public schools.Reasons
why whites pulled their children out of public
schools have been debated: whites insisted
that "quality fueled their exodus", and blacks
said "white parents refused to allow their
children to be schooled alongside blacks".
Scholars estimate that, across the nation,
at least half a million white students were
withdrawn from public schools between 1964
and 1975 to avoid mandatory desegregation.
In the 21st century, Archie Douglas, the headmaster
of Montgomery Academy (founded as a segregation
academy), said that he is sure "that those
who resented the Civil Rights Movement or
sought to get away from it took refuge in
the academy". But in the 21st century, the
school no longer practiced any type of discrimination.
=== IRS involvement and definitions ===
In 1969, parents of Mississippi black children
brought suit to revoke tax-exemption status
for non-profit segregation academies (Green
v. Connally). They won a temporary injunction
in the D.C. Circuit in early 1970 and the
suit in June 1971. The United States government
appealed to the Supreme Court, where the lower
court's decision was summarily affirmed in
Coit v. Green (1971). Meanwhile, on July 10,
1970, the Internal Revenue Service announced
it could "no longer legally justify allowing
tax-exempt status to private schools which
practice racial discrimination." For a school
to get or keep its tax-exempt status, it would
have to publish a policy of non-discrimination
and not practice overt discrimination. Many
schools simply refused. A decade later, similarly
aggrieved appellees argued again in Allen
v. Wright (1983) that the standards were too
low. The appellees had asserted that "there
are more than 3,500 racially segregated private
academies operating in the country having
a total enrollment of more than 750,000 children."
The court considered whether the parents standing
to sue, and concluded not, because they did
not allege that they or their children had
applied to, been discouraged from applying
to, or been denied admission to any private
school or schools. Specifically, it ruled
that citizens do not have standing to sue
a federal government agency based on the influence
that the agency's determinations might have
on third parties (such as private schools).
The judges noted the parents were in the posture
of disappointed observers of the governmental
process. The IRS would continue to enforce
the regulations it had promulgated in 1970.
Any school that was not tax-exempt in this
period was most certainly a segregation academy.
Not many of the 3,500 appear in lists, if
there were 3,500. Any school named in a judgement
or IRS document in this period absolutely
was. Many schools did not regain tax-exempt
status until the 1990s.
== By state ==
Virginia was an early adopter of techniques
to establish and finance segregation academies.
Virginia was first respond to Brown with the
establishment of segregation academies and
first to be told in federal court that segregation
academies were unconstitutional (Runyon v.
McCrary (1976)), leading to their decline.
The state was a bellwether for other states.
Eventually, five states—Alabama, Georgia,
Mississippi, South Carolina and Virginia—defied
the court's decision in Brown by 1970. Segregated
private schools lost their tax-exempt status
in Coit v. Green (1971). Between 1961 and
1971, non-Catholic Christian schools doubled
their enrollments nationally. By 1969, 300,000
of 7,400,000 white students attended segregated
school in eleven southern states.
=== Virginia ===
In Virginia, segregation academies were part
of a policy of massive resistance declared
by U.S. Senator Harry F. Byrd, Sr. He worked
to unite other white Virginia politicians
and leaders in taking action to prevent school
desegregation after the Brown v. Board of
Education Supreme Court ruling in 1954.
In its September/October 1956 special session,
the Virginia General Assembly passed a series
of laws known as the Stanley plan to implement
massive resistance. In January, Virginia's
voters had approved an amendment to the state
constitution to allow tuition grants to parents
enrolling their children in private schools.
Part of the Stanley plan established tuition
grants program, which allowed parents who
refused to allow their children to attend
desegregated schools funding so each could
attend a private school of choice. In practice,
this meant state support of newly established
all-white private schools which became known
as "segregation academies".
On February 18, 1958, the General Assembly
passed (and Governor Almond signed) additional
legislation protecting segregation, what the
Byrd Organization called the "Little Rock
Bill" (responding to President Eisenhower's
use of federal powers to assist the court-ordered
desegregation of schools in Little Rock, Arkansas).
Since new segregation academy facilities often
failed to meet construction, health and safety
standards for public schools, these were also
loosened.
Segregation academies opened in various Virginia
cities and counties subject to desegregation
lawsuits, including Arlington, Charlottesville
and Norfolk where Governor Almond had ordered
the schools closed rather than comply with
Federal court orders to desegregate. Arlington
and Norfolk desegregated peacefully in February
1959. In Arlington, many (if not most) white
students remained in the desegregated schools.
However, that was not the case in Norfolk
and other areas such as Richmond where whites
largely abandoned the public schools for segregation
academies and other private schools, home
schooling, or moved to the suburbs. Today,
more than a half-century after school desegregation,
largely due to white flight, the Richmond
City and Norfolk Public Schools are the school
divisions with the most racially and economically
isolated schools in Virginia.Segregation academies
in Warren and Prince Edward Counties and the
City of Norfolk are discussed below, as examples
of why even in the fall of 1963, only 3,700
black pupils or 1.6% attended school with
whites. NAACP litigation had resulted in some
desegregation by the fall of 1960 in eleven
localities, and the number of at least partially
desegregated districts had slowly risen to
20 in the fall of 1961, 29 in the fall of
1962, and 55 (out of 130 school districts)
in 1963.Warren County also planned to integrate
its only high school, Warren County High School,
but Governor Almond closed the school (along
with schools in Charlottesville and Norfolk)
in the fall of 1958. Education continued in
private and church facilities for that school
year. By the fall of 1959, John S. Mosby Academy
(1-12) was constructed and opened as an all-white
school. A public high school for black students
was built and opened (Criser High School),
and Warren County High School reopened with
a significantly reduced white student population
and 22 black students. Criser operated until
1966, and Mosby operated through the 1968–69
school year.
When faced with an order to integrate, Prince
Edward County closed its entire school system
in September 1959, and kept county schools
closed until 1964, as it kept litigating (although
Davis v. County School Board of Prince Edward
County had been a companion case to Brown).
The newly-founded private Prince Edward Academy
operated as the de facto school system for
white students. It enrolled K-12 students
at several facilities throughout the county.
Many black students were forced to move in
with relatives in other counties, attend makeshift
schools in church basements, or move to northern
states to live with host families through
a program of the Society of Friends in order
to gain education. Even after public schools
re-opened, Prince Edward Academy remained
segregated as discussed below.
In Norfolk, churches and other organizations
offered classes, teachers from the shuttered
public schools formed tutorial groups, and
classes were also held in private homes. The
Norfolk Division of the College of William
& Mary (now Old Dominion University) provided
classes for some high school students. Other
students from Norfolk attended schools in
the neighboring cities of Hampton Chesapeake,
Virginia Beach and Portsmouth. Some parents
sent their children to live with relatives
in other parts of Virginia or in other states.
The Defenders of State Sovereignty and Individual
Liberties founded the Tidewater Educational
Foundation to create a private school for
white students in Norfolk. The Tidewater Academy
opened as a segregation academy on October
22, 1958, with 250 white students with classes
meeting in local churches.Although on January
19, 1959, the Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals
struck down the new Virginia law that closed
schools before integration, as contrary to
a public schooling provision in the state
constitution (and a three-judge federal panel
struck down other provisions of the Stanley
plan on the same day, (the Virginia state
holiday honoring Robert E. Lee and Stonewall
Jackson), individual state tuition grants
to parents continued, allowing them to patronize
segregation academies.
In 1964, the Supreme Court of the United States
ruled in Griffin v. County School Board of
Prince Edward County that Virginia's tuition
grants where the public schools had been closed
for reasons of race (such as in Prince Edward
County) violated the U.S. Constitution. This
decision finally effectively ended massive
resistance within state governments, and dealt
some segregation academies a fatal blow. Later
rulings put the academies' tax exemption status
in jeopardy if they practiced racial discrimination.In
1978, Prince Edward Academy lost its tax exempt
status. In 1986, it changed its admission
policy to allow black students to attend but
few black students can afford the tuition
to attend the school, which today is known
as the Fuqua School. All other Virginia segregation
academies have either closed or adopted non-racial
discrimination policies. Ironically, because
the Catholic Church had desegregated its schools
before Brown, the Huguenot Academy (a segregation
academy implicitly disavowing that Catholic
policy by its title), merged with Blessed
Sacrament High School, a nearby Catholic High
School, to become Blessed Sacrament-Huguenot.
In 1985 the Bollingbrook School, originally
founded as a segregation academy for white
students in 1958, merged with Gibbons High
School, a nearby Catholic High School in Petersburg,
to become St. Vincent de Paul High School.
=== Mississippi ===
In Mississippi, many of the segregation academies
were first established in the black-majority
Mississippi Delta region in northwestern Mississippi.
The Delta has historically had a very large
majority-black population, related to the
history of the use of slave labor on cotton
plantations. The potential for integration
resulted in white parents' establishing segregation
academies in every county in the Delta. Many
academies are still operating, from Indianola,
Mississippi to Humphreys County. These schools
began to accept black students late in the
20th century, although many of them still
enroll relatively small numbers of black students.
In a region with low incomes among blacks,
many African-American parents cannot afford
the private schools. At least one school in
Mississippi, Carroll Academy, receives substantial
funding from the segregationist Council of
Conservative Citizens. The governor of Mississippi
Ross Barnett, said in September 1962, "I submit
to you tonight, no school will be integrated
in Mississippi while I am your governor".
=== Arkansas ===
Between 1966 and 1972, at least 32 segregation
academies were established in Arkansas. By
1972, about 5,000 white students attended
such schools.Arkansas is one of 12 states
that have not adopted the Blaine Amendment
to their state constitutions. The amendment
forbids direct government aid to educational
institutions that have a religious affiliation.
Many segregation academies have since adopted
curricula with a "Christian world view".
=== Louisiana ===
The United States District Court for the Eastern
District of Louisiana mandated integration
of public schools in Washington Parish (1969),
St. Tammany Parish (1969), Tensas Parish (1970),
Claiborne Parish (1970), and Jackson Parish
(1969).
=== Alabama ===
Alabama, like Mississippi, largely ignored
the 1954 ruling of Brown v. Board of Education.
In 1958, a conflict over segregation in city
parks brought Martin Luther King to Montgomery.
The city closed its parks; King recommended
that black parents attempt to enroll their
children in city schools, expecting to establish
cases testing the Alabama Pupil Placement
Act. Montgomery Academy was the first segregation
academy established in Alabama; others followed
in the late 1960s.
=== South Carolina ===
In South Carolina, where private schools have
existed since the 1800s, there were no fully
racially integrated private schools before
1954. Some 200 private schools were created
between 1963 and 1975; private school enrollment
hit a peak of 50,000 in 1978. In Clarendon
County, for example, the private academy Clarendon
Hall was established in late 1965, after four
blacks students enrolled in a previously all-white
public school in the fall term. By 1969, only
281 white students were left in the public
school system, and only 16 white students
were in public schools when they officially
desegregated a year later.
=== Texas ===
Texas was an early opponent of desegregation.
In 1956, blacks were turned away from Mansfield
High School in defiance of Brown and other
federal orders to integrate. In Dallas, for
example, the DISD subdivided itself into six
subdistricts, each of which was "one race"
(more than ninety percent white or black).
The Texas Education Agency was ordered in
November 1970 to desegregate Texas public
schools (United States v. Texas). The state
did not offer any financial assistance to
private schools as Virginia, Mississippi,
and Alabama had.
== List of schools founded as segregation
academies ==
== In federal law ==
Green v. Connally (1971) set the standard
by which the Internal Revenue Service identifies
a segregation academy, a so-called "Paragraph
(1) School". The IRS must deny exemption to
schools:
which have been determined in adversary or
administrative proceedings to be racially
discriminatory; or were established or expanded
at or about the time the public school districts
in which they are located or which they serve
were desegregating, and which cannot demonstrate
that they do not racially discriminate in
admissions, employment, scholarships, loan
programs, athletics, and extracurricular programs.
== See also ==
The "Southern Manifesto", a document written
in 1956 by legislators in the United States
Congress opposed to racial integration in
public places
Runyon v. McCrary (1976): U.S. Supreme Court
affirms private schools may not discriminate
due to race based on 42 U.S.C. 1981.
Allen v. Wright, a 1984 U. S. Supreme Court
case challenging public subsidy for private
schools that are effectively segregated.
== Further reading ==
Felton, Emmanuel (September 25, 2017), "The
Secessionist Movement in Education", The Nation,
pp. 12–24
== References ==
== External links ==
"The Ground Beneath Our Feet" website
Massive Resistance timeline
"Massive Resistance". The Civil Rights Movement
in Virginia. Virginia Historical Society.
2004.
"Memories of busing in Richmond". Richmond
History Center.
"Brown v. Board of Education: Virginia Responds".
State Library of Virginia. 2003. Archived
from the original on 2005-10-30.
"They Closed Our Schools," the story of Massive
Resistance and the closing of the Prince Edward
County, Virginia public schools
Edward H. Peeples Prince Edward County (Va.)
Public Schools Collection photographs, documents,
and maps exploring the history of the Prince
Edward County school segregation issues of
the 1950s and 1960s, from the collection of
the VCU Libraries.
"The Aftermath - Brown v. Board at Fifty:
"With an Even Hand"". Library of Congress.
2004-11-13. Retrieved 2017-08-23.
