Bailey Hammond
Wayne Academy
1999-2003
Waynesboro, Mississippi
I attended Wayne Academy in Waynesboro, Mississippi, from grade 4 through halfway through grade 8. I had no idea at the time that I was participating in voluntary segregation. I can honestly say that I was never taught anything about the Civil Rights Movement during my time at WA. I was also never outright taught to be racist. But then again, when has anyone ever said that racism or classism is taught overtly? So much of it is subtle manipulation, reinforcement, and peer pressure. It’s possible that I was not paying attention (highly probable knowing what I know now about my then undiagnosed inattentive ADHD). It could also be that the school curriculum—based on the Bible and creationism—simply skirted around these issues. Biblically based curriculum does tend to take the easy way out with difficult issues, particularly ones dealing with slavery and racism in the South. It’s deemed too hot to touch.
I do remember vividly when, in sixth grade, one student bragged about being related to what he called a “Civil War hero” named Nathan Bedford Forrest. I did not learn the truth about this historical figure—his diabolical part in segregation, the KKK, and voter suppression—until I was in high school, and to say that I had a hard time squaring that circle with the former classmate’s pride is an understatement. I would hope that this classmate was not aware of the murderous history of his relative. I highly doubt such data was kitchen table conversation in that family. Instead, they likely focused on him being a General and leading cavalry charges, and not his status as the first Grand Wizard of the KKK, behind lynchings and murders and all kinds of terrible acts against black voters and white supporters of equality. No. That was not the sort of thing taught at Wayne Academy back then. Children are to be shielded from the truth because it might make them start to feel guilty about what their ancestors did to a group of fellow humans.
Yet, the racism that led to the formation of Wayne Academy and other academies in 1970 was not casual. It was deliberate and barely hidden, except from the students themselves as the years went by. The parents could pretend that they formed the school to protect Christian values and their way of life. As they became more ensconced in their fenced off lives, they relaxed. They’d survived the forced desegregation of the Civil Rights Movement without allowing their children to participate in the changing world.
The world, however, did not stop changing just because one small sect of the population chose to stay the same. People of color continued to exist and continued to gain more prominence as members of the community. Despite this fact, my story is not just about the continued pursuit of racial division in one small Southern town. I know many people have already written and opined on this topic, people with far more knowledge and experience with the weighty issue than I have. Something that I was always keenly aware of in my time at WA was a different type of social split. I’m talking about the intersection of wealth and how that impacted not only the larger community but also the small microcosm within the school.
The people with power at Wayne Academy, and in Waynesboro in general, have always been the money men. Money men in Wayne County usually deal in two things: oil or lumber. Some deal in oil and lumber. All of them own massive tracts of land. My mother’s cousin is in the lumber business, and he’s wealthy. His kids were popular at Wayne Academy. Every year I would receive a few bags of his daughter’s hand-me-down clothes from Limited Too and similar stores where my mother never shopped because they were too far away and too expensive. I still remember a pair of pink windbreaker pants. The soft swish-swish of the fabric along with the brand logo emblazoned on the waistband made me feel special. The first time I wore them to school, someone asked me if I borrowed them from my cousin. The swish-swishing of my pants turned into the whispered sound of judgment, and I tried never to wear them to school again. If I had to wear hand-me-downs, I swore that I’d only wear stuff sent to us from friends back in Alabama. There was less chance it would be recognized as second-hand that way.
In a nutshell, that was the wealth divide at Wayne Academy. I guess that made it a microcosm of the historic Deep South—make that American—dynamic of the cynical need of powerful whites to court poorer whites’ support yet never sincerely consider them equals. The very well-off made up a quarter of the enrollment in my era there. The rest of the students came from families who maybe lived in trailers, and perhaps had family who worked for the wealthy members. Some struggled to pay the tuition each year, but they always did, regardless of sacrifice. My family was like this. It’s a reiteration of the same old story of the haves and the have-nots; except in this case, they were united against an understood outside threat.
Admittedly, I don’t remember many specific details about people or dates from when I was at WA, and don’t expect me to remember anyone’s name. But around 2003, the same time my family moved back to Alabama, and Wayne Academy admitted its first student of color to play football, the school also hired its first African American custodial worker/assistant football coach. If those co-jobs seem odd, just imagine how strange it must have been for him. During the week he took out the trash, mopped and swept the floors, and picked up litter on campus. Then on Friday nights he stood on the sidelines with the football team where there was only one player out of both teams who looked like him.
Today, the IRS-required anti-discrimination policy is listed on WA’s admissions page and photos of the staff have replaced the original information about the school’s founding in 1970 once found on the “About Us” page, a fact you can discover if you figure out how to use the Wayback Machine through the Internet Archive. There’s no mention of when the school was founded on the current website, an omission that tells its own story. The policy itself states: “Wayne Academy admits students of any race, color, national and ethnic origin to all the rights, privileges, programs and activities generally accorded or made available to students at the school. It does not discriminate on the basis of race, color, national and ethnic origin.” In 2008, this policy was formatted on a bright yellow background on a separate page clearly marked as an anti-discrimination policy. Now, it is situated on their admissions page, right above the information about tuition, which, by the way, is $4800 yearly for one child with a $200 registration fee, a “Capital Improvement Fundraiser” (whatever that is) fee of $660 that families can “sell fundraiser tickets to cover,” and a variety of lab, testing, and assessment fees throughout the year depending on grade level. This is all without even mentioning the additional costs of extracurricular activities with the school, like cheerleading, basketball, baseball or softball, and football.
Tuition is a loaded term. For many families, it’s also a word that means debt or doing without in some other area. It can also mean that some students don’t get to participate in the extracurriculars.
Wayne Academy appears to be doing just fine. It’s picked up students since the closure of Heidelberg Academy in Heidelberg, Miss. in 2016. I talked with a couple who split their time between Waynesboro and Foley, Alabama. They told me how many of those former Heidelberg students get bussed in every day—an approximately two-hour roundtrip commute—just to attend Wayne Academy. The two towns are about 35 miles apart on U.S. 45. Two hours on a bus or in a car every day to remain in a private school? I asked them if these people had lost their minds. The couple laughed and agreed that it was crazy, but I couldn’t help but get the feeling that they would do what those other parents did if the situation was reversed. It’s eerie how the herd mentality makes the two hours in a bus make sense.
A benefit since Heidelberg’s closure is that the infusion of support to Wayne Academy has led to a building boom on WA’s campus. The formerly drab school began to burst with new buildings, sports facilities, and technology in the classrooms. Wayne Academy profited mightily in terms of student body growth and capital.
However, I was drawn to one fact that is listed on Wayne Academy’s profile on Private School Review (a website rating private schools and academies by various criteria, including class size, students by grade, and percentage of students of color). Even after absorbing students from Heidelberg Academy’s closure in 2016, WA only boasts 1 percent students of color in a town that boasts a population made up of over half black or African American citizens. More specifically according to Data USA’s breakdown of the 2024 census data, that’s 66.2 percent of the total population in Waynesboro, while the white/non-Hispanic percentage of the population is listed as only 31.5 percent. Heidelberg Academy, when it was open, boasted 22 percent students of color, which is higher than the state’s average (I assume for private schools) of 19 percent by 3 whole percentage points.
One doesn’t have to be a mathematician or statistician to draw the conclusion that only the white students are commuting to a new academy, and these students bring their wealth with them.
Who could’ve figured?
References
Herrington, Charles. (2016, May 4). “Heidelberg Academy closes after 45 years.” WDAM7 News. Retrieved October 3, 2025 from https://www.wdam.com/story/31884272/heidelberg-academy-closes-after-45-years/
Private School Review. (n.d.) Heidelberg Academy. Retrieved October 3, 2025 from https://www.privateschoolreview.com/heidelberg-academy-profile
Private School Review. (n.d.) Wayne Academy. Retrieved October 3, 2025 from https://www.privateschoolreview.com/wayneademy-profile
DataUSA. (2024). Waynesboro, MS. Retrieved July 7, 2026 from https://datausa.io/profile/geo/waynesboro-ms#demographics
Wayne Academy. (2021). K-12 admissions. Retrieved October 3, 2025 from https://wayneacademy.net/k-12-admissions
Bailey Hammond lives in Magnolia Springs, Alabama and teaches American literature and composition online at the Mississippi University for Women. An MA and MFA, she writes on her phone in car line like all the other single mothers out there. She’s on Threads as @bookwolfbailey. Her poetry can be read in Oracle: Fine Arts Review and The Bangalore Review.