The reality of systemic racism in our culture has become undeniable: Economic and health inequities. The murders of Breonna Taylor and George Floyd, along with black men’s disproportionate imprisonment rate. The disparities revealed in COVID virtual learning. As the country reflects, the South, as always, offers high-visibility lessons for the nation to better understand itself. What’s true and clear here represents what’s true nationwide as well. It’s important not to turn away from the opportunity to learn, whether the year is 1954 or the current one. 

History isn’t just history. Admissions captures first-person stories which help explain who the South and America is through the story of schools and the promise of education ongoing since the Seventies integration era.

The Academy Stories captures accounts from those of us educated in the estimated 4,000 all-white private academies which opened in 13 states in order to flee public school integration circa 1970. Admissions also documents the public school experience at that foundational time. Deep South schools became America’s most integrated for a few years. Yet even as the transformation rolled out, the new system was often white-centered. A frequent integration route in a community was closing an historic black high school with its traditions and iconic teachers. Black students and faculty lost their old school, to be deposited in a resentful white one. How was the price of integration unnecessarily high? How do the failures of the past impact schools today? What about the increasing resegregation of schools that is clearly underway?

In towns where academies have survived, the legacy academies have become an assumed part of their community, now with tiny black enrollments as well. In dozens of Mississippi towns, academies operate as almost parallel white systems to the black public schools. The gravitational force of the academies shapes the dynamics of cities, public resources and, of course, an area’s young people. 

In the months to come, Admissions will capture the stories of school in the South both as necessary racial history and as a lens to more clearly see race today. We can’t change the past, which was shaped by a generation fast disappearing. We are responsible for today, however, and for our willingness to confront what was in order to see—and live—with our own clear eyes today.    

 Admissions and The Academy Stories are grateful for the support of the Mississippi Humanities Council and the support of individual donors to the Eyes on Mississippi project through our non-profit fiscal agent the Community Foundation for Mississippi.

Have a story or thoughts? Please contact us: info@admissionsprojects.com.