The stakes were high when Deep South school desegregation in the 1970s transformed the region’s classrooms, stadiums, and teachers’ lounges into America’s most integrated spaces, at least for a while. The Supreme Court called a halt to nearly two decades of post-1954 Brown v. Board of Education stonewalling, and racial history shifted in one sweep. Black and white, children and educators, lives changed. Old patterns shattered. The transformation, wrapped in clear historic moral purpose, affected over 11 million children.
And then there was us. I’m one of the estimated 500,000 Deep South white alumni of the segregation academies that sprouted up in 11 states to defy the ideal of racial equality.
Films like the Virginia-set “Remember the Titans” and “The Best of Enemies,” based on Durham, North Carolina events, center on that hard-won ’70s moment of public school transformation. The academies’ parallel stories? We don’t talk about it much. We alums prefer skipping over our high school history since the truth of our all-white alma maters inevitably brings on blowback today. (In my home state of Mississippi, U.S. Senator Cindy Hyde-Smith’s 1977 graduation from Lawrence County Academy ballooned into a campaign issue in last year’s Senate race. Governor Phil Bryant likes to say he attended Jackson public schools, but he spent his final years at McCluer Academy, graduating in 1973.) The Jackson Free Press broke both stories.
The fact is, however, our academy bona fides matter in far more scenarios than the unlikely one in which I run for office. Our academy educations matter all the time. They matter not just in terms of what people ought to know about us, but, just as importantly, in what we know — or dare to confront — about ourselves. Otherwise, we look so okay, right?
It’s over-Faulknerified to say so, but the past’s not past, and certainly not for white academy alums living and engaging in the 2019 world. Our story is not just history but an unfolding question: How does that defiant schooling still shape us and our heads by default? It does, of course, in unconscious and conscious ways.
Among Mississippi academy alums aren’t just ruby-red officeholders like Hyde-Smith in Washington and Bryant in the Governor’s Mansion. Many Mississippians who’ve marked our culture came out of white academies too. These include actor Sela Ward (Lamar School, 1973) and blockbuster novelists Donna Tartt (Kirk Academy, 1981) and Kathryn Stockett (Jackson Preparatory School, founded in 1970, her alma mater in 1987). Author Steve Yarbrough graduated from Indianola Academy in 1975 while writer-journalist Neely Tucker ruled as Mr. Starkville Academy 1982. Let the record reflect I was in the Pillow Academy Class of 1974 Hall of Fame. Hyde-Smith’s segregation academy was about 150 miles south of mine. Bryant’s academy in Jackson used to play mine in football. (In my memory, McCluer parents were famous for spoiling for a post-game fight with our parents.)