Tell me more about these private academy schools in Mississippi [View All]

[bluestateguy]

Last night I did some cruising around the website of the Mississippi Private School Association (http://www.mpsa.org/default2.php), which has links to all of the private academies for K-12 schoolchildren in Mississippi. I looked at many of the school webpages and noticed some interesting things:

1) Many of the schools' mascots are the "rebels".

2) A large number of these schools were formed in the mid to late 1960's, coincidentally, at the same time as court ordered racial integration was going on in the schools.

3) Most of the schools seemed to have non-discrimination policies on paper, but pictures of the students indicated that all or almost all students were white.

4) It seemed like the schools in Jackson were a little more integrated than other academies.

So educate me here. Do these schools really mean what they say when they profess to not discriminate on the basis of race? Do you think racial prejudice is what is really driving the wishes of white parents who put there kids in these schools? Is this really a healthy thing in a state that is so racially mixed? Finally, are there any private academies that make real affirmative efforts to have a diverse student body and a diverse faculty?