Art Brady

The Desegregation Movement and Private Academies

Art Brady

Dr. Gagnon

HIST 3090

November 15, 2004

Private schools have long been a fixture in the landscape of the American South. From the colonial days where private tutors taught in school houses paid for by the community, private education has grown into a major part of the Southern education system. The South’s education system was mainly non-existent with the exception of the private school. From colonial times to the early part of the 1900’s the South remained an agrarian society. It was not until Reconstruction that the idea of the modern public school came into existence. It was at this point that local government became the guardian of the education systems funding and the point in which private education began to decline in its importance in the South.

When post Reconstruction and its emphasis on black participation in government ended, the period of Southern retribution known as redemption, paired with the adoption of “Jim Crow” practices, began. Education was not left out of the South’s new system of de jure and de facto segregation and blacks were given little chance at education until the twentieth century. Increasing numbers of farmers moved to the cities to work in the mills and factories of the towns and as a result schooling began to hold more importance. With this large influx of rural people to urban areas. the South’s school districts grew in size and encompassed larger areas. The urban areas of the South had more choices of public schools while the rural areas were left with few choices consisting of mainly a single county school.

It was with these matters that the Civil Rights movement moved forward with its desires to desegregate the South and its public schools. It was no secret that even with the legal regulations of de jure segregation, de facto segregation became the issue after the Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education. The Southern practice of de facto segregation had existed even during the period of Reconstruction and tried to keep black society separate from white society. After the Brown ruling and the passing of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 white public education came under threat. Public school funding relied on local property taxes so the more prominent an area the better the schools. Many whites that lived in districts that were forced to integrate their public schools opted to move to better districts rather than face having to experience racial mixing.

For whites who could not move or did not want to move there was another option. Beginning in 1960 private schools began to take on greater importance as white parents began to seek alternatives to integrated public schools. Born out of this desire for other choices the segregation academy soon became an option for many whites in addition to the private schools already in existence. During the 1960’s the private schools of the South were not required by law to integrate and therefore continued to operate with de jure segregation. It was not until later that the federal government became involved and threatened penalties for non-integration that some private schools decided to integrate while others opted to suffer the consequences. Woodward Academy of College Park, Georgia, was one of the private schools that opted to open its doors to blacks. This paper is a study of the process of events that led to the decision to integrate Woodward and a comparison to segregation academies of the period that chose not to comply with the federal government’s new regulations on private schools.

Beginning in the 1960’s private schools took on greater importance in the South. After Reconstruction and the introduction of public education in the South private schools began to decline in their importance. One of the reasons this took place is because unlike the rest of the country the South had relatively very few Catholics compared with the rest of the country. This fact is important because at the time the majority of private schools in the nation were secular schools. From 1961 to 1971 the enrollment of non-Catholic schools rose from 0.7 million to 1.4 million students. At the same time the country was seeing decreasing numbers of students in Catholic schools with numbers dropping from 5.3 million to 4.0 million. By 1971 the number of non-Catholic private school students rose to over a quarter of the total number of private school students. This religious composition of the South and its lack of Catholics made the increase in private schools more noticeable[1].

Another factor leading to the increase of private schools in the South was that the public school districts were much larger than in other areas of the country. Throughout the rest of the country there were smaller districts which had a larger number of schools. Northern and Midwestern school districts organized along municipal jurisdictions; in the South, school districts were organized into counties. School systems organized around towns and cities, allowed for many more schools. This option allowed whites in these areas to simply move from a school that was to undergo integration to a school that was in a predominately white area. This was not possible in many areas of the South, especially the rural areas. Because the South organized its schools on a county system there were fewer schools with large student populations. If a county school was to integrate whites did not have the option of just moving to another school that was located in a white area because there simply was not another public school available.

While desegregation acted as the catalyst for the increase in private school enrollment there was another aspect that contributed. As the South began to move away from its role as a purely agricultural area it entered into an industrial economy that mirrored the rest of the country. With this increase in economic development came a rise in the middle class of the region. With this extra income the middle class had more money to spend on items that were earlier unattainable. It was the combination of the Civil Rights movement’s desegregation of schools, coupled with the increase in income that allowed the large white middle class to enter their children into private schools. Before only the wealthy could afford to send their children to private institutions, but thanks to their extra income the middle class could now do the same[2].

The combination of few private schools in the South, few alternative public schools, and the increase in Southerner’s income led to the educational phenomenon of the segregation academies. The segregation academy was an institution of the South from the 1960’s to the late 1970’s. The segregation academy refers to the private schools founded in the south immediately during and following the announcement of public school desegregation. Most of the segregation academies were formed in predominately white areas and were not meant to accommodate more than just a handful of students. The example of the Smallville Academy in Smallville, Louisiana represents the steps that were taken to create the typical segregation academy and the materials given by the community. After a Federal court ordered the Smallville public schools to integrate grades one through four a meeting was held by a group of parents in opposition to the decision. At the meeting it was decided that the parents would rather hire private teachers than have their children “go to school with the niggers,” as a result fifty to sixty white children were soon enrolled in the Smallville Academy. The school held classes in the town’s sparsely outfitted lodge hall for the first year. A segregation academy in Americus, Georgia operating in the local Baptist Church was described as having “dim cramped corridors, empty RC Cola crates stacked in corners and a vague sour rankness” this depiction is typical of what the early academies were like. It was soon after in Smallville that the Courts called for a full integration of all the public schools and it was at this time that it was decided to construct an actual school for the Academy to operate. A recently retired public school principle donated land for the construction of the school and agreed to become principal of the new academy. Labor and materials were donated by local businessmen allowing for much lower construction costs. The desks in the school were “donated” by a public school after a school board member called the school and alerted the Smallville Academy that there were some materials that were being thrown away that they could probably use. The library of the Smallville Academy was also donated by the public school. The text books for the students came from the state government and security was provided by two deputies who were paid by the local government. The teachers of the academy came from the local public school where they had worked long enough to earn pensions from the school system allowing them to receive a lower amount of pay. It was more than just salary that was important to the teachers, as one allegedly made the statement “I ain’t going to teach no niggers,” perhaps proving that it was not just racist parents that allowed for the creation of these academies. This description serves as an example of what the typical Southern segregation academy was like during the period[3].

Just like Smallville, Atlanta and its surrounding area’s schools were undergoing integration and the influx of private education followed. Atlanta’s integration of its public schools was that of the first southern city to do so without violence. However, the lack of violence did not mean that whites accepted integration and began sending their children to public school. Georgia’s private school enrollment increased from 30,000 in 1969 to 50,000 in 1970 and even further to 58,000 in 1971. These numbers reflect all previously established private schools and the recently created segregation academies. A State senate subcommittee reported that there were between 120 and 150 private schools in Georgia in 1971, but according to the State Department of Education the number was unofficially closer to 224 schools. While there were officially 120 to 150 private schools the subcommittee found that only forty-five met or exceeded the standards set for public schools. That seventy-five to 105 private schools operated despite failing to achieve the accepted standards of public education proved that there is a direct correlation between the desegregation of public schools and the increase in private school populations. This fact also proves that white parents of the private school students were not concerned with quality education, but rather just avoidance of integrated education[4].

One of the many metro Atlanta private schools that experienced an influx of students was Woodward Academy in College Park. Woodward was founded in 1900 as Georgia Military Academy, an all-male boarding school. As time went on the military aspect of the Academy began to fall from favor as other private schools opened around Atlanta and students began to favor a non-military education. By 1966 GMA changed its name to the present name of Woodward Academy, and along with changing the name of the school the curriculum changed and the military portion of the school was dropped.

With the integration of Atlanta’s public schools, Woodward saw an increase in its own student body. Rusty Zaring, a former student and current faculty member/school historian, remembered when the public schools in his neighborhood in South Atlanta integrated and as a result a large number of white residents sent their children to Woodward. Zaring cited Woodward’s relatively low tuition and its location as the major draws for his transfer. Zaring also recalled the large amount of Latin American and Iranian boarding students that attended Woodward at the same time as he, before the school’s official open door policy[5].

In 1964 Woodward became a co-ed institution. Not long after, the Governing board decided in light of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to adopt an open admissions policy. It was at the combined meeting of the Executive and Finance Committees of the Governing Board on September 6, 1968 that the decision to administer “a non-discriminatory admissions policy commencing with the 1969-70 school year” was made. The decision was carried by a unanimous vote of the board. One of the requests of the board was that the school’s President, William R. Brewster Jr. send a letter to all student’s parents explaining the board’s decision:

“[The Board] carefully considered the possibility of the school losing its favored tax position by continuing its present policy; of the school becoming a target for picketing and for adverse publicity because it is the only large independent school in the Metropolitan Atlanta which had not already announced an open admissions policy; of the school being able to maintain financial support from charitable foundations with its present policy; and of the school not qualifying for future federal funds and low interest loans which could influence future tuition changes.[6]”

With the board’s decision, the first black students were admitted to Woodward in 1972. Robert Ricks began first grade at the same time his sister Melodie Ricks and Darlene Douglas started the eleventh grade. Rusty Zaring remembered his initial reaction to one of the black students, Melodie Ricks, as noticing she was from his neighborhood. Zaring does not recall any ill speech about the new students by any of the faculty or students. He reasons that the integration of black students resulted in little attention in that the Academy had been boarding international students ever since a large group of Cuban students enrolled in the 1930’s. The following year of 1973 saw an increase in the number of black students to eight students in first, second, eighth, ninth, eleventh and Woodward graduated its first black seniors. The next year saw an increase to fifteen students and its first black board member William W. Allison, a vice president of Coca-Cola. In 1975, the number of black students increased to twenty-eight signaling an exponential increase in the number of black students at a time when the largest class size was 469 students[7].

A year before Woodward saw its first black student, the Federal government decided it had seen enough of the south’s segregation academies. On July 10, 1971 the IRS made the announcement that any private school that did not adopt a non-discriminatory admissions policy would no longer receive tax-exempt status. The IRS required that the school’s board of directors adopt an open admissions policy and publish its plan to do so in the local newspaper. Then a copy of the clipping had to be mailed to the IRS along with and application for tax free status. Even though the new requirement from the IRS was weakly enforced it marked the changing time for private schools. As more segregation academies saw rising operation costs they were forced to raise tuition. With the rise in tuition many of the middle class families that were able to pay tuition before were now finding themselves choosing between “private schools and a new car, and [their] children opted for the new car,” this quote signifies the decreasing importance of segregated education to the South’s white parents. By 1972 more than 5,000 students had left private academies and many of the smaller schools were struggling financially. Several schools around the state had fewer than twenty students in their academies[8].

The segregation academies not only were facing economic issues but certain schools also faced expulsion from groups such as the Georgia Association of Independent Schools (GAIS). One particular instance involved the expulsion of six private schools from the GAIS due to their segregationist ideals. The six schools were only facing a one-year probation. However, several members of the GAIS, including William Pressly the president of The Westminster School, testified in 1970 before the Committee on Equal Educational Opportunity about the “distinctions between established, integrated independent schools, and those purportedly established for purposes of segregation”, and William Brewster, Woodward Academy’s president argued for the expulsion of the six schools. Brewster acknowledged the committee’s initial decision to put the schools on probation as compassionate, but he argued that it would ultimately be doing the GAIS a disservice. Brewster’s outspoken disapproval of the segregation academies is representative of Woodward’s desire to include all races of students and establish equality[9].

While exploring the history of Woodward Academy’s desegregation, I was expecting to find a hard fought battle to integrate and even then only token integration. In looking for information on the topic of desegregation of private schools it seemed that all information circulated around the segregation academy. It was difficult and frustrating trying to determine the cause of Woodward’s decision to integrate. With the idea that Woodward did not integrate willingly it was hard to not think that there was a catch to its integration. However as the research continued it became clearer that maybe Woodward was an exception to the supposed rule of hard fought integration. With the realization that desegregation was not as simple as once believed the question arose to what was typical of the period. The answer to this question came with the segregation academy. Through research on the topic it was found that the segregation academy existed across the country and especially in the South. From its creation in the community the segregation academy played an important role in eventually causing its own demise. With its reliance on the middle class the segregation academy hurt itself in the end as the students’ parents began to question whether it was really worth paying to keep their children away from blacks. That being said about the segregation academy more pride is given to those academies that did integrate, like Woodward. As a former student of Woodward my expectations of the events of the period were changed causing me to understand that sometimes there is no smoking gun.

Links of interest

-History of Georgia's school system

-Timeline of Southern desegregation

-Historical tour of Woodward Academy