Education segregation in the Mississippi Delta

In 1960, the average income of African Americans in Sunflower County was lower than the federal poverty line.

[2] Farm mechanization in the first half of the twentieth century, among other things, had made employment prospects bad in the region.

As a result, from 1940 to 1970, there was net outward migration to northern and western inner cities and suburbs and from 1970 to present, urban centers in the South outside of Mississippi.

Nevertheless, Robert B. Patterson of Sunflower County[4] began to organize the Citizens' Councils that sponsored segregation academies in Mississippi.

Tradition played a part; many black children had been employed in agriculture, including the October–November cotton harvest season.

Hugh White visited Indianola in 1953, he stated that finding enough money to support the two separate school systems was the biggest financial problem of his administration.

The Virginia General Assembly, by contrast, implemented the Stanley Plan in 1956 and laws protecting segregation in 1958.

By then Virginia's tuition grant program had been called illegal and tax-exempted status for segregated schools would soon follow.

In 1969, a federal court found Mississippi's tuition grants supporting private schools—segregation academies for the most part—illegal in Coffey v. State Educational Finance Commission.

Later in 1969, U.S. v. Indianola Municipal Separate School District described Mississippi's freedom of choice plan as "constitutionally defective".

The Sunflower County School District was complying with the big federal rules, but making up its own small ones.

Demographic data for Bayou Academy shows that of the 355 students who attended in the 2015–2016 school year, 4 were black (1%).