Segregation academy
The laws that permitted their racially-discriminatory operation, including government subsidies and tax exemption, were invalidated by U.S. Supreme Court decisions.
Most of these schools remain overwhelmingly white institutions, both because of their founding ethos and because tuition fees are a barrier to entry.
At the time, segregation under Jim Crow laws was still widely enforced in the South, where most adult blacks were still disfranchised and excluded from politics.
[6][7] The Brown ruling did not apply to private schools,[8] so founding new academies gave white parents a way to continue to educate their children separately from blacks.
"What is notable is that taxpayer dollars financed these all-white schools at the cost of simultaneously creating poorly funded all-black public-school systems in the South.
[12] The report observed that while individual Protestant churches were often deeply involved in the establishment of segregation academies, Catholic dioceses often indicated that their schools were not meant to be havens from desegregation, which was buttressed by the reputation Catholic schools had in offering free or reduced tuition to children of color in order to afford them a parochial education.
[15] Scholars estimate that, across the nation, at least half a million white students were withdrawn from public schools between 1964 and 1975 to avoid mandatory desegregation.
[17][18] In 1969, parents of Mississippi black children brought suit to revoke tax-exemption status for non-profit segregation academies (Green v.
Meanwhile, on July 10, 1970, the Internal Revenue Service announced it could "no longer legally justify allowing tax-exempt status to private schools which practice racial discrimination.
In the 1980s, Southern Republican Members of Congress such as Trent Lott and Strom Thurmond began to pressure the Reagan administration to halt revocation of tax-exempt status from segregation academies.
In 1982, during congressional debate on the Voting Rights Act Amendments of 1982, the administration considered support for such a policy, leading to what one of its aides called "our worst public-relations and political disaster yet.
He worked to unite other white Virginia politicians and leaders in taking action to prevent school desegregation after the Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court ruling in 1954.
In its September/October 1956 special session, the Virginia General Assembly passed a series of laws known as the Stanley Plan to implement massive resistance.
In January, Virginia's voters had approved an amendment to the state constitution to allow tuition grants to parents enrolling their children in private schools.
In practice, this meant state support of newly established all-white private schools which became known as "segregation academies".
[30] Since new segregation academy facilities often failed to meet construction, health and safety standards for public schools, these were also loosened.
[32] Segregation academies in Warren and Prince Edward Counties and the City of Norfolk are discussed below, as examples of why even in the fall of 1963, only 3,700 black pupils or 1.6% attended school with whites.
The newly founded private Prince Edward Academy operated as the de facto school system for white students.
The Norfolk Division of the College of William & Mary (now Old Dominion University) provided classes for some high school students.
The Defenders of State Sovereignty and Individual Liberties founded the Tidewater Educational Foundation to create a private school for white students in Norfolk.
[citation needed] Although on January 19, 1959, the Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals struck down the new Virginia law that closed schools before integration, as contrary to a public schooling provision in the state constitution (and a three-judge federal panel struck down other provisions of the Stanley Plan on the same day, (the Virginia state holiday honoring Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson),[34] individual state tuition grants to parents continued, allowing them to patronize segregation academies.
[35] This decision finally effectively ended massive resistance within state governments, and dealt some segregation academies a fatal blow.
[38] In 2016 Nansemond Suffolk Academy opened a second campus, that includes an additional 22,000 square foot building for students in pre-kindergarten through grade 3.
In some cases their association with "old money" and past discrimination still cause some tension in the community, especially among non-whites and students of the local public schools.
[41] The abandonment of public schools by most whites in Virginia's rural counties that lie within the Black Belt and white flight from inner cities to suburbs after the failure of "Massive Resistance" has ultimately led to increasingly racially and economically isolated public schools in Virginia.
Following the Brown v. Board of Education decision in 1954, Governor William B. Umstead established a committee to consider the effects of complying the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling.
The bi-racial committee made up of blacks and whites reported to the General Assembly that desegregation "throughout the state cannot be accomplished and should not be attempted."
Luther Hodges became governor in 1955, and although opposed to integration, he formed a new committee to study the issue, because the Court had ruled that school desegregation must happen "with all deliberate speed."
[36] The IRS must deny exemption to schools: which have been determined in adversary or administrative proceedings to be racially discriminatory; or were established or expanded at or about the time the public school districts in which they are located or which they serve were desegregating, and which cannot demonstrate that they do not racially discriminate in admissions, employment, scholarships, loan programs, athletics, and extracurricular programs.
