Segregation academies

Segregation academies (also called seg academies) are private schools in the United States that functioned during the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s as a way for white parents to avoid the desegregation of public schools as a result of the U.S. Supreme Court ruling Brown v. Board of Education. Because Brown did not apply to private schools, the creation of segregation academies was a way to keep segregation intact. While these schools were mainly found in the Southern United States, they existed nationwide. In recent years, as social patterns in United States have changed, many of these private schools began to admit minority students; others have ceased to exist. Still others in regions such as the Mississippi Delta continue to operate with few, if any, black students.
History
The first segregation academies were created in the late 1950s as a result of the U.S. Supreme Court ruling Brown v. Board of Education, which required public school boards to eliminate segregation "with all deliberate speed." Because the ruling did not apply to private schools, the creation of segregation academies was a way to keep segregation intact. Private academies operated outside the scope of the Brown v. Board of Education ruling and could therefore effectively maintain racial segregation.
While there is some debate about why whites pulled their children out of public schools (with whites insisting that "quality fueled their exodus" while blacks say "white parents refused to allow their children to be schooled alongside blacks") there is no debate that many white children were pulled out of public schools and instead educated in private schools. Across the nation it is estimated that at least half a million students were withdrawn from public schools between 1964 and 1975 to avoid mandatory desegregation.
As a result of the creation of segregation academies, a number of Southern schools were identified by name in Allen v. Wright, a lawsuit by black parents in seven U.S. states. The parents sued the Internal Revenue Service, contending that IRS guidelines for determining whether a private school was racially discriminatory were insufficient. The case was decided in 1984 by the U.S. Supreme Court, which ruled that citizens do not have standing to sue a federal government agency based on the influence that the agency's determinations might have on third parties (such as private schools). The judges also noted the parents were in the posture of disappointed observers of the governmental process, that although the complaint asserted that "there are more than 3,500 racially segregated private academies operating in the country having a total enrollment of more than 750,000 children" (J.A. 24), it cited by name only 19 "representative" private schools, and that the parents did not allege that they or their children had applied to, been discouraged from applying to, or been denied admission to any private school or schools. individual state tuition grants to parents allowed them to fund the segregation academies. It was not until 1964 that the U.S. Supreme Court outlawed Virginia's tuition grants to private education where the public schools had been closed, such as in Prince Edward County. This decision was effectively the end of the Massive Resistance movement within state governments, and it dealt the segregation academies a fatal blow. Other later rulings put their tax exemption status in jeopardy if they practiced racial discrimination.
In 1986, Prince Edward Academy accepted black students. Today it is known as the Fuqua School. All of the other segregation academies either closed or adopted non-racial discrimination policies. One, Huguenot Academy, merged with Blessed Sacrament High School, a nearby Catholic High School, to become Blessed Sacrament-Huguenot.

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