Mississippi has the oldest state-wide system of public 2-year colleges in the USA. The story of the creation of the community college system in Mississippi is both complex and powerful. Founded upon the combination of the needs of rural students, the challenge of poor transportation, and a serendipitous conference side-trip, the college system has…

Students learn about the history of the civil rights movement and are empowered to create positive change in their communities, states this author, Susan M. Glisson, Executive Director of the William Winter Institute for Racial Reconciliation. She describes the efforts to build racial understanding among young high school students through the…

Vickie Malone's students see integration when they gather in her classroom at McComb (Mississippi) High School. Black and white youngsters talk and study with peers they've known since elementary school. She doesn't want them to learn history; she wants them to do history. She accomplishes that goal by prodding, poking and challenging her students…

The purpose of this historical case study dissertation is to discover the story of Dr. Katharine Rea in her role as dean of women and later faculty member in the higher education and student personnel program at the University of Mississippi. As the dean of women in the 1960s Rea was responsible for the well-being and quality of the educational…

In 1955, journalist William Bradford Huie interviewed Emmett Till's killers and published their confession in "Look" magazine. Titled "The Shocking Story of Approved Murder in Mississippi," Huie's tale dominated the remembrance of Emmett Till for nearly fifty years. This essay argues that the power of the "Shocking…

When Morris Dees was a young man in Alabama, the law said that black people couldn't drink from the same water fountain as white people, or sit at the same lunch counter. Back then, the government created and sanctioned divisions between human beings. The Civil Rights Movement changed all of that, of course, and ended state-mandated apartheid in…

This collection of case studies on school desegregation in nine American communities (Kalamazoo, Michigan; Newark, Delaware; Riverside and Los Angeles, California; Savannah, Georgia; River City and Bayon County, Mississippi; Chicago, Illinois; and, Hempstead, New York.) summarizes and interprets the struggles to solve this domestic social problem.…

For most of the college students who went south to change the race relations of Mississippi and the nation during the "Freedom Summer" of 1964, the most radical effort of the civil rights movement, lower expectations have replaced the boundless hopes of the 1960s, but the values and the commitment remain. (RM)

The geography of schools in Mississippi have undergone many phases of change during the past three decades. Racial segregation in schools and patterns of resistance to change have been influenced signigicantly by residential segregation at the local level and by the racial composition of the population at broader scales. (RJ)

This is a report of school desegregation in Greenville, Mississippi. In 1964, five years before ordered to do so by a federal judge, Greenville initiated its own plan for majority-to-minority crossover of students on a "freedom of choice" basis. The school board also initiated a voluntary teacher transfer program that met with…

Describes the work of Friends of the Children of Mississippi, a Head Start program which began in the late 1960s and for which the author was hired to develop Black history materials for teacher training. Presents excerpts from the autobiographies of several Black women trainees in the program. (GC)

Examines the foundation of private segregationist academies across Mississippi counties following court-ordered desegregation, 1969-71. Argues that the establishment of academies was a countermovement strategy emerging from the prior history of organized white resistance to the civil rights movement, and was a response to the social-movement…

This study surveyed the attitudes of public policy makers in higher education from Arkansas, Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi and Tennessee to find areas for developing fundamental policies for desegregation. A total of 71 surveys were mailed to state higher education executive officers (SHEEOs), legislative chairs of education or of higher…

Racial attitudes were an issue in the 1972 Mississippi gubernatorial campaign between Charles Evers and William Waller. This conclusion is supported by test evidence consisting of content analysis of candidate speeches, news coverage of speeches in the form of direct quotations, printed issue position papers, and printed campaign advertising. A…