These Researchers Study the Legacy of the Segregation Academies They Grew Up Around

[Nevilledog]

https://www.propublica.org/article/alabama-researchers-segregation-academies-school-vouchers

One young researcher from Alabama is unearthing the origin stories of schools known as “segregation academies” to understand how that history fosters racial divisions today.

Another is measuring how much these private schools — which opened across the Deep South to facilitate white flight after the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education ruling — continue to drain public school enrollment.

And a third is examining how these academies, operating in a “landscape marred by historical racial tensions,” receive public money through Alabama’s voucher-style private school tuition grants.

All three researchers are white women raised in Alabama, close in age, who grew up near these academies. The women — one recently received a doctorate and the other two are working on theirs — approach their research from the varied disciplines of economics, education and history. Their inquiries are probing the very schools some of their family and friends attended.

*snip*

[Hekate]

2. KnR. These Researchers Study the Legacy of the Segregation Academies They Grew Up Around

[Iris]

3. Two things stick out to me -

"Graves also realized how few people outside of the South knew about segregation academies. Economics literature rarely mentioned them at all."

I moved to the south in middle school. This was just beginning to take off when we arrived. It was an open secret and also was ingrained in the community in a way that made it seem "normal."

I remember one school was considered the "farm boys school" and started out as a butler building.

And then of course this, which is why see history and other liberal studies courses being removed from h.s. and college curricula,

“ 'History is very important in understanding how we’ve gotten to where we are today, especially when you look at public schools in rural communities in Alabama,' Sheffield said. 'Many of these schools are mostly Black, underfunded and struggling. 'I want people to understand how it got that way, and the answer usually is segregation academies.' "

[Solly Mack]

4. K&R