Jackson Academy is a private school in Jackson, Mississippi founded by Loyal M. Bearrs in 1959. Bearrs claimed he established the school to teach using an accelerated phonics program he developed, but the school remained completely racially segregated until 1986, even forgoing tax exemption in 1970 to avoid having to accept Black students.
Today, the school enrolls nearly 1200 students in grades K3 through 12, making it one of the largest independent schools in Mississippi.
History
In 1959, Loyal Bearss and ten families founded Jackson Academy, with the mission to teach children reading through the use of Bearss' phonics method, Beginning Phonics, developed while Bearss was working as a director of the speech and hearing clinic at University of Southern Mississippi, and as a faculty member at Millsaps College.
By November 1960, JA was a private school corporation, jointly owned by the parents of its 49 students, and supervised by a board of directors elected from those parents. The school served kindergarten (then called primer) and first through fifth grade.
In 2008, JA started working towards becoming an Apple one-to-one environment. In 2014, the school was selected as an Apple Distinguished School, and maintains a 100% Apple Teacher certification, while providing all students in K5 through 12th grade with Apple devices for digital learning.
The academy's board of trustees established the James Peter Jernberg, Jr. Scholars program in 2014. The scholarship provides up to full tuition and fees for several students a year, and is named for President Emeritus Peter Jernberg, who led the school from 1988 to 2014.
Racial segregation
For the 1965–1966 school year, 41% of Jackson Academy's tuition revenue came from grants provided by the state of Mississippi. In 1969, in Coffey v. State Educational Finance Commission, the United States District Court for the Southern District of Mississippi ruled that, since, in the court's opinion, Jackson Academy would refuse to admit qualified Black students, the tuition grant program violated the equal protection clause of the fourteenth amendment.
Jackson Academy's enrollment tripled in 1970 when the Supreme Court, in Alexander v. Holmes County Board of Education, ordered Jackson public schools to desegregate. Because the school did not have a race blind admissions policy, the IRS revoked their tax exempt status.
In 1973, the FCC was asked to revoke WLBT's broadcasting license because the station's largest shareholder, William Mounger, also served as a Jackson Academy Vice President. The FCC filing stated that, since Mounger was affiliated with an institution that practiced racial segregation, he was not fit to hold a broadcasting license. In 1974, the FCC rejected the complaint as untimely since the evidence of Mounger's association with the school and the school's discriminatory practices was available from at least 1969.
In April 1979, Jackson Academy's campus was damaged in the Jackson Easter flood. The school resumed classes in temporary facilities provided by local churches. Jackson Academy vacated the churches after a civil rights attorney filed a lawsuit to revoke the churches' tax-exempt status since the churches were aiding a racially segregated school. The attorney who filed the IRS complaint, Frank Parker, recalled that he received so many threats of violence that he had to leave Mississippi for several weeks.
As of 1982, no African-Americans had ever applied to or attended Jackson Academy. The headmaster at the time, Glenn Cain, explained "People of like kind educate better together."
In 1986 Jackson Academy became the first segregation academy in the Jackson area to enroll black students. Cain was succeeded by Jernberg as headmaster in 1988.
In 2001, Jackson Academy had its first black graduate.
As of 2009, the school was over 98% white, whereas Jackson city schools were 97.6% black.
In the 2017–18 school year, Jackson Academy had 1,183 students. Not including pre-K, the students were 85% white, 13.4% black, and 1% Asian, with the remaining percentage split between Hispanic students and students of two or more races.
Affiliations
Jackson Academy is accredited by Southern Association of Colleges and Schools.