Mississippi
Mississippi School for the Negro Blind (Jackson)
- Established 1951
- Integrated with the Mississippi School for the Blind, 1974
The state of Mississippi did not fully support a school for African-American children who were blind until 1951, despite several efforts. In 1929, the Mississippi Commission for the Blind established a temporary school for children at the Piney Woods Country Life School, a private boarding school for African-Americans. The school received some state funds initially, though this ended in 1932 as the state dealt with economic woes of the Great Depression. In the 1940s, as the economy began to improve, Piney Woods again received some money for its program.
Helen Keller was particular critical of Mississippi in a speech she gave at the all-white Mississippi School for the Blind in 1945:
The colored are also blind, and are denied a school of their own in this state; this is still a Democracy, and the colored blind need help as much as the white.1
After more than thirty years of effort, the state finally established the Mississippi School for the Negro Blind in Jackson, where a new school for the white blind had been built, although on the other side of town. The students from Piney Woods transferred there in 1951, and the instructor at the Piney Woods School, Martha Foxx, became the principal.
Mississippi continued segregation and the disfranchisement of most African Americans thought the 1950s and 1960s, regardless of the 1954 Brown v Board of Education decision and the Civil Rights Act of 1965. Jackson was a center of civil rights activities. The city witnessed riots and bombings, protests by the Freedom Riders, the murder of black activist Medgar Evans, attempted murder of black activist James Meredith, and more, and was the only U.S. city to be placed under martial law by the army in the twentieth century. It is then perhaps remarkable that the two schools for the blind did integrate peacefully in 1974. At that time, elementary students were moved to the former white school on Eastover Road, and older students were moved to the former black school. In 1980, all students were moved to the Eastover campus.2
- Quoted by Alferdteen Harrison and Roland Freeman, Piney Woods School: An Oral History, 2006, p. 84.
- 2010-2011 Staff Policy and Procedures Manual, Mississippi School for the Blind.