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| "Mississippi is failing its most vulnerable children," the Southern Poverty Law Center states in its lawsuit. Image: Shutterstock |
The complaint hinges on an 1870 law that was made as a condition of Mississippi’s readmission into the Union after the Civil War. That law requires the state to provide a “uniform system of free public schools” for all children.
“From 1890 until the present day, Mississippi repeatedly has amended its education claws and has used those amendments to systematically and deliberately deprive African-Americans of the education rights guaranteed to all Mississippi schoolchildren by the 1868 Constitution,” the lawsuit states.
“Mississippi is failing its most vulnerable children—those living in the shadow of a Jim Crow system that deliberately undermined education rights in the name of white supremacy,” said SPLC Senior Staff Attorney Will Bardwell. “The state’s education system is shamefully inequitable and anything but uniform.”
“If you’re a kid in Mississippi, your chances of getting a good education depend largely on whether your school is mostly white or mostly black,” Bardwell told the Washington Post.
The suit names numerous state officials as defendants, including Governor Phil Bryant, Lieutenant Governor Tate Reeves, House Speaker Philip Gunn, and Secretary of State Delbert Hosemann. It also names state school Superintendent Carey Wright and the nine appointed members of the state Board of Education.
“This is merely another attempt by the Southern Poverty Law Center to fundraise on the backs of Mississippi taxpayers,” Governor Bryant said in a statement. “While the SPLC clings to its misguided and cynical views, we will continue to shape Mississippi’s system of public education into the best and most innovative in America.”
Bryant also expressed his upset at the fact that SPLC is trying to “protect the status quo” by challenging the state’s efforts to direct public funds to charter schools that would allegedly provide more choices to minority students.
However, the SPLC states, 13 of the 19 Mississippi school districts rated “F” by the Mississippi Department of Education have a student body that is more than 95 percent black. The other six have African-American populations ranging from 81 to 91 percent. The five highest-performing schools in the state are predominantly white.
The four plaintiffs represented by the SPLC are black parents whose children attend overwhelmingly black elementary schools in Jackson and Yazoo City, both of which have ratings of “D.” The schools have inexperienced teachers, the facilities are in poor condition, and there aren’t enough textbooks to go around. The suit also states that at each school, only about 10 percent of children are proficient in reading and about 4 percent are proficient in math.
On the other hand, majority-white schools with an “A” rating have plenty of extracurricular activities, modern technology, experienced teachers, and the majority of students are proficient readers.
“I’m filing this lawsuit because the state has an obligation to make the schools that black kids attend equal to the school that white kids attend,” said plaintiff Indigo Williams, whose son attends first grade at Raines Elementary School in West Jackson. Plaintiff Precious Hughes, who also has a child at Raines, says the school is “old, dark and gloomy—like a jail.”
“These children deserve the same strong start as any other students in their state and we are committed to seeing that they get it,” said Brad Elias, an attorney with O’Melveny & Myers LLP, a national law firm that is handling the case pro bono.
Rita and Bill Bender of the Skellenger Bender law firm in Seattle are serving as co-counsel.
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