East Side High School (Mississippi)

East Side High School is a senior high school in Cleveland, Mississippi, within the Mississippi Delta region. It is a part of the Cleveland School District.

As of 2016^[update] it is an all-black high school. The Trojans are its athletic mascot.

It opened as a segregated black school, Cleveland Colored Consolidated High School.

For a long period B. L. Bell, known as "Professor Bell," served as the principal of the colored school. He became an informant, for the Mississippi Sovereignty Commission, a pro-segregation state agency of Mississippi, during the 1954-1968 African-American Civil Rights Movement. Bell received $100 on a monthly basis to establish a network of African-American informers by 1959, as that year Bell had proposed establishing a spy network to Governor of Mississippi James P. Coleman. Bell also recorded NAACP meetings in his area, sending the information to the commission. Bell denied being paid by the commission when he was openly accused of disloyalty in NAACP meetings. Charles C. Bolton, author of The Hardest Deal of All: The Battle Over School Integration in Mississippi, 1870-1980, wrote that the suspicion against him made Bell an ineffective informer. B. L. Bell, Jr., the man's son, stated in a 1996 interview that his father believed black teachers and students were not "qualified enough" for white schools, and this is why he believed his father would cooperate with the commission.

From 1988 to 1997 Leroy Byars served as the principal. He was the American football coach previously, from 1972 to 1987. The American football field at East Side High was named after him.

The Cleveland School District made several failed attempts to encourage white students to enroll at East Side High. In the 1990s the Cleveland School District established magnet programs to East Side High. At another point it established a "Freedom of Choice" program to allow any student in the school district to attend a different school than where he/she is zoned. In 2012 the school district opened an International Baccalaureate at East Side High. Despite these efforts East Side High remained almost all black.

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