Indianola Academy

The Indianola Academy
Address
Dorsett Drive Indianola, Mississippi United States
Information
Type	Private School (Non-Sectarian)
Motto	Integrity and Achievement
Established	1965
Headmaster	Sammy Henderson
Grades	pre-kindergarten - 12
Enrollment	500 (approximately)
Color(s)	Blue, White, and Black
Mascot	The Running Colonel
Affiliation	Mississippi Private School Association
Website	http://www.iaonline.org

The Indianola Academy is a K-12 private school in Indianola, Mississippi. Indianola Academy comprises an elementary school, a middle school, and a college preparatory high school. Indianola Academy is a 501-C3 nonprofit institution. It originated as a segregation academy. As of 2012 most white teenagers in Indianola attend Indianola Academy instead of the public high schools.

In the post Brown v. Board of Education era, white Americans in the Indianola area planned to establish a segregation academy. Planning for the school began in 1964 with funding from the White Citizens Council. Classes started in 1965 with four sections in grades 1 and 2, with a total of 70 students. For the 1966-1967 and the 1967-1968 school years, classes were held at the First Baptist Church. In the fall of 1967 the school had nine grades, with a total of 241 students. The school conducted the 1968-1969 school year in a new building. During that year it served grades 1-10 and had 280 students.

In April 1969 the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit ruled that the desegregation plan adopted by the Indianola Municipal Separate School District was constitutionally defective. Isabel Lee, then the sole African-American on the Indianola School District board, recalled that no white students showed up at Gentry High School on the following Monday. Once the U.S. v. Indianola Municipal School District court case ruling occurred on a Friday, the White townspeople almost immediately prepared to send their children to Indianola Academy, with classes beginning on a Monday. The school was not directly operated by a White citizens' council. J. Todd Moye, author of Let the People Decide: Black Freedom and White Resistance Movements in Sunflower County, Mississippi, 1945-1986, said that the school's "link to council ideology was direct." Moye said "Indianola Academy's relatively quick organization and construction could only have been the result of massive organization on the part of white segregationists."

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