Jackson Academy is an independent, co-educational school Jackson, Mississippi founded in 1959 as a segregation academy. Its founder, Loyal M. Bearss, claimed he established the school to teach accelerated reading and spelling in early grades using a phonics program he developed. The school enrolls nearly 1250 students in grades K3 through 12 and is the largest independent school in Mississippi
History
In December 2006, Pat Taylor was named headmaster. A 2008 Clarion-Ledger article reported the Jackson Academy board was aware that LaSalle University, where Taylor had obtained his doctoral degree, was a diploma mill, but decided to hire Taylor on the basis of his other accomplishments. In 2014, the school was selected as an Apple Distinguished School.
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 a court ordered Jackson public schools to desegregate. Later in 1970, Jackson Academy lost its tax exempt status after the school declined to provide the IRS with documentation that the school had race blind admissions policy. 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 was forced to vacate the churches after a civil rights attorney filed a lawsuit to force the IRS to remove 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 Glenn Cain explained "People of like kind educate better together." In 1986, the school enrolled its first two Black students. Jackson Academy was the first segregation academy in the Jackson area to enroll black students. 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 1989, a retired NFL player, Glenn Collins, was the color commentator for Jackson Academy football broadcasts. Collins, who is black, was asked by Jackson Academy athletic director Bobby West not to attend a game at East Holmes Academy because the other school did not want any blacks to attend.
