Saints Academy was a private 1-12 school in Lexington, Mississippi, the county seat of Holmes County, Mississippi. Founded by the Church of God in Christ in 1918 as the Saints Industrial and Literary School, a school for black children in a segregated environment, it gradually expanded. The school added grades until it provided classes through high school. It had a national reputation for its strong academics and attracted students from outside the region. It was later expanded to include a junior college, and was known, variously, as Saints Junior College and Academy and Saints College. It closed in the late 1970s, unable to operate with a declining black population in the area and competition with publicly funded schools.
History
Saints Industrial and Literary School was founded in 1918 as a ministry of St. Paul's Church of God in Christ. It was an all-black institution through at least the 1967-1968 school year. Under the direction of Arenia Mallory, president of the school from 1926 to 1977, the school was renamed as Saints Academy. She expanded its program through high school and created a high-quality, private alternative to the segregated public schools for black children in Holmes County. She stressed an academic education, along with music and arts. Parents from a wide area sent their children to Saints Academy, including families who had moved to northern cities such as St. Louis, Missouri. After her retirement and death, followers tried to keep the school going, but population in the Delta had declined as many families moved north or to large cities. They were unable to succeed After federal courts ordered Mississippi schools to desegregate in the mid-1960s, local white parents founded Central Holmes Academy, an all-white segregation academy founded in 1967. It is located a mile from the Saints campus. Saints Academy was also notable for its inclusion in a landmark federal case, Coffey v. State Educational Finance Commission that challenged the state of Mississippi's tuition grant program for segregated schools. All of the other named schools were white-only. Saints was the only private school to receive state aid for black children. Those grants covered 80% of Saint's tuition cost in the 1967-1968 school year. Coffey established the standards by which the Internal Revenue Service would identify segregation academies. In the course of the case, twenty-four schools were deposed and categorized according to the following criteria:
The private school began operation the same year public schools in county were desegregated.
