When the federal government enforced school integration, many white parents sought ways to keep their children from attending integrated schools. Starkville Academy was founded in 1969 to provide white children a segregated education. In 1970, the Oktibbeha Educational Foundation's tax exempt status was revoked after it declined to provide the IRS with documentation that the school had a racially nondiscriminatory admissions policy. In 1977, Starkville Academy was among a group of all-white private schools sued by parents of black children enrolled in Humphreys County public schools in the case Bishop v. Starkville Academy. The parents asked for an injunction blocking payments under a Mississippi program that provided tuition grants for intellectually disabled students to attend private schools. A three-judge panel from the United States District Court for the Northern District of Mississippi unanimously ruled that, since the program allowed the grants to be used at schools with racially restrictive admissions policies, such as Starkville Academy, the program violated the Equal Protection Clause of the United States constitution. In 1984, the NAACP filed a lawsuit alleging that the city of Starkville had illegally provided free water and electricity to the school. The NAACP claimed that the free utility service was unconstitutional aid to a school that practiced racial discrimination. In 1993, the NAACP asked Starkville School District to follow the precedent set in Cook v. Hudsonand barpublic school teachers from sending their own children to Starkville Academy and other racially discriminatory private schools. At the time, the head of Starkville Academy said no blacks had ever applied or enrolled. In 1999Oktibbeha County school board member Allen McBroom did not seek reelection so he could enroll his son in Starkville Academy. Contrary to predictions, the school experienced an outflow of students when the predominantly white Starkville School district merged with the predominantly black Oktibbeha County School district to form the Starkville Oktibbeha Consolidated School District in 2015.
Demographics
As of 2012, the student population was 96% white, 2% Asian, 1% Hispanic and 1% black. In the 2015–16 school year, eight of 615 students were black.
