Wilkinson County Christian Academy


Wilkinson County Christian Academy is a private PK3-12 Christian school in Wilkinson County, Mississippi, near Woodville. It was established in 1969 as a segregation academy.

History

In a 1970 article on the rise of segregation academies, the journalist Jim Wooten described the white parent's enrollment of their children in Wilkinson County Christian Academy as "the mode of adjustment" to the racial desegregation of public schools. In a later article, a parent told Wooten that "my kids got to go to school," but that they were attending Wilkinson Christian since "They can't go to school with the coloreds.".
After a 1973 visit to the school, the Los Angeles Times writer Jack Nelson described the school as "prefabricated metal complex that looks like a garment factory."
In 1982, Wilkinson Academy teacher Bernard Waites told the Clarion-Ledger that he withdrew his daughter from public schools and sent her to Wilkinson Academy because "there was no way I was going to send her out to a school with 2,700 black kids." Waites, who resigned as Wilkinson County School District superintendent to join the Academy, also said that he had difficulty accepting blacks socially and that he "didn't feel so good walking the halls of the black public schools."

Athletics

The school won the 1988 and 2015 Mississippi Association of Independent Schools class A-AA football championships.

Alumni