Separate But Equal?: African American Schools in Mississippi

Mississippi’s African American school buildings still occupy the center of their communities, recalling the struggles of segregation but also the attempts to overcome it. African American attempts to gain parity with white schools in the 1920s with assistance from the Julius Rosenwald Fund gave way to stagnation during the Great Depression, when many consolidated white schools were built with federal grants. By the 1950s, threats from the Civil Rights movement forced the Mississippi Legislature to fund a massive “Equalization Program” that built sprawling consolidated campuses in every county in the state in an effort to create a segregated system that was truly “separate but equal.”

Speakers Expertise:

Jennifer Baughn has been the chief architectural historian at the Mississippi Department of Archives and History since 2007. She is the author of numerous articles on the state’s historic buildings including the book Buildings of Mississippi published in 2021. Her specialties include the architecture of Mississippi, historic school architecture, architectural documentation, archival research, and historical writing.