Briarcrest Christian School is a
private
Private or privates may refer to:
Music
* " In Private", by Dusty Springfield from the 1990 album ''Reputation''
* Private (band), a Denmark-based band
* "Private" (Ryōko Hirosue song), from the 1999 album ''Private'', written and also recorde ...
,
coeducational
Mixed-sex education, also known as mixed-gender education, co-education, or coeducation (abbreviated to co-ed or coed), is a system of education where males and females are educated together. Whereas single-sex education was more common up to ...
,
Christian school
A Christian school is a school run on Christian principles or by a Christian organization.
The nature of Christian schools varies enormously from country to country, according to the religious, educational, and political cultures. In some count ...
in
Eads
Airbus SE (; ; ; ) is a European multinational aerospace corporation. Airbus designs, manufactures and sells civil and military aerospace products worldwide and manufactures aircraft throughout the world. The company has three divisions: '' ...
, an unincorporated area of
Shelby County, Tennessee
Shelby County is the westernmost county in the U.S. state of Tennessee. As of the 2020 census, the population was 929,744. It is the largest of the state's 95 counties, both in terms of population and geographic area. Its county seat is Memp ...
. The school was founded as a
segregation academy
Segregation academies are private schools in the Southern United States that were founded in the mid-20th century by white parents to avoid having their children attend desegregated public schools. They were founded between 1954, when the U.S. ...
during the racial integration of public schools in
Memphis, Tennessee
Memphis is a city in the U.S. state of Tennessee. It is the seat of Shelby County in the southwest part of the state; it is situated along the Mississippi River. With a population of 633,104 at the 2020 U.S. census, Memphis is the second-mo ...
. Today, it serves students in kindergarten through 12th grade. The school also offers "early school" for ages 2-4.
History
Establishment
![W](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/07/W._Wayne_Allen.jpg)
In 1970, the leaders and members of East Park Baptist Church began to plan a collection of
segregation academies — schools that would allow white parents to avoid having their children in desegregated public schools — in anticipation of the court-ordered
racial integration
Racial integration, or simply integration, includes desegregation (the process of ending systematic racial segregation). In addition to desegregation, integration includes goals such as leveling barriers to association, creating equal opportuni ...
of
Memphis City Schools
Memphis City Schools (MCS) was the school district operating public schools in the city of Memphis, Tennessee, United States. It was headquartered in the Frances E. Coe Administration Building. On March 8, 2011, residents voted to disband the ci ...
. That order arrived in 1972, and on March 15, 1973, the church incorporated the Briarcrest Baptist School System.
Briarcrest's initial faculty consisted of teachers who left public schools after desegregation. Principal Joseph A. Clayton said he and others wanted to be "back among their own" with "less fear, less culture shock" and more "cultural homogeneity".
As part of the effort, the administration screened prospective teachers to ensure that all staff members believed in
creationism
Creationism is the religious belief that nature, and aspects such as the universe, Earth, life, and humans, originated with supernatural acts of divine creation. Gunn 2004, p. 9, "The ''Concise Oxford Dictionary'' says that creationism is 't ...
and that no teacher would teach the
theory of evolution
Evolution is change in the heritable characteristics of biological populations over successive generations. These characteristics are the expressions of genes, which are passed on from parent to offspring during reproduction. Variation ...
.
In September 1973, the school system launched with 2,400 pupils attending kindergarten through eighth-grade classes at 11
Southern Baptist
The Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) is a Christian denomination based in the United States. It is the world's largest Baptists, Baptist denomination, and the Protestantism in the United States, largest Protestantism, Protestant and Christia ...
churches throughout the Memphis area.
Tuition and fees were $650 per student (about $ today), with $100 discounts for siblings.
Few, if any, were black, despite a declared policy of nondiscrimination — a requirement for the school's tax-exempt status — and reported efforts by Briarcrest officials to attract African-American students. A 1976 book published by
Christian Literature Crusade
CLC International is an International Christian Literature mission committed to the distribution of the Bible, Christian books and a variety of Christian media. CLC works in 43 countries and has more than 600 workers worldwide. It is represented ...
said those efforts included asking 10 African-American pastors in Memphis for recruiting help and advertising in the ''
Tri-State Defender
The ''Tri-State Defender'' is a weekly African-American newspaper serving Memphis, Tennessee, and the nearby areas of Arkansas, Mississippi and Tennessee. It bills itself as "The Mid-South's Best Alternative Newspaper".
The ''Defender'' was fou ...
'', a local minority newspaper.
W. Wayne Allen, the pastor of East Park Baptist Church and head of the school system, said the black community pressured its families not to attend Briarcrest schools. "A black pastor friend of mine told me, 'Brother Allen, if I had one of your satellite schools in my church I'd be ostracized as an Uncle Tom, Mr. Allen told the ''New York Times'' in August 1973. "I told him, 'It's too bad you folks are so segregationist.
1970s
In the fall of 1974, Briarcrest narrowly won an auction for a plot of land in East Memphis, beating out a Jewish group that sought to build a
synagogue
A synagogue, ', 'house of assembly', or ', "house of prayer"; Yiddish: ''shul'', Ladino: or ' (from synagogue); or ', "community". sometimes referred to as shul, and interchangeably used with the word temple, is a Jewish house of wor ...
. School officials, who wanted the land for their high school campus, described the victory as a divine intervention in favor of Christianity over Judaism.
[
Grades 9–12 were added in 1975. That year, all of the high school's 1,432 students and 69 faculty and staff members were white, despite the ostensibly open admissions policy.]
In its early years, the Briarcrest system continued to hold elementary-grade classes in various churches, paying minimal rent so it could concentrate capital spending on its high school campus. Since the Briarcrest system was affiliated with a large church, it continued to attract students after other Memphis-area segregation academies shut down.
In 1979, six years after Briarcrest began operation, about 2,000 students attended classes in the churches, and another 1,800 students attended the high school. Allen, by now the chairman of the school board, proclaimed it "the largest private school in the world." Tuition in the lower grades was still $650; for high schoolers it was $1,100. A recent capital fundraising drive had netted about $400,000 to build a football stadium, and the school had recently created a development office to routinize solicitations for more funds.
None of its 3,800 students were black; indeed, only two black students had ever enrolled in Briarcrest's regular classes, and just 46 more in its summer programs, Allen said.[
] Memphis NAACP
The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) is a civil rights organization in the United States, formed in 1909 as an interracial endeavor to advance justice for African Americans by a group including W. E.&n ...
chair Maxine Smith
Maxine (Atkins) Smith (October 31, 1929 — April 26, 2013) born in Memphis, Tennessee, United States, was an academic, civil rights activist, and school board official.
Smith's leadership in the National Association for the Advancement of Color ...
described the school as a "bastion of white segregation in a city with a 40% black population". Allen said the school's attempts at outreach were foiled by the black community, whose children were "pressured into staying away, feeling they'd be Uncle Tom
Uncle Tom is the title character of Harriet Beecher Stowe's 1852 novel, '' Uncle Tom's Cabin''. The character was seen by many readers as a ground-breaking humanistic portrayal of a slave, one who uses nonresistance and gives his life to prot ...
s if they came."
In February 1979, Allen was summoned to Washington, D.C., to testify at a hearing of the oversight subcommittee of the House Committee on Ways and Means
The Committee on Ways and Means is the chief tax-writing committee of the United States House of Representatives. The committee has jurisdiction over all taxation, tariffs, and other revenue-raising measures, as well as a number of other program ...
. Rep. Harold Ford Sr., D-Tennessee, questioned Allen about why no black students attended Briarcrest. Allen said that "every possible effort has been made to encourage and enroll black students ... Some of the black leadership in our city says, 'Stay away; it is a racial school.' And it is not." Ford, the first black person to represent Tennessee in Congress, responded that he had never heard black leaders say that.
1980s
In 1984, a group of black parents sued Allen in his official capacity, alleging that the school practiced discriminatory policies that require the revocation of its federal tax-exempt status. The case, '' Allen v. Wright'', was ultimately decided by the Supreme Court, which held that the parents did not have standing
Standing, also referred to as orthostasis, is a position in which the body is held in an ''erect'' ("orthostatic") position and supported only by the feet. Although seemingly static, the body rocks slightly back and forth from the ankle in the s ...
to challenge the IRS
The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) is the revenue service for the United States federal government, which is responsible for collecting U.S. federal taxes and administering the Internal Revenue Code, the main body of the federal statutory tax ...
ruling on the school's tax status.[''Allen v. Wright'']
468 US 737
/ref> Afterward, Allen said he was glad the tax code could not be "used as a weapon" by those who disagreed with the school's "policies or politics".
By 1988, the school's enrollment had dwindled to 1,473 students and the school was in a precarious financial situation. School leaders feared the school would not have funds to reopen after the 1988–89 Christmas break, but a combination of teacher layoffs, staff pay cuts, and emergency fundraising allowed the school to continue classes. In 1989, the school split from the founding church and re-chartered as an independent school under the name Briarcrest Christian School.
2000s
The school and its history of racial segregation were portrayed in the 2009 film '' The Blind Side'', though it was called "Wingate Christian School". Briarcrest officials said they did not permit the use of the school's real name because they felt that the script took excessive artistic license
Artistic license (alongside more contextually-specific derivative terms such as poetic license, historical license, dramatic license, and narrative license) refers to deviation from fact or form for artistic purposes. It can include the alterat ...
.
By 2010, the school had grown to 1,600 students and spent $43 million to build its campus.
In 2012, the school sold its Memphis campus to a church that had been a tenant there, though it continued to "lease space in the building for 200 students ranging from 2-year-olds to fifth graders", the ''Memphis Business Journal'' reported.
In 2021, the school attracted controversy by inviting parents to a seminar on how to "respond biblically" to "the craziness" of children coming out or embracing an alternative gender identity
Gender identity is the personal sense of one's own gender. Gender identity can correlate with a person's assigned sex or can differ from it. In most individuals, the various biological determinants of sex are congruent, and consistent with the ...
. Shelby County commissioner Tami Sawyer said the school's anti-LGBT rhetoric ("hateful drivel") should be viewed in light of the school's history of racial segregation. Several alumni said that the school's homophobic teachings led them to consider suicide during their attendance.
Program and facilities
Briarcrest is a non-denominational Christian school. All students attend weekly chapel services, study the Bible, and are encouraged to have what evangelical Christians
Evangelicalism (), also called evangelical Christianity or evangelical Protestantism, is a worldwide interdenominational movement within Protestant Christianity that affirms the centrality of being " born again", in which an individual exper ...
describe as "a personal relationship with Jesus Christ
Born again, or to experience the new birth, is a phrase, particularly in evangelicalism, that refers to a "spiritual rebirth", or a regeneration of the human spirit. In contrast to one's physical birth, being "born again" is distinctly and se ...
". The school professes to teach Christian values and biblical morals; citing biblical verses, it forbids students to make statements in support of abortion, sexual promiscuity, homosexuality, same-sex attraction, and alternate gender identity.
Briarcrest offers honors, advanced placement, and dual enrollment In the United States, dual enrollment (DE), also called concurrent enrollment, programs allow students to be enrolled in two separate, academically related institutions. Generally, it refers to high school students taking college or university cours ...
classes. Fine arts programs begin in preschool and continue through grade 12 in visual arts, choral music, instrumental music, general music, and theater arts.
Accreditation and affiliations
The school has dual accreditation
Accreditation is the independent, third-party evaluation of a conformity assessment body (such as certification body, inspection body or laboratory) against recognised standards, conveying formal demonstration of its impartiality and competence to ...
from the Southern Association of Independent Schools {{Cleanup-spam, date=April 2011
The Southern Association of Independent Schools (SAIS) is a U.S.-based voluntary organization of more than 380 independent elementary and secondary schools through the South, representing more than 220,000 students ...
and the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools. Briarcrest is also a member of the Association of Christian Schools International, Tennessee Association of Independent Schools, Memphis Association of Independent Schools, and the College Board.
Sports
Briarcrest offers athletic programs including football, baseball, basketball, wrestling, cross country, golf, bowling, swimming, trap shooting, softball, lacrosse, soccer, volleyball, track, tennis, and cheerleading. The school participates in Tennessee Secondary School Athletic Association
The Tennessee Secondary School Athletic Association (TSSAA), along with the affiliated Tennessee Middle School Athletic Association (TMSAA), is an organization which administers junior and senior high school sporting events in Tennessee. The TSSAA ...
(TSSAA) Division II West AA for large schools, competing with both private and public schools in the region. Since 1998, Briarcrest has won nine state championships. Two of the football titles and four in girls' basketball were won by teams coached by Hugh Freeze
Hugh may refer to:
*Hugh (given name)
Noblemen and clergy French
* Hugh the Great (died 956), Duke of the Franks
* Hugh Magnus of France (1007–1025), co-King of France under his father, Robert II
* Hugh, Duke of Alsace (died 895), modern-day ...
, who left in 2004 and went on to become head football coach at the University of Mississippi
The University of Mississippi ( byname Ole Miss) is a public research university that is located adjacent to Oxford, Mississippi, and has a medical center in Jackson. It is Mississippi's oldest public university and its largest by enrollment ...
.
In 2017, Freeze resigned abruptly from Ole Miss after he was found to have made more than a dozen calls to escort services on a university cellphone. Soon thereafter, some female former Briarcrest students alleged that Freeze had engaged in inappropriate conduct with them at the school.[ A Briarcrest spokeswoman said, "We are totally unaware of any allegations against Coach Freeze regarding any kind of inappropriate personal conduct while he was here at Briarcrest.”
]
Notable people
*Hugh Freeze
Hugh may refer to:
*Hugh (given name)
Noblemen and clergy French
* Hugh the Great (died 956), Duke of the Franks
* Hugh Magnus of France (1007–1025), co-King of France under his father, Robert II
* Hugh, Duke of Alsace (died 895), modern-day ...
: coach who won four girls' basketball state championships and two boys’ football state championships at Briarcrest; fired as University of Mississippi head football coach after recruiting violations and using a school phone for calls to an escort service
An escort agency is a company that provides escorts for clients, usually for sexual services. The agency typically arranges a meeting between one of its escorts and the client at the customer's house or hotel room (outcall), or at the escort' ...
*Greg Hardy
Gregory McKarl Hardy (born July 28, 1988) is an American former football defensive end, mixed martial artist and professional boxer who played in the National Football League (NFL) for six seasons, primarily with the Carolina Panthers. He played ...
: NFL football player
* Nicole Jordan: Miss Tennessee 2010
* Jim Mabry: NCAA All-American football player
* Leslie McDonald: basketball player
* Austin Nichols: basketball player
*Michael Oher
Michael Jerome Oher (; né Williams Jr.; born May 28, 1986) is a former American football offensive tackle who played in the National Football League (NFL) for eight seasons, primarily with the Baltimore Ravens. He played college football at t ...
: NFL football player
*Leigh Anne Tuohy
Leigh Anne Tuohy (née Roberts; born August 9, 1960) is an American businesswoman and interior designer. She is the adoptive mother of Michael Oher. Their story was featured in the 2006 book '' The Blind Side: Evolution of a Game'' and its 2009 ...
: interior designer
*Kennedy Chandler
Kennedy Collier Chandler (born September 16, 2002) is an American professional basketball player who last played for the Memphis Grizzlies of the National Basketball Association (NBA). He played college basketball for the Tennessee Volunteers bask ...
: NBA basketball player
References
External links
Briarcrest Christian School
2005 '' New York Times Magazine'' article on Michael Oher
{{authority control
1973 establishments in Tennessee
Christian schools in Tennessee
Educational institutions established in 1973
Preparatory schools in Tennessee
Private K-12 schools in Tennessee
Segregation academies in Tennessee
Schools in Memphis, Tennessee
Schools in Shelby County, Tennessee