Canton Academy, officially known as the Canton Academic Foundation, is a segregation academy in

Canton, Mississippi Canton is a city in Madison County, Mississippi, Madison County, Mississippi, United States. The population was 13,189 at the 2010 United States Census, 2010 census. It is the county seat of Madison County, and situated in the northern part of th ...

, the county seat of Madison County. It serves 285 students in grades K-12.

History

Canton opened in January 1970 as a segregation academy. The school's founders were so concerned about the impact of school desegregation that they accepted white students from families for which they knew could not afford tuition. Canton Academy board president J. D. Weeks said that he "anticipat dthe public school system of Canton would be virtually all black". In the school's first year, all but one white high school seniors withdrew from Canton Rogers High School and enrolled in Canton Academy. Canton Academy was initially housed in an abandoned tent factory. The curriculum was reported to be similar to public schools, but with an extra focus on the "evils of

communism Communism (from Latin la, communis, lit=common, universal, label=none) is a far-left sociopolitical, philosophical, and economic ideology and current within the socialist movement whose goal is the establishment of a communist society, a s ...

". In the case '' Coffey v. State Educational Finance Commission'' (1969), the United States District Court for the Southern District of Mississippi found that "No Negro pupils would be admitted to the private school."

Sports

Canton competes in shooting sports against Jackson Preparatory School and Tri-County Academy. The school sponsors a ''Twenty Guns in Twenty Days'' raffle to support athletics.

Notable people

Glenn Boyce Glenn Boyce is an American academic administrator. He is currently the chancellor of the University of Mississippi. Prior to working at the university, Boyce was commissioner of the Mississippi Institutions of Higher Learning from 2015 to 2018 an ...

, chancellor of 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. ...

coached football at Canton Academy. In 2019, Boyce was criticized his past affiliation with segregation academies like Canton Academy.

References

* Bolton, Charles C. '' The Hardest Deal of All: The Battle Over School Integration in Mississippi, 1870-1980''. University Press of Mississippi, 2005. , 9781604730609. * Cobb, James Charles. '' The Most Southern Place on Earth: The Mississippi Delta and the Roots of Regional Identity''.

Oxford University Press Oxford University Press (OUP) is the university press of the University of Oxford. It is the largest university press in the world, and its printing history dates back to the 1480s. Having been officially granted the legal right to print books ...

, 1994. , 9780195089134. Private high schools in Mississippi Private middle schools in Mississippi Private elementary schools in Mississippi Schools in Madison County, Mississippi Segregation academies in Mississippi {{Mississippi-school-stub