Norma C. O'Bannon High School (known as O'Bannon High School) is a

public In public relations and communication science, publics are groups of individual people, and the public (a.k.a. the general public) is the totality of such groupings. This is a different concept to the sociology, sociological concept of the ''Öf ...

junior and senior high school located in unincorporated Washington County,

Mississippi Mississippi ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the Southeastern United States, Southeastern and Deep South regions of the United States. It borders Tennessee to the north, Alabama to the east, the Gulf of Mexico to the south, Louisiana to the s ...

, USA, adjacent to Greenville. The school is part of the Western Line School District. The school includes students in grades 7 through 12.

History

Establishment

Norma C. O'Bannon High School (OHS) was established in 1950. The school is named after Norma C. O'Bannon, a career educator in Mississippi who was for many years the Superintendent of Washington County schools. Norma O'Bannon, was the Illinois-born daughter of a man who bought a

plantation Plantations are farms specializing in cash crops, usually mainly planting a single crop, with perhaps ancillary areas for vegetables for eating and so on. Plantations, centered on a plantation house, grow crops including cotton, cannabis, tob ...

in Arcola, Mississippi. She began her career in 1921 at

Central School A central school was a selective secondary education school with a focus on technical and commercial skills in the English education system. It was positioned between the more academic grammar schools and the ordinary elementary schools where m ...

in Greenville, where she taught English literature,

civics In the field of political science, civics is the study of the civil and political rights and obligations of citizens in a society. The term ''civics'' derives from the Latin word ''civicus'', meaning "relating to a citizen". In U.S. politics ...

, and science at the junior high school level.Shaffner, "Interview with Norma C. O'Bannon,"] pg. 1. She later moved to

elementary education Primary education is the first stage of formal education, coming after preschool/kindergarten and before secondary education. Primary education takes place in ''primary schools'', ''elementary schools'', or first schools and middle schools, de ...

, becoming principal at the city's Starling Elementary School. She became superintendent of Washington County schools in 1948, remaining in that position until 1968. O'Bannon saw a great period of great change during her tenure as superintendent, with Washington County's count of schools being reduced through consolidation from 96 small and segregated facilities to just 6 integrated schools.

Demographics

O'Bannon High School includes students in grades 7 through 12 — effectively combining a junior and senior high school in a single facility. The school has approximately 435 students, making it the 146th largest of the state's 249 public high schools. The student body of O'Bannon High School is 95%

African-American African Americans, also known as Black Americans and formerly also called Afro-Americans, are an American racial and ethnic group that consists of Americans who have total or partial ancestry from any of the Black racial groups of Africa. ...

/Black and 3%

White American White Americans (sometimes also called Caucasian Americans) are Americans who identify as white people. In a more official sense, the United States Census Bureau, which collects demographic data on Americans, defines "white" as " person having ...

, with an additional 1% listing an ethnicity including "two or more races.""O'Bannon High School: Students and Teachers,"
Great Schools, www.greatschools.org/ Retrieved Sept. 24, 2014. These percentages differ significantly from the state averages of 50% black and 46% white for Mississippi public school students. Some 91% of OHS students are eligible for free or reduced price school lunches, in comparison to 71% of Mississippi students statewide. The disproportionately high percentage of black students at O'Bannon High School is a legacy of the segregation era, during which wealthy white plantation-owning families traditionally sent their children to out-of-state

boarding school A boarding school is a school where pupils live within premises while being given formal instruction. The word "boarding" is used in the sense of "room and board", i.e. lodging and meals. They have existed for many centuries, and now extend acr ...

s, while poor whites attended fully segregated public schools.Cathy Hayden
"Delta Schools Search for Answers,"
''Jackson Clarion-Ledger,'' Dec. 21, 1999. With the coming of federally ordered efforts at desegregation in the 1970s, parents of white students, particularly in the

Mississippi Delta The Mississippi Delta, also known as the Yazoo–Mississippi Delta, or simply the Delta, is the distinctive northwest section of the U.S. state of Mississippi (and portions of Arkansas and Louisiana) that lies between the Mississippi and Yazo ...

region, "fled en masse" from public schools to private

academies An academy (Attic Greek: Ἀκαδήμεια; Koine Greek Ἀκαδημία) is an institution of tertiary education. The name traces back to Plato's school of philosophy, founded approximately 386 BC at Akademia, a sanctuary of Athena, the go ...

, leaving the public school system in a state of ethnic and economic imbalance. Even in the 21st Century public schools in the Delta region remain predominantly black, with African-American enrollments frequently ranging from 80 to nearly 100 percent — far in excess of the state average.

Athletics

O'Bannon High School athletic teams are known as the "Greenwaves" and the school colors are Kelly Green, Scarlet, and White"O'Bannon High School: Home,"
MaxPreps, www.maxpreps.com/

Footnotes

External links