‘We paid the price’: End of Rankin County schools desegregation order worries Black residents

BRANDON — Before her kids’ first day of second grade in the mid-1980s, Janie McLaurin sat them down in the living room to tell them about hers. She recalled what her history teacher called her: “negress.” She recounted her classmates’ welcome on the morning bus: slaps and shoves.

She shared these memories, not because they’d face the same obstacles, but to impress upon them what she fought against to ensure they could attend Rankin County schools. McLaurin said it was why she joined a suit in 1967 to ensure Black students and teachers were treated fairly. 

The lawsuit led to federal oversight and called for regular check ups by a judge. The desegregation order lasted from 1970 until last month, when U.S. District Judge Kristi Johnson ended court oversight when she found school leaders were fair enough to Black students and staff. 

McLaurin, along with six Black Rankin County schools alumni who spoke to Mississippi Today, believe the decision was premature. 

“Rankin County schools just took a step backwards,” she said.

Johnson acknowledged that racial disparities exist in the school district’s hiring, enrollment, student discipline and course selection, but found those issues result from socioeconomics, where people chose to live and other race-neutral factors.

The district isn’t held to a standard of perfect racial balance, Johnson said. The legal standard is whether the district policy is a holdover of segregation. And other school districts that are less racially integrated have been released from desegregation orders, she found.

In September, attorney Katrina Feldkamp, counsel with the Legal Defense Fund, argued against letting the district out from its consent decree. Black Rankin County schools students and staff still encounter discriminatory school policies, particularly related to discipline, she argued. She also contended that district leaders have exacerbated resegregation through intradistrict transfers and staff assignments.

“My sisters and I were some of the trailblazers in desegregating Rankin County schools. So what I’ve seen is almost post-traumatic shock,” Angela English, branch president of the Rankin County NAACP, said of the decision to clear the district of discriminatory practices. “It’s very personal for me. And I don’t intend to see any child have to suffer wrongdoing.”

Are Rankin County schools resegregating?

Rankin County schools have resegregated since court ordered integration in 1970, and they’re not alone. More U.S. schools are either majority white or majority minority than in the past decade.

In Rankin County, white families are moving their students from schools where Black enrollment has increased, such as Brandon and Flowood. During the September hearing to determine if Rankin County should be free from its consent decree, the plaintiff’s attorneys held up Pisgah-area schools as a prime example of such resegregation. 

In the 2022-23 school year, 24 white students transferred to Pisgah High School. Three of the students came from Brandon and Flowood, where Black enrollment has increased, according to an analysis by education equity researcher Erica Frankenberg, who was an expert witness for the plaintiffs.

Johnson also flagged Pisgah schools for being disproportionately whiter than the district.

Complaints from within Pisgah schools weren’t limited to resegregation or hiring.

Ma’Kesha Adams, a former Rankin County School District employee and daughter of Kenneth Adams, lead plaintiff of the lawsuit, said she was put on an improvement plan after a white student accused her of racism. Despite being the highest rated English teacher in the school, she said, her principal denied her request to see the complaint or other documentation. The move was disappointing because her tenure at the school was mostly positive, she said. She feels conflicted because her tenure as assistant principal at Brandon Middle School was positive, too.

Because of her past experiences, and those of her parents and grandparents, Adams said she believes continued oversight is important. She got into education because she believed in its power to provide opportunity to students regardless of background.

“Now that the case goes away, how likely are we to stay on top of ensuring that things like what I just mentioned at Pisgah get rectified,” she said. “You have to commit to fostering diversity for the benefit of students and staff.”

‘It was a very traumatic experience’

Jeuan Brown, who attended McLaurin Elementary in the early 2000s, said he felt the brunt of policies that attorneys say disproportionately impacted Black students. 

“I would get punished and I didn’t do it, and nobody believed me,” he recalled of his time at McLaurin Elementary. 

Read more: Rankin County schools released from desegregation order

Black students, who comprised 25.7% of the enrollment in 2023-24 in Rankin County schools, were suspended twice as much as white students. 

Brown said school leadership ignored racist bullying when he was a student. He remembers when white classmates who taunted him with racial epithets faced no consequences. Instead, he said, school leaders transferred him to the alternative school, without due process, for defending himself in a fight.

“Since you’re in alternative school, you’re stigmatized because everybody thinks you’re a bad child,” he said.

“It was a very traumatic experience,” Brown said of his time in Rankin County schools. “The depression that I have today as a young adult stems directly from those events that occurred starting in elementary school.”

Expert testimony at the September hearing backs up Brown’s observations on discriminatory discipline practices. District data showed “a clear pattern of racial bias,” according to behavioral health researcher Jamilia Blake, who analyzed district discipline data in preparation for the hearing. She found Black students were most likely to be suspended multiple times, and school policies did not reduce that occurrence. 

However, Johnson, the judge, was persuaded by district leadership testimony that referred to new behavior intervention plans despite the absence of proof of their implementation or of their success in reducing punishments.

Adams, who oversaw discipline at Brandon Middle School when she was the assistant principal, said she was surprised to see racial disparities in data for other district schools. 

“We always made an effort to ensure that what we were doing was consistent and fair,” she recalled of her time in Brandon. “As an administrator, you have to make a conscious effort.”

Johnson also found that Black students didn’t face discrimination when participating in extracurriculars. But some Rankin County alumni and parents disagree. At least 10% of student clubs and activities lacked any Black participation, Adams’ family attorneys noted at the September hearing.

For Tagira Bush, being Black on the cheer squad at Northwest Rankin High School was isolating, she testified at the September hearing.

The squad’s participation fees were too steep for her mother, and district staff would not grant a waiver. Bush said she felt they didn’t care. She later joined a cheer group outside of school and no longer felt the same distress, she told the court at the September hearing.

“I don’t want any other Black children to have to go through what I had to go through,” she said in September. “I was so discouraged that I just wanted to give up on everything.”

District leadership alluded to implementing “supportive measures” to make some clubs more inclusive. The court found that Bush’s testimony and related data weren’t evidence of systemic harm on account of race.

The steps forward

Black parents in the county schools said they worry now that the court isn’t watching out for their children. 

Deidra Moore said she was concerned by the way a district expert witness in the September desegregation hearing explained away high suspension rates for Black students as a socioeconomic fact. She learned new details about the case at a forum hosted Thursday by Mt. Sinai MB Church in Richland. She worries her son could be denied the high quality education she envisioned for him.

“Some of their rationale doesn’t make sense,” Moore said of the expert witness’s testimony.

Moore was also alarmed to hear from organizers that Black students are underrepresented in the district’s gifted and talented program. 

Moore and her husband moved to Richland for a small-town feel with bigger-city comforts and because they heard Rankin County had top-rated schools.

She said she hopes district leaders continue to see her son the way she does: capable of success and of greatness. 

“We don’t have any major issues right now,” Moore told Mississippi Today. “It’s just scary what the possibility can be now for all kids.”

English, the Rankin County NAACP leader, recalled the discrimination she faced integrating Florence Elementary in the late 1960s. Students put frogs and snakes under her desk to spook her. White boys tried to run her off the road in their pickup trucks while she walked to school.

Those childhood experiences at the tail end of the Jim Crow Era motivate her to fight for other marginalized groups. Her organization has fielded several complaints in the last year about Hispanic children experiencing discrimination because of their parents’ immigration status.

Although court oversight of Rankin County schools has ended, English plans to continue asking for district data and records as well as monitoring attendance-zone redistricting.

“And we’re not going to let up,” she said. “We don’t intend for our children or anybody else’s children or grandchildren to have to suffer the way we did. We paid the price so that they wouldn’t have to.”