Drew High School was a public high school located in Drew,

Mississippi Mississippi () is a state in the Southeastern region of the United States, bordered to the north by Tennessee; to the east by Alabama; to the south by the Gulf of Mexico; to the southwest by Louisiana; and to the northwest by Arkansas. Miss ...

. It was a part of the Drew School District. The school district's attendance boundary included Drew,

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, and the employee residences of the

Mississippi State Penitentiary Mississippi State Penitentiary (MSP), also known as Parchman Farm, is a maximum-security prison farm located in unincorporated Sunflower County, Mississippi, in the Mississippi Delta region. Occupying about of land,unincorporated area An unincorporated area is a region that is not governed by a local municipal corporation. Widespread unincorporated communities and areas are a distinguishing feature of the United States and Canada. Most other countries of the world either hav ...

.Drew School District Audited Financial Statements For the Year Ended June 30, 2005
"
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Office of the State Auditor, State of Mississippi. 12 (18/82). Retrieved on July 20, 2010. It served grades 9 through 12 and later grades 8 through 12.

History

In the

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, seven children of the family of

Mae Bertha Carter Mae Bertha Carter (January 13, 1923 – April 28, 1999) was an activist during the Civil Rights Movement from Drew, Mississippi.Moye, J. Todd. '' Let the People Decide: Black Freedom and White Resistance Movements in Sunflower County, Mississippi, 1 ...

were the first black students to attend white schools in Drew.Cobb, p
248
Archie Manning, an

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player who had attended Drew High School, recalled that there had been no violent incidents against the children but that the white students ignored the Carter children. According to Susan M. Glisson, author of ''The Human Tradition in the Civil Rights Movement'', Ruth Carter, the oldest of the Carter children, encountered racial taunts involving the word " nigger", students avoiding her and moving out of her way, and students throwing spitballs. In 1969 a court order ended the segregation system in the Drew School District.Glisson, p
224
/ref> By 1971 black students were the majority of Drew High School, with four black students for every one white student. After Drew School District was desegregated, white residents of Drew enrolled their children in North Sunflower Academy. White teachers also left the school.Turner, Billy.
The hometown Archie once knew is no more
" '' The Times-Picayune''. Saturday January 26, 2009. Retrieved on March 30, 2012. In 1997 Ned Tolliver Jr. came out of retirement to be the principal of Drew High. Prior to the 2010–11 school year the school district had three school buildings, with Drew High School being one of them. In 2010 the school district voted to close the Drew High School building and move the 5th and 6th grades to A.W. James. John Thigpen, the president of the school board, stated that the district operated as if it had 1,200 students when in fact it had 650. Drew Hunter High School began serving secondary grades. The Drew School District closed in 2012 and the high school-level students who attended Drew Hunter were moved to Ruleville Central High School.Amy, Jeff.
Mississippi to return Okolona schools to local control; district merger ends Drew High School
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'' at '' The Republic''. May 17, 2012. Retrieved on June 12, 2012. The secondary school is now named Drew Hunter Middle School, with grades 6 through 8.

Student discipline

According to Charles Bussey, author of the 2004 book ''Where We Stand: Voices Of Southern Dissent'', the assistant superintendent of the North Sunflower Academy discussed with him high expulsion, suspension, and dropout rates in Drew High School, which at that time had become mostly black.Bussey, p
150
��151. "Other whites remain adamant today in their belief that the civil rights movement ruined "the Southern way of life." The headmistress of the all-white private Sunflower Academy told us the history of its establishment, and the assistant school superintendent spoke of the high dropout, expulsion, and suspension rates in the now mostly black Drew High School."

Notable alumni

* Archie Manning – American football quarterback

References

* Bussey, Charles. ''Where We Stand: Voices Of Southern Dissent''.

NewSouth Books NewSouth Books is an independent publishing house founded in 2000 in Montgomery, Alabama, by editor H. Randall Williams and publisher Suzanne La Rosa. Williams was the founder of Black Belt Press, working there from 1986 to 1999, and La Rosa wo ...

, 2004. , 9781588381699. * 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 book ...

, August 4, 1994. , 9780195089134. * Glisson, Susan M. ''The Human Tradition in the Civil Rights Movement''.

Rowman & Littlefield Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group is an independent publishing house founded in 1949. Under several imprints, the company offers scholarly books for the academic market, as well as trade books. The company also owns the book distributing comp ...

, 2006. , 9780742544093.

External links

* ." Drew School District (Archive, 2005-2009) * ." Drew School District (Archive, 2001-2004) {{authority control Schools in Sunflower County, Mississippi Public high schools in Mississippi Educational institutions established in the 1960s Educational institutions disestablished in 2010 1960s establishments in Mississippi 2010 disestablishments in Mississippi