‘A good education’ excuse was used to justify avoiding integration

Editor’s note: This essay originally published in the Admissions Project, a nonprofit that launched in October 2019 to publish stories from alumni of the 1970s-era segregation academies, founded at the time of school integration. Ellen Ann Fentress, editor of the Admissions Project, will speak Oct.1 at the History is Lunch program at the Mississippi History and Mississippi Civil Rights Museum Building.The flight back to Jackson that night in June 2023 was full. I was then serving as an in