Greenwood High School (Mississippi)

Greenwood High School (GHS) is a public high school located in Greenwood, Leflore County, in the U.S. state of Mississippi. The school is part of the Greenwood-Leflore Consolidated School District.

Greenwood High School
Address
1209 Garrard Avenue[1]

Greenwood
,
MS
38930-5125

United States
Coordinates33°30′38″N 90°11′38″W[2]
Information
TypeComprehensive public high school
MottoMaximizing Student Potential
School districtGreenwood-Leflore Consolidated School District (2019–)
Greenwood Public School District
PrincipalLorita Harris
Faculty36.99 (FTE)[3]
Grades9-12
Gendercoed
Enrollment656 (2017–18)[3]
Student to teacher ratio17.73[3]
Color(s)   
Team nameBulldogs
Websitewww.greenwood.k12.ms.us/Schools/Greenwood_High/index.php

History
Greenwood High School

The school was reserved for white students only from its founding until 1969, when two African-American students, Marcel Gulledge and Milbertha Teague, walked past a crowd of jeering students and entered the school. It was a part of the Greenwood Public School District until 2019, when that district merged into Greenwood-Leflore CSD.[4]

Location

Greenwood, Mississippi, is a town of slightly over 15,000 residents located on the banks of the Yazoo River about 130 miles (210 km) south of Memphis, Tennessee, and about 95 miles (153 km) north of Jackson, Mississippi. The city and county are named after Greenwood Leflore, the designated leader of the Choctaw nation who ceded Mississippi land under pressure of the 1830 Indian Removal Act to the United States government in exchange for a land allotment in today's state of Oklahoma.

De Jure segregation years

Greenwood was the original home of the White Citizen's Council, a white supremacist organization established in the summer of 1954 in response to a national trend towards racial integration and civil rights for African-Americans which culminated in the landmark 1955 Supreme Court decision Brown v. Board of Education.[5]

During this period the town of Greenwood's high school students attended Broad Street High School, the site of today's Threadgill Elementary School — including most notably in its Class of 1955 Academy Award-winning actor Morgan Freeman.[6][7]

Academics

In 2012 Greenwood High School was attended by nearly 770 students.[8] The school features a student-to-teacher ratio of 17.8 to 1.[8] The school nickname is the Bulldogs.

According to U.S. News and World Report, for the 2009–10 school year Greenwood High School's student body of 719 students was 98 percent of African-American ethnicity and about 1 percent White American.[9]

Greenwood High School was one of the first two public high schools in the state of Mississippi to earn accreditation from the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools.[10]

Demographics

Around 1988 Greenwood High School was almost split evenly between black and white students. In 1998 it was 92% black. Many white students were instead going to the private school Pillow Academy.[11]

Academic performance

The Mississippi Department of Education gave the school an "F" grade for the 2013–14 school year. In the period circa 2010–2015 the graduation rate was 67.4%.[12]

Notable alumni

Footnotes
  1. "School Directory Information (2014–15 school year)". U.S. Department of Education. Retrieved November 22, 2015.
  2. U.S. Geological Survey Geographic Names Information System: Greenwood High School
  3. "Greenwood High School". National Center for Education Statistics. Retrieved January 10, 2020.
  4. "School District Consolidation in Mississippi Archived 2017-07-02 at the Wayback Machine." Mississippi Professional Educators. December 2016. Retrieved on July 2, 2017. Page 2 (PDF p. 3/6).
  5. "White Citizen's Councils Aimed to Maintain 'Southern Way of Life,'" Jackson Sun, Jackson, TN, 2003.
  6. "Morgan Freeman: Full Biography," All Movie Guide, via New York Times. Retrieved October 9, 2012.
  7. "Milbertha Tigue". Clarion-Ledger. July 9, 1995. Retrieved 23 May 2020.
  8. "High Schools in Greenwood, MS," HighSchools.com, Retrieved October 9, 2012.
  9. "Greenwood High: Student Body," U.S. News and World Report: Education, www.usnews.com/
  10. Greenwood High School official website Archived 2011-08-27 at the Wayback Machine, www.greenwood.k12.ms.us/ Retrieved October 9, 2012.
  11. Rubin, Richard. "Should the Mississippi Files Have Been Re-opened? No, because." The New York Times. August 30, 1998. Retrieved on March 25, 2012.
  12. Yerkey, Gary G. (2015-11-12). "T.Mac Howard opened a school for disadvantaged youths in a small Southern city". Christian Science Monitor. Retrieved 2018-09-17.
  13. Nossiter, Adam (2009). Of Long Memory: Mississippi and the Murder of Medgar Evers. Da Capo Press. p. 116.
  14. Biographical Directory of the United States Congress, 1774-2005. Government Printing Office. 2005. p. 1082.
  15. Ellis, Lee (2004). Who's Who of NASA Astronauts. Americana Group Publishing. p. 442.
  16. "SENATE CONCURRENT RESOLUTION NO. 506" (PDF). Retrieved 1 November 2019. A 35 graduate of Greenwood High School, he attended college at the 36 University of Southern Mississippi and Mississippi College, and 37 was a law student at the Jackson School of Law.
  17. "Once Unwanted, Hull Anchors Line". Wilmington Morning Star. January 5, 1989.
  18. "Argos Bring In Some Lemon-Aid - Boatmen Sign QB Cleo Lemon". Our Sports Central. March 17, 2010.

Further reading
  • Charles C. Bolton, The Hardest Deal of All: The Battle over School Integration in Mississippi, 1870-1980. Jackson, MS: University Press of Mississippi, 2005.
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