# 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.

## History

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.

### 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.
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.

## Academics

In 2012 Greenwood High School was attended by nearly 770 students. The school features a student-to-teacher ratio of 17.8 to 1. The school nickname is the Bulldogs.
According to U.S. News & 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.
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.

## 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.

## 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%.

## Notable alumni

* Mario Branch, former professional football player
* Byron De La Beckwith, assassin of civil rights leader Medgar Evers
* Carlos Emmons, former professional football player, New York Giants, Philadelphia Eagles, and Pittsburgh Steelers
* Webb Franklin, former U.S. Representative from Mississippi's 2nd congressional district
* Kent Hull, former professional football player, Buffalo Bills
* Cleo Lemon, former professional football player, Jacksonville Jaguars, Miami Dolphins, and San Diego Chargers
* Mulgrew Miller, jazz musician

## Footnotes

* ↑ "School Directory Information (2014–15 school year)". U.S. Department of Education. Retrieved November 22, 2015.
* ↑ U.S. Geological Survey Geographic Names Information System: Greenwood High School
* 1 2 3 "Greenwood High School". National Center for Education Statistics. Retrieved December 27, 2024.
* ↑ "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).
* ↑ "White Citizen's Councils Aimed to Maintain 'Southern Way of Life,'" Archived 2017-10-13 at the Wayback Machine Jackson Sun, Jackson, TN, 2003.
* ↑ "Morgan Freeman: Full Biography," All Movie Guide, via New York Times. Retrieved October 9, 2012.
* ↑ "Milbertha Tigue". Clarion-Ledger. July 9, 1995. Retrieved May 23, 2020.
* 1 2 "High Schools in Greenwood, MS," HighSchools.com, Retrieved October 9, 2012.
* ↑ "Greenwood High: Student Body," U.S. News & World Report: Education, www.usnews.com/
* ↑ Greenwood High School official website Archived 2011-08-27 at the Wayback Machine, www.greenwood.k12.ms.us/ Retrieved October 9, 2012.
* ↑ Rubin, Richard. "Should the Mississippi Files Have Been Re-opened? No, because." The New York Times. August 30, 1998. Retrieved on March 25, 2012.
* ↑ Yerkey, Gary G. (November 12, 2015). "T.Mac Howard opened a school for disadvantaged youths in a small Southern city". Christian Science Monitor. Retrieved September 17, 2018.
* ↑ Nossiter, Adam (2009). Of Long Memory: Mississippi and the Murder of Medgar Evers. Da Capo Press. p. 116. ISBN 9780786748488.
* ↑ Biographical Directory of the United States Congress, 1774-2005. Government Printing Office. 2005. p. 1082. ISBN 9780160731761.
* ↑ "Once Unwanted, Hull Anchors Line". Wilmington Morning Star. January 5, 1989.
* ↑ "Argos Bring In Some Lemon-Aid - Boatmen Sign QB Cleo Lemon". Our Sports Central. March 17, 2010.