With all the turmoil in our schools it is a wonder that we still claim to have moved forward. In Mississippi many of the legislators are the same people who thirty years ago were ordered by the court to integrate the schools. The only thing that has moved forward is time, and times have certainly not changed. Three decades after the Civil Rights Movement, schools in the Delta remain segregated. The school system in Drew, and throughout the Delta, is split into two separate divisions, the public schools and the private schools.
Public schools are primarily Black, whereas the majority of private schools are virtually all white.
Public schools, on the other hand, are in extremely poor condition, from an inadequate supply of books, to the fact that 60 percent of the teaching staff are substitute teachers, most of which are not certified to teach their courses. The public schools receive inadequate or no funding at all, and Black students are trapped in this system because their parents have no money to send them off to private schools. In Drew, Mississippi, transportation is another problem the public school students face. There are no school buses provided for them, and often the students have to commute long hours, whether by public transportation or on foot, simply to get to school. The three new buses that had been purchased last year for the public schools mysteriously disappeared after three days, and reappeared with the sign North Delta Academy emblazoned on the side.