A History of Private Schools/Segregation Academies and Race in the American South..

"The goal of these evangelical schools was not a “better form of education” but denial of education."

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When it comes to formal schooling my experiences were unusual in that I experienced the full gamut available at the time. I first had a public grade school and then finished the second half of grade school at an ostensibly secular boarding school. I then did one year in a public high school and finished things at a private, evangelical school run by religious right lunatics — who also proved them selves to be utter hypocrites when it came to their obsessive sexual morality.

Even Among The Wealthy, Education Predicts Trump Support.

In the evangelical school I came to be familiar with the evangelical view of education — or, to be more precise, their contempt for education. My principal was the real founder of the Moral Majority, Robert Billings Jr., who convinced Jerry Falwell to start the Moral Majority. Billings was also the key voice pushing evangelicals to open a slew of schools in order to prevent education — not encourage it.

The first wave of evangelical schools was started in protest over desegregation. Evangelicals were largely rather open about being racist and seeing blacks as “inferior,” operating under “the curse of Ham” from the Old Testament. The Bible College I briefly attended before beginning my journey to sanity pushed preaching and teaching but the goal of teachers was the same as preachers — conformity, obedience and the rule of theocrats.

In a course on education Billings told us students — all of whom were white, of course — that one couldn’t have blacks and whites educated together because blacks were unable to think rationally and could only learn by rote, not by principles. Of course both the high school and college he helped found excluded black students.

When Billings died in 1995 the Chicago Tribune wrote:

“Alarmed by plans to revoke the tax-exempt status of private Christian schools that were founded as a backlash to racial integration, he formed the National Christian Action Coalition, packed his belongings in a trailer and hit the road with his wife to preach against what he viewed as a godless humanism dominating American life.

Along the way, Mr. Billings, who once estimated that his efforts had led to the founding of 400 Christian schools.”

They mention that in 1979 he “invited other like-minded individuals to a meeting, where they formed an organization known as the Moral Majority” in order to take over the Republican Party and eventually the nation. They now have full control of the GOP and are set on corrupting the judiciary to prevent Constitutional government and allow theocracy. Their goal is to take over America completely and then reveal their full agenda for the first time. Until then they advised lying about their goals.

I debated the vice president of the Moral Majority and he publicly denied wanting to have all gay people executed — until a tape I had of him preaching just that was played and only then did he admit if he could have his way he’d execute gays and “God’s word would uphold that.” Another Moral Majoritarian who lead anti-gay campaigns and was a teacher in the Bible College when I was there told a private gathering of evangelicals that they should hide their agenda from the media and pretend they were only concerned about gays attacking children. Lie about everything else until they have power, then pull out the agenda one piece at a time— as DeSantis is now doing in Florida.

I frequently heard these far right theocrats preach the purpose of Christian schools was NOT education per se but a “greenhouse” to protect “young plants” from an education that said anything contrary to the far right religious agenda of the Moral Majority. Their goal was to prevent education, not give it. This may explain the utter lack of science classes or even basic mathematics at the school. But we did have an hour-long sermon preached every day of the week. There was a lot of the Bible, no science and no real education of which to speak. The goal was to channel all students into the church college upon graduation so they could be either preachers or teachers if male or teachers or an obedient pastor’s wife if female.

One of the preachers I was introduced to at this time was Rev. Ezra Graley, one of the leaders of the anti-education movement in West Virginia that exploded into violence and intimidation as evangelicals allied themselves with open racist extremists such as the Klan. Graley invited me to see for myself what was going on in the 1974 Kanawha textbook war and I stayed in his home for the summer meeting these “warriors” for Jesus.

Out of every holler and valley poured the uneducated evangelicals to damn textbooks in what is now commonplace Republican politics. They were open about their racism and their advocacy of white supremacy — even if each of them was a walking refutation of that theory. The Klan was welcomed at their rallys. Timeline reported protests “soon included the Ku Klux Klan, whose member came from across state lines to chant ‘Get the Nigger Books Out!’ on the picket lines.”

Graley, one night, told me that if a school bus were bombed, “It would be one of our people who does it.” I didn’t know then that such plans were in the works. Whether he was speaking of personal knowledge of the plan or just guessing I don’t know. Neither would surprise me.

Public Radio reported: “Ministers Ezra Graley, Avis Hill, Charles Quigley and Marvin Horan galvanized the anti-textbook forces and called for a school boycott; 12,000 people signed petitions to keep the books out of schools. The protests were not limited to the religious community. Business leaders began taking sides in the debate too. By late summer, the battle lines were drawn.”

Very quickly the anti-education evangelicals turned to violence, their own local version of January 6th. Violent evangelicals attacked anyone and everyone.

Angered by a lack of progress, some of the more radical anti-textbook protesters decided to shut down schools by force. On the night of October 9, 1974, dynamite was thrown through the windows of one elementary school. Another school was firebombed and dynamited. Two nights later, protesters threw Molotov cocktails into a school; another school was firebombed a few nights after that. Then, 15 sticks of dynamite were exploded near a gas meter at the board of education office just after a meeting had adjourned. No injuries resulted from any of these incidents, but the level of violence and destruction shook the community.

One elementary school was firebombed, another dynamited. The school superintendent was sprayed with mace and received death threats. A group of extremist fundamentalists led by Reverend Marvin Horan gathered to discuss the possibility of bombing buses full of children headed to school during the boycott (Horan later did jail time for the conspiracy). That didn’t happen, but school buses were shot at and stoned, as were the residences of families who chose to continue sending their children to school.

School buses were accompanied by police and protestors shot at the police and the buses, thankfully missing the children.

The entire campaign of violence by these religious extremists was meant to accomplish what Republicans are carrying out for them today. They wanted any mention of sexuality or gender removed, and the Bible and prayers substituted. They wanted to end any discussion of racism in America and the denial of all rights to LGBT people, criminalizing them first, and eventually moving on to executions.

The goal of these evangelical schools was not a “better form of education” but denial of education. It was meant to prevent students from learning any facts contrary to the extremist beliefs of the evangelical Right. They know education is their enemy and openly preached as much. I heard megachurch pastors lamenting from the pulpit how “godly children sent off to college” leave the church and the true faith and no longer obey “God’s man” as God demands. The prevention of knowledge is their ultimate agenda.

To accomplish that goal they must also do the same to public schools and that is where the Republican Party is in full cooperation with them. Across the country the same ignorant fanatics are getting books pulled from libraries. They are banning any discussion about the racist laws that impacted black Americans. They are restricting what teachers may say or insisting they must bully trans kids by misgendering them. Republicans are turning state education into a hell controlled by rabid evangelicals out to theocratize the nation.

This is precisely why those of us opposed to turning state schools into engines of hateful indoctrination have to support alternative schooling to prevent this perversion of education from being inflicted entirely on all students. In 2018 I wrote of why humanists, secularists, libertarians and atheists need to offer alternative schools.

Now the need is more urgent. Like it or not authoritarians such as DeSantis are turning stated education into a hateful form of indoctrination. They are banning speech in the name of freedom; they are stripping parents of rights in the name of parental rights; and they are bullying LGBT kids in order to “protect the children.” They have gone full-on Newspeak right out of George Orwell. Their “Moms for Liberty” are constantly demanding liberty be stifled. And now they are threatening to take children from parents if the child is trans and making them wards of the state or state property if you please.

Alternative schools would provide a safe haven, at least for a time. I have no doubt the GOP would eventually try to ban them from operating or, at a minimum impose the same top-down controls on those schools they impose at the state level. Hopefully America will come to its senses before that happens and returns to the limited government of the Constitution and not the authoritarianism of theocrats.

But beware that prominent home schooler Rev. Gary North, openly admitted their long-term goal and it isn’t liberty.

So let us be blunt about it: we must use the doctrine of religious liberty to gain independence for Christian schools until we train up a generation of people who know that there is no religious neutrality, no neutral law, no neutral education, and no neutral civil government. Then they will get busy in constructing a Bible-based social, political and religious order which finally denies the religious liberty of the enemies of God.

Some schools in the United States were founded as segregation academies to educate white students, including Christian academies.

Examples of segregation academies

Robert F. Munroe Day School: Founded in 1969 in Florida

Rolling Green Academy: Founded in 1970 in Florida

North Florida Christian School: Founded in 1968 in Florida

Tallavana Christian School: Founded in 1971 in Florida

History of segregation academies

In the late 1950s and early 1960s, some states closed public schools to protest integration. Jerry Falwell Sr. opened Christian academies for white students during this time. The IRS temporarily suspended tax exemptions for segregation academies in the early 1960s. In 1967, the IRS announced tax deductions for contributions to any segregated academy.

Religious segregation can contribute to continued segregation in other parts of society. For example, when parents choose to send their children to private schools, they are often religious institutions, and these institutions are often racially segregated.

Twisted Cross: The German Christian Movement in the Third Reich.

How did Germany's Christians respond to Nazism? In Twisted Cross, Doris Bergen addresses one important element of this response by focusing on the 600,000 self-described 'German Christians,' who sought to expunge all Jewish elements from the Christian church. In a process that became more daring as Nazi plans for genocide unfolded, this group of Protestant lay people and clergy rejected the Old Testament, ousted people defined as non-Aryans from their congregations, denied the Jewish ancestry of Jesus, and removed Hebrew words like 'Hallelujah' from hymns. Bergen refutes the notion that the German Christians were a marginal group and demonstrates that members occupied key positions within the Protestant church even after their agenda was rejected by the Nazi leadership. Extending her analysis into the postwar period, Bergen shows how the German Christians were relatively easily reincorporated into mainstream church life after 1945. Throughout Twisted Cross, Bergen reveals the important role played by women and by the ideology of spiritual motherhood amid the German Christians' glorification of a 'manly' church.