The Color of Compromise: The Truth about the American Church’s Complicity in Racism

by Jemar Tisby

Schools also became a battleground for Christians committed to segregation. Some Christian parents, faced with the unconscionable prospect of little white girls attending school with little black boys and eventually growing up, falling in love, and having brown babies, started “segregation academies.” Because these were private schools, these institutions did not have to abide by the Brown v Board mandate for racial integration, which only applied to public schools. A 1972 report entitled “It’s Never Over in the South” found that many of these newly formed schools used the word “Christian” or “Church” in their name. The report went on to state that “individual Protestant churches in most cities have participated and often led the private school movement during desegregation.”