At first, Gamble said, white parents who sent their kids to private academies “were people with money who didn’t want their kids sitting next to blacks.” But as public schools deteriorated, the academies began to attract middle-class families who simply wanted their kids to have a better chance. The academies cost $150 a month, straining budgets and deepening resentment of blacks, whom many whites blamed for the decline of public schools. “It’s a vicious cycle and the whole South is caught in it, the whole nation, really,” she said.
