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Digitized School Photos Collection Posted
Thousands of historical images of Mississippi students, teachers and staff members, and schools can now be viewed on the department’s website. The collection documents aspects of twentieth-century education in Mississippi such as demographics, classroom furnishings, extracurricular activities, bussing, and the state’s change from a racially segregated system. “School Photographs (Mississippi), 1920s—1980s” is the fortieth collection to be scanned and added to the MDAH Digital Archives, which provides direct online access to the resources of the state archives.
“We continue to add online content for the public,” said MDAH Archives and Records Services director Julia Marks Young. “Our goal is to enrich the state’s culture through these unique resources.”
The Mississippi Department of Education originally created the files, and the MDAH collection retains some elements of their original organizational schemes, including the names. Many of the oldest images are in the series “School Building Photographs and Illustrations, 1920s-1950s,” which includes nearly 2,000 photographs of school buildings and facilities throughout Mississippi. The series contains scenes of tornado damage
in Tupelo in 1936 and images of the 1939 Mississippi State Fair and parade in Jackson.
The series “School Transportation Photographs, 1930s—1980s” contains roughly 1,800 photographs depicting school buses and student safety, school bus maintenance facilities and work, training for drivers and mechanics, and office personnel.
Another series features nearly
1,700 color slides of public school buildings and facilities in Mississippi and a few other states. They are dated between 1952 and 1972 and most have information identifying the people or places pictured. In addition to the slides there are color transparencies of school buildings, facilities, and workers. Nearly 800 slides are of pre-integration African American schools, some 600 are of pre-integration white schools, and the remainder are of various school-related topics that were organized for slide presentations.
In 1953, as judicial challenges to the South’s separate-but-equal school systems increased, Mississippi governor Hugh White convened the state legislature in a special session. The legislature passed laws directing every school district to develop a plan to equalize the facilities used by blacks and whites in their respective districts. Each county was also required to have a school survey, which typically contained enrollment and attendance figures, lists of existing school buildings, and other pertinent information. Photographs produced to support the school surveys are found in “Educational Finance Commission School Survey Photographs,
1954-1975,” which contains images from scrapbooks compiled to accompany separate text-only survey reports and loose images
that were submitted with survey reports.
The final series is a scanned scrapbook created in 1927 that contains text and photographs for forty-six county agricultural high schools established in Mississippi between 1908 and 1924. The schools, some of which later became community colleges, taught boys and girls such fundamental skills of farm life as land drainage, terracing, orchard management, cooking, and care of livestock, in addition to furthering their academic training. Information listed for each school includes the nature of the school’s extension work, number of classrooms, student enrollment by sex (for school year 1925-26), acres of land owned by school and their usage, number of boarding students by sex, and number of teachers and their average salaries. The scrapbook also contains site plans for most institutions, which are arranged alphabetically by county.
To view the photographs in this collection, go to the department’s homepage at mdah. state.ms.us, click on the Digital Archives link, and from that page click on the “School Photographs (Mississippi), 1920s-1980s” link.
Legislature Funds Preservation Grant Program
A popular grant program for preservation projects across the state has been reauthorized. The 2015 Mississippi legislature provided for $2.8 million in competitive grants in the Community Heritage Preservation Grant Program, which helps preserve, restore,
rehabilitate, and interpret historic courthouses and schools. In Certified Local Government communities grant funds may also be used for projects involving historic buildings other than courthouses or schools.
The MDAH Board ofTrustees will award the grants at a
special meeting in December. Only properties that have been designated Mississippi Landmarks are eligible for the grants. County or municipal governments, school districts, and nonprofit organizations granted 501(c)(3) tax-exempt status may submit applications.
A cash match of at least 20 percent is required, and grant awards are reimbursed upon the successful completion of the project.
Applications are available online at mdah.state.ms.us and are due October 2. For more information call 601-576-6937.