History
The school opened with grades K-8 in 1966. It began as a segregation academy, started in resistance to the forced integration of the public school system. From 1967-1969 grades 9 and 10 appeared. In 1969 a new high school building was built and grades 11 and 12 were added. One of the founders of the Pillow Academy was Robert B. Patterson, also founder of the Association of White Citizens' Councils.
In a 10 year period until 1998, Pillow grew by almost 25%. Many students who would have otherwise attended public schools, which were increasingly becoming mostly black, were instead going to Pillow. In 1998 Richard Rubin of The New York Times said "Whites in Greenwood are much more likely today than they were 10 years ago to openly admit that they send their children to Pillow Academy not because it is a better school but because of its racial composition."
Read more about this topic: Pillow Academy
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“Racism is an ism to which everyone in the world today is exposed; for or against, we must take sides. And the history of the future will differ according to the decision which we make.”
—Ruth Benedict (1887–1948)
“The history of his present majesty, is a history of unremitting injuries and usurpations ... all of which have in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over these states. To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world, for the truth of which we pledge a faith yet unsullied by falsehood.”
—Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826)
“The history of work has been, in part, the history of the worker’s body. Production depended on what the body could accomplish with strength and skill. Techniques that improve output have been driven by a general desire to decrease the pain of labor as well as by employers’ intentions to escape dependency upon that knowledge which only the sentient laboring body could provide.”
—Shoshana Zuboff (b. 1951)