By Jim Beaugez

Special to The Post

When history and memory are reduced to internet memes, context usually suffers most. But still, it’s tempting to envision what a “how it started/how it’s going” juxtaposition of images would look like to our ancestors. 

Could they ever imagine, over the generations and centuries, how our modern life both parallels and diverges from the frontier lives they knew? What about an institution like education and how it has evolved from simple language and arithmetic lessons designed to benefit one particular race or class of people into an often-lifelong pursuit spanning cultures and disciplines?

There is little doubt they would appreciate the role education now plays in creating opportunities for personal fulfillment and mobility among income brackets. And those qualities are more present than ever in students’ lives in the Vicksburg Warren School District (VWSD), thanks to efforts by teachers and administrators like Traci Esparza.

As a designated academy coach for the school district, Esparza oversees the three academies created to uncover and nurture the educational interests of students and guide them to related career paths. These learning cohorts are essentially schools within a school, built around specific areas of learning and with limited class sizes. Since the district established this system in 2015, Esparza has witnessed its many benefits.

“Teachers are actually able to form a relationship with the students and provide more one-on-one counseling that our counselors in high schools just don’t really have time for anymore,” she said. “That has opened so many doors for our students that they didn’t know they had.”

Elevating opportunities for students is the core mission of the Vicksburg Warren College and Career Academy. Beginning with ninth grade, the majority of students’ classes are determined by the academy they want to attend in high school — ACME, which includes architecture, construction, mechatronics and engineering; CAB, with communications, arts and business; or HHS, encompassing health and human services. 

The road to this outcome-minded academy approach to education in Vicksburg has been long, though, and not without its challenges — many of which go back to the earliest days of European settlement in the region.

The roots of education in Vicksburg

Public education in what became the U.S. traces back to the earliest period of European colonization, when new arrivals established schoolhouses in New England in the 1600s. But as agrarian settlements sprang up along the southern frontier over the next two centuries, formal education was less a concern than the survival of crops. Most communities stayed small and were organized around survival by cultivating the land and other food sources.

Vicksburg, though, has a unique history among the communities of Mississippi and the South. As a river town on the Mississippi River — once the nerve center of the interior U.S. economy and a superhighway for transporting goods and people — its economy catered to riverboat travelers and farmers offloading their harvests for transport. 

The city grew up around a diverse assemblage of people who came to America from far-flung locales and who either settled along the bluffs or passed through town on the river. Some arrived enslaved and destined to toil in the fields that held the key to much of the state’s economy. But just two decades after officially incorporating as Vicksburg, the city of such diverse origins established the first public school system in the state.

Records from 1845 show public education in Vicksburg was rolling thanks to donations from local fraternal organizations, which combined resources to fund schools. The following year, the City of Vicksburg instituted taxes on arrests and fines in order to fund them, and in 1847 appointed Josiah Gilbert Holland as the first superintendent of education. In 1850, the city purchased a building and established the 12-classroom Main Street School.

The first 127 years of public education in Vicksburg is a story of intertwined histories, where neighbors were divided by race into so-called “separate-but-equal” halves. In the early years, Black students were prohibited by law from learning how to read and write. Later, particularly beginning with Reconstruction after the Civil War, white students had their schools, while Black students had their own. 

In the aftermath of the Siege of Vicksburg in 1863, a missionary from Dayton, Ohio named Sarah Dickey arrived to help educate recent freedmen and their children. Her commission by the Church of the United Brethren came just six months after President Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation. Over a period of 19 months, more than 300 students attended classes to help them learn to read and write.

When her assignment ended in 1865, Dickey trained to be a teacher at Mount Holyoke Female Seminary in Massachusetts, and then returned to Mississippi in 1869 to resume her career as an educator. Later, she founded the Mount Herman Female Seminary in Clinton. That same year, public education became a reality for all children in Mississippi, established as part of the Freedmen’s Bureau through the United States War Department.

Vicksburg supported educational efforts for its growing population by constructing the Cherry Street School in 1890 and the Magnolia School in 1923, as well as Carr Central High School in 1924. In 1921, the Rosenwald Foundation, a philanthropic organization dedicated to building schools for African American students in the rural South, provided funding for the Sandy Bottom School. Three decades later, Kings School was built on the same site. As the 20th century rolled onward, H.V. Cooper High School and Rosa A. Temple High School, the former for white students and the latter for Black students, both opened in 1958.

Desegregation arrives in the River City

Longtime Vicksburg educator James Stirgus Sr., who served in the Korean War as the only Black man in his squad, served as assistant principal at Rosa A. Temple from 1958 to 1962, when he became principal. Under his leadership, which continued until integration in 1972, Temple became the first accredited Black school in the state. He later became the assistant superintendent of the school system and served one year as superintendent in 1986. 

“He used his Army discipline to instill in all of his students that they could learn and compete with anyone,” says his son, Jim Stirgus Jr., whose mother, Annie Stirgus, was a teacher for 50 years for first and second grades and later became a school librarian.

Although the landmark Brown vs. Board of Education ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1954 abolished racial segregation in public schools, this new regime took decades to break through in Mississippi. During the fall semester of 1966, a sort of provisional integration of the city’s two high schools enabled Black students to attend the formerly H.V. Cooper High School. Jeanne Olson had three classmates who were Black in her sophomore year, and by the time she graduated in 1969, that number had grown to five.

According to Olson, while some tensions existed between students, most of the opponents were from the older generations, for whom segregation was the familiar social order.

“I think there were teachers who were very open and willing and saw that this was progress, and I think there were others who did not see it that way,” Olson says. “We just sort of absorbed [the students] and didn’t give it too much thought. Those kids that agreed to come to the white high school were truly heroes.”

Full integration finally arrived in 1972, when Temple became North Vicksburg High and Cooper became South Vicksburg High. “As far as the parents were concerned, they thought there were going to be problems,” Stirgus Jr says. “A lot of people didn’t think it was going to be as peaceful as it was, but the kids didn’t care. We learned the white culture, and they learned the black culture.”

Charging ahead

Vicksburg and Warren County schools merged in 1987, and the Vicksburg Warren School District currently serves about 7,000 students over three high schools, three middle schools and ten elementary schools.

More than 200 business and community leaders signed on to draft the plan for the Vicksburg Warren College and Career Academy Esparza currently leads. Having such a high degree of buy-in from scores of potential local employers is key to achieving positive outcomes for students.  

Esparza says the HHS academy is one of the strongest pathways available to students in the school district. Through partnerships with Merit Health River Region and some of the clinics in the community, students can go on “industry visits” to observe what really happens on the job in their fields of interest.

“They go to the hospital or the clinic, or they go out to Elite Performance and Rehab, for example, and talk to people who work there,” she says. “Then in eleventh grade, they participate in mock interviews.” Students are also eligible for paid internships. “A lot of them have gotten up to $25 an hour, and they can work about 300 hours until they’ve completed their internship cycle. That has been incredibly beneficial for some of our kids.”

In a September 2024 report, the Mississippi Department of Education graded the Vicksburg Warren School District with a B rating, with a graduation rate of 91.4 percent of students. However, the 38.1 percent score on college and career readiness lags the statewide average of 51.9 percent. The academy approach, by definition, should help the district increase the number of students prepared to enter higher education or the workforce. But numbers aren’t everything.

“It’s not just giving them the experience and them having that available for their résumé,” Esparza says. “It’s also them figuring out what they don’t want to do, which I think is the most beneficial part of the whole academy system.”

This article was made possible by Shape Up Mississippi, which highlights the transformative educational initiatives within the Vicksburg Warren School District. Vicksburg is proud to be part of a storytelling cohort designed for RWJF Culture of Health Prize alumni.

Vicksburg Voices: Intergenerational Storytelling Workshop

Connecting the Past, Inspiring the Future

As Vicksburg celebrates its rich educational heritage and modern innovations, such as the academy model, the Vicksburg Voices: Intergenerational Storytelling Workshop invites the community to explore the power of stories in shaping a better tomorrow.

This unique event will bring together community members of all ages to reflect on the city’s educational journey—from the history of Rosenwald Schools to today’s efforts to bridge equity gaps in education.

This workshop is part of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Culture of Health Prize Alumni Storytelling Cohort, a national initiative uniting communities to share narratives that bridge health and equity gaps.

Through Vicksburg’s participation, the event connects the city’s educational history to larger conversations about equitable opportunities for future generations. By examining how educational efforts like Rosenwald Schools laid the groundwork for community investment, this workshop highlights the ongoing relevance of these stories today.

As Vicksburg prepares for its 200th anniversary, this workshop highlights the city’s journey from its earliest schools to the present. It invites seniors and youth to share their experiences, forging connections between generations and underscoring the ongoing relevance of educational equity and investment.

For more information, visit shapeupmississippi.com.

Event Details:

Date: Tuesday, December 10, 2024
Time: 5:30 p.m.
Location: Catfish Row Museum

Led by: Ashley F.G. Norwood, Associate Director of Digital Storytelling, Jackson State University