Four African-American Mothers File Lawsuit Against Mississippi for Education Equality

The paint on the walls of Raines School in Jackson, Mississippi, is chipped and litters the floor, snakes roam around the playground and only 15 out of the school’s 376 students are at grade level for math but Precious Hughes says it’s the only option for her 6-year-old kindergartner.

“The school is dark, gloomy and uninviting. It feels like a prison,” she said. “Not even the teachers want to show up because the school has nothing, but that’s where we live.”

Raines School, which is over 99 percent African-American, is part of 19 school districts that got an “F” from the Mississippi State Department of Education.

The other 18 school districts with failing assessments have a majority African-American student populations topping over 81 percent.

The pattern is not coincidental, says the Southern Poverty Law Center, a non-profit watchdog group.

More than six decades after the landmark Brown v. Board of Education decision abolishing school segregation, the fight for education equality is still waging in the South with a new federal lawsuit filed against Mississippi on Tuesday by Hughes and three mothers who say all public schools are not created…

Please read original article –  Four African-American Mothers File Lawsuit Against Mississippi for Education Equality