Mississippi accused of unequal schooling for black students

(AP) — Mississippi is violating the federal law that enabled the state to rejoin the union after the Civil War, a civil rights group alleged Tuesday in a lawsuit over school funding.

The lawsuit filed by the Southern Poverty Law Center on behalf of four African-American mothers with children in public elementary schools asks a federal judge to force the state's leaders to comply with the 1870 law, which says Mississippi must never deprive any citizen of the "school rights and privileges" described in its 1868 constitution.

[...] Mississippi has repeatedly watered down education protections in its first post-Civil War constitution ever since, as part of what the lawsuit calls a white supremacist effort to prevent the education of blacks.

"From 1890 until the present day, Mississippi repeatedly has amended its education clause and has used those amendments to systematically and deliberately deprive African Americans of the education rights guaranteed to all Mississippi schoolchildren by the 1868 Constitution," the suit states.

The schools attended by the plaintiffs' children "lack textbooks, literature, basic supplies, experienced teachers, sports and other extracurricular activities, tutoring programs, and even toilet paper," the SPLC said.

"Plaintiff Dorothy Haymer, whose six-year-old daughter is in kindergarten at Webster Elementary, spent $100 this year for sanitary supplies for the school," the group said.