Gov. Phil Bryant attended Council McCluer High School, a segregationist academy set up by the racist Citizens Council, his junior (left) and senior years of high school. The Mississippi Legislature gave financial assistance, now called vouchers, to white families to send their children to these private schools. Credit: SOURCE: McCluer High School Yearbook
Dewey Phillip Bryant, now the governor of Mississippi, said in his senior Council McCluer High School yearbook that there was no need to worry about the future; it would come soon enough.
W.J. “Bill” Simmons (far right) was the treasurer of Council McCluer High School when now-Gov. Phil Bryant attended it. As the director of the national Citizens Council of America, a group pushing white supremacy, he helped set up the Council schools in response to the U.S. Supreme Court declaring that public schools had to allow black children to attend.

Mississippi Gov. Phil Bryant doesn’t talk about it much, but he attended a high school set up by the segregationist Citizens’ Council in Mississippi.

Mississippi native Donna Ladd and partner Todd Stauffer founded the Jackson Free Press in 2002 in the capital city. The heavily awarded local newspaper did many investigations heralded across the state and nation and served as a paper of record due to its diversity, inclusion, in-depth reporting and deep connection to readers and dedication to narrative change in and about Mississippi. In 2022, the nonprofit Mississippi Free Press, founded by Ladd and JFP Associate Publisher Kimberly Griffin in 2020, purchased the journalism assets and archives of the Jackson Free Press. A Google grant through AAN Publishers enabled Newspack's integration of the JFP archives into the Mississippi Free Press website to become part of a more searchable archive of recent Mississippi history and essential journalism.