In 1967, 13 years after the landmark Brown v. Board of Education decision, a group of Black parents filed a federal lawsuit to integrate the Rankin County School District in Mississippi. The plaintiffs in Adams v. Rankin County Board of Education claimed that Black students and white students in the district were not receiving the same level of quality education and that the district’s schools were still racially segregated.
Forty-eight years later, in 2016, Ma’Kesha Adams became an administrator in the Rankin County School District. Her grandfather, John Quincy Adams, was one of the lawsuit’s plaintiffs, suing on behalf of his children—including her father—and their classmates. When Adams was first hired as a teacher years earlier, the Rankin County School District was still operating under a series of desegregation orders triggered by her family’s case.
“It was a very proud moment for my grandfather when I became a principal, like that was his dream,” Ma’Kesha Adams told the Mississippi Free Press on Aug. 19. “And I’ll be honest, I don’t even think I understood the significance of that moment.”
Adams’ grandfather, who died nearly four years ago, encouraged his family to remain vigilant over the court ruling.
“He would say, ‘Y’all got to make sure this lawsuit stays. You got to be sure they (are) doing what they need to do.’ He would always say that to me,” Adams said, breaking down into tears nearly a month after the courts released the district from the mandate.
On Aug. 20, she sat in a church in Richland, Mississippi, knowing her grandfather was right.
There, NAACP Legal Defense Fund attorneys explained why the desegregation orders in place for 56 years—the orders her family fought for—were being overturned, and what that could mean for students and staff in the district.
‘Perfection Is Not the Standard’
In 1970, the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Mississippi ruled for the plaintiffs in Adams v. Rankin County Board of Education and ordered the school district to take all measures to end school segregation.
Rankin County first responded with the Rankin County Integration Plan in 1971. But in 1973, the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the plan violated the Constitution, issuing a consent decree ordering RCSD to rehire Black staff, desegregate classrooms, provide Black students equal access to extracurricular activities and prevent white parents moving their children from integrated schools by creating specific school zones.
The court issued a second consent decree in 1978, ordering the district to ensure that all schools operate without discrimination, that the percentage of Black students not fall below 12% or exceed 45% in any school, and that at least 28% of staff at every grade level and in all employment categories be Black.
By 2019, the court ruled the district had reached partial unitary status by fulfilling its obligation in transportation and facilities. Other issues still lingered. The court still found, for example, that RCSD had not reached compliance in faculty and staff assignments or student assignments at schools, extracurricular activities or quality of education.
The district filed a new motion to end those desegregation orders in 2024, but lawyers from the NAACP Legal Defense Fund argued that the district still had not met its obligations.
On July 28, 2026, U.S. District Judge for the Southern District of Mississippi Kristi Johnson ruled in the district’s favor, declaring that segregation no longer exists in how students are zoned or how students or staff are assigned to schools.
Despite recognizing ongoing racial disparities in Rankin County schools, “the court said perfection is not the standard,” NAACP Legal Defense Fund attorney Katrina Feldkamp said at the Aug. 20 town hall.
“The Court finds that District’s current policies and practices are race-neutral and comply in good faith with the Court’s orders and the District has done everything practicable to eliminate the vestiges of discrimination,” Johnson wrote in the decision.
The ruling means the court will no longer monitor whether discriminatory practices occur in the District.
Room for More Progress
“We saw with our own eyes, with our own data, that Black educators were not being treated the same—but the court said that it was not sufficient to keep the district under the order,” NAACP Legal Defense Fund attorney Katrina Feldkamp told attendees at the Aug. 20 town hall.
Rankin County School District hired white candidates over Black candidates who were more highly qualified—but because there was no proof that the hiring decisions were racially motivated, the court decided not to hold those hiring choices against RCSD, the July 28, 2026, order said.
There are several instances where RCSD has “failed to eradicate vestiges of segregation” when it comes to equal access to education for students, Feldkamp alleged in a Sept. 16, 2025, hearing.
There are four schools in the district where student enrollment has been more than 82% white in recent school years, Rankin County School District Assistant Superintendent Amanda Stocks said during the September 2025 hearing. Several of those schools were formerly white-only, Feldkamp said, and most of the schools’ demographics are still in line with their demographics during the de jure system of segregation.
In recent years, 12 RCSD schools had no Black administrators, and three had no Black teachers on staff at all. Dozens of extracurricular activities at RCSD high schools and junior high schools have zero participation from Black students, and programs aimed at addressing racial disparities in referrals to advanced academic programs are “not well utilized,” NAACP LDF attorney Jennifer A. Holmes said in a November 2025 filing.
Ma’Kesha Adams, who testified at the hearing, told the Mississippi Free Press on Aug. 19 that although her experience in the district was mostly positive, she recognized that there were problems.
Adams worked her way up from second-grade assistant teacher to high school English teacher and later district English curriculum specialist and administrator. She is now the executive director of secondary education in the Office of Curriculum and Instruction at the Mississippi Department of Education.
“What I knew right away, though, was that because my experience was positive, not all other African-American educators in the district had the same experience,” Adams said. “I talked to people when I was a curriculum specialist and then when I transitioned to principalship, and even after people would reach out to me and say, ‘Hey, can I call you?’ because of things they may have been experiencing in the district.”
“But I also knew, too, that my experience paled in comparison to what my father and his siblings and friends went through,” she continued. “They were really treated horribly. So that wasn’t lost on me.”
When she began her teaching career at Pisgah Elementary School in 1999, Adams didn’t realize her grandfather had challenged the district’s racial dynamics. She just knew her grandparents were active in civil rights work in the community, organizing marches and voter registration.
“It just kind of came up very casually when my grandfather asked me kind of like what the landscape was like. He was like, ‘How many Black teachers (do) they have?’ Just kind of in the way that grandfathers do. Things of that nature,” Adams said. “It was then that I kinda got the backstory.”
Trump Administration Prompting More Schools to Request Release from Desegregation Orders
Desegregation orders remain in effect until a school district demonstrates to the relevant court that it has fulfilled all of the order’s obligations. This includes quality of education, student assignments, faculty and staff assignments, extracurricular activities, and discipline.
Federal desegregation orders are predominantly found in the South, where racial discrimination was prominent during the civil rights era. Axios found that of the 84 school districts that remain under U.S. Justice Department court orders or federal monitoring agreements, 63% are in Alabama, Georgia or Mississippi, and 26% are in Florida, Tennessee or Texas. Other districts are under desegregation agreements with the U.S. Department of Education. Twenty-eight Mississippi school districts remain under desegregation orders.
Since the beginning of the second Trump administration, there has been speculation that the federal government could end desegregation orders across the South.
In a case in Plaquemines Parish, Louisiana, the Trump administration dismissed a consent decree through a joint stipulated dismissal, rather than the usual court process in May. The administration claimed the district was still under the order due to administrative neglect after the judge on the case died and the court records were lost.
However, some civil rights activists say that the school district not having to prove it was still complying with the decree sets a bad precedent, and Louisiana Governor Jeff Landry has called for all the state’s remaining orders to be lifted.
The federal government also ended its oversight of Mississippi’s Copiah County School District on Aug. 6, 2025. One day prior, it formally dismissed the desegregation case against Florida’s Hendry County.
Ma’Kesha Adams said her father and his siblings were not surprised when Rankin County was added to that list.
“The overwhelming consensus from my family was (that) we’re disappointed but not surprised that that was going to happen,” Adams said. “Just in light of the political climate that we’re in with this current administration, we felt like the order was probably going to be dropped.”
While Adams sees Rankin County Schools as having made significant progress, she does not trust it to stay put without the desegregation order in effect.
“I do think Rankin County School District has made significant strides. You can look at the leadership across the board on the web pages. You see more African American principals and assistant principals probably than we’ve ever had before,” Adams continued. “So, while the work has yielded some results, we just can’t become comfortable with that. We have to stay vigilant. That means that we have to show up to board meetings. We have to show up to PTO meetings and join those organizations and really have a seat at the table so that we have a bird’s eye view to the things that are going on as opposed to just getting on Facebook being mad.”
‘All Is Not Well. It’s Better, But It’s Not Well’
Although Rankin County School District’s desegregation order was lifted, students still have protection from discrimination under federal law, NAACP Legal Defense Fund Policy Counsel Ray Li said at the Aug. 20 town hall in Richland.
Any school that receives federal funding is required to follow Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 and Section 504 of the Education Act of 1973, among other laws, Li said.
Students and their families can make discrimination complaints directly to the Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights at any time, as long as the discrimination is related to race, sex, disability or age.
“This is something that tonight, if you want to, you can go to this link or that phone number and file a complaint right away about discrimination that you know about in schools,” Li said before going on to explain which laws allow the Department of Education to intervene in these cases.
Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 bans any federally funded program—including schools—from excluding, denying benefits to or discriminating against anyone on the basis of race, color or national origin. This includes protections against discrimination in discipline, including punishing Black students more harshly or frequently than white students for the same offenses. The law also requires schools to provide equal access to advanced courses, extracurricular activities, quality school facilities and materials, transportation and technology to students.
Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 bans sexual violence, unequal funding for athletics between genders, discrimination against pregnant students and harassment based on sex or sexual orientation.
Section 504 of the Education Act of 1973 requires that schools provide reasonable accommodations to students with disabilities and make school buildings physically accessible to them, while also barring disability related harassment and the unlawful use of restraint and seclusion to punish disabled students.
The Equal Education Opportunities Act prohibits school districts from making attendance or zoning decisions that would require Black students to travel to farther, more segregated schools, in addition to prohibiting student transfers that segregate schools. It also prohibits discrimination in regards to faculty assignment, employment conditions and employment practices.
At the state level, Mississippi’s anti-bullying law also provides some protections for students against bullying. The law requires that schools notify parents of bullying victims in a timely manner, in addition to establishing and following procedures for reporting and investigating bullying incidents. The law also prohibits schools from disciplining students for reasonable use of self-defense and bans retaliation against people who report bullying.
“All is not well. It’s better, but it’s not well,” former RCSD teacher and administrator Ma’Kesha Adams said. “And the fight never stops. There are still at least a couple of schools in Rankin County that have almost no Black faculty members…I have always had the belief, especially in education, but even in business and other industry. You always have to have people at the top or in roles that are significant that represent the students that you serve.”
The NAACP lawyers and Rankin County NAACP chapter president Angela English encouraged audience members to stay vigilant and to inform them if, or when, an instance of discrimination occurs.
The nearby Pearl Public School District remains under a desegregation order.
Follow the Mississippi Free Press’ coverage of desegregation and read past stories here.
Mississippi Free Press stories are always free because we believe everyone should have access to quality journalism. Donations from readers like you make that possible. Please click here to give to help sustain and grow vital, people-over-power journalism for Mississippians.
Readers can sign up for our free newsletters here.
