School won’t be placed near casinos

Wednesday, Nov. 24, 1999 | 10:49 a.m.

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

TUNICA, Miss. -- A Mississippi school district and the U.S. Justice Department have agreed to place Tunica County's newest elementary school near a predominantly black community, rather than close to the region's casinos.

The Tunica County School District had planned to put the $5 million school in the town of Robinsonville, but the federal government argued that the school's student body would be made up almost entirely from the children of white, wealthy casino executives, who could afford homes in Robinsonville's new developments.

That would have run afoul of a 1970 federal desegregation order.

"Today's agreement serves the interests of all schoolchildren in Tunica County and, if properly implemented, will likely further desegregation in the county," said Bill Lann Lee, the acting assistant attorney general for civil rights.

The Tunica school district has 2,000 black students, but just 39 white children. Most white students attend the Tunica Institute for Learning, a private school that is almost entirely white.