Even though it’s been more than 70 years since she attended Northside Elementary School, Bettye Swift can still recall the names of each teacher she had there in the mid-1950s.
The school opened in 1946 and served the city’s Black students during racial segregation. But to Swift, Northside was just her school, a place where teachers made the best of whatever resources they had.
“At Northside, when I was in the third grade, I had a teacher … and we had music in the classroom,” Swift told The Dispatch. “She had a piano in the back, and this is when we would always do songs, even though we did not have a music department. She would take peanuts and we had a grinder, and she would make peanut butter and crackers, and give it to us. … So we learned life experience, even though we didn’t have all the departmental things that people have today.”
It was the devotion shown by her teachers that inspired Swift to pursue a degree in education from Mississippi State University before returning in 1971 to the West Point Consolidated School District, where she taught for more than 36 years.
Northside School carries a similar significance for dozens of Black students in West Point who, like Swift, shuffled through its doors over the decades. So when she learned earlier this month about Assembly in Jesus Christ Academy’s plans to reopen the school after decades of it sitting vacant, Swift was ecstatic.
Jacqueline Hannah, a former student who attended Northside School during the late 1960s, shares Swift’s excitement, remembering the school as a safe space for many young Black students, including herself, from the difficulties of racism during segregation.
“It was just a place where kids our age (who were) Black … didn’t have to worry about not fitting in or not being accepted,” Hannah said. “… It was just a big disappointment to me at that time, when they did (close it) because (we) were just so used to being in that environment.”
The building’s purpose has changed since Northside first opened on Fifth Street. In 1970, the district closed the school in line with its desegregation plan. But the decision was overturned by the Fifth Circuit of the U.S. Court of Appeals, and Northside reopened the following year.
Virginia Ellis, archivist with the Bryan Public Library in West Point, said the building, which was designated as a Mississippi Landmark in 2007, has mostly sat vacant since at least the 1990s despite both the city and school district’s attempts to give it new life.
“They were trying to refurbish the building, and maybe use it for a community center or something like that, just because it’s a historic building and it means so much to that community up there,” Ellis said.
While those ideas never came to fruition, AIJC Academy’s ongoing renovations give alumni hope the school may once again open its doors to students.
Once a school, always a school
AIJC Academy started in 2015 as a tutoring program designed to help area students with learning disabilities or general difficulties in school learn more effectively, School Administrator Carol Lee told The Dispatch.
Since then, Assistant School Administrator Shavonne Buford said the program has grown to serve as many as 200 students a semester as a K-12 private Christian school based out of the Assembly in Jesus Christ Church off Highway 45 Alternate.
“Once (those students) begin to come, we see a big change,” Buford said. “Because the parents always talk about, ‘I thought (my child) couldn’t do it,’ and when they bring them to AIJC Academy, it’s a turnaround.”
Buford said school administrators realized the school had outgrown facilities in 2024, prompting the need for a larger space to host the school. Northside presented the perfect opportunity.
WPCSD donated the property to the academy in 2024, and while renovations were slightly delayed by initial site cleaning and construction site requirements, construction intended to revitalize the school started about two months ago.
AIJC is currently pursuing roughly $500,000 in renovations, including roof replacement and window installation that have already been completed.
Based on initial inspections, Joe Robinson, the project manager for the school, believes the building will also need repairs to its electrical system, new fiber cable for internet access, a replacement of the HVAC system, new floor boards and new interior walls.
To fully fund all of those needs, administrators believe the academy will need at least another $500,000.
“We’re reaching out to other programs that are in the city of West Point that are giving out grant funding,” Lee said. “You can’t ever tell how that’s going to go, but we’re hoping that they will help us.”
Even with the mountain of repairs ahead of them, Lee and Buford remain hopeful enough can be completed by August to welcome the first cohort of students to the new facility. While he said that timeline is “feasible,” Robinson expects efforts to fully renovate the building will continue for at least another 10 months after August.
Eventually, AIJC plans to incorporate elements of Northside’s history into the academy’s final design, specifically finding ways to highlight the old school’s signage and its alumni.
Once initial repairs are done, Buford plans to host an open house for community members to showcase the project’s progress and drum up additional support and donations for the renovation.
As the school returns to life, Hannah hopes to see it continue to serve as a reminder to younger students about the difficulties of racial segregation and the social growth the area and country have experienced since that time.
“It’s good to be able to remember your history, and to be able to tell your children about how your life was at that time,” Hannah said. “And how now all of us should be striving to do better and to live with each other and get along.”
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Quality, in-depth journalism is essential to a healthy community. The Dispatch brings you the most complete reporting and insightful commentary in the Golden Triangle, but we need your help to continue our efforts. In the past week, our reporters have posted 39 articles to cdispatch.com. Please consider subscribing to our website for only $2.30 per week to help support local journalism and our community.
