High on a Hill

Vicksburg's All Saints' Episcopal College was established in 1907 as a finishing school for girls—white girls. The school was planned in the mid-1800s but the outbreak of the Civil War and subsequent Reconstruction delayed the doors opening until 1909. Church fathers selected a location high on a hill above the Mississippi River.

While it was called a college, the school offered prep school and college courses including the subjects of mathematics, Latin, Greek and ethics. In 1911, the school was accredited and a number of higher education institutes accepted the courses. 

In 1961, while Freedom Riders were traveling through the South, the Episcopal Church maintained what was termed a “deafening silence” on civil rights. Objecting to this, a group of clergymen formed within the church, the Episcopal Society for Cultural and Racial Unity, and organized their own bus ride: a “Prayer Pilgrimage”, to visit segregated Episcopal schools and encourage acceptance of black students. They visited All Saints’ in Vicksburg with this goal but received a cool reception.

All Saints’ School was not integrated until 1967 when a tobacco heiress funded a $1 million program to desegregate “exclusive” Dixie prep schools. All Saints' started accepting boys a year later. The school finally closed in 2006, only to reopen in 2009 as a training campus for AmeriCorps, which is more diverse than the school founders could ever have imagined, with students of all races, religions and ethnicities.

AmeriCorps NCCC FEMA Corps 

Class 21a, Atlantic Region