This article is CLEARLY BIASED. It draws from an opinion piece written by a local guy who has a problem with the school. http://www.greggriffin.com/Editorials/Desegregation.htm

The Montgomery Academy was NOT founded as a segregationist school. The founders would be appalled to hear such an accusation.

Please refer to the article's history tab. The Montgomery Academy article is maintained fervently and adamantly by Alabamaboy, whose profile page shows him to be a racial activist. No one should begrudge him his views. However, his interests clearly make his dominance of the article a conflict of interest.

At current, the article is libel. -- — Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.44.103.111 (talk • contribs)

• I find little or no bias in the article as it stands. The facts presented are easily verified and the conclusions drawn from them are cited to their original authors. The article clearly cites Griffin as a source. If you have evidence that contradicts the statements in the article, or sources that reach other conclusions, it would be helpful to provide them. There is no basis for a libel case in my view. If you are truly concerned, Wikipedia:Libel advises contacting the info team at info-en@wikimedia.org --Dystopos 21:07, 2 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Discussion: info-en ticket 2006050110014409, User talk:66.44.103.111, 2 User talk:Alabamaboy edits, and 2 User talk:Jeandré edits. -- Jeandré, 2006-05-02t21:30z

I recommend discussion about the article content be placed here and discussion about the actions of contributors be placed on their respective talk pages. I guess we're still looking for sources to contradict what is contained in the article? --Dystopos 22:27, 2 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I posted a response on my talk page about the vandalism issue. In short, apologies for my own mistakes. That said, though, I think the article is balanced and NPOV. The establishment of seg academies was a well-known response to the Brown v Brown decision. As the Guardian article that is referenced here states, "After the US supreme court ordered the end of segregation 50 years ago, many white southerners simply moved their children from state schools to private academies, often referred to as "seg academies" because they effectively kept segregation intact."[1] The other references provide additional info on the Montgomery Academy, with the Montgomery Advertiser article stating that several private schools began in the area shortly after BvB and the Griffin article specifically naming the Montgomery Academy.

While the Academy may have not been founded for the best of reasons, as the article states the school has overcome this origin. Referenced info is also given for this. While I understand why there may be a desire not to cover the complete history of the school, I think the article presents the pros and cons of everything and is, in short, encyclopedic. Thanks also for updating the reference system. I'd been meaning to do this. Best to all. --Alabamaboy 23:08, 2 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

• I've noticed that Wikipedia does have an article on Segregation academies, but it is thus far limited to Virginia. One of the Birmingham News special reports on the Black Belt gave a pretty good survey of the phenomenon in Alabama. I mentioned it on the talk page there and hope that the article will expand so that it can provide adequate context for the history alluded to here. To wit, it is not necessary to label Mr Weil a racist to accept the fact that the Academy was exclusively white for decades and that, whether by intention or merely by effect, it did help preserve a segregated educational system in the wake of Brown v. Board of Education. --Dystopos 23:15, 2 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Glad to see there's now an article on seg academies. I'd always thought about starting that article but didn't have enough referenced info to do so. I'm also amused to see myself called a "racial activist." Some of the people who've e-mailed me lately about some edits I made to 2006 U.S. immigration reform protests said I must be a right-wing nutcase. Anyway, for the record I care deeply about this article because I went to the Montgomery Academy. However, while I love the school I can't ignore its actual history as a product of desegregation fears. However, nowhere in the article does it say the school is racist or still a seg school--in fact, the article specifically states the opposite. I hope the anonymous editor will help expand the article with more info for the history, academics, and other sections. This article could be greatly expanded and I'd love it if the anonymous editor would help do so. Best, --Alabamaboy 23:32, 2 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I should add that nowhere in the article did it state that Mr. Weil was racist. There were many reasons why people were worried about desegregation and not all of them had to do with race.--Alabamaboy 23:52, 2 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

[Wow, where to start?]

Alabama,

If there is no article on seg schools, I encourage you to create one. It is a topic that bares the public's attention.

The reason I would call you a racial activist is the following sentences on your profile: "I am an administrator whose interests range from literature to African American issues." and "I am especially interested in people reporting problems with systemic bias and racism here at Wikipedia." ; the fact you have a "barnstar" award for tireless Afro-American contribution; the image of the continental United States with stripes in green, black, and red; and the fact you have moderated, edited, or created articles having to do with the KKK, the "Address to the Negroes of the State of New York", Uncle Tom's Cabin, and Anti-Tom literature. But I don't know you... so what do I know. Actually, I do probably know you. Who was your algebra teacher?

-that last post was not appreciated.

All,

Griffin's articles are opinion. He often reminds us what he writes are nothing more than his thoughts.

Here is what Griffin says in his article: "In my opinion it was founded to provide affluent whites the opportunity to avoid sending their kids to an integrated Montgomery Public School."

Here is what the wikipedia article says: "Founded in 1959 by the city's leading white citizens in response to fears of desegregation efforts in the public schools, the academy has since expanded in both diversity and academics to become one of the top elementary and high schools in Alabama."

Griffin has also written, "I am convinced that Satan has children walking around on earth." http://www.greggriffin.com/Editorials/Wicked%20People.htm (2nd line)

Does that mean that Satan has people walking around on earth?

In short, Griffin's opinion articles on his vanity site/blog are not a credible source and no basis to make statements of the nature seen in the Academy article.

The recent addition of the Montgomery Advertiser piece is a good add, in my opinion. But it still does not provide a clear statement that the Montgomery Academy was established as a seg school. It simply states, as had been said before, it's founding came shortly after the B. v. Board of Ed. ruling. Chronological sequence does not MEAN the earlier is a cause of the latter. I hope I don't have to explain the logic. But here is an example: "This afternoon it started raining. 2 Hours later I went home." Did I go home because it was raining, or did my shift just end at work?

The article on seg academies exists (although it needs a lot of work IMHO, I'm not sure who wrote it but they focused on VA only) and is at Segregation academies. I've also just finished making rewrites to the article to address your concerns while not removing the facts about the founding. While I undertand that you don't like Griffin, he is a valid source who is published in a number of newspapers, with the editorial I referenced being originally published in the Montgomery-Tuskegee Times. Anyway, I hope you will add more info to this article. Best,--Alabamaboy 00:31, 3 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I'm going to start with a paragraph break.

I still don't like "Founded in 1959 by the city's leading white citizens in response to fears of desegregation efforts in the public schools," The founders were concerned about the adverse effect of desegregation in the sense that it would tear the system apart affect the "quality" as addressed in the article. However, the founders "had it in" for the Montgomery public school system before Brown. These are dynamic people who weren't going to settle for even the all white, pre Brown v. Board, public schools for their children.

Do you have a reference for that in a publically accessible document? If so, we can find a way to present both views.--Alabamaboy 00:43, 3 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I have no way to access the founders feelings at the time of founding on paper. You'll have to take my word for it. It's very easy to get the public's perception of the school. We've seen that in Griffin's article, the article from the Advertiser, and well... probably your opinion.

Opinion.

No offense to any of the writers or readership of the Montgomery-Tuskegee Times, but I don't recognize the publication as a first tier news source. And again, Griffin says "IN MY OPINION." That should be enough alone.

If you'll believe me, here's how the founding went: Weil, his wife, and two other familes get together because JD, Lanier, and Robert E Lee weren't cutting it. Weil felt a good education was extremely important. He went to boarding school. He wanted a higher caliber school in town. Naturally you can't have a private school without funding. And tuition was charged. Unfortunately there were no prominent black families in town who could afford the tuition. So, the school was all white. Had it not been all white at the time, you can probably imagine racists would have burned it down.

So decades passed and times changed and there have been black families to put their kids through the school; which is really wonderful. And the school has programs that seek out minority students in the city and offer them scholarships because diversity in a child's life is important for their socialization and development into normal and tolerant adults. Also, these kids really deserve the chance at real success which- according to what we know Weil believes- is only possible through good education.

Here is a question for discussion which may change your attitude toward the Academy. Griffin believes the flight of white students to private schools was detrimental to the public schools after integration. I would contend the loss of those students had little effect if not a positive one. Every family with a child in private schools still pays the taxes which support the school system. But they do not burden the system with the expenses of educating their children.

The other issue is that of the scholarship programs at the Academy. I've witnessed the Academy change the lives of kids in magnet schools who might have had good jobs after leaving their schools and graduating from Alabama or Auburn but now are doing greater things with their lives. In terms of race and class in Montgomery, where does that place the Academy?

That's all nice. However, it doesn't change the history that must be stated in this article. I have just added a new reference to the article, "Private schools diversify" by Regan Loyola Connolly, The Montgomery Advertiser, January 12, 2004. The article quotes Archie Douglas, the headmaster of The Montgomery Academy, as stating that the school was started in 1959 in what he believed was a reaction to desegregation of the public schools. He then said, "I am sure that those who resented the civil rights movement or sought to get away from it took refuge in the academy. But, it's not 1959 anymore and The Montgomery Academy has a philosophy today that reflects the openness . . . and utter lack of discrimination with regard to race or religion that was evident in prior decades."

I would state that the headmaster of the school, as quoted in the Montgomery Advertiser, is solid proof. Feel free to add more info to the article but I think the history is correct as is. Best, --Alabamaboy 01:17, 3 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

BTW, as I said I love the Academy. I don't need to change my attitude towards it. My reason for including this info is to create an accurate encyclopedia article, which must include the history behind the school's founding. Best, --Alabamaboy 01:26, 3 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The latest link isn't clickable. Douglas knows less about he school's founding than Johnson or Byrd. What he has to say is speculation and he is lucky it isn't getting him fired.

I really wanted that paragraph break. What was wrong with it?

Can you see where I am coming from on the opinions? When a founder comes out and says, "I started the Academy as a seg school," or the minutes are published saying something incriminating, it's ok to write the things in the article like "MA was founded in response to B V BE." As it stands, the article should say something like, "Many believe" or "it is the opinion of a great deal of people." Because what we have to go on are the opinions of those interviewed or the opinions of the authors of the articles.

I'm telling you it is a case of concern for quality of education and very bad timing regarding the founders' children's ages. You don't have to believe me. I'm just a guy at the other end of a bunch of cables. But I do know what I am talking about.

[Wow, where to jump in]

• The fact that Griffin holds an opinion does not mean that his opinion is unwarranted. It would be good to have some documentation of the circumstances of the founding of the Academy that do not rely as heavily on regional trends, but even without first-person documentation reasonable historians could reasonably lump Montgomery Academy in with the large number of private academies established in the late 50s which served white students exclusively. As Wikipedians we should try to find the best sources available and clearly indicate what is documented and what is reasonably assumed. What we can't do is introduce one person's reading of the public's perception as evidence that Montgomery Academy in some way happened to look like a reaction to integration, smell like a reaction to integration, sound like a reaction to integration and behave like a reaction to integration without actually being a reaction to integration. That assertion is the one that, in my opinion, needs to bear the burden of proof. --Dystopos 05:00, 3 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I never inferred the opinion was unwarranted. I do argue it is poorly founded and that to present it as fact is misinformation.

As for the look, smell, sound, and act... Well, I'm still tangled in the double negative. I assume what you meant to say is that if it looks, smells, sounds, and acts like X it is X. That is an old addage. Though it isn't my favorite, it is a good one. However please see the following wikipedia articles: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scarlet_kingsnake http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tofurkey http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zodariid_ground_spider http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bacon (line 2) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viceroy_butterfly

References.

oooo they need to be cleaned up. that last one is on there like 5 times.

That last edit was really bad. Again, what is the beef? You would have to not like the academy to write it was founded in RESPONSE to desegregation.

That last reference is deliberately used multiple times, which is standard research policy when one reference covers multiple points. And Douglas is the current headmaster of the school so his opinion, in a large respected newspaper, carries a lot of weight. If you have an issue with what he said, take it up with him.--Alabamaboy 10:54, 3 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Combined and rewritten using templates. -- Jeandré, 2006-05-03t19:52z

[Oh, by the way...] Yesterday I had no idea we were reverting each other. I thought my computer was acting up when the article went back to what it was before after like 10 minutes. That's a lot of time in front of the monitor.

That being said I want to make changes. See what you think. And remember my contention about OPINION.

Please see my previous comments and those of Dystopos. I have provided a ton of references to back up what I have written, culminating with a statement from the current school headmaster on the issue. If you have any publically available references, please provide them. And there is no link for the Mont. Advertiser article b/c it is in their paid archive. However, that is still considered a publically accessible reference and is actually a dang good one. Best, --Alabamaboy 10:56, 3 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Alabama,

I've thought about it. And I still feel the way I did 2 days ago about the article. I think what we've had is a case where you've been fencing with me and I've been fencing with you on an issue. And as it stands I don't think we are going to come to an understanding. You seem to want the Academy documented as a school founded to continue segregation. You have a lot of opinion pieces and interviews with those who do not know the circumstances of the founding. Admitedly, the statements the headmaster made weaken the argument that it is not a school founded to avoid integration. But I haven't seen that article. I can't click it and Google hasn't turned up with anything when I searched for it.

If he did, in fact, say what you report he said then my only response is that he does not know the circumstances of the founding. I have very little biographical information available to me on the guy. I know he went to Yale and Harvard. He looks like he might be 50, on a bad day. So where does that put him in terms of age at the time of founding?

I did find an article where he is quoted on a historical racial issue: http://www.visitingmontgomery.com/press_view.cfm?press_id=B25BBCCA-E22B-4CC5-81E44ABE38AEC535

I think his comments are very honorable. But they do show a bias which may have surfaced in the aforementioned Advertiser interview.

MA has been hiring wonderfully educated people for a very long time. Within the last decade and a half, they began pulling from the Ivy League heavily. It is a great step for the school. The negative effect, which we see here, is a lot of them had not been south of Washington, DC in their lives unless it was vacationing in south Florida. Before they got to the Academy, they thought the worst of Alabama. And when they started teaching, they continued with the same attitudes. Why else would Douglas have an opinion on the school's founding? He was probably in kindergarten or not even born when it was founded.

When did you graduate? You might know one of those teachers.

Jumping back to the first part about us not seeing eye to eye... What do you think about taking all the information about seg schools and making an entry about seg schools? Wikipedia needs that entry. We can expand the info on MA. That's easy. It needs to be updated anyway. 73 kids in the class of 2000 is pretty irrelavent. That's 5 years ago. Since then, they have built a new Upper School building. There should be something like "It is often criticized as a seg school." Then have seg school clickable.

Right now, the article is more about seg schools than the Academy. This is a very long entry. More thoughts to come...

[Oh, and most importantly...]

Not everyone who reads wikipedia is as active a wikipedian as you all. The vast majority just visit wikipedia for information. So, when they come to this site, they don't think to click on the discussions; they don't know what is happening behind the scenes. I know I didn't 3 days ago. And when they click on an article like this they take it at face value.

But what do we have in this article? Statements which begin with "In my opinion," restated with "In my opinion," lopped off. Such is the case with the Griffin comment.

I would argue the Gary Younge article is both irrelavent to the Academy in terms of the fact the Academy is not directly mentioned in the article and that The Guardian is a senstionalist semi-tabloid style UK based newspaper covering an issue in Alabama from New York with no knowledge of the Alabama constitution. (The constitution, in my opinion is "bass ackwards." For years, if a state representative wanted a law to stick, he'd just put it in the constitution rather than make it an act.) In addition, ask a British moderate what kind of publication The Guardian is and the first words out of his mouth, without political prompting will be "very leftist and a joke to the moderate majority." The next thing he will note is the poor editing evident in the frequent misspellings.

In the article, "Private Schools offer Parents Niche" the statement used for our wikipedia article is made by Annette Allen. She is a dean now at ASU, an HBC. And, at the time of the statement, she was a professor of sociology. Forgive my saying this, but a professor of sociology at an HBC is like the finger pointing equivalent of Bill O'Reilly from Fox News. Her position implies a huge bias. And the quote in question is really just putting words in her mouth anyway. "Allen is not sure when all the private schools were founded, but she noted several began shortly after the Brown v. Board of Education decision that deemed segregation in the public schools unconstitutional." You have to read between the lines to get anything out of that statement. And at best, all you get is that she is suspicious of the schools.

I feel all this is a real issue and a serious problem. We have politcally and racially biased opinion being passed as fact on a site people use for research.

== BIASED OPINION IS BEING PRESENTED AS FACT ==

• I differ with your appraisal. The article as it stands (and without relying solely on Griffin) places Montgomery Academy in the context of a large number of schools that were quite obviously and openly founded in response to white parents' concerns about integration. Given the context (Montgomery, Alabama 1959) and the outcome (a large number of students who once attended all-white public schools are enrolled in a newly-organized all-white private school), it is certainly reasonable to assume that the Montgomery Academy was a classic example of a segregation academy and that race was a primary consideration in the founding and success of the school. You have analyzed the bias in every commentator offered here, but have not analyzed your own bias. Do you have any indication that this academy was founded for reasons other than avoiding the integration of public schools? Without a court mandate to force integration, would there have been any threat to the perception of quality in the public schools which would not just be handled by putting pressure on the board?

Let's say you come upon a red, yellow and black-banded snake. You know that red and yellow adjacent indicate that the snake is venemous, but maybe this is a young snake and they change color as they get older. You look around and see that you are in a nest with hundreds of coral snakes. The conditions are perfect for them, coral snakes have flourished here for many generations. In fact, you are in a coral snake breeding area set up by the Federal government. And look, your snake is wearing a tag that says "Coral Snake - Venomous - opinion of Greg Griffin". The snake strikes at a nearby raccoon. The raccoon keels over. You start to take a step back, but then you remember a story your grandpa told you about the snake the built the first nest here. No one ever really said if he was a coral snake or not, but he apparently never actually killed anyone. Then you think about this Griffin guy... where did he study herpetology? Why did he say it's just an opinion? And then you consider the raccoon. Maybe the raccoon was already in poor health. Can we be sure that it was snake venom that killed it? You've heard that when snakes get older sometimes they'll let a raccoon walk right past them without striking. So there's the evidence. Are you seriously going to pick this snake up? --Dystopos 18:58, 3 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Re [2]. If concensus can't be reached, please consider contacting the Mediation Cabal. Please also sign all talk page posts with 4 tildes: ~~~~. -- Jeandré, 2006-05-03t19:52z