Member Insights: Investing in the Deep South

Investing in the Deep South: A Journey Through History, Community and Possibility

By Sara Sneed, President and CEO, The NEA Foundation; Board Chairperson, Grantmakers for Education

If you’ve never been on a bus filled with education grantmakers from across the country—listening to blues music, sharing fried chicken and peach cobbler, and gazing out wide windows at small rural towns rising from endless stretches of cotton fields - let me be the first to tell you: it’s an experience you won’t soon forget.

This October, in my capacity as board of directors chairperson for Grantmakers for Education (EdFunders), I had the immense pleasure of co-hosting nearly fifty representatives of education philanthropies nationally on an immersive study tour of the Mississippi Delta. The tour, offered as a preconference experience ahead of EdFunders’ annual convening in Memphis, Tennessee, provided a rare opportunity for colleagues from across the U.S.  to engage deeply with the history, culture, and present-day realities of a region too often overlooked by philanthropy. As someone with deep familial roots in Mississippi, the chance to introduce peers to the promise and complexity of the Deep South was both personal and profoundly meaningful.

As president and CEO of The NEA Foundation, a national philanthropy based in Washington, D.C., I am proud that our board has made investing in public education in the Deep South a strategic priority. The NEA Foundation has long supported educators and public education nationwide through grants, fellowships, special initiatives and awards. Yet, when I stepped into this role, I was pleased to also launch our Community Schools Initiative, an ambitious effort to build, strengthen and sustain community schools across the Deep South through grants, coaching, technical assistance, network-building and policy advocacy at every level.

When we began this initiative, only one community school could be identified across Mississippi, Louisiana and Arkansas. Today, The NEA Foundation is honored to support 27 community schools, each leveraging local assets to meet the specific needs of the students and families served. The extraordinary gains we’ve witnessed—academically, socially and civically—give me real hope for the future of public education in the South and beyond.

The urgency cannot be overstated. The South is home to the nation’s largest concentration of Black Americans. It increasingly is the most diverse region of the country and it has the highest official poverty rate. In 2023, 47% of all children living in poverty nationwide resided in the South and one in five children in the region faces hardships such as food insecurity, unstable housing and limited access to health care, realities that profoundly shape educational outcomes. As the Children’s Defense Fund reminds us, “Growing up in poverty has wide-ranging, sometimes lifelong, effects on children, impairing a child’s ability and capacity to learn, build skills and succeed academically.”

As education grantmakers, we are called not only to confront these realities, but also to recognize the profound opportunity before us. Making meaningful, lasting change in the Deep South is quite possible but requires more than an infusion of funds. It requires a willingness to encounter the full, unvarnished complexity of a region that holds both some of the country’s deepest inequities and some of its most powerful traditions of resilience, advocacy and communal care.

Each stop on our study tour was intentionally chosen to illuminate a different facet of that complexity.

The Rosenwald School in Marks, Mississippi—A Testament to Visionary Philanthropy and Local Leadership

Our first stop was at a historic Rosenwald school in Marks, Mississippi. The Rosenwald school alliance, founded in the early 20th century by philanthropist Julius Rosenwald, in partnership with educator, author and philanthropist Booker T. Washington, ultimately encompassed thousands of schools for Black children across the South. Each school emerged during an era of segregation, when institutions serving Black students were profoundly under-resourced and, in many communities, entirely absent.

Though the Rosenwald schools themselves operated with limited resources – for instance some were designed to maximize natural light because electricity was not available – they became powerful examples of what thoughtful, community-centered philanthropy can make possible. The schools became pillars of Black communities, creating dedicated spaces for learning and demonstrating how strategic investment can expand opportunity and strengthen the civic fabric of a place.

While at the Rosenwald School, our tour group was privileged to hear from Mrs. Lillie V. Thompson-Davis, a 96-year-old former Rosenwald student, who shared vivid recollections of what education for Black children in her era demanded — principally, endurance, dignity, and an unshakeable belief in learning as a pathway to freedom. Mrs. Thompson-Davis spoke of the pride that Black families felt in having a Rosenwald School in their community, a place built through their own sweat equity and philanthropists’ willingness to invest in their children’s futures. Hearing her speak, surrounded by the restored walls that once held generations of Black children with boundless potential, was an honor none will soon forget.

Yet the fundamental issue of underfunded public schools in the Deep South remains.

Public schools in the South receive less funding on average than those in other regions, and, when situated amid under-resourced communities and persistent generational poverty, the outcomes are painfully predictable.  A 2021 report by the Southern Poverty Law Center noted, “students in the South are being denied access to the well-funded, well-resourced schools that are key to providing them with the skills and opportunities needed to thrive academically, socially, and as engaged members of our democracy. At the same time, local champions throughout the region have dedicated their lives to the continuing pursuit of both justice and transformation.

Senator Robert L. Jackson is one such exemplar. Immediately after our visit to the Rosenwald School, we traveled to one of the most promising emerging community school sites in the Deep South—a body of work initiated by the Quitman County Development Organization (QCDO) under Senator Jackson’s leadership. Over the past three years, QCDO and Quitman County Schools have forged an exceptional partnership to build a community-driven, educator-led community school, and what is taking shape there is extraordinary: broad and enthusiastic community engagement, strong cross-sector alignment, and an unwavering commitment to integrating essential resources, including health services, family engagement, expanded learning and social-emotional supports, into the school day.

Even at this early stage, the site stands as a model of what becomes possible when a community asserts its agency, marshals its strengths and designs an educational ecosystem that reflects its deepest hopes for its children. It was one of the most inspiring stops on the tour and a powerful testament to the transformative potential of community schools, visionary leadership and strategic philanthropy in the rural South.

The Emmett Till Historic Intrepid Center—Truth, Memory and Community Healing

The next stop on our bus tour was the Emmett Till Historic Intrepid Center in Glendora, Mississippi. Located in a building that once housed the cotton gin owned by one of Emmett Till’s abductors, the center now stands as a solemn and powerful site honoring Emmett Till’s memory, the profound impact of his murder on the Civil Rights Movement, and the historical and cultural heritage of Glendora and the state of Mississippi.

There are few places in the country where the legacy of slavery and Jim Crow can be felt more acutely than in the Deep South. Yet where there is deep darkness, there is also brilliant light. The region carries the trauma of racial violence, much of it never met with justice, but it also carries an equally enduring tradition of communal care, organizing, resistance and a commitment to healing.

As grantmakers consider what it means to invest in the South, my hope is that we feel called not only to acknowledge this history but to engage it with humility. And just as importantly, we must recognize how that history continues to shape the lived realities, opportunities and constraints facing communities across the region today. The work ahead requires that we deepen our understanding, honor the truth of what communities have endured, and partner with local leaders as they continue the long, courageous journey toward collective healing.

Stop 3: Coahoma Community College—From Past into Present, Partnership into Possibility

Our final stop was Coahoma Community College, one of Mississippi’s Historically Black Community Colleges. This last destination carried us from the deep past into the present day—to celebrate the ways small communities in the Mississippi Delta are driving change for younger generations.

After remarks from local education leaders, including Coahoma Community College President Valmadge T. Towner and Clarksdale Municipal School District Superintendent Dr. Toya Harrell-Matthews, we were treated to a profoundly moving performance by the college’s choir, performing Sam Cooke’s “A Change Is Gonna Come.” Its enduring message of hope, persistence and resilience felt just as fitting as a closing note to our tour as it must have felt to listeners when released in 1964.

Coahoma Community College, like many Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs), is far more than a place of higher learning. In January 2025, the college entered into an official partnership with the Quitman County School District, the Quitman County Development Organization, and the Clarksdale Municipal School District. Although Coahoma has long maintained informal relationships supporting students with college readiness, skills preparedness and mentoring, this new university-assisted community school partnership will strengthen the region’s school-to-career pipeline and expand schools’ capacities to meet student needs across the K–20 continuum.

These types of community partnerships—formal and informal—are the threads that form a resilient web of support for young people, families and communities across the South. They show how institutions, when working hand-in-hand with their neighbors, can create pathways of opportunity that philanthropy is uniquely positioned to nurture and amplify.

Closing Reflections: A Region of Profound Challenge and Unmatched Opportunity

As our journey through the Mississippi Delta came to an end, one truth rose above all others: the Deep South is a region of extraordinary cultural depth, historical consequence and untapped possibility. It includes some of the country’s fastest-growing cities, one of its largest rural populations, and a racial and cultural inheritance that continues to shape its political, economic and civic life. The region also confronts some of the nation’s most entrenched challenges—its highest childhood poverty rate, severe educational inequities, and the enduring imprint of structural racism, evident in the policies, resource disparities and lived conditions that define daily life for far too many.

Our study tour only hinted at the full landscape. In the span of a day, we could not adequately examine the health disparities, the housing and transportation shortages or the structural barriers that define daily life for millions across the region. What we witnessed was not the whole story, but a doorway into it.

For grantmakers, these realities require far more than our episodic attention. They demand disciplined learning, rigorous self-examination, and deep partnership with those who have lived and labored in this context for generations. Effective investment in the South begins with listening—truly listening—to the stories, knowledge and lived experiences of local communities. It requires grappling with the region’s complex histories and understanding how their remnants still shape policy, opportunity and public life today. Only then can philanthropic engagement become relevant, resonant and capable of driving lasting change.

Historically, only 3% of philanthropic dollars have reached the South. Let that number settle for a moment. In the very place where strategic investment could yield some of the nation’s most transformative impact, philanthropy has too often been thin, episodic or entirely absent. But there are signs of a shift. More funders are turning their attention southward, and educators, communities and policymakers across the region are prepared—indeed, eager—to step into a new era of possibility.

My hope is that those committed to advancing justice and opportunity in this extraordinary region will take the time to learn its history, immerse themselves in its culture, and walk in genuine partnership with communities that have long carried both the burdens and the brilliance of the South. If we invest with intention, humility and courage, the light our group witnessed across the Mississippi Delta will not simply endure—it will widen. And generations from now, people might look back on this moment as the one in which philanthropy finally chose to meet the South with the respect, imagination and resolve it has always deserved.

About Member Insights

This article represents the opinion of the author; it is not intended to represent the views of Grantmakers for Education or its employees.

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