Flyer, 40th Anniversary Christmas Letter of Piney Woods School, Mississippi

Piney Woods, Mississippi: Piney Woods School, 1950. First Edition. Letter. Very good. 9 x 12" flyer, with b/w photographs of graduates, boy scouts and 4-H group. Fold lines, likely an enclosure. Flyer signed, "In the Joy of Spraying A Human Orchard, Lawrence C. Jones". "We have no 'sob stuff' or 'ism', other than unadulterated Americanism... In our human factory, we manufacture AMERICANS." The school was started at the turn of the century by a black educator, Lawrence C. Jones, to provide basic education for the children of field hands. In 1929, with the arrival of Martha Louise Morrow Foxx serving as principal, the Mississippi Blind School for Negroes (truncated) was founded at Piney Woods. Still running today, more than a century later, most of the today's pupils are from poor, single-parent homes, many come from the 'toughest neighborhoods in the country', according to one of two 60 Minute specials on the school.

The Piney Woods Country Life School (or The Piney Woods School) is a co-educational independent historically African-American boarding school for grades 9-12 in Piney Woods, unincorporated Rankin County, Mississippi. One of four remaining historically African-American boarding schools in the United States, currently the largest African-American boarding school, as well as being the second oldest continually operating African-American boarding school. (Inventory #: 785)