East Side High School

East Side High School was a senior high school in Cleveland, Mississippi, within the Mississippi Delta region. It was a part of the Cleveland School District and the building itself remains such as a middle school. In September 2017, it was merged into Cleveland Central High School. As of 2016, it was an all-black high school. Historically African-Americans lived in the eastern part of Cleveland. Their teams were known as the Trojans. History It opened as a segregated black school, Cleveland Colored Consolidated High School. For a long period B. L. Bell, known as "Professor Bell," served as the principal of the historic black school. He became an informant, for the Mississippi State Sovereignty Commission, a pro-segregation state agency of Mississippi, during the Civil Rights Movement. Bell received $100 (about $ according to inflation) on a monthly basis to establish a network of African-American informers by 1959, as that year Bell had proposed establishing a spy network to Governor of Mississippi James P. Coleman. Bell also recorded NAACP meetings in his area, sending the information to the commission. Bell denied being paid by the commission when he was openly accused of disloyalty in NAACP meetings. Charles C. Bolton, author of The Hardest Deal of All: The Battle Over School Integration in Mississippi, 1870-1980, wrote that the suspicion against him made Bell an ineffective informer. B. L. Bell, Jr., the man's son, stated in a 1996 interview that his father believed black teachers and students were not "qualified enough" for white schools, and this is why he believed his father would cooperate with the commission.