Houston Academy

The school was founded in 1970 in response to integration of the public schools in Dothan, as a way to maintain segregated schooling under the guise of private education. This history received national attention in 2016, when Bill Clinton revealed in a campaign speech that his wife Hillary Clinton had made an undercover visit to the area investigating segregation academies in 1972.^[2] In 1970, the IRS allowed the school to retain its tax exempt status despite its policy of discriminating on racial grounds.^[3]

While the school no longer enforces a ban on non-white students, in 2015 only eight black students were enrolled and thirteen percent of the student population were minorities of any kind.^[4]

Mark Saliba, the current mayor of Dothan, was a chairman of the school's board from 2007 until 2014.^[5]