• History of Wells APAC

    Wells Elementary School is named in honor of Ida B. Wells, investigative journalist, educator and early leader in the Civil Rights movement and one of the founders of the NAACP, who dedicated her lifetime to combating prejudice and violence, and fought for African-American equality, especially for women. 

    For four decades, the Academic and Performing Arts Complex (APAC) of Jackson Public School District has been implementing and sustaining a vision that was developed in 1980.  In 1982, with the aid of an Emergency School Aid Act (ESAA) Magnet Grant, APAC began at Murrah High School, with the same mission statement that remains in effect today.
     
    In 1990, the APAC program was placed in the Power Elementary School building on Riverside Drive, which, in 2020, was renamed Ida B. Wells APAC.
     
    Over the years, APAC has been awarded hundreds of honors and recognitions for excellence in academics, arts education, dance, theatre, music and visual arts.  It has been named a National Blue Ribbon School (2003) and given the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts National Schools of Distinction in Arts Education Award (2011).