Students, parents, and teachers of today should know full well that even a whole phalanx of educational reforms does not automatically prevail over the social bigotries that persist from the past. This paper provides an uncomfortable reminder of how the democratic purposes of U.S. education must be sustained not only by court decisions and legislative mandates, but by wholesale public understanding that a continued "opening up" of U.S. schools is the only direction possible in a democracy. (Author)