This essay describes Open Admissions in the South during postsecondary desegregation, providing a comparative analysis of policies and debates in Tennessee, Louisiana, and Georgia. Statewide Open Admissions policies emerged in the 1960s as part of superficial efforts to comply with desegregation but were ineffective; consequently, they were…

"Kappan"'s editor talks with the distinguished historian Vanessa Siddle Walker about the hidden -- and lost -- tradition of political advocacy by Black educational leaders in the segregated South. To promote equity and excellence for all students, she argues, today's educators will need to recover the sorts of extensive and…

In this study I used autoethnography to analyze fifty years of African-American educational history in Georgia. The impetus for the study was the Atlanta cheating scandal, widely interpreted as a character problem for individual teachers and administrators. As a lifelong resident of Georgia, a student, a public school teacher, and a parent, it…

Prior to the United States Supreme Court's decision in "Brown v. Board of Education" (1954), educational finance litigation focused almost entirely on the equitable distribution of state educational financing, ending preferential disbursement of state funds. This ended in 1973, with the United States Supreme Court's decision in "San…

An interpretive overview of Georgia's response to the 1954 school desegregation decision is presented. The study, approached historically, concludes that massive resistance to desegregation crumbled in the state in large part due to forces within the state. It is argued that the public's commitment to public education was stronger than its support…