Since the Second World War, racial integration has been the dominant way of framing racial justice. Those who advocate integration believe that racial justice would be achievable if Blacks were given an equal opportunity to compete on par with Whites. However, racial integration was critiqued most radically and vocally during the 1970s and early…

Scholars have demonstrated that a range of institutions, organizations, and "social movement schools" aimed to advance the civil rights movement through education. What remains unclear is how those institutions balanced conversation, direct instruction, role-play, and other pedagogical methods. This article focuses on the Highlander Folk…

In 1963 and 1964, organizers in Boston held Freedom Stay-Outs--one-day school boycotts-- to protest the neglect of predominantly Black schools from the Boston School Committee, the governing body of the Boston Public Schools. Boycotting students attended Freedom Schools, where they learned about Black history and discussed issues facing Black…

In the Bible, the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse are said to usher in the end of the world. That is why, in 1964, Judge Ben Cameron gave four of his fellow judges on the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit the derisive nickname "the Fifth Circuit Four"--because they were ending the segregationist world of the Deep…

The Chinese of Chinatown, San Francisco largely opposed the city-wide racial integration plan that would bus their children across the city beginning in 1971. Claiming that it was a violation of their language rights, a need for cultural preservation and continued autonomy from the San Francisco that had long excluded them, Chinatown instituted…

Chicago's magnet schools were one of the nation's earliest experiments in choice-driven school desegregation, originating among civil rights advocates and academic education experts in the 1960s and appearing at specific sites in Chicago's urban landscape during the 1970s. The specific concerns that motivated the creation of magnet schools during…

December 1, 2015, marked the 60th anniversary of Rosa Parks' arrest for refusing to give up her seat to a white passenger on a Montgomery bus in 1955. This incident sparked the Montgomery Bus Boycott and the mid-20th century civil rights movement. A century before Parks' act of resistance, African American schoolteacher Elizabeth Jennings was…

Historically, teachers unions have played a special role in strengthening democratic cultures, and they are urgently called on to do so again. What is needed now more than ever says Kahlenberg, is a "social justice unionism" that goes beyond the narrow self-interest of members in bargaining for better wages and benefits to also engage in…

The purpose of this study was to explore the dynamics of racial change through the landmark appointment of the Black social scientist, Allison Davis, to the faculty of the University of Chicago in 1942. As archival materials make clear, the appointment came to fruition through the collaboration of powerful White liberals at the Julius Rosenwald…

Purpose: The purposes of this study were to: (a) analyze the insights and experiences of the 1st African American student-athlete (in basketball) at a prominent predominantly White institution in the Deep South as well as the later insights and experiences of his sons at the same university; and (b) to present a counterstory to the dominant…

The mainstream press frequently characterized the election of President Barack Obama, the first African American US President, as the realization of Martin Luther King's dream, thus crafting a postracial narrative of national transcendence. I argue that this routine characterization of Obama's election functions as a site for the production of…

Last summer, the Supreme Court declared voluntary student assignment plans to racially integrate the public schools in Louisville, Kentucky, and Seattle, Washington, unconstitutional by a 5-4 majority. This was a landmark ruling for public school integration and civil rights; the "Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School…

At the core of the epistemology of black identity in the 20th century United States is the assertion that freedom is a human right, not a privilege to be earned. By the late 19th century, an ideology of racial uplift had emerged that revolved around four concepts--compassion, service, education, and a commitment to social and economic justice for…

In this article, the author talks about a critically acclaimed movie "Crash" and what it reveals pedagogically about the paradoxical legacies of the grand experiment in radical democracy. Written and directed by Paul Haggis, "Crash" inundates the viewer with a barrage of the most condescending racial and ethnic insults, which…

This article explores the legacies of the 1954 "Brown v. Board of Education" Supreme Court decision within the historical context of race relations in the United States. The pursuit by African Americans to exercise their rights of citizenship is described as influenced by the changing face of fear. The Supreme Court decisions that…