This book presents a narrative version of Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas, which struck down state-sponsored racial segregation in America's schools. It analyzes the origins and consequences of that landmark case, illuminating the legal, political, and social implications of this decision. The book weaves many controversial issues…

Describes the historical efforts of economically, politically, and socially oppressed black communities across the segregated U.S. south to give their children a quality education, highlighting rural Prince Edward County, Virginia. In an attempt to circumvent Brown v. Board of Education (1954), white leaders closed every public school in the…

Based on data from five educational voucher programs in the United States, argues that voucher schools do not "cream" the best students, do serve special-needs students, can improve academic achievement, do not increase racial segregation, and do not harm public schools. Explains why African Americans support educational vouchers. (Contains 18…

Interviews with African American and White American elders capture the immediate power of the Brown v. Board of Education (1954) decision and the biography of its impact over time. This article reviews the lived experience of the decision and theorizes 3 threats to sustainability that ruthlessly undermined the decision over time: (a) the…

The "Brown v. Board of Education" decision remains one of the most important legal decisions in history. Although there were local schemes used to avoid desegregating public schools after the decision, black students experienced declining segregation from the 1950s to the late 1980s. During the 1990s, however, a series of Supreme Court decisions…

Examining the widespread claims that private schools have high segregation levels and vouchers will lead to greater segregation, this study finds that both assertions are empirically unsupportable. Private schools participating in Cleveland's voucher program are much less segregated than Cleveland's public schools. This means that students using…

This chapter presents the author's response to Bernard Gifford and Guadalupe Valdes's article "The Linguistic Isolation of Hispanic Students in California's Public Schools: The Challenge of Reintegration." In their article, Gifford and Valdes consult the historical record concerning English-speaking Anglo contact with Spanish-speaking…

The relationship between the educational character of Philadelphia's public schools (Pennsylvania) and the communities in which they are embedded was studied using information from the 1990 Federal Census and the city's police and health departments. The characteristics of the city's neighborhoods are described, and schools are located in their…

If past experience is taken as a guide, desegregation in the big cities will not come easily, yet interdistrict desegregation of public education is the key to allowing minority youth to participate in the mainstream of the economy in addition to relieving the tension between the races. (Author/AM)

Fifty years after the "Brown v. Board of Education" decision outlawed de jure segregation in American schools, many school districts remain segregated. Despite numerous efforts aimed at desegregation, residential segregation--the primary barrier to significant school desegregation--remains entrenched throughout the United States. The Miami-Dade…

The Supreme Court's opinion in the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education case legally ended decades of racial segregation in America's public schools. Originally named after Oliver Brown, the first of many plaintiffs listed in the lower court case of Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, KS, the landmark decision actually resolved five separate…

The appellate argument of Paul Wilson, who represented the Topeka, Kansas, school board in the 1952 Supreme Court case, "Brown v. Board of Education," presents an excellent example of the influence of personal and legal ethics on rhetorical choices. A reluctant advocate of racially segregated education, a policy the Topeka Board of…

Struggle for racial justice in the public schools is now taking on a new focus. The issue has become the treatment of minority students within "desegregated" systems and the use of suspensions, tracking, and unofficial exclusion to discriminate against them. [Available from Commonweal Publishing Company, 232 Madison Avenue, New York, New York…

One premise of the Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court decision was that racial injustice could be eliminated through court ordered desegregation. Twenty-three years after Brown I, segregation continues to be one of the most complex issues confronting the country. The failure to distinguish between means (busing school children) and ends…

This study explores the effect of school location (city or county) on the relationship between four independent variables (number of private schools, existence of social elite enrolled in private schools, private school affiliation, and private school type) and a series of eight attitudinal items tapping public school superintendents' ideas on two…