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Still Separate, Still Unequal: Teaching about School Segregation and Educational Inequality

By Keith Meatto

• May 2, 2019

Racial segregation in public education has been illegal for 65 years in the United States. Yet American public schools remain largely separate and unequal — with profound consequences for students, especially students of color.

Today’s teachers and students should know that the Supreme Court declared racial segregation in schools to be unconstitutional in the landmark 1954 ruling Brown v. Board of Education . Perhaps less well known is the extent to which American schools are still segregated. According to a recent Times article , “More than half of the nation’s schoolchildren are in racially concentrated districts, where over 75 percent of students are either white or nonwhite.” In addition, school districts are often segregated by income. The nexus of racial and economic segregation has intensified educational gaps between rich and poor students, and between white students and students of color.

Although many students learn about the historical struggles to desegregate schools in the civil rights era, segregation as a current reality is largely absent from the curriculum.

“No one is really talking about school segregation anymore,” Elise C. Boddie and Dennis D. Parker wrote in this 2018 Op-Ed essay. “That’s a shame because an abundance of research shows that integration is still one of the most effective tools that we have for achieving racial equity.”

The teaching activities below, written directly to students, use recent Times articles as a way to grapple with segregation and educational inequality in the present. This resource considers three essential questions:

• How and why are schools still segregated in 2019? • What repercussions do segregated schools have for students and society? • What are potential remedies to address school segregation?

School segregation and educational inequity may be a sensitive and uncomfortable topic for students and teachers, regardless of their race, ethnicity or economic status. Nevertheless, the topics below offer entry points to an essential conversation, one that affects every American student and raises questions about core American ideals of equality and fairness.

Six Activities for Students to Investigate School Segregation and Educational Inequality

Activity #1: Warm-Up: Visualize segregation and inequality in education.

Based on civil rights data released by the United States Department of Education, the nonprofit news organization ProPublica has built an interactive database to examine racial disparities in educational opportunities and school discipline. In this activity, which might begin a deeper study of school segregation, you can look up your own school district, or individual public or charter school, to see how it compares with its counterparts.

To get started: Scroll down to the interactive map of the United States in this ProPublica database and then answer the following questions:

1. Click the tabs “Opportunity,” “Discipline,” “Segregation” and “Achievement Gap” and answer these two simple questions: What do you notice? What do you wonder? (These are the same questions we ask as part of our “ What’s Going On in This Graph? ” weekly discussions.) 2. Next, click the tabs “Black” and “Hispanic.” What do you notice? What do you wonder? 3. Search for your school or district in the database. What do you notice in the results? What questions do you have?

For Further Exploration

Research your own school district. Then write an essay, create an oral presentation or make an annotated map on segregation and educational inequity in your community, using data from the Miseducation database.

Activity #2: Explore a case study: schools in Charlottesville, Va.

The New York Times and ProPublica investigated how segregation still plays a role in shaping students’ educational experiences in the small Virginia city of Charlottesville. The article begins:

Zyahna Bryant and Trinity Hughes, high school seniors, have been friends since they were 6, raised by blue-collar families in this affluent college town. They played on the same T-ball and softball teams, and were in the same church group. But like many African-American children in Charlottesville, Trinity lived on the south side of town and went to a predominantly black neighborhood elementary school. Zyahna lived across the train tracks, on the north side, and was zoned to a mostly white school, near the University of Virginia campus, that boasts the city’s highest reading scores.

Before you read the rest of the article, and learn about the experiences of Zyahna and Trinity, answer the following questions based on your own knowledge, experience and opinions:

• What is the purpose of public education? • Do all children in America receive the same quality of education? • Is receiving a quality public education a right (for everyone) or a privilege (for some)? • Is there a correlation between students’ race and the quality of education they receive?

Now read the entire article about lingering segregation in Charlottesville and answer the following questions:

1. How is Charlottesville’s school district geographically and racially segregated? 2. How is Charlottesville a microcosm of education in America? 3. How do white and black students in Charlottesville compare in terms of participation in gifted and talented programs; being held back a grade; being suspended from school? 4. How do black and white students in Charlottesville compare in terms of reading at grade level? 5. How do Charlottesville school officials explain the disparities between white and black students? 6. Why are achievement disparities so common in college towns? 7. In what ways do socioeconomics not fully explain the gap between white and black students?

After reading the article and answering the above questions, share your reactions using the following prompts:

• Did anything in the article surprise you? Shock you? Make you angry or sad? Why? • On the other hand, did anything in the article strike you as unsurprising? Explain. • How might education in Charlottesville be made more equitable?

Choose one or more of the following ideas to investigate school segregation in the United States and around the world.

1. Read and discuss “ In a Divided Bosnia, Segregated Schools Persist .” Compare and contrast the situations in Bosnia and Charlottesville. How does this perspective confirm, challenge, or complicate your understanding of the topic?

2. Read and discuss the article and study the map and graphs in “ Why Are New York’s Schools Segregated? It’s Not as Simple as Housing .” How does “school choice” confirm, challenge or complicate your understanding of segregation and educational inequity?

3. Only a tiny number of black students were offered admission to the highly selective public high schools in New York City in 2019, raising the pressure on officials to confront the decades-old challenge of integrating New York’s elite public schools. To learn more about this story, listen to this episode of The Daily . For more information, read these Op-Ed essays and editorials offering different perspectives on the problem and possible solutions. Then, make a case for what should be done — or not done — to make New York’s elite public schools more diverse.

• Stop Fixating on One Elite High School, Stuyvesant. There Are Bigger Problems. • How Elite Schools Stay So White • No Ethnic Group Owns Stuyvesant. All New Yorkers Do. • De Blasio’s Plan for NYC Schools Isn’t Anti-Asian. It’s Anti-Racist. • New York’s Best Schools Need to Do Better

3. Read and discuss “ The Resegregation of Jefferson County .” How does this story confirm, challenge or complicate your understanding of the topic?

Activity #3: Investigate the relationship between school segregation, funding and inequality.

Some school districts have more money to spend on education than others. Does this funding inequality have anything to do with lingering segregation in public schools? A recent report says yes. A New York Times article published in February begins:

School districts that predominantly serve students of color received $23 billion less in funding than mostly white school districts in the United States in 2016, despite serving the same number of students, a new report found. The report, released this week by the nonprofit EdBuild, put a dollar amount on the problem of school segregation, which has persisted long after Brown v. Board of Education and was targeted in recent lawsuits in states from New Jersey to Minnesota. The estimate also came as teachers across the country have protested and gone on strike to demand more funding for public schools.

Answer the following questions based on your own knowledge, experience and opinions.

• Who pays for public schools? • Is there a correlation between money and education? Does the amount of money a school spends on students influence the quality of the education students receive?

Now read the rest of the Times article about funding differences between mostly white school districts and mostly nonwhite ones, and then answer the following questions:

1. How much less total funding do school districts that serve predominantly students of color receive compared to school districts that serve predominantly white students? 2. Why are school district borders problematic? 3. How many of the nation’s schoolchildren are in “racially concentrated districts, where over 75 percent of students are either white or nonwhite”? 4. How much less money, on average, do nonwhite districts receive than white districts? 5. How are school districts funded? 6. How does lack of school funding affect classrooms? 7. What is the new kind of ”white flight” in Arizona and why is it a problem? 8. What is an “enclave”? What does the statement “some school districts have become their own enclaves” mean?

• Did anything in the article surprise you? Shock you? Make you angry or sad? Why? • On the other hand, did anything in the article strike you as unsurprising? Explain. • How could school funding be made more equitable?

Choose one or more of the following ideas to investigate the interrelationship among school segregation, funding and inequality.

1. Research your local school district budget, using public records or local media, such as newspapers or television reporting. What is the budget per student? How does that budget compare with the state average? The national average? 2. Compare your findings about your local school budget to your research about segregation and student outcomes, using the Miseducation database. Do the results of your research suggest any correlations?

Activity #4: Examine potential legal remedies to school segregation and educational inequality.

How do we get better schools for all children? One way might be to take the state to court. A Times article from August reports on a wave of lawsuits that argue that states are violating their constitutions by denying children a quality education. The article begins:

By his own account, Alejandro Cruz-Guzman’s five children have received a good education at public schools in St. Paul. His two oldest daughters are starting careers in finance and teaching. Another daughter, a high-school student, plans to become a doctor. But their success, Mr. Cruz-Guzman said, flows partly from the fact that he and his wife fought for their children to attend racially integrated schools outside their neighborhood. Their two youngest children take a bus 30 minutes each way to Murray Middle School, where the student population is about one-third white, one-third black, 16 percent Asian and 9 percent Latino. “I wanted to have my kids exposed to different cultures and learn from different people,” said Mr. Cruz-Guzman, who owns a small flooring company and is an immigrant from Mexico. When his two oldest children briefly attended a charter school that was close to 100 percent Latino, he said he had realized, “We are limiting our kids to one community.” Now Mr. Cruz-Guzman is the lead plaintiff in a lawsuit saying that Minnesota knowingly allowed towns and cities to set policies and zoning boundaries that led to segregated schools, lowering test scores and graduation rates for low-income and nonwhite children.

Read the entire article and then answer the following questions:

1. What does Mr. Cruz-Guzman’s suit allege against the State of Minnesota? 2. Why are advocates for school funding equity focused on state government, as opposed to the federal government? 3. What did a state judge rule in New Mexico? What did the Kansas Supreme Court rule? 4. What fraction of fourth and eighth graders in New Mexico is not proficient in reading? What does research suggest may improve their test scores? 5. According to a 2016 study, if a school spends 10 percent more per pupil, what percentage more would students earn as adults? 6. What does the economist Eric Hanushek argue about the correlation between spending and student achievement? 7. What remedy for school segregation is Daniel Shulman, the lead lawyer in the Minnesota desegregation suit, considering? Why are charter schools nervous about the case? 8. How does Khulia Pringle see some charter schools as “culturally affirming”? What problems does Ms. Pringle see with busing white children to black schools and vice versa?

• Did anything in the article surprise you? What other emotional responses did you have while reading? Why? • On the other hand, did anything in the article strike you as unsurprising? Explain. • Do the potential “cultural” benefits of school segregation outweigh the costs?

Choose one or more of the following ideas to investigate potential remedies to school segregation and educational inequality.

1. Read the obituaries “ Jean Fairfax, Unsung but Undeterred in Integrating Schools, Dies at 98 ” and “ Linda Brown, Symbol of Landmark Desegregation Case, Dies at 75 .” How do their lives inform your grasp of legal challenges to segregation?

2. Watch the following video about school busing . How does this history inform your understanding of the benefits and challenges of busing?

3. Read about how parents in two New York City school districts are trying to tackle segregation in local middle schools . Then decide if these models have potential for other districts in New York or around the country. Why or why not?

Activity #5: Consider alternatives to integration.

Is integration the best and only choice for families who feel their children are being denied a quality education? A recent Times article reports on how some black families in New York City are choosing an alternative to integration. The article begins:

“I love myself!” the group of mostly black children shouted in unison. “I love my hair, I love my skin!” When it was time to settle down, their teacher raised her fist in a black power salute. The students did the same, and the room hushed. As children filed out of the cramped school auditorium on their way to class, they walked by posters of Colin Kaepernick and Harriet Tubman. It was a typical morning at Ember Charter School in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, an Afrocentric school that sits in a squat building on a quiet block in a neighborhood long known as a center of black political power. Though New York City has tried to desegregate its schools in fits and starts since the 1954 Supreme Court ruling in Brown v. Board of Education, the school system is now one of the most segregated in the nation. But rather than pushing for integration, some black parents in Bedford-Stuyvesant are choosing an alternative: schools explicitly designed for black children.

Before you read the rest of the article, answer the following questions based on your own knowledge, experience and opinions:

• Should voluntary segregation in schools be permissible? Why or why not? • What potential benefits might voluntary segregation offer? • What potential problems might it pose?

Now, read the entire article and then answer these questions:

1. What is the goal of Afrocentric schools? 2. Why are some parents and educators enthusiastic about Afrocentric schools? 3. Why are some experts wary of Afrocentric schools? 4. What does Alisa Nutakor want to offer minority students at Ember? 5. What position does the city’s schools chancellor take on Afrocentric schools? 6. What “modest desegregation plans” have some districts offered? With what result? 7. Why did Fela Barclift found Little Sun People? 8. Why are some parents ambivalent about school integration? According to them, how can schools be more responsive to students of color? 9. What does Mutale Nkonde mean by the phrase “not all boats are rising”? 10. What did Jordan Pierre gain from his experience at Eagle Academy?

• Did anything in the article surprise you? What other emotional responses did you have while reading? Why? • On the other hand, did anything in the article strike you as unsurprising? Explain. • Did the article challenge your opinion about voluntary segregation? How?

Choose one or more of the following ideas to investigate some of the complicating factors that influence where parents decide to send their children to school.

1. Read and discuss “ Choosing a School for My Daughter in a Segregated City .” How does reading about segregation, inequity and school choice from a parent’s perspective confirm, challenge or complicate your understanding of the topic?

2. Read “ Do Students Get a Subpar Education in Yeshivas? ” How might a student’s religious affiliation complicate the issue of segregation and inequity in education?

Activity #6: Learn more and take action.

Segregation still persists in public schools more than 60 years after the Brown v. Board of Education decision. What more can you learn about the issue? What choices can you make? Is there anything students can do about the issue?

Write a personal essay about your experience with school segregation. For inspiration, read Erin Aubrey Kaplan’s op-ed essay, “ School Choice Is the Enemy of Justice ,” which links a contemporary debate with the author’s personal experience of school segregation.

Interview a parent, grandparent or another adult about their educational experiences related to segregation, integration and inequity in education. Compare their experiences with your own. Share your findings in a paper, presentation or class discussion.

Take action by writing a letter about segregation and educational inequity in your community. Send the letter to a person or organization with local influence, such as the school board, an elected official or your local newspaper.

Discuss the issue in your school or district by raising the topic with your student council, parent association or school board. Be prepared with information you discovered in your research and bring relevant questions.

Additional Resources

Choices in Little Rock | Facing History and Ourselves

Beyond Brown: Pursuing the Promise | PBS

Why Are American Public Schools Still So Segregated? | KQED

Toolkit for “Segregation by Design” | Teaching Tolerance

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The Struggle Against Segregated Education

Outfit worn by Carlotta Walls to Little Rock Central High School, 1957.

The road to desegregated education in the United States was a long and difficult one, and stands as a testament to the remarkable power, tenacity, and moral clarity of great African American trailblazers who refused to settle for the inherent injustice of “separate but equal.” 

Following the Civil War and the Emancipation Proclamation, Black Americans fought to realize their rights as guaranteed by the so-called Reconstruction Amendments. These three constitutional amendments—the 13th, 14th, and 15th—abolished slavery (except as a punishment for crime); established the principles of “birthright citizenship” and “equal justice under the law”; and ensured a citizen’s right to vote regardless of “race, color, or previous condition of servitude.” As many states sought to re-establish “white supremacy” in the 1870s, African Americans were disenfranchised and stripped of their newly won civil rights. They often sought justice in the court system, sometimes taking their cases all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. 

Issued on May 18, 1896, the Supreme Court’s ruling in the Plessy v. Ferguson case created the “separate but equal” doctrine, declaring that racial segregation was constitutional and did not violate the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment. This landmark decision provided the constitutional basis for legalizing racial segregation. In what became known as the Jim Crow era, a collection of state and local statutes quickly followed, the impact of which was painfully felt in every aspect of African American life, including by Black children in the classroom.  

Plessy v. Ferguson allowed Black children to be segregated into overcrowded and unsafe school buildings that were often inaccessible by public transportation, forcing students to walk long distances year-round. Classrooms were poorly resourced, without enough desks for every child, and the few books students had were tattered hand-me-downs from white schools. Black teachers were paid only a fraction of the salary of their white counterparts. 

African Americans across the country understood the profound impact of segregated and inferior educational practices on Black students. Led by the NAACP’s Charles Hamilton Houston, the NAACP began mounting a legal challenge to “separate but equal” in the 1940s. Known as the “man who killed Jim Crow,” Houston trained several attorneys, including Thurgood Marshall, to serve as counsel for African Americans fighting many areas where segregation was practiced, including education, transportation, and housing. 

Offering Education, 2003 bronze sculpture by Elizabeth Catlett. Gift from the Unit Owners Association of the Offices at Terrell Place, a Condominium, Beacon Capital Partners, LLC and AARP. Conservation for these sculptures received Federal support from the Collections Care Initiative Fund, administered by the Smithsonian American Women’s History Initiative and the National Collections Program. © 2020 Catlett Mora Family Trust/Licensed by VAGA at Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY 

In 1951, the NAACP identified a promising educational case and plaintiff in Oliver Brown, whose daughter was refused enrollment at the elementary school closest to their home in Topeka, Kansas, and instead was forced to ride a bus to a segregated Black school further away. 

The Browns joined together with other Black families in Topeka and filed a class-action lawsuit against the Topeka Board of Education, alleging that its segregation policy was unconstitutional. When a federal court ruled against the families on the basis of Plessy v. Ferguson, the Browns—now represented by NAACP chief counsel Marshall—appealed directly to the Supreme Court. 

In the Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka case of 1954, Marshall, Houston, and other prominent Black attorneys argued that segregation was inherently unequal and unconstitutional under the 14th Amendment. They also built their case around the groundbreaking work of a husband-and-wife team of psychologists, Drs. Kenneth B. and Mamie Clark. 

The Clarks, who each received their bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Howard University, were the first African Americans to obtain doctoral degrees in psychology from Columbia University. In 1946, they opened the Northside Center for Child Development, the first full-time child guidance center offering psychological and casework services to families in Harlem. There they also continued Mamie’s studies on self-identification in Black children, the subject of her master’s thesis, and began conducting experiments to examine the psychological effects of segregation on Black children. 

In the Clarks’ now famous experiments, children were presented with two Black dolls and two white dolls and asked to identify which dolls looked like them and which were “good” or “bad.” The studies revealed that Black children preferred the white dolls, identifying them as “nice” while identifying the Black dolls as “bad.” 

School Boycott, “No More Segregated Education”, print of 1964 photograph by Frank Espada.

The findings of the Clarks’ studies played a major role in the NAACP’s arguments in Brown v. Board. The Clarks were called as expert witnesses and testified that segregation damaged the psychological development of African American children and caused them to internalize racism. 

Swayed by the Clarks’ research and the arguments advanced by Marshall and the Browns’ other attorneys, the Supreme Court unanimously overturned Plessy v. Ferguson and ordered that school segregation should be dismantled “with all deliberate speed.” 

As for the courageous men and women at the center of this case, Charles Hamilton Houston passed away before the Brown v. Board case was decided. His words, however, spurred on the efforts of the legal team: “We must remain on the alert and push the struggle farther with all our might.” Later, Thurgood Marshall became the first African American Supreme Court Justice.  

Kenneth and Mamie Clark continued to make significant contributions to the field of psychology and to the social justice movement of their time. Their research would later influence the scholarship of the late Dr. Audrey Smedley, a trailblazing social anthropologist—and one of the Museum’s earliest Charter Members. Dr. Smedley’s pioneering book, Race in North America: Origins and Evolution of a Worldview, traces popularized concepts of race for more than 300 years to show that race is not a product of science, as the Plessy court believed, but in fact a social construct. 

The long reach of the social construct identified by Dr. Smedley remains visible in the systemic issues that plague education to this day. While the Brown case established the legal requirement for desegregating schools, that goal remains out of reach in many communities. In 1968, about 77 percent of Black students and 55 percent of Latino students attended public schools that were more than half minority. In 2010, more than 40 years later, 74 percent of Black students and 80 percent of Latino students continue to attend public schools dominated by minority populations. The legal mandate of Brown v. Board may be clear but factors such as income inequality and discriminatory housing patterns continue to perpetuate not only de facto educational segregation, but continuing disparities in the quality of education offered to children. 

Baby dolls used by Northside Center for Child Development, 1968.

 Baby dolls used by Northside Center for Child Development, 1968.

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The National Museum of African American History and Culture shares these and other stories of the heroes who helped overturn legalized segregation in our effort to advance social justice and racial equity. The groundbreaking work of the Clarks and other Civil Rights leaders informs many of the Museum’s powerful resources, including our acclaimed Talking About Race initiative. In our collections you can view some of the Black and white dolls the Clarks used in their experiments at the Northside Center for Child Development in the 1960s, similar to those presented in the 1954 Brown v. Board arguments. On the Museum’s first floor, you also can see Elizabeth Catlett’s 2003 bronze statue Offering Education, created to honor African American educator and activist Mary Church Terrell (1863–1954), who championed desegregation, African American civil rights, and women’s suffrage in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. And in the Museum’s Segregation Gallery, you can view the outfit worn by Carlotta Walls LaNier during the "Little Rock Crisis" of 1957 at Little Rock Central High School.  

To learn more about the struggle against segregated education—or if you are interested in exploring other powerful but lesser-known stories in African American history—please visit our online Searchable Museum today. This groundbreaking—and 2022 CIO 100 Award-winning—initiative by the Museum brings innovative, immersive digital experiences and evocative content directly into the homes of Members like you.  

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The U.S. student population is more diverse, but schools are still highly segregated

Sequoia Carrillo

Pooja Salhotra

The U.S. student body is more diverse than ever before. Nevertheless, public schools remain highly segregated along racial, ethnic and socioeconomic lines.

That's according to a report released Thursday by the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO). More than a third of students (about 18.5 million of them) attended a predominantly same-race/ethnicity school during the 2020-21 school year, the report finds. And 14% of students attended schools where almost all of the student body was of a single race/ethnicity.

The report is a follow up to a 2016 GAO investigation on racial disparity in K-12 schools. That initial report painted a slightly worse picture, but findings from the new report are still concerning, says Jackie Nowicki, the director of K-12 education at the GAO and lead author of the report.

Why White School Districts Have So Much More Money

"There is clearly still racial division in schools," says Nowicki. She adds that schools with large proportions of Hispanic, Black and American Indian/Alaska Native students – minority groups with higher rates of poverty than white and Asian American students – are also increasing. "What that means is you have large portions of minority children not only attending essentially segregated schools, but schools that have less resources available to them."

"There are layers of factors here," she says. "They paint a rather dire picture of the state of schooling for a segment of the school-age population that federal laws were designed to protect."

School segregation happens across the country

Segregation has historically been associated with the Jim Crow laws of the South. But the report finds that, in the 2020-21 school year, the highest percentage of schools serving a predominantly single-race/ethnicity student population – whether mostly white, mostly Hispanic or mostly Black etc. – were in the Northeast and the Midwest.

School segregation has "always been a whole-country issue," says U.S. Rep. Bobby Scott, D-Va., who heads the House education and labor committee. He commissioned both the 2016 and 2022 reports. "The details of the strategies may be different, but during the '60s and '70s, when the desegregation cases were at their height, cases were all over the country."

How The Systemic Segregation Of Schools Is Maintained By 'Individual Choices'

The GAO analysis also found school segregation across all school types, including traditional public schools, charter schools and magnet schools. Across all charter schools, which are publicly funded but privately run, more than a third were predominantly same-race/ethnicity, serving mostly Black and Hispanic students.

There's history behind the report's findings

Nowicki and her team at the GAO say they were not surprised by any of the report's findings. They point to historical practices, like redlining , that created racially segregated neighborhoods.

And because 70% of U.S. students attend their neighborhood public schools, Nowicki says, racially segregated neighborhoods have historically made for racially segregated schools.

The 50 Most Segregating School Borders In America

"There are historical reasons why neighborhoods look the way they look," she explains. "And some portion of that is because of the way our country chose to encourage or limit where people could live."

Though the 1968 Fair Housing Act outlawed housing discrimination on the basis of race, the GAO says that in some states, current legislation reinforces racially isolated communities.

"Our analysis showed that predominantly same-race/ethnicity schools of different races/ethnicities exist in close proximity to one another within districts, but most commonly exist among neighboring districts," the report says.

School district secessions have made segregation worse

One cause for the lack of significant improvement, according to the GAO, is a practice known as district secession, where schools break away from an existing district – often citing a need for more local control – and form their own new district. The result, the report finds, is that segregation deepens.

"In the 10 years that we looked at district secessions, we found that, overwhelmingly, those new districts were generally whiter, wealthier than the remaining districts," Nowicki says.

Six of the 36 district secessions identified in the report happened in Memphis, Tenn., which experienced a historic district merger several years ago. Memphis City Schools, which served a majority non-white student body, dissolved in 2011 due to financial instability. It then merged with the neighboring district, Shelby County Schools, which served a wealthier, majority white population.

This Supreme Court Case Made School District Lines A Tool For Segregation

Joris Ray was a Memphis City Schools administrator at the time of the merger. He recalls that residents of Shelby County were not satisfied with the new consolidated district. They successfully splintered off into six separate districts.

As a result, the GAO report says, racial and socioeconomic segregation has grown in and around Memphis. All of the newly formed districts are whiter and wealthier than the one they left, which is now called Memphis-Shelby County Schools.

Why Busing Didn't End School Segregation

"This brings negative implications for our students overall," says Ray, who has led Memphis-Shelby County Schools since 2019. "Research has shown that students in more diverse schools have lower levels of prejudice and stereotypes and are more prepared for top employers to hire an increasingly diverse workforce."

The GAO report finds that this pattern – of municipalities removing themselves from a larger district to form their own, smaller school district – almost always creates more racial and socioeconomic segregation. Overall, new districts tend to have larger shares of white and Asian American students, and lower shares of Black and Hispanic students, the report finds. New districts also have significantly fewer students eligible for free or reduced-price lunch, a common measure of poverty.

How a Psychologist’s Work on Race Identity Helped Overturn School Segregation in 1950s America

Mamie Phipps Clark came up with the oft-cited “doll test” and provided expert testimony in Brown v. Board of Education

Leila McNeill

From a young age, Mamie Phipps Clark knew she was black. “I became acutely aware of that in childhood, because you had to have a certain kind of protective armor about you, all the time … You learned the things not to do…so as to protect yourself,” she would say later, when asked in an interview how she first became aware of racial segregation. Growing up attending an all-black school in Hot Spring, Arkansas left an indelible impression on Clark; even as a young child, she knew that when she grew up she wanted to help other children.

And help children she did. Clark would go on to study psychology and develop valuable research methodology that combined the study of child development and racial prejudice— helping her field incorporate the felt experience of childhood racism. Ultimately, her work in social psychology crossed over into the Civil Rights Movement: Her research and expert testimony became instrumental to ending school segregation across the country in the landmark Brown v. Board of Education case of 1954.

Although she was born into the Jim Crow South, Clark’s childhood was not what one might consider typical. Compared to other black children in her city, she had a “very privileged childhood,” Clark recalled in a 1976 interview. Her father, Harold H. Phipps, was a well-respected physician, a rare occupation for a black person to hold in the early 20th century. Because of Phipps’ well-paying career, Clark’s mother, Kate Florence Phipps, was able to stay home with Clark and her younger brother, whereas many black mothers worked outside the home in labor or service jobs out of financial necessity. In a 1983 personal essay, Clark credits this “warm and protective” environment to later career success.

When Clark finished high school in 1934, the United States was slowly recovering from the Great Depression, and college was out of reach for many. For black Americans, the obstacles were even greater; Clark wrote in her personal essay that “a southern Negro aspiring to enter college had relatively few choices ... and was absolutely prohibited to be accepted in larger southern universities.” Still, the Phipps’ were determined to send their children to college, and with persistence and familial support, Clark received a merit scholarship to Howard University, a historically black college in Washington, D.C.

When Clark started at Howard, she intended to study mathematics and physics in order to become a math teacher. But she later wrote that she found the mathematics professors “detached” and “impersonal,” particularly “toward the female students.”

While rethinking her educational ambitions, she met a psychology student named Kenneth Clark. Kenneth encouraged Clark to pursue psychology as a way to fulfill her wish to help children, advice Clark would later describe as “prophetic.” And her meeting Kenneth was prophetic in more ways than one. Clark did decide to pursue psychology, which ultimately turned into a 36-year career. But she also began a relationship with Kenneth, which would ultimately grow into a long-term professional collaboration and a 46-year marriage.

After graduating  magna cum laude  in psychology 1938, she spent the summer working as a secretary in the law office of Charles Hamilton Houston, a formidable NAACP lawyer whose office served as a planning ground for racial segregation cases. She later recalled that this experience was “enormously instructive and revealing in relation to my own identity as a ‘Negro.’” She also noted the “total absence of Negro females with advanced degrees in psychology at Howard University,” calling this a “‘silent’ challenge.” When Clark began graduate study at Howard in the fall, she entered with a new challenge to address these racial disparities in her work.

Her master’s thesis, “ The Development of Consciousness in Negro Pre-School Children ,” surveyed 150 black pre-school aged boys and girls from a DC nursery school to explore issues of race and child development—specifically the age at which black children become aware that they were black. For the study that formed the basis of her thesis, she and Kenneth recruited the children and presented them with a set of pictures: white boys, black boys, and benign images of animals and other objects. They asked the boys to pick which picture looked like them, and then asked the girls to pick which picture looked like their brother or other male relative.

The conclusion of the study showed a distinct racial awareness of self in boys aged three to four years. The results were, in Kenneth's words, "disturbing."

In 1939, she and Kenneth applied for the Julius Rosenwald Fellowship program, which was created to fund, support and advance the achievements of black people. Their proposal included two new methods for studying racial identity in children: a coloring test and a doll test. They were awarded the fellowship in 1940 with renewals in 1941 and 1942. The goal of the Clarks’ fellowship, specifically, was to demonstrate that awareness of racial difference negatively affected development in black children and that, subsequently, black people were not limited by innate biological difference but by social and economic barriers to success.

Psychologist Alexandra Rutherford of York University, who wrote a 2012 biographical essay on Clark titled “Developmental Psychologist, Starting from Strengths,” describes the decades preceding Clark, the 1920s-1930s, as psychology’s “era of scientific racism.” It was “literally the height of a period in psychology marked by the study of racial differences in intelligence, presumed to be innate and biologically based,” says Rutherford. There was, however, increasing pushback from psychologists in the latter 1930s from black psychologists, and even a group of progressive white psychologists formed the  Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues  in 1936.

By the time Clark came on the scene with her graduate research, “psychologists were moving away from race difference research and hereditarianism to investigate what contributes to the development of race prejudice,” Rutherford says. “The Clarks were at the vanguard of this kind of work.”

However, just because scientific racism was losing its supremacy within the field did not mean that many practitioners no longer held those views. When Clark entered the doctoral program at Columbia University in 1940 as the only black student in the department, she intentionally chose to study under a professor Henry Garrett, a scientific racist and eugenicist. “She wanted the challenge,” says Rutherford. Garrett, unsurprisingly, did not encourage Clark to pursue a career in psychology, despite the fact that Clark not only continued her Rosenwald-funded research but also wrote a dissertation on separate research titled, “ Changes in Primary Mental Abilities with Age .”

Despite Garrett’s discouragement, in 1943, Clark graduated from Columbia with a PhD in psychology, making her the first black woman to do so.

But it was the work she did with Kenneth, namely the Doll Test, that has had the most lasting impact on the field of psychology and on the Civil Rights Movement. The Doll Test looked at 253 black children aged three to seven years old: 134 of the children attended segregated nursery schools in Arkansas and 119 who attended integrated schools in Massachusetts. They each were all shown four dolls: two with white skin and yellow hair, and two with brown skin and black hair. Each student was asked to identify the race of the doll and which one they preferred to play with.

The majority of the black students preferred the white doll with yellow hair, assigning positive traits to it. Meanwhile, most discarded the brown doll with black hair, assigning it negative traits. The Clarks concluded that black children formed a racial identity by the age of three and attached negative traits to their own identity, which were perpetuated by segregation and prejudice.

In leading up the 1954 ruling in the Supreme Court ruling of  Brown v Board of Education , Clark and Kenneth testified in many school segregation cases in the South. In one particular case, Clark was called to testify in the desegregation case of  Davis v County School Board of Prince Edward County Virginia  to rebut the testimony of none other than her former advisor, Henry Garrett. He testified in favor of segregation, arguing that black and white children were innately different. Clark argued against his testimony directly, and the court ruled in favor of integration. That was last time Clark and Garrett would meet.    

In regard to the  Brown  ruling itself, the NAACP lawyers asked Kenneth to pen a statement that described the social psychology research that supported school integration, which included the Clarks’ research and the Doll Test. Rutherford says that the work “was quite influential as part of the integrationist case in the  Brown v Board  decision. It was also the first time social science research was used in a Supreme Court Case.” Yet while history books often credit Kenneth with the Doll Test, even he acknowledged that “The record should show [The Doll Test] was Mamie’s primary project that I crashed. I sort of piggybacked on it.”

Despite all of Clark’s accomplishments and pioneering work with children, Clark could not find an academic job. A “black female with a PhD in psychology was an unwanted anomaly in New York City in the early 1940s,” she wrote in her personal essay. Eventually, Clark stopped doing original research and utilized her knowledge of child development and race in social services. There was no organization that provided mental health services to black children in New York City, so she decided to fill that need herself.

In 1946, the Clarks opened the  Northside Center for Child Development  in Harlem, the only organization in the city that provided mental health services to black children. They provided psychological testing, psychiatric services, and social services, and after the first year of operation, they also offered academic services. Northside became a bulwark of activism and advocacy for Harlem, working to provide personal mental health service and to help alleviate some of the social barriers to success. Clark ran Northside until her retirement in 1979, though the center continues even today.

Even though Clark left academic research, in 1973 she was awarded the American Association of University Women achievement award for “admirable service to field of mental health,” and ten years later the National Coalition of 100 Black Women awarded her the Candace Award for humanitarianism.

Clark died in 1983 of lung cancer. But from the Doll Test to Civil Rights to Northside, her devotion to children endures. Late historian Shafali Lal perhaps describes Clark best: “Mamie Clark’s comprehensive efforts to ameliorate the pain attached to skin color have had a lasting impact in the fields of child development and the psychology of race. Her vision of social, economic, and psychological advancement for African American children resonates far beyond the era of integration.” 

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Leila McNeill is an American writer, editor, and historian of science. She is an Affiliate Fellow in the History of Science at the University of Oklahoma and the co-founder and co-editor in chief of Lady Science magazine. She has been a columnist for Smithsonian magazine and BBC Future, and she has been published by The Atlantic , The Baffler , JSTOR Daily , among others.

Classroom Segregation: History and Current Impact on Student Education

The history of classroom segregation in the US reflects the nation’s continuing legacy of racism and systemic racial inequality. As recently as the 1950s, racial segregation in schools was the law of the land. More than six decades after the Supreme Court ruled that law unconstitutional, many schools are still heavily segregated and substantial disparities in school funding along racial lines remain.

As educational leaders search for ways to close achievement gaps and innovate solutions to manage inequitable school funding, they must also confront an ever-growing issue: the resegregation of US schools. Unfortunately, as in the past, the conditions of many schools today continue to separate the haves from the have-nots and further root marginalized groups in positions of disadvantage.

Leaders in education continue to seek ways to ensure that students across all race, ethnicity, and socioeconomic background, have equitable access to quality education. This requires addressing the role classroom segregation plays in exacerbating disparities and developing teaching approaches that offset the negative impact of segregation in schools.

A Brief History of Classroom Segregation

As early as the 1930s, members of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) were looking for strategies to desegregate schools through lawsuits targeting the legal doctrine of “separate but equal.” However, not until Brown v. Board of Education in 1954 did the US Supreme Court unanimously outlaw state-sanctioned school segregation, ruling it unconstitutional.

From their inception, schools serving students of color received significantly less funding than schools serving white students and faced overcrowding, inadequate supplies, and insufficiently paid teachers.

Such disparities resulted in gaps in the educational opportunities available to Black and white communities. In 1950, only 1 in 10 Black adults graduated from high school compared to 4 in 10 white adults. Especially hard hit were people living in states with a history of Jim Crow laws—Black adults in Mississippi, Georgia, and other Southern states having an average of only about five years of schooling.

Resistance to Integration

Once efforts to integrate schools began, campaigns directed by white community leaders and elected officials to resist and defy the Brown v. Board of Education ruling followed. One of the most famous examples occurred in 1957, when Arkansas governor Orval Eugene Faubus called upon the state’s National Guard to block nine newly enrolled Black students from entering Little Rock’s Central High School.

Another defiance of the Brown v. Board of Education ruling took place in Cleveland, Mississippi, where local officials devised schemes to stop desegregation by building schools in locations that kept Black students in all-Black schools, and created “dual residencies” that allowed the school district to continue sending students to particular schools based on their race.

Nonetheless, proponents of integration pressed on, introducing programs and strategies to address the issue. One controversial strategy to end classroom segregation became known as “busing.” These programs sought to close opportunity and achievement gaps and make classrooms more diverse by busing students of color to white schools and busing white students to schools made up of students of color

However, many white parents objected to the programs, in fear they would lose access to the better-resourced schools. Because large numbers moved their children to private schools or their families to suburban areas (a phenomenon known as “white flight”), Black families shouldered a disproportionate burden in busing and other integration efforts. Some Black families and political leaders also objected to busing programs on the grounds that they were too disruptive and failed to address deeper, causal issues such as inequities in the housing market.

Benefits of Desegregation

Despite resistance to busing and other efforts aimed at desegregating schools, integration programs delivered meaningful educational opportunities to generations of Americans by helping to address funding inequities that exist between between schools that are predominantly white and those that are predominantly non-white.

Consider the research of University of California, Berkeley, economist Rucker Johnson, who studied the effects of court-ordered school desegregation on socioeconomic and health outcomes.. He found that high school graduation rates for Black students jumped by almost 15 percent when they attended integrated schools for five years. This attendance also decreased those students’ chances of living in poverty as an adult by 11 percent. Such improvements correlated with greater access to school resources; Johnson’s research found desegregation plans effectively narrowed Black-white gaps in per-pupil school spending and class size.

However, any discussion of the benefits of busing should also acknowledge that the Black students who were bused to previously all-white schools faced immeasurable hardships. Whatever positive outcomes resulted from access to greater resources or exposure to institutions that prepared them for predominantly white postsecondary and professional settings, they were gained in the face of widespread hostility and discrimination from white educators and students alike.

Integrated Schools and Achievement

Research from the National Coalition on School Diversity (NCSD) found integrated schools offer many advantages. The coalition reports that integrated schools on average function at a higher level, with greater parent involvement, less teacher turnover, and more and better quality resources. Students at integrated schools not only achieve at higher levels in math, science, language, and reading, but they also benefit in nonacademic ways. The NCSD, citing research from several scholars, lists the following among outcomes that are associated with attending integrated schools:

• Decreased levels of racial and ethnic prejudice
• Improved ability to navigate multicultural environments
• A break in stereotypes and fears about other races and ethnic groups passed down between generations
• Better overall health and well-being

Resegregation in Today’s Classroom

Despite gains made in the 1970s and ’80s to desegregate schools, a series of court rulings ending mandatory desegregation programs have resulted in growing numbers of segregated schools.

A study from the Civil Rights Project found that the number of schools in which students of color make up 90 percent or more of the student population has tripled since 1988. Today, more than 40 percent of Black and Hispanic students attend schools where 9 out of 10 students are students of color. According to the Civil Rights Project study, “Black students in the South are less likely to attend a school that is majority white than about 50 years ago.” In fact, the study reports, the percentage of Black students attending schools in which white students make up at least 50 percent of the student body dropped from 44 percent in 1989 to 23 percent in 2011.

This return to segregation is a return to the original problem: separate and unequal. More specifically, the problem is not that predominantly Black and Hispanic schools exist, but rather that predominantly Black and Hispanic schools continue to face economic, social, and structural challenges that predominantly white schools do not. Most schools serving majority nonwhite student populations are in low-income areas, and due to funding systems that rely on property taxes to finance education, these schools receive much less money. A report from Edbuild estimates that school districts serving mostly students of color receive $23 billion less than districts serving equal numbers of white students.

A system that relies so heavily on community wealth favors districts that can concentrate resources at the expense of larger populations; average enrollment in white districts is just over 1,500 students, while nonwhite districts serve over 10,000 students, according to Edbuild. Average revenue per student in nonwhite school districts is $2,226 lower than in white school districts.

Effects of Resegregation

Just as desegregation produces positive results for students of color, the shift away from re-integration produces noted declines for them. In the study “Ending to What End? The Impact of the Termination of Court-Desegregation Orders on Residential Segregation and School Dropout Rates,” researcher David D. Liebowitz found that in districts that discontinued integration programs, dropout rates immediately jumped for Black and Hispanic students compared to those districts where programs remained intact.

Strategies to Address Segregation

Much of segregation, whether in schools or neighborhoods, traces back to a history of discriminatory policies. For example, redlining, the practice of denying loans to people of color trying to purchase homes in predominantly white neighborhoods, prevented many families of color from moving into areas with well-funded schools.

Overcoming such legacies has proven a painfully slow process. However, some leaders in education point to solutions that can help address problems of inequity even if they can’t change segregated housing patterns. San Antonio Independent School District’s Diverse by Design program has set into place several initiatives to bolster integration in schools including:

• Addressing transportation needs
• Building schools using a 50-50 enrollment model based on family income
• Redrawing attendance zone lines or eliminating them altogether
• Adding specialized academic programs to encourage enrollment

In addition to these solutions, educators can use classroom strategies to help offset the negative effects of segregation. Founding principal of Maya Angelou Public Charter School in Washington, DC, Nataki Gregory argues that even though public policy and systemic racism have caused segregation, “culturally relevant teaching practices, teacher coaching and strategic use of technology could help us overcome the barriers that our neighborhoods present to desegregation.”

In the article “4 Ways Teachers in Segregated Classrooms Can Desegregate Their Students’ Learning,” Gregory presents ideas to offset the effects of classroom segregation. Some of them include:

• Strategic use of technology : Use the internet and meeting platforms like Zoom in the classroom to connect with schools across the city and country. While teaching students about European colonization of the Americas, for instance, connect with other classrooms to explore the differences and similarities about what’s being taught. Follow up with discussions exploring the different perspectives on the topic and how to discuss ideas with those holding conflicting viewpoints.
• Focus questions and activities on the world : Rather than relying on textbooks to direct activity, drive student engagement by exploring topics relevant beyond the walls of the classroom and investigating issues that students find meaningful.
• Establish a culture of coaching in schools : Teachers need encouragement and feedback to improve their teaching practice. Coaching can offer this, and it can give teachers a chance to discuss their mindsets and discover their own racial biases that might get in the way of activating the potential of all their students.

Transform Education Through Leadership

Tackling challenges like classroom segregation calls for well-prepared leaders. To ensure all students have access to schools where they can grow and thrive, educators must know how to disrupt the status quo with creative solutions to problems and inequities.

American University offers a comprehensive degree program that cultivates skills in system change, personal leadership, social justice and anti-racism, and policy and research. Explore how a Doctorate in Education Policy and Leadership equips aspiring educational leaders to transform American education.

Education Policy Issues in 2020 and Beyond

Data-Driven Decision Making in Education: 11 Tips for Teachers & Administration

Culturally Responsive Teaching Strategies: Importance, Benefits & Tips

AFT, “Jim Crow’s Schools”

The Atlantic , “School Segregation Is Not a Myth”

The Atlantic , “There’s a Generational Shift in the Debate Over Busing”

Chalkbeat, “When School Districts Resegregate, More Black and Hispanic Students Drop Out”

The Civil Rights Project, “Harming Our Common Future: America’s Segregated Schools 65 Years After Brown”

Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis , “Ending to What End? The Impact of the Termination of Court-Desegregation Orders on Residential Segregation and School Dropout Rates”

Education Dive, “Study: School Segregation Persists 65 Years After Brown Decision”

Encyclopedia Britannica , “Little Rock Nine”

Governing, “After Decades-Long Legal Battle, Mississippi School District Ordered to Desegregate”

Library of Congress, School Segregation and Integration

The National Coalition on School Diversity, “School Integration and K-12 Outcomes: An Updated Quick Synthesis of the Social Science Evidence”

Pacific Standard, “Non-White School Districts Get $23 Billion Less Funding Than White Ones”

The 74, “Gregory: 4 Ways Teachers in Segregated Classrooms Can Desegregate Their Students’ Learning”

The 74, “12 Things to Know About School Segregation — and How Integration Helps Students”

The University of Texas at Austin, Texas ScholarWorks, Remarks on Bussing by Shirley Chisholm (Excerpt)

Vox, “The Data Proves That School Segregation Is Getting Worse”

The Washington Post, “What Black Students Who Were Bused Said About Their Experiences”

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Brown v. Board of Education: The First Step in the Desegregation of America’s Schools

By: Sarah Pruitt

Updated: September 7, 2023 | Original: May 16, 2018

On May 17, 1954, Chief Justice Earl Warren issued the Supreme Court ’s unanimous decision in Brown v. Board of Education , ruling that racial segregation in public schools violated the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment . The upshot: Students of color in America would no longer be forced by law to attend traditionally under-resourced Black-only schools.

The decision marked a legal turning point for the American civil-rights movement . But it would take much more than a decree from the nation’s highest court to change hearts, minds and two centuries of entrenched racism. Brown was initially met with inertia and, in most southern states, active resistance. More than half a century later, progress has been made, but the vision of Warren’s court has not been fully realized.

The Supreme Court Rules 'Separate' Means Unequal

The landmark case began as five separate class-action lawsuits brought by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) on behalf of Black schoolchildren and their families in Kansas , South Carolina , Delaware , Virginia and Washington, D.C . The lead plaintiff, Oliver Brown, had filed suit against the Board of Education in Topeka, Kansas in 1951, after his daughter Linda was denied admission to a white elementary school.

Her all-Black school, Monroe Elementary, was fortunate—and unique—to be endowed with well-kept facilities, well-trained teachers and adequate materials. But the other four lawsuits embedded in the Brown case pointed to more common fundamental challenges. The case in Clarendon, South Carolina described school buildings as no more than dilapidated wooden shacks. In Prince Edward County, Virginia, the high school had no cafeteria, gym, nurse’s office or teachers’ restrooms, and overcrowding led to students being housed in an old school bus and tar-paper shacks.

Brown v. Board First to Rule Against Segregation Since Reconstruction Era

The Supreme Court’s decision in Brown v. Board marked a shining moment in the NAACP’s decades-long campaign to combat school segregation. In declaring school segregation as unconstitutional, the Court overturned the longstanding “separate but equal” doctrine established nearly 60 years earlier in Plessy v. Ferguson (1896). In his opinion, Chief Justice Warren asserted public education was an essential right that deserved equal protection, stating unequivocally that “separate educational facilities are inherently unequal.”

Still, Thurgood Marshall , head of the NAACP’s Legal Defense and Educational Fund and lead lawyer from the plaintiffs, knew the fight was far from over—and that the high court’s decision was only a first step in the long, complicated process of dismantling institutionalized racism. He warned his colleagues soon after the verdict came down: “The fight has just begun.”

In 1954, the Supreme Court unanimously strikes down segregation in public schools, sparking the Civil Rights movement.

Brown v. Board Does Not Instantly Desegregate Schools

In its landmark ruling, the Supreme Court didn’t specify exactly how to end school segregation, but rather asked to hear further arguments on the issue. The Court’s timidity, combined with steadfast local resistance, meant that the bold Brown v. Board of Education ruling did little on the community level to achieve the goal of desegregation. Black students, to a large degree, still attended schools with substandard facilities, out-of-date textbooks and often no basic school supplies.

In a 1955 case known as Brown v. Board II , the Court gave much of the responsibility for the implementation of desegregation to local school authorities and lower courts, urging that the process proceed “with all deliberate speed.” But many lower court judges in the South, who had been appointed by segregationist politicians, were emboldened to resist desegregation by the Court’s lackluster enforcement of the Brown decision. 

In Prince Edward County, where one of the five class-action suits behind Brown was filed, the Board of Supervisors refused to appropriate funds for the County School Board, choosing to shut down the public schools for five years rather than integrate them.

This backlash against the Court’s verdict reached the highest levels of government: In 1956, 82 representatives and 19 senators endorsed a so-called “Southern Manifesto” in Congress, urging Southerners to use all “lawful means” at their disposal to resist the “chaos and confusion” that school desegregation would cause.

In 1964, a full decade after the decision, more than 98 percent of Black children in the South still attended segregated schools .

The Brown Ruling Becomes a Catalyst for the Civil Rights Movement

For the first time since the Reconstruction Era , the Court’s ruling focused national attention on the subjugation of Black Americans. The result? The growth of the nascent civil-rights movement, which would doggedly challenge segregation and demand legal equality for Black families through boycotts, sit-ins, freedom rides and voter-registration drives.

The Brown verdict inspired Southern Blacks to defy restrictive and punitive Jim Crow laws, however, the ruling also galvanized Southern whites in defense of segregation—including the infamous standoff at a high school in Little Rock , Arkansas in 1957. Violence against civil-rights activists escalated, outraging many in the North and abroad, helping to speed up the passage of major civil-rights and voting-rights legislation by the mid-1960s.

Finally, in 1964, two provisions within the Civil Rights Act effectively gave the federal government the power to enforce school desegregation for the first time: The Justice Department could sue schools that refused to integrate, and the government could withhold funding from segregated schools. Within five years after the act took effect, nearly a third of Black children in the South attended integrated schools, and that figure reached as high as 90 percent by 1973.

Legacy and Impact of Brown v. Board

More than 60 years after the landmark ruling, assessing its impact remains a complicated endeavor. The Court’s verdict fell short of initial hopes that it would end school segregation in America for good, and some argued that larger social and political forces within the nation played a far greater role in ending segregation.

As the Supreme Court has grown increasingly polarized along political lines, both conservative and liberal justices have claimed the legacy of Brown v. Board to argue different sides in the constitutional debate. In 2007, the Court ruled 5-4 against allowing public schools to take race into account in their admission policies in order to achieve or maintain integration. 

Chief Justice John Roberts, writing for the majority, asserted: “The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.” And in a dissenting opinion, Justice John Paul Stevens wrote that the ruling “rewrites the history of one of this court’s most important decisions.”

Are Schools 'Separate But Equal’ in the 21st Century?

School segregation remains in force all over America today, largely because many of the neighborhoods in which schools are still located are themselves segregated. Despite the passage of the Fair Housing Act in 1968 and later judicial decisions making racial discrimination illegal, exclusionary economic-zoning laws still bar low-income and working-class Americans from many neighborhoods, which in many cases reduces their access to higher quality schools. 

According to a 2014 report by Richard Rothstein of the Economic Policy Institute report , as of the 60th anniversary of the Brown v. Board verdict the typical Black student attended a school where only 29 percent of his or her fellow students were white, down from some 36 percent in 1980.

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Unequal Opportunity: School and Neighborhood Segregation in the USA

• Published: 20 January 2020
• Volume 12 , pages 29–41, ( 2020 )

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A Correction to this article was published on 20 November 2020

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School and neighborhood segregation are intertwined in complex ways. Schools reflect segregated neighborhoods, and school considerations reinforce neighborhood segregation. Over the past 25 years, racial segregation in neighborhoods and schools has slightly declined in terms of sorting, though children remain racially isolated in their neighborhoods and schools. Income segregation between schools, school districts, and neighborhoods has increased among children. Recent educational policy and demographic changes may break the link between neighborhood and school segregation. As population diversity increases, the proliferation of school choice leads schools and neighborhoods to resemble one another less, with schools becoming more segregated than their local neighborhoods. Regardless of the complicated and changing ways neighborhood and school segregation shape and reshape one another, segregation in both contexts remains high in the twenty-first century. Drawing on administrative data, I provide a quantitative portrait of the schools and neighborhoods of children from different racial/ethnic groups in 2015, documenting stark inequalities in these contexts. I conclude with a discussion of why segregation matters, what can be done about it, and why something must be done.

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Perpetuating Separate and Unequal Worlds of Educational Opportunity Through District Lines: School Segregation by Race and Poverty

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Richard Rothstein

School Segregation at the Classroom Level in a Southern ‘New Destination’ State

Charles T. Clotfelter, Helen F. Ladd, … Mavzuna R. Turaeva

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20 november 2020.

The original version of this article unfortunately contained an error. The author would like to correct the error with this erratum.

I use “Hispanic” to be consistent with the wording of the data collection instruments.

For reference, in 2015–2016, the US public school student body was 26% Hispanic, 15% Black, 48% White, and 5% Asian; if there were no segregation, each group should attend a school with these proportions.

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Owens, A. Unequal Opportunity: School and Neighborhood Segregation in the USA. Race Soc Probl 12 , 29–41 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12552-019-09274-z

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The road to school desegregation

For years, many public schools separated children based on their race. Here’s how that changed so that kids of all races could go to school together.

Six-year-old Ruby Bridges walked up the steps to her new school on November 14, 1960. It was her first day at William Frantz Elementary School in New Orleans, Louisiana . Ruby’s mother had walked with her, but they weren’t alone

Four U.S. federal marshals were with Ruby, too. They were there to protect her from the angry crowd of people at the school who didn’t want Ruby there. Why? She was the first African American student to attend an all-white elementary school in the South.

At the time, many schools—especially in Southern states—were segregated, meaning that Black children attended different schools from white kids. Even though this had been against the law since 1954, it was still happening at William Frantz Elementary when she integrated, or attended school with children of different races.

People had been fighting against school segregation for many years, ever since the first laws to separate Black and white students were passed after the Civil War. It would take many brave people—including children like Ruby—to make people see that the laws did not provide equal education for all children and needed to change.

A long road ahead

Before the Civil War (1861-1865), enslaved children were not allowed to attend school. Soon after the war ended, the U.S. government required former slaveholding states that had fought against the Union to educate both white and Black children. Then, in 1868, Congress passed the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which guaranteed every citizen equal rights and protection under the law—including equal access to education.

Not everyone agreed with these decisions. Southern leaders did not want Black people to have the same rights as white people. So most Southern states adopted a group of laws in the late 1870s, called Jim Crow laws, to segregate Black and white people. Throughout the South, nearly all public places—restaurants, parks, movie theaters, trains, swimming pools, schools, and even drinking fountains—were separated by race. It was because of these new laws that Black children could not attend the same schools as white children in the South.

Separate but not equal

Despite the 14th Amendment, Southern states were able to legally segregate Black and white children because of a U.S. Supreme Court decision from 1896 called Plessy vs. Ferguson. After Homer Plessy, a Black man, tried to sit in a whites-only train car, the court ruled that as long as Black and white people were treated equally, they could be separated by race. This became known as “separate but equal.”

But “separate but equal" wasn’t truly equal—conditions in places meant for Black people were usually much worse than those for white people. For instance, Black schools often had leaking roofs, sagging floors, and windows without glass. They were also overcrowded, with too many students per teacher and not enough desks or books. If books were available, they were old, outdated ones from white schools.

Black families knew that if they wanted their children to have an equal education that these laws needed to change. And the only way to do that was through the U.S. Supreme Court.

Hope for equality

In 1951, eight-year-old Linda Brown was not allowed to attend an all-white elementary school in Topeka, Kansas . Her father, Oliver Brown, did not think this was fair and filed a lawsuit against the Topeka Board of Education.

Around the same time, four other lawsuits challenging school segregation had been filed, so in 1952, the Supreme Court combined all of them into one. The justices would decide once and for all if schools could separate students based on the color of their skin.

Thurgood Marshall —who would later become the first African American Supreme Court justice—represented the five children and their families in a case called Brown vs. Board of Education. He argued that segregation was not equal and was actually harmful to children. The court agreed. On May 17, 1954, every single justice decided that racial segregation of children in public schools was unconstitutional, which meant that separating children in public schools by race went against what had been outlined in the U.S. Constitution .

School segregation was now against the law. States were ordered to begin desegregating their public schools. But changes were slow to come.

The Little Rock Nine

Some school districts defied the 1954 order by not integrating immediately or simply doing nothing. Other school boards purposefully delayed integration by years by integrating only one grade each year. Other white parents refused to send their children to integrated schools or held angry protests that were sometimes violent to prevent Black children from registering.

To help move integration along, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) decided to recruit a group of nine Black students to integrate Little Rock Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas. The teenagers gathered on September 4, 1957, to enter the school. But the governor had called in the Arkansas National Guard, which blocked them from entering the building.

The story made headlines across America, and many people were outraged that Southern states were still defying the Supreme Court ruling. A few weeks later, on September 25, President Dwight D. Eisenhower ordered federal troops to escort the students—now known as the Little Rock Nine—into the school. This time the students' integration efforts were successful.

The fight continues

After the Little Rock Nine, more and more Black families courageously started sending their children to all-white schools. It wasn’t an easy decision for parents to make, since kids often faced bullying and loneliness. For instance, Ruby Bridges often sat in class with only her teacher because white parents didn’t want their children in school with a Black student. Even Vice President Kamala Harris was part of a program in 1970 to bus children far from their neighborhoods to integrate schools in Berkeley, California .

Racial inequalities in the nation’s school system still exist today, more than 65 years after the Brown decision. Schools in wealthier, mostly white neighborhoods sometimes have better technology, higher-quality books, and smaller class sizes; schools in disadvantaged neighborhoods with more people of color sometimes have older or broken computers, overcrowded classes, and buildings in need of repair.

But people continue to speak out against these inequalities and fight for equal education for all students. As former President Barack Obama said, “In the years to come, we must continue striving toward equal opportunities for all our children. … Because when children learn and play together, they grow, build, and thrive together.”

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How School Choice Left Black Children With Scraps for Their Education

T o understand why Black children only get the scraps of school choice, we need to interrogate what the phrase “school choice”has meant in the years between the Brown vs. Board of Education ruling in 1954 and today. Initially, before Brown, Black families sought more choice in their children’s education. More precisely, they wanted access to schools that were better resourced than those established for Black children.

School choice promised to allow parents, irrespective of race, to choose outside of their zoned public school in the interest of their children’s education, while in reality, that choice was fraught at best and damaging at worst. The hope education fostered in the hearts of generations of Black parents was paid for by having to make the impossible chose between their children having to endure violence, racial isolation, and psychological trauma in predominantly white schools or under-resourced, understaffed, less credentialed, and policed predominantly Black public schools.

The sacrifice of leaving local public schools was made most evident in the lives of civil rights activists Ruby Bridges and Linda Brown. Bridges was just six years old in 1960 when she walked to school in New Orleans escorted by four U.S. marshals. On her first day, Ruby was accosted by two white women, one who threatened to poison her, the other who held a display of a Black baby doll in a coffin. For her safety, Ruby was not permitted to eat food prepared at school. She spent the entire school year alone. No white parent would allow their child to be in the same classroom with her. Brown was thrust into the national spotlight by her family’s commitment to ending racial segregation in public schools. The Brown name entered the annals of history by chance. Thirteen families were involved in the civil rights lawsuit, but the Brown’s case was chosen because it was alphabetically first: Brown v. Board of Education. These two Black girls still embody both the hope and the terror that Black parents are faced with generation after generation as they choose an educational path for their children.

Read More: Linda Brown's Legacy and the Hidden Ripple Effect of Brown v. Board of Education

Thirty years later, access to white schools continued to offer Black children nothing more than a mixed bag: A chance at more advanced academics but at a negative and often damaging social cost. Aja (her name has been changed to protect her privacy), who is 40 and Black, grew up in my hometown of Rochester, New York. She works for a local nonprofit in the city. Educators raised her—her grandmother and mother are teachers—and she loved to read as a child. She remembers being a first grader who often finished schoolwork before her classmates. When she did, she would put her pencil down, hand the work to her teacher, then walk over to the reading nook to quietly lose herself in a book, careful not to disrupt her classmates. Rather than give Aja more challenging work or encourage her independent reading time, her white teacher labeled Aja’s trips to the reading nook disruptive and called Aja’s mother to complain.

“I was a precocious little kid,” Aja told me. “My thirst for knowledge was a problem for this teacher.”

Aja’s mother searched for a better school for her daughter, one that would nurture her love of learning. Private school was too expensive, so Aja’s mother filled out an application for her nine-year-old daughter to attend Urban-Suburban, the “first and oldest voluntary desegregation program in the United States.” Established in 1965 through an agreement between the Rochester City School District and a neighboring school district, the program transfers inner-city students to suburban schools and vice versa. Urban-Suburban’s goal is “to decrease racial isolation, deconcentrate poverty and enhance opportunities for students.”

The ruse of school choice left Aja’s mother with few options for her daughter. White people who had fled to the segregated suburbs left underfunded urban public schools in their wake, and programs like Urban-Suburban were designed to fill the gap. However, to seize the opportunity offered by Urban-Suburban, Aja would have to leave her city behind. “It was overwhelming. It was terrifying. It was traumatizing,” Aja said about attending a nearly all-white school. The suburb her school was in was 87% white. “It was also the realization that, damn, we’re poor,” Aja continued.

Listening to Aja describe her experience hit me hard. I had applied to that same program for high school, but I had been rejected. I thought Aja was lucky—until I spoke to her. When Aja and I met as teenagers, we instantly became best friends. We both noticed right away that I needed Aja’s help. We were in the same grade and the same age, but I was years behind her educationally. She was well read, and I had never finished a book. She began to tutor me. I needed her guidance in every subject. We joked and laughed about how far behind I was, but Aja would reassure me that she had my back. And I, in turn, gave Aja the Black female friendship and camaraderie that she had missed out on attending a white school.

But Aja’s access to rigorous academics came at a price. She recalls sitting in classrooms in those moments before or after the bell rang, the moments when students had time to mill about and talk. That’s when she’d find herself surrounded by white peers who shot rapid-fire questions at her “tommy-gun-style,” she told me. They wanted to know what it was like to live in Rochester, but first they had to make their assumptions known.

“Are you in a gang? Do you have a gun?” Others asked about her hair and talked about Black people in only stereotypical ways. Aja said she felt like “an exhibit in a zoo.” All she could do was look at them incredulously, hopeful that the look on her face showed her disgust at their ignorance. “I knew I was dealing with white people’s perceptions,” she told me. “But I didn’t have the framework to understand what was happening.” Aja made do, building community with other Black students who, like her, were bused in from the city. She got used to white classmates trying to correct her English and stopped expecting anyone in leadership at the school to bridge the gap between the culture she came from and the one she’d been “imported” into. In this way, Black children are often exposed to soul-crushing social challenges and psychic damage when they attend majority-white schools.

In reality, we have educational scraps. Black parents’ sacrifices are expected, and the awareness that many of us will do whatever it takes to help our children is systematically exploited. Our sacrifices are celebrated as America’s watershed moments for the appearance of civil rights, but once the cameras leave, we are met with resistance in the courts—and legislation often quietly unravels the gains of our sacrifices. We are expected to be America’s moral conscience—and we are unceremoniously punished for it.

From Punished For Dreaming: How School Reform Harms Black Children and How We Heal by Bettina L. Love. Copyright © 2024 by the author and reprinted by permission of St. Martin’s Publishing Group.

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Racial Discrimination and Justice in Education Essay

The impact of racism in schools and on the mental health of students.

Funding is one of the main factors that ensure racial segregation and exacerbation of the plight of the black population. Being initially in a more disastrous economic situation, racial minority populations fall into a vicious circle. Low-funded schools in poor areas have low academic ratings, which further contributes to the reduction of the material base. Due to their poor academic performance and the need to earn a living, many minorities are deprived of the opportunity to receive prestigious higher education. They are left with low-skilled jobs, which makes it impossible for their children to go to private school or move to a prestigious area with well-funded public schools. In institutions with little funding, unfortunately, manifestations of racism still prevail.

A significant factor in systemic racism in modern schools is the theory of colorblindness as the prevailing ideology in schools and pedagogical universities. The total avoidance of racial topics in schools has led to a complete absence of material related to the culture of racial minorities in the curricula. An example is the complaint of the parents of one of the black students that, during the passage of civilizations, the Greeks, Romans, and Incas were discussed in the lessons, but nothing was said about Africa. However, there were a few African American students in the class (Yi et al., 2022). The white director justified herself by saying that this was the curriculum and that it was not customary at school to divide people by skin color. In response, the student’s mother stated that children have eyes, and they see everything. And she would like them to see that we had a strong and fruitful culture. This state of affairs is justified by the proponents of assimilationism and American patriotism, built mainly around the honoring of the merits of white settlers and the founding fathers.

Meanwhile, the works of many researchers provide evidence that a high level of colorblindness among students correlates with greater racial intolerance. One study on race relations was conducted among young “millennials”. As a result, thousands of reports were recorded of openly racist statements and actions of white people from the field of view of these students (Plaut, et al., 2018). Another study on colorblindness found that white students who avoid mentioning racial issues were less friendly on assignments with black partners. This could be because they have less eye contact.

The shortcomings of the described situation affect not only black students but also white teachers who have not received proper training in their time on how best to take into account the characteristics of students from racial minorities. One researcher writes that in his entire experience in multicultural education, he faced the almost universal embarrassment that racial issues caused to white teachers. A common complaint is: I feel helpless. What am I, as a white teacher, to do? One educator remarked that he had never seen African-American teachers say that they did not distinguish between races (Mekawi et al., 2017). This is further proof that racism and the factors leading to it contribute only to the split of social ties at school. Students from racial minorities feel this burden the most, which leads to their feeling of constant alienation. During the school years, conflicts with children “not like the rest” are especially aggravated – the state of affairs described above provides the basis for constant skirmishes, fights, and tension in institutions.

Suggestions for Creating an Inclusive School Environment

Among the educational factors supporting the status quo of widespread structural racism are the following. This is the system of financing public schools and the dominance of the ideology of colorblindness in schools and pedagogical universities. In the opposite direction, there is such a factor as the peculiarity of keeping educational statistics (Welton, et al., 2018). By providing up-to-date information on the state of affairs of students of various racial and ethnic groups, statistics give rise to the search for optimal solutions in the field of school policy.

The inclusion of racial and ethnic dimensions in educational statistics is intended to provide an objective assessment of the current situation regarding racial differences in American society in order to develop and improve racially relevant policies. In recent years, the ideas of culturally relevant pedagogy have been actively promoted in the US educational sphere. American citizens are becoming more interested and enlightened in the field of racial issues, which can be seen in activist speeches and anti-racist public actions.

It is crucial to teach racism in schools so that all pupils may understand what it is, how it affects, and how to stop tolerating it. There are many publications and learning experience plans that address racism. It is essential to ask teachers and principals to integrate lessons on racism into the syllabus. One can also request that your teachers incorporate novels with a variety of subjects (Welton, et al., 2018). Then, it is important to request that the school draft an inclusion and zero-tolerance statement. Counselors can encourage the instructors and administration to implement these policies at the school if they do not already exist in the code of conduct or other policies (Pizarro & Kohli, 2020). It is critical that schools have clear policies about race and how individuals are treated on campus.

Resources for the School Counselor to Deal With Prejudice and Its Impact at the School

Mekawi, Y., Bresin, K. & Hunter, C.D. (2017). Who is more likely to “not see race”? individual differences in racial colorblindness. Race and Social Problems, 9 (1), 207–217. Web.

The authors claim that many Americans support a colorblind racial philosophy, which emphasizes sameness and the equitable allocation of resources without regard to race. The current study looked at the relationships between aggressiveness, and empathy in white undergraduates and three distinct types of racial colorblindness, including ignorance of racial privilege, ignorance of institutional discrimination, and ignorance of overt racism. The findings showed two distinct trends. In contrast to ignorance of overt racism and institutional discrimination, which were linked to poorer cooperativeness, cognitive flexibility, and empathic concern, ignorance of racial privilege was associated with lower openness and viewpoint-taking. These findings are addressed in light of a larger body of research on bias and personality.

Pizarro, M., & Kohli, R. (2020). “I stopped sleeping”: Teachers of color and the impact of racial Battle Fatigue. Urban Education, 55 (7), 967–991. Web.

According to the authors, an operational definition of racial battle fatigue (RBF) is the mental, emotional, and physical costs of fighting racism. RBF is employed in this article to examine the effects of racism on educators of color who work in a predominately “White profession.” The scholars share counterstories of urban academics of color who confront racism on a regular basis in their workplaces. This has a negative effect on their well-being and ability to stay in the profession. The authors also discuss their resiliency and resistance tactics since they depend on a supportive community to persevere and change their schools.

Plaut, V. C., Thomas, K. M., Hurd, K., & Romano, C. A. (2018). Do Color blindness and multiculturalism remedy or foster discrimination and racism? Current Directions in Psychological Science, 27 (3), 200–206. Web.

This article gives psychology science’s perspective on the question of whether multiculturalism and colorblindness are more likely to prevent prejudice and racism than they are to promote it. The authors first concentrate on the results of a color-blind model. The study in this area reveals that while colorblindness may be appealing to certain people, it can also make people less sensitive to racism and prejudice. Additionally, according to the literature, color blindness generally has detrimental effects on intergroup relationships, minorities’ perceptions and results, and the promotion of diversity and inclusion in organizational settings. In the second section, the scholars look at the situations in which a multicultural perspective has beneficial or bad effects on intergroup relations, organizational diversity initiatives, and discrimination.

Welton, A. D., Owens, D. R., & Zamani-Gallaher, E. M. (2018). Anti-racist change: A conceptual framework for educational institutions to take systemic action. Teachers College Record, 120 (14), 1–22. Web.

In order to attain racial justice in education, people’s mindsets must also be changed to embrace a more anti-racist worldview. In order to investigate whether behaviors and leadership qualities could really encourage institutional change for racial justice, the authors review two sets of literature: studies on anti-racism and institutional transformation. However, they admit the constraints of each set of studies. The organizational transformation research often ignores equity concerns, notably racial conversations, while anti-racism research is more ideological and theoretical. The scholars combine essential ideas from the literature on organizational change and anti-racism to propose a conceptual framework that may be utilized to create a systematic anti-racist change at a wide level.

Yi, J., Neville, H. A., Todd, N. R., & Mekawi, Y. (2022). Ignoring race and denying racism: A meta-analysis of the associations between colorblind racial ideology, anti-Blackness, and other variables antithetical to racial justice . Journal of Counseling Psychology . Web.

The authors sought to comprehend how colorblind racial ideology (CBRI), or the rejection and minimizing of race and racism, can act as an obstacle to engaging in antiracist practice by relying on antiracism research. To find out if color evasion (ignorance of race) and power evasion (defiance of structural racism) CBRI were differently connected with anti-Blackness and mechanisms related to antiracism, the scholars specifically performed a meta-analysis. Results from 83 research with more than 25,000 participants and 375 effects reveal that varied effects depend on the kind of CBRI. The area of counseling psychology may be pushed by this meta-analysis to construct a bridge between different ideologies and the development of systemic reform.

Plaut, V. C., Thomas, K. M., Hurd, K., & Romano, C. A. (2018). Do color blindness and multiculturalism remedy or foster discrimination and racism? Current Directions in Psychological Science, 27 (3), 200–206. Web.

Yi, J., Neville, H. A., Todd, N. R., & Mekawi, Y. (2022). Ignoring race and denying racism: A meta-analysis of the associations between colorblind racial ideology, anti-Blackness, and other variables antithetical to racial justice. Journal of Counseling Psychology . Web.

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Racial Segregation In Schools Essay

By the late 1930's, the words “Jim Crow” were affiliated with racial segregation, so strict that they were reinforced under the law. “Nearly all aspects of everyday life were governed by Jim Crow laws, as whites and blacks were forced to use separate water fountains, parks, and bathrooms” (Desmond and Emirbayer 2016, 69). This also made it subsequently illegal for these two racial groups to attend the same schools. These laws were supported with the full weight of the Supreme Court in the 1896 case of Plessy v. Ferguson, which ruled that racial segregation was constitutional, because African American and white facilities were seen to be separate yet also equal. This could not be farther from the truth, however, in regards to the educational system. Although the Civil Rights Act …show more content…

Harris's article, “Racial Segregation in New York Schools Starts With Pre-K, Report Finds”, it is discussed that children in New York City are subjected to one of the country's most racially segregated educational systems, particularly in pre-kindergarten. In half of all prekindergarten classrooms, “over 70 percent of students belonged to a single racial or ethnic group, despite the fact that the overall program was diverse, with no racial or ethnic majority” (Harris, 2016). In order for individuals to be tolerant as well as accepting of one another, there must be diversity within their environment to observe similarities they may have with one another. In recent years, some progress has been made to address New York City’s issue with segregation within the education system. The Education Department has started to allow individual schools to alter their admissions policies which would “create a more diverse student body, by doing things like setting aside seats for students who are learning English” (Harris, 2016). These changes will further expand the diversity with classrooms, allowing children to not only learn from each other, but also allow them to learn

Prejudice and Racial Segregation on Campus Essay

• 5 Works Cited

    The practice of ethnic separation and segregation is common on every college and university campus. Since this practice has happened through history, it is remarkable that this has only been recognized recently as a true problem (Jacobs, 2). Segregation has hampered America as long as it has existed. Ethnicity and segregation was nearly the cause of this country splitting apart during the Civil War. Since then reformation and hard work has attempted to bring unity to this country. Though today, college students have regressed, university pupils are "standing by" their own and are not branching out to those who are unlike them in ethnicity. People in general, but more specifically college students

Essay on The Segregation of America's School System

Schools systematically subjugate minority and black students when a school’s enrollment contains a huge racial majority. If students have no exposure to persons of different ethnicities, cultures, races, and religions, then these students will experience culture shock when they confront “other” people. Even in our class, we talk about black and minority students as another group, one that differs from “us.” We think about the inequalities in school systems as problems we need to fix, not as problems that have influenced our thinking and affect us as prospective teachers. For example, a white graduate student with

Segregation In Schools: Article Summary

In her article on school segregation, Hannah-Jones describes how the school district which Ferguson resident Michael Brown graduated from, ranked last in overall performance for Missouri schools. The death of Michael Brown in August 2014 spurred riots not only in St. Louis, but also in other cities nationwide. Hannah-Jones states how many St. Louis area school districts have “returned to the world of separate and unequal”, which was widespread before the U.S. Supreme Court’s Brown v. Board of Education decision. Black and white children in the St. Louis region are educationally divided,

Dbq Seggrandizement Of America

Segregation is the act of discriminating against others because of their race. The act of Segregating is morally wrong. Racism executes appalling feats. This is because it slows down the development of countries, and brings out the worst in people.

Segregation and Racism in the United States Essay

Just fifty years ago, America was a society of segregation and racism. The dictionary defines racism as “the belief that a particular race is superior to another.” Although it is clear times have changed, racism is still seen in modern american society. It’s also clear that relationships between African Americans and whites are generally better than they were in the forties and fifties. Today, it is rare to witness a black man walk down the street and step off the sidewalk to let a white man walk by, or to see a black man sitting on a different section of the bus or train because a white man told him he has too. But superiority of races is still happening. A lot of this has the do with the ignorance of others. Passed down generation to

Little Rock Crisis Research Paper

Since Reconstruction, many aspects of American life were segregated. “ laws known as Jim Crow laws permitted and often required segregated bathrooms, drinking fountains, parks, restaurants, and other public spaces. The Supreme Court upheld this legal practice in the case of Plessy v. Ferguson.” While, a half century later, “On May 17, 1954, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Brown vs. Topeka Board of Education that segregated schools are ‘inherently unequal.’” And “In a related case known as Brown II the Court ordered schools to desegregate ‘with all deliberate speed.’” Southern resisted the decision of Brown II order.

Essay on The Segregation of School in America

already in the form of “The Jim Crow Laws” but now that it had been

Jim Crow Essay

In 1896, the court case of Plessy vs. Ferguson ruled that the states had the right to legally segregate public facilities. This court ruling fueled the fire of Southerners in regards to race relations, leading to the Jim Crow laws. These laws went as far as to say blacks could not cut a white person’s hair, drink from the same water fountain as a white person, and established a test for blacks to take prior to getting a ballot.

Residential Segregation In America Essay

According to Massey and Denton (1988), residential segregation “is the degree to which two or more groups live separately from one another, in different parts of the urban environment”(282). Now this is a pretty general definition, but it gives basic but good insight as to what residential desegregation is talking about. In this paper, I will mostly be focusing on residential segregation as it relates to the black and white populations in relation to one another, although I will be referencing some other races briefly to create a better understanding of concepts or ideas.

Turmoil During The Civil Rights Era

Jim Crow Laws presented the African American man with unequal opportunities in housing, work, education and government. In the case of Plessy v. Ferguson in 1896, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that racially separate facilities, if equal, did not violate the Constitution. “Segregation,” the Court said,

Segregation and the Civil Rights Movement Essay

Protest against injustice is deeply rooted in the African American experience. The origins of the civil rights movement date much further back than the 1954 Supreme Court ruling on Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka which said, "separate but equal" schools violated the Constitution. From the earliest slave revolts in this country over 400 years ago, African Americans strove to gain full participation in every aspect of political, economic and social life in the United States.

Essay On Segregation In Schools

As I learn more about the realities of education, there was one issue that sparked my interest and passion – segregation. Though it is difficult to see first-hand, I can definitely see remnants of segregation through comparison of resources available at schools I’ve worked at. My belief that education serves as an accessible tool for social mobility led me to explore the issue of segregation with the perspective of a future educator. Over 50 years ago in the Brown v. Board of Education case, the Supreme Court deemed that segregation in public schools was unconstitutional. With this in mind, I was under the impression that schools were not segregated (at least to a far lesser extent). However, I was shocked to learn that segregation in schools

Example Of Segregation Essay

Segregation: [seg-ri-gey-shuh n] the institutional separation of an ethnic, racial, religious, or other minority group from the dominant majority. In the south a lot people worked hard to keep the jim crow laws - even though it was illegal. Segregation was a big problem in the south, especially Georgia, but Hamilton Holmes and Charlayne Hunter-Gault were about to desegregate the University of Georgia. Technically that should not have been a problem, seeing that segregation and Jim Crow laws were illegal, but while trying to be successful and earn an education they had endured horrible things. They were attacked both physically and mentally, yet they stayed defending their right to be there and learn. Most people have seen or heard the quote “Why fit in when you were born to stand out” (Dr. Seuss), and that exactly what Hamilton Holmes and Charlayne Hunter-Gault did.

Efforts To Reduce Racial Isolation In Public Schools Essay

Purpose: This article examines efforts to reduce racial isolation in hyper-segregated public schools in Connecticut during the 2012-13 academic year. Research Methods: This article examines efforts to reduce racial isolation in hyper-segregated Connecticut public schools during the 2012-13 school year by examining self-reported narratives titled Efforts to Reduce Racial, Ethnic and Economic Isolation. This article examines self-reported narrative data from 131 racially hyper-segregated elementary schools, 45 racially hyper-segregated middle schools, and 36 racially hyper-segregated high schools. Data released by the Connecticut State Department of Education, and the Sheff Standard for racial isolation was used to identify hyper-segregated schools.

Essay on Segregation Now in the USA

Forty-seven years ago the Civil Rights Act was passed to end racial discrimination in America. And later on the 24th Amendment to poll taxes, then the Voting Rights Act to allow every man to vote and not be discriminated against. Black Power, the Nation of Islam, and the Southern Christian Leadership conference were just some of the groups that tried to end segregation and promote the African American race. Although these groups did help end it, it still exists in today’s world and many studies have been done to prove it in the past couple of years.

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Economic Segregation in Schools

by Charles Clotfelter | March 2014

In my professional experience, I have encountered two distinct meanings for the word “segregation.” One refers to a legal regime or otherwise formalized system by which people in particular groups are kept apart or treated differently, as illustrated by the systems of state-enforced regulations under Jim Crow in the U.S. or under apartheid in South Africa. The second meaning is the one adopted by social scientists and other observers to refer to an empirical measure of separation or unevenness in distribution, typically across neighborhoods or schools. Sociologists such as Otis Dudley Duncan and Karl Taeuber developed and used various mathematically-calculated indices to reflect segregation of this second sort. In fact, the aim of creating a measure of segregation is a challenge that can be said to have launched a thousand articles. In this blog posting, I use the term segregation in this second sense.

To measure segregation in this sense, all you need is at least two groups of individuals, at least two sets of units containing individuals, one set nested within the other (such as schools within districts or census tracts within metropolitan areas), data on how these individuals are arrayed across these units, and a formula. Groupings of individuals that have been used by researchers include those differentiated by race, ethnicity, national origin, gender, age, religion, and housing tenure type. Unit designations can be geographical units like census tracts, they can be schools, they can be places of employment, etc.

Although such measures can be devoid of value connotation, it is often assumed that less segregation is better than more of it. As Mary Pattillo’s blog entry so eloquently argued, some of these implicit assumptions do not always stand up to close scrutiny. In contrast to racial segregation, it may be that economic segregation, such as that I have measured in schools, carries less of the misplaced normative baggage she addressed in her post. That is, education experts and social observers would be hard-pressed to come up with good things to say about economic segregation. Across schools, economic segregation almost inevitably means unequal access to the best teachers and other resources. In any case, empirical studies of segregation by economic status typically differentiate individuals or households according to a dichotomous indicator, such as poor vs. non-poor. (For a study of residential segregation using both racial and economic groupings, see Jargowsky (forthcoming).)

Since public schools typically draw their students from neighborhoods and rarely enroll students from other jurisdictions, economic segregation in schools tends to reflect economic residential segregation. (Similarly, racial segregation in schools reflects residential segregation by race.) But the connection between residential and school patterns is not iron-clad. Policy matters.

In work with Helen Ladd and Jacob Vigdor, I have applied one type of segregation index to two parallel groups of students in schools in North Carolina. We divided students according to whether they were eligible to participate in the federal free lunch program, which requires a family income not too much higher than the income cutoff for poverty status. Our units of analysis for this study were counties and, within those, schools. (For this analysis, we paid no attention to districts within counties.) We used an index of segregation that, like the Dissimilarity Index, ranges from 1.0 for complete separation to 0 for perfectly balanced schools. We found that the statewide average rate of segregation between students eligible for free lunch and those not eligible increased between the 1994/95 school year and the 2010/11 school year.  In Charlotte-Mecklenburg, a district that abandoned its previous policy of racial balance, the increase was about twice as fast as the statewide average. (As I note below, trends in racial segregation to some extent tend to mirror trends in economic segregation.) A contrasting policy was followed in Wake County, home of the state capital, Raleigh. Wake’s practice was to rebalance schools periodically (necessitated by the constant growth in enrollments) with the objective of having no schools with more than 40% of students eligible to receive free or reduced price lunches. As a result, economic segregation in Wake increased only modestly, slightly less than that for the state as a whole.

For comparison, we also tracked segregation by race and ethnic group. In 2010/11, average segregation between white and black students is higher than that between white and Hispanic students or that between black and Hispanic students, but all of these have increased over time. Comparisons across states using one measure related to segregation suggest that Southern states like North Carolina, along with states in the West, have relatively less racial segregation than states in the highly balkanized Northeast and Midwest, where a plethora of jurisdictions makes any kind of segregation, racial or economic, much easier to sustain. (Orfield et al. (2012) report that the percentage of black students in schools that are 90-100% minority in 2009/10 ranged from 30% in the West and 33% in the South to 44% in the Midwest and 51% in the Northeast.) In addition, I would guess that economic segregation in K-12 schools has increased over time, during a period when income inequality has increased for the nation. This trend appears to be showing up in colleges as well. How these two things—income inequality and economic segregation in schools—are connected is a good topic for further research.

Attention to economic differences—and economic segregation—is growing. There are good reasons to pay attention. Economic disparities in education have implications for equity. They also have implications for the effective use of the nation’s scarce resources if the economic return from investing resources in the education of low-income children is as great or greater than the return from investing in the children of the affluent.

Charles T. Clotfelter, Helen F. Ladd, and Jacob L. Vigdor, “Racial and Economic Imbalance in Charlotte’s Schools: 1994-2012,” chapter in Mickelson, Roslyn Arlin, Stephen Samuel Smith, and Amy Hawn Nelson (eds.) Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow. The Past, Present, and Future of School (De)segregation in Charlotte (Harvard Educational Press, forthcoming).

Clotfelter, Charles T., Helen F. Ladd, and Jacob L.Vigdor, “Racial and Economic Diversity in North Carolina’s Schools: An Update,” Sanford School Working Paper SAN13-03, January 16, 2013.

Jargowsky, Paul A., “Changes in Segregation by Race and Class: The Implications for Schools,” in Annette Lareau and Kimberly Goyette (eds.), Choosing Homes, Choosing Schools: Residential Segregation and the Search for a Good School (New York: Russell Sage, forthcoming).

Orfield, Gary, John Kucsera, and Genevieve Siegel-Hawley, “E Pluribus…Separation: Deepening Double Segregation for More Students,” The Civil Rights Project, September 2012.

Charles Clotfelter is the Z. Smith Reynolds Professor of Public Policy Studies and Professor of Economics and Law at Duke University. 

More in Discussion 2: Economic Segregation in Schools

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The Echo of Racial Segregation: Deciphering the Southern Manifesto

This essay about the Southern Manifesto dives into the 1956 document that aimed to resist the desegregation efforts following the Supreme Court’s Brown v. Board of Education decision. Authored by Southern lawmakers, it represented a vehement opposition to ending segregation in public schools, cloaking racial prejudices in constitutional arguments about states’ rights. The Manifesto not only sparked a wave of resistance against racial equality but also became a rallying cry for those wishing to maintain the racial status quo. Despite its efforts to uphold segregation, the civil rights movement, bolstered by key legislation and activism, eventually overcame the barriers it sought to preserve. The essay reflects on the Manifesto’s place in history as a stark reminder of America’s struggle with racial inequality and the ongoing journey toward justice, emphasizing the importance of recognizing and confronting the remnants of such divisive ideologies in contemporary society.

How it works

Back in 1956, a document emerged that would etch itself into the annals of American history as a symbol of defiance against the winds of change. This was the Southern Manifesto, a bold statement penned by a group of Southern lawmakers who were anything but pleased with the Supreme Court’s decision to end segregation in public schools. The Brown v. Board of Education case had just turned the tide, proclaiming that separate was inherently unequal, and not everyone was ready to board that ship.

Crafted with a blend of legal jargon and a heavy dose of states’ rights rhetoric, the Southern Manifesto was more than just a piece of paper. It was a rallying cry for those who wished to keep the South’s racial divide as wide as the Mississippi. Signed by 101 politicians, this document didn’t mince words. It called the Supreme Court’s decision an overreach, a judicial activism that stomped on the traditions and rights of the Southern states to run their schools (and their segregation) as they saw fit.

What’s fascinating, and frankly, disheartening, about the Southern Manifesto is how it managed to dress up prejudice in the garb of constitutional concerns. The signatories claimed they were standing up for the law when, in reality, they were upholding a status quo that denied African Americans their rightful place in society. It’s a classic example of how legal arguments can be wielded to serve injustice, wrapping discrimination in the flag of states’ rights.

The aftermath of the Manifesto was as expected—a stubborn resistance to desegregation that would make the next few decades a battleground for civil rights. Schools were shut down, laws were twisted, and loopholes were exploited, all in a bid to keep segregation alive. The Manifesto didn’t just voice opposition; it legitimized a fight against equality, encouraging a backlash that would slow the wheels of progress.

Yet, for all its bluster, the Southern Manifesto couldn’t hold back the tide. The civil rights movement, powered by tireless activists and landmark legislation like the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act, would eventually break down the barriers the Manifesto sought to uphold. But the scars remain, reminders of a time when lawmakers put pen to paper not to uplift humanity, but to divide it.

Reflecting on the Southern Manifesto today is a bit like staring into the abyss of America’s racial history. It shows us how far we’ve come and how the ghosts of the past still linger in debates about race, education, and equality. It’s a stark reminder that progress often comes in the face of fierce opposition, and the fight for justice is never as straightforward as we’d hope.

In the end, the Southern Manifesto is more than a historical footnote. It’s a lesson in the power of words to shape our world—for better or for worse. It’s a call to vigilance, reminding us that the battle for equality demands our attention, our courage, and our unwavering commitment to stand up against the echoes of segregation that, even now, try to find their voice.

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Striking racial inequities in health persist in South Africa

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• Anthony Mbewu , consultant physician and cardiologist 1 ,
• David R Williams , professor of public health and African and African American studies 2 ,
• Relebohile Moletsane , J L Dube chair in rural education 3 ,
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• 1 Department of Internal Medicine, Sefako Makgatho Health Sciences University, Ga-Rankuwa, South Africa
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• 3 School of Education, University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa
• 4 School of Education, University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa

In 1994, when 350 years of colonialism and apartheid in South Africa came to an end and more than 300 racist laws were repealed, many people expected to see a significant decline in racial inequalities in the country’s health.

Thirty years later, however, striking inequities in health persist between racial groups, 1 even after accounting for socioeconomic indicators. For example, in 1998 the infant mortality rate in the Black population was six times as high as in the White population and remained three to four times as high when adjusting for income, education, and living conditions. 2 This barely improved over the next 13 years: census data from 2011 show that, when compared with White people, infant mortality was 4.6 times as high in Black people, 2.4 times as high in people of mixed ethnicity, and 20% higher in people of Indian heritage. 3

Why do these health inequities persist in South Africa and around the world? A growing body of research shows that racial and ethnic discrimination are damaging to physical and mental health. 4 A national study in South Africa found that Black, mixed ethnicity, and Indian people were four times as likely as White people to report acute and chronic experiences of racial discrimination, 5 which was associated with heightened psychological distress. This association persisted even after adjustment for socioeconomic status, multiple stressors, and psychological resources—suggesting intrinsic harm to mental health from racism.

In South Africa, “Bantu education” (by which Black people were educated simply to provide cheap labour) was officially abolished after 1994, resulting in a reduction in the 13-fold inequality in government spending on education between Black and White children. By 2021, however, the racial inequality in education spending remained eightfold. This was partly because of many White pupils attending schools in wealthy areas that remained predominantly White because of the persistent effects of the Group Areas Act of 1950, 6 an act that had enforced racial segregation in urban areas and was repealed in 1990.

Nowadays this enduring legacy of apartheid in South African society is dubbed “geographical apartheid.” Similar patterns are evident in the US, where civil rights initiatives provide only a partial solution for the racial gap in academic outcomes. This is important because educational status remains a powerful predictor of health status in South Africa, as in most countries worldwide.

Apartheid and colonialism also produced enormous inequity in household incomes, 7 as Black people are largely consigned to low paying jobs in mining and agriculture. To tackle these inequities, Broad-Based Black Economic Empowerment (BBBEE) laws were introduced in 2003 to “correct historical imbalances” in socioeconomic status. Although they were effective in changing racial socioeconomic demographics in public sector employment, they were less successful in the private sector. Partly because of these BBBEE laws, a substantial Black middle class emerged, 8 and racial inequalities in education and household income began to narrow. But while more Black children and adults had access to education and employment opportunities, many remained on the margins of the educational system and the economy, particularly in rural and township areas.

Thus, decades after the end of apartheid, glaring inequalities remain in household income, access to opportunities, and living and working conditions. In 1993, for example, the average per capita income among White people was 10 times that of Black people, and by 2017 this had dropped to six times. 9 However, as Shifa and colleagues wrote in 2023, “when all Black people in the top 10 per cent of the income distribution were excluded from the analysis, the White-Black income ratio had risen significantly, from 10.5 in the early 1990s to 11.5 in 2019.”

They added, “This indicates that racial inequalities in income in South Africa have decreased, but that this decrease is primarily due to the emergence of a new African elite” 9 —presumably from expanded tertiary education for Black people and BBBEE laws providing them with access to better paid jobs.

Enduring structural inequity

The idea of apartheid in South Africa originally derived from residential racial segregation in the US as a structural mechanism for reinforcing racism. 10 Research in the US has found that where a person lives determines their access to high quality education, income, housing, amenities, and employment opportunities, while exposing them to social, environmental, and physical stressors. 11 Differences in social mobility are thus linked to amenities and opportunity at the neighbourhood level, where racial differences in multiple indicators of income, education, and employment are a direct result of discriminatory social policies. 11

Segregation likely plays a similar role in South Africa. This was seen in a recent study showing the persistence of “green apartheid,” whereby majority White neighbourhoods were more likely to have parks, tree cover, and both public and private green space than areas where White people were in the minority. 12

In South Africa today poverty, race, employment status, educational status, and hunger remain significant determinants of health inequity. 9 13 14 However, the country’s persistent racial inequities in health, mental health, and socioeconomic status are likely also driven by enduring structural racism, evident in the higher levels of psychological stress and racial discrimination experienced by Black and ethnic minority South Africans. In addition to “geographical apartheid,” a legacy of the Group Areas Act also contributes to these racial inequities, as do the legacies of other apartheid era policies that created and sustain large racial differences in access to social and economic opportunities and resources. 5 14

Correcting geographical apartheid and reducing inequalities in household income, education, and employment are vital to eliminating racial inequities in health. 11 15 In addition, recognising and tackling the systemic racism that permeates South African society and shapes access to opportunities and resources is essential in reducing persistent racial inequities in health in South Africa.

Competing interests: None declared.

Provenance and peer review: Commissioned; not externally peer reviewed.

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• ↵ Statistics South Africa. Census 2022: Statistical release. 10 Oct 2023. https://census.statssa.gov.za/assets/documents/2022/P03014_Census_2022_Statistical_Release.pdf (Compares 2011 data with 2022 data)
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• ↵ Leibbrandt M, Woolard I, Finn A, Argent J. Trends in South African income distribution and poverty since the fall of apartheid. OECD Social, Employment and Migration Working Papers (no 101). OECD Publishing, 2010. doi: 10.1787/1815199X
• ↵ Goldman Sachs. Two decades of freedom—a 20 year review of South Africa. 2013. Available from: https://allafrica.com/view/resource/main/main/id/00071601.html
• ↵ Shifa M, Mabhena R, Ranchhod V, Leibbrandt M. An assessment of inequality estimates for the case of South Africa. WIDER Working Paper 2023/90. UNU-WIDER, 2023. doi: 10.35188/UNU-WIDER/2023/398-7
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