Dr. Gina Tillis grew up in a multiracial, bilingual household in California. In high school, she moved to Texas where, generations earlier, her family helped start an all-Black school. Gina came to StoryCorps with Sheri Neely — her friend and fellow board member of the Memphis 13 Foundation, a nonprofit that advocates for educational equity to honor the thirteen African American students who were the first to integrate the public schools in Memphis, Tennessee, in 1961. Together, they reflect on Gina’s educational experience and the legacy of desegregation.
Elisabeth "Biz" Lindsay-Ryan and Suni Kartha were strangers in Evanston, Illinois who believed that there were serious inequities in the way that the parent-teacher associations (PTA) were able to raise and spend money for schools in their district. They remember how they eventually galvanized the rest of their community to rethink that approach.
Diane Hayes Powers tells her daughter Destiny McLurkin about growing up in segregated Seattle and how her experiences during school desegregation inspired her to advocate for young people in her community.
LueRachelle Brim-Atkins grew up in Naples, Texas, where strict segregation was a part of everyday life. Years later she moved to Seattle, Washington. There, she spoke with her friend, Jacquelyn Howard, about her early life, and how her family’s legacy led her to becoming an educator.
Chris Horan tells his daughter Katie Wetsell about his recollections of school desegregation as a white student in McGehee, Arkansas in the 1960s. The two reflect on what they have learned through his experiences and stories, and how that informs how they move through the world today.=
When the Chicago Board of Education voted to close 50 elementary schools, the majority of students affected were Black, who were being bused to new schools in sometimes rival gang territories. Community organizer Jeanette Taylor and teacher Angela Ross talked about the impact of the school closures on their community.
National director of Education Innovation and Research for the NAACP Dr. Ivory Toldson and executive director of the Education and Civil Rights Initiative Dr. Adrienne Dixson speak with professor of education leadership at Teachers College, Columbia University, Sonya Douglass about the state of educational equity in America nearly seventy years after Brown vs Board of Education.
Louis Jordan grew up on a farm in Americus, Georgia during the late 1950's. He spoke with his son, Andrew about the racial tensions and unrest that marked his childhood and how desegregating his high school helped shape the man he would become.
In the summer of 1974, Suzanne Lee was a first-year teacher living in Boston’s Chinatown and Howard Wong was an 11-year-old middle schooler. They remembered when the notice for desegregation first came, and how it eventually led to a Chinese student boycott of Boston schools.
Judy Stoia first met Patricia Kelly when Pat knocked on her door and asked if she was interested in selling her home. It was 1976, and many whites were fleeing Boston's Jamaica Plain neighborhood because of school desegregation. Now, nearly 50 years later, they remember that tumultuous time…
In this interactive timeline, students explore the roles that everyday citizens, political leaders, and the courts have played in the struggle to integrate public schools throughout the United States. Find Classroom Resource at PBS LearningMedia
Examine a series of images and a video related to one U.S. city’s school integration history in order to determine where this event occurred and to develop a more comprehensive understanding of the extent to which school integration efforts were similar across the nation. Find Classroom Resource at PBS LearningMedia
