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
Discover how Black parents in Boston, faced with White resistance to school integration after the Brown v. Board of Education decision, undertook a series of grassroots organizing efforts to advocate for their children’s fair and equal education. Find Classroom Resource at PBS LearningMedia
Learn why it took decades to integrate public schools even after the Supreme Court’s 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision and how local communities and school boards delayed and obstructed compliance with court integration orders. Find Classroom Resource at PBS LearningMedia
In 1961, identical twin sisters Sheila Malone-Conway and Sharon Malone were part of a group of students in Memphis, Tennessee, who integrated previously all-white schools. Known as the “Memphis 13,” these African American students were all enrolled as first graders. From Nashville, Tennessee, Sheila Malone-Conway and Sharon Malone talked about their experience.
In this recording, Destiny McLurkin interviews her mother Diane Hayes Powers, who grew up in Seattle during the city’s desegregation of its schools. Diane recalls the efficiency with which Seattle enforced integration after Brown v. Board of Education was decided, and the resistance by white parents to the initial busing plan. Diane also describes the community education efforts - including “freedom schools” - that were organized in response to racial educational inequality.
In this recording, Chapin Montague interviews Chika Offurum about her early years. Chika, who comes from a family of educators, remembers the importance placed on education in her family when she was a child. She began attending public school in the 4th grade in Westchester, NY, and recalls the harsh structure imposed on her there. She also shares how the uniformity of her classmates made her feel more isolated during the transition.
