Fifty years after the Supreme Court issued its ruling in "San Antonio Independent School District v. Rodriguez," the trajectory of school finance desegregation has shifted from expansive federal hopes to narrower state efforts. Attempts to address many of the disparities continue to be constrained by the complex and intersecting nature…

When the South Carolina legislature created the anti-NAACP oath in 1956, teachers across the state lost their positions. But it was the dismissal of twenty-one teachers at the Elloree Training School that captured the attention of the NAACP and Black media outlets. In the years following Brown v. Board of Education, South Carolina's Black and…

In 1969, four years after passage of the Voting Rights Act, African Americans in Greene County, Alabama, reclaimed control of local government, becoming the first community in the South to do so since Reconstruction. A half century later, however, Greene County remains an impoverished and largely segregated area with poor educational outcomes,…

In 1981, Cambridge, Massachusetts, became the first school district in America to replace its neighborhood schools with a "controlled choice" assignment plan, which considered parental preference and racial balance. This article considers the history preceding this decision to explore how and why some Americans became enamored with…

This article reconstructs the story behind "Freeman v. Pitts" (1992), one of the main US Supreme Court cases that made it easier for school districts to terminate court desegregation orders and that, in turn, helped to propel a widely documented trend: the resegregation of southern schools. The case in part hinged on the question of…

This address derives from the intellectual contributions of young scholars and doctoral students, in faded memory of the author's life as a doctoral student and young scholar. This address has three purposes: (1) to define school desegregation; (2) to place--albeit briefly--that definition within the larger context of the literature on school…

This articles discusses the unification of Alabama's black and white Parent-Teacher Associations from 1954 to 1971. Alabama was one of the last PTA state units to desegregate in the late 1960s, along with Arkansas, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina, and Texas. It was also the only state in which white members launched a successful…

The history of public higher education for African Americans in Florida provides an excellent opportunity to examine American institutional and political dynamics. Following World War II, Florida public higher education expanded dramatically, while at the same time, state leaders maintained racial segregation well after "Brown v. Board of…

This article traces back to the time when virtually no educational research or policymaking takes integration seriously, when the courts regularly declare segregated districts unitary, when the rhetoric of race-blind social justice has been abandoned by the left and appropriated by the opponents of equality. This leads students' and other…

This article examines the two autobiographical accounts of the students in Duke University about their perception on how the race especially the "Brown" decision affects their educational history. The students were advised to consult local newspapers and public records, interviews relatives, neighbors, teachers, and public officials in…