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 desegregation, primarily but not only in historical terms; and (3) to challenge that larger context and to revise the traditional definitions in a rather substantial way, offering a new historiography of school desegregation with implications for both historical study and contemporary understanding of schools. (Contains 1 table and 78 footnotes.)