National Education Policy Center, May 16, 2019
Tomorrow marks the 65th anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education, the landmark Supreme Court decision that our children’s books celebrate for ending segregation in our nation’s schools. But that version of history is sanitized. The anniversary is bittersweet. Brown itself faced immediate pushback that has never relented during those 65 years and has limited the case’s ability to compel integration.
For a while, beginning with the passage of the l964 Civil Rights Act and continuing with a series of Supreme Court decisions in the l960s and early 70s, there was reason for hope. And there was real process. Yet today even that progress has stalled, according to Harming our Common Future: America’s Segregated Schools 65 Years after Brown, a report released last week by the Civil Rights Project at UCLA and the Center for Education and Civil Rights at Penn State University.