Sixty Years After Brown: “Segregation Forever”?

We recently learned of an interview by Democracy Now! with journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones, who discusses the segregation that persists in public schools around the United States. 

Watch a brief segment here:

You can watch the full interview at the Democracy Now! website.

Nearly 60 years after the Civil Rights Act and Brown v. Board of Education decision, Hannah-Jones points out that many public school districts look as though these landmark changes never happened.

“What George Wallace and others like him wanted was all-white schools. All-white schools don’t really exist anymore, but all-black schools do,” Hannah-Jones says. “Sixty years after Brown, integration is gone for many students.”

Hannah-Jones discusses the redrawing of school district boundaries in Tuscaloosa, Alabama as just one example of what she calls the “resegregation of America’s schools.”

“We still have a racialized K-12 system,” Hannah-Jones says. “Black and brown students tend to be in schools where they’re receiving an inferior education. They have less rigorous curriculum, and they’re less likely to have access to classes that will help them in college.”

Hannah-Jones’ full report, “Segregation Now” is published at ProPublica.

Related Resources:

The Promise: Brown v. Board of Education, the Civil Rights Movement, and Our Schools, special issue of Rethinking Schools, Volume 18, Issue 3, Spring 2004.

Teaching Brown in Tuscaloosa, by Alison Schmitke