1986: The State of Black Education

1900-1999: A New Divide
Written By Stephanie Brizee

Big Idea

During segregation, Black educators fought for equal access to the resources that White students had while also establishing excellent Black schools and teaching methods. After segregation, Black educational leaders lost their jobs, and efforts to desegregate schools slowed down when courts refused to acknowledge the link between residential segregation and school segregation.

What’s important to know?

  1. The Tenacity, Excellence, and Subversion of Black Education: Black educators, while advocating for desegregation, also established strong schools and effective teaching methods.

  2. Milliken v. Bradley: In this case, the U.S Supreme Court rejected the claim that housing policy caused de facto segregated schools and ruled that government-related segregation cannot be remedied by courts.

  3. Re-segregation: Brown v. Board of Education desegregated schools, but residential segregation kept educational institutions predominantly segregated and the Courts ruled this could not be legally addressed.

1: The Tenacity, Excellence, and Subversion of Black Education

Picture of Vanessa Siddle Walker early in her career as a high school teacher.

Image: ASCD, Vanessa Siddle Walker

While fighting for desegregation and access to the plentiful resources that White students were accustomed to, Black educators simultaneously created Black schools and pedagogical methods of excellence. As noted by historian Vanessa Siddle Walker, “Black educators did not merely use their intricate networks to disseminate pedagogical ideas that would inspire Black children to succeed in a challenging and inequitable school climate, but they also used those networks to create advocacy structures to undermine segregation” (Siddle Walker, 2019, para 9).

Black Educator, Dr. Horace Tate

Image Source: Fort Valley State University

During segregation, Black educators networked, researched, and gathered to share best practices for inspiring excellence, integrity, and knowledge in their students preparing them to navigate a world of inequity. Siddle Walker described their work as: “Black educators believed desegregation should be an additive model. More specifically, they wanted desegregated schools to provide for students all the structures they had been created to sustain those students in segregated schools plus providing them the equality and resources they had been denied in the segregated schools” (para 12).

When Brown v. Board of Education started educational desegregation in the South, Black educators sought to bring their principles, practices, and spirit into newly desegregated schools. Many, however, faced the challenges of being forced out of their jobs or removed from positions of leadership where they could bring these educational practices to bear. The resistance continued, but the results remained uneven. Many came to feel that Brown v. Board of Education was a hollow victory meant to provide the United States with better international standing but still protect the White children of wealthy voters. (Siddle Walker, 2019).

Listen

Listen to oral history interviews with educators who experienced desegregation after the Brown v. Board of Education ruling. All interviews from “Oral Histories of the American South,” a part of the Documenting the American South project.

Interview with Sam Holton

In this interview with Sam Holten, he explains his role in the desegregation of Chapel Hill schools during his tenure on the school board from 1968 to 1974.

Interview with Leroy Miller

In this interview, a Black administrator describes the intricacies of administrative changes during desegregation and how he brought his passion for discipline to Charlotte-area schools, including West Charlotte High School.

Interview with Willie Mae Lee Crews

In this interview, Willie Mae Crews, the daughter of a sharecropper, shares her story as a teacher at Hayes High School, an African American school in Birmingham, Alabama, during the 1960s and 1970s. Crews describes Hayes as an excellent segregated school that did not benefit from the desegregation that began during the 1970-1971 school year.

2: Milliken v. Bradley

Integrated busing in Charlotte, North Carolina, February 1973.

Image Source: Wikipedia

In 1974, the NAACP brought a suit against the Governor of Michigan arguing that while official segregation laws did not exist in the school districts, enacted policies had the same impact of effectively segregating schools. They also argued that redlining (the government’s de facto system of residential segregation) had the impact of segregating schools. They won their first case, but the state officials appealed to the Sixth Court of Appeals. The appeals court agreed that the school district could be held responsible for policies that created the effect of segregation and ordered the district to create a de-segregation plan. The state officials appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court who agreed to hear their case. The U.S. Supreme Court in a 5-4 decision, reversed the lower court decisions and did not hold the Detroit school districts responsible. They called the district court’s requirements to create a de-segregation plan “wholly impermissible… [and that desegregation] did not require any particular racial balance in each ‘school, grade or classroom” (Milliken v. Bradley, 1974).

The argument that segregated housing policy created de facto segregated schools was not accepted by the court. And in a further setback, the court effectively ruled that “segregation that is present, that is clearly related to government policy… can’t be remedied by the courts” (Meinke, 2011, p. 22).

3: Re-Segregation

While Brown v. Board of Education had ostensibly desegregated schools, the segregation existing in residential neighborhoods meant that educational institutions would, on the whole, remain disproportionately Black or White. And when the Supreme Court made its ruling in 1974 in Milliken v. Bradley, they effectively shut down any efforts to connect prior segregation within residential areas as related to educational segregation. This reality left Black families with very little recourse to demand better educational opportunities for their children. And as White flight left cities with a smaller tax base and less influential voters, the schools that already were underserving students continued to fall into disrepair.

These trends all converged in the late 1980s into the 1990s and had the direct impact of creating clear resegregation patterns. Bonilla-Silva (2018) noted “[a]s a consequence of resegregation during the decade of the 1990s, U.S. schools were more segregated in the 2000-2001 school year than in 1970.” (p. 26)

St. Louis area schools, like many schools in segregated cities, lacked what suburban White schools had – money, decent school buildings, equipment (especially up to date technology), textbooks, library books and resources. Statistically, teachers and administrative staff have been paid less, which combined with the decrepit buildings and lack of political attention to fixing educational inequities, often led to low morale and teacher turn-over. All of these “savage inequalities,” in the words of one educational researcher have been directly related to lower reading achievements and learning attained by Black students [as well as] limited computer skills (Bonilla-Silva, 2018, p. 26). 

The “afterlife of slavery” continued to appear in American society showing just how deeply rooted (systemic, structural) racism is in America.

Your Turn

How does the ruling from the Supreme Court refusing to connect prior housing segregation with school segregation hurt African American access to public education? What impact does that have on Black communities across the United States?

    • NPR article on the impact of Mulllikan v. Bradley on school segregation.

    • Read the report from The Civil Rights Project at UCLA, “Brown at 60 Great Progress, a Long Retreat and an Uncertain Future.”

    • Read about influential Black educator, Horace Tate.

    • Siddle Walker, V. (2018). The Lost Education of Horace Tate. The New Press.

    • Ramsey, S. (n.d.) The Troubled History of American Education after Brown. The American Historian.

    • Stuart Wells, A. (1999). Stepping over the Color Line: African-American Students in White Suburban Schools. Yale University Press.

    • Michael Fultz, “The Displacement of Black Educators Post-Brown: An Overview and Analysis,” History of Education Quarterly, 44 (Spring 2004), 11–45.

    • McKoy, Saundra Melinda, "Lessons from the Segregated Classroom: An Oral History of the Experiences and Practices of Three Retired African American Teachers" (2008). Electronic Theses and Dissertations. 515. https://digitalcommons.georgiasouthern.edu/etd/515

    • Martha Lash, & Monica Ratcliffe. (2014). The Journey of an African American Teacher Before and After Brown v. Board of Education. The Journal of Negro Education, 83(3), 327–337. https://doi.org/10.7709/jnegroeducation.83.3.0327

  • General Resources:

    • Read about the state of education integration in St. Louis.

    Books & Articles:

    • STL NPR article on Dr. Jerome Morris, the Endowed E. Desmond Lee Professor of Urban Education at the University of Missouri-St. Louis, who talks about the desegregation efforts within St. Louis schools.

    • Morris, J. (2009). Troubling the Waters: Fulfilling the Promise of Quality Public Schooling for Black Children. Teachers College Press.

    Archives:

    Museums & Parks:

    • Baugh, J. A. (2011). The Detroit School Busing Case: Milliken v. Bradley and the Controversy over Desegregation. University of Kansas Press.

    • Cashin, S. D. (2004). American Public Schools Fifty Years After Brown: A Separate and Unequal Reality, 47 How. L.J. 341-360.

    • Love, B. (2023). Punished for Dreaming: How School Reform Harms Black Children and How We Heal. St. Martin’s Press.

    • Morris, J. (2009). Troubling the Waters: Fulfilling the Promise of Quality Public Schooling for Black Children. Teachers College Press.

    • Ramsey, S. (2008). Reading, Writing, and Segregation: A Century of Black Women Teachers in Nashville. University of Illinois Press.

    • Siddle Walker, V. (1996). Their Highest Potential: An African American School Community in the Segregated South. University of North Carolina Press.

    • ——-. (2009). Hello Professor: A Black Principal and Professional Leadership in the Segregated South. University of North Carolina Press.

    • ——-. (2018). The Lost Education of Horace Tate. The New Press.

Stephanie Brizee
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