School Desegregation Research

The desegregation situation is the keynote theme of the following chapters. I Each of them touches on a different dimension of the situation: the historical, the temporal, the spatial. But the reader, perusing the essays with the situation in mind, should remember that the desegregation situation should not be inter preted literally. Authorities and adults certainly, school-age children probably, are influenced by their awareness of a sequence of past and future situations. Some may even operate with William James's (1890, p. 608) notion of "the specious present" that "has melted in our grasp, fled ere we could touch it, gone in the instant of becoming," thus reducing the potency of the present situation. Others may be dancing to a slower tempo of change, thus becoming more responsive to the present situation. Whatever the perceived tempo, many must share the view that the future may reverse the direction of the past. Some may see that new future direction as unswerving, unending, or long-lasting; others may see it as short-lived. And it is through attention to the phenomenological description of desegregation that these issues can be explored; a theme that is considered in several of the following chapters.

An acclaimed economist reveals that school integration efforts in the 1970s and 1980s were overwhelmingly successful -- and argues that we must renew our commitment to integration for the sake of all Americans We are frequently told that school integration was a social experiment doomed from the start. But as Rucker C. Johnson demonstrates in Children of the Dream, it was, in fact, a spectacular achievement. Drawing on longitudinal studies going back to the 1960s, he shows that students who attended integrated and well-funded schools were more successful in life than those who did not -- and this held true for children of all races. Yet as a society we have given up on integration. Since the high point of integration in 1988, we have regressed and segregation again prevails. Contending that integrated, well-funded schools are the primary engine of social mobility, Children of the Dream offers a radical new take on social policy. It is essential reading in our divided times.

HAROLD B. GERARD AND NORMAN MILLER In the fall of 1965, when the school board of the Riverside Unified School District made its momentous decision to desegregate the ele mentary schools in Riverside, both of us were faculty members in the psychology department on the Riverside campus of the University of California. The riots in Watts had occurred the previous August and the shock waves were being felt around the cou~try. Although the black population of Riverside at the time was only 6% or 7%, people were ap prehensive. A story appeared in the local paper, The Rzverside Press Enterprzse, about several Blacks who were watching the burning and looting in Watts on TV. One of them, excited by what he saw, ex claimed, "Man-let's burn here, too. " The others in the bar were more level-headed and fortunately dissuaded him from following his impulse. Barely two weeks later, however, someone set fire to one of the build ings of Lowell School, in the eastside ghetto area. Nothing was left of the building but a charred shell. People in Riverside, of all ethnic groups, were generally edgy in the face of a seemingly volatile situation. Agitation by minority parents for improved education for their children seemed to be reinforced by the general unrest.

List of Oral History and Interview Participants -- Notes -- Index

"An effective blend of memoir, history and legal analysis."—Christopher Benson, Washington Post Book World In what John Hope Franklin calls "an essential work" on race and affirmative action, Charles Ogletree, Jr., tells his personal story of growing up a "Brown baby" against a vivid pageant of historical characters that includes, among others, Thurgood Marshall, Martin Luther King, Jr., Earl Warren, Anita Hill, Alan Bakke, and Clarence Thomas. A measured blend of personal memoir, exacting legal analysis, and brilliant insight, Ogletree's eyewitness account of the legacy of Brown v. Board of Education offers a unique vantage point from which to view five decades of race relations in America.

This book discusses desegregation as a community decision, focusing on case studies from the 1960s. Crain uses comparative techniques based on fifteen northern and southern cities. The author seeks a "total" explanation for the decision to desegregate by determining its proximate causes and locating the roots of the decision in the economic, social, and political structure of the community. This work represents the first attempt to conduct a genuinely scientific analysis of the political process by which school systems were desegregated in this period.Robert L. Crain documents the way in which eight non-southern, big-city school systems met community demands to reduce segregation. Reactions varied from immediate compliance to months and years of stubborn resistance, some cities maintaining good relations with civil rights leaders and others becoming battlegrounds. Differences in these reactions are explained and focus is brought to desegregation in the South New Orleans in particular. The situation there is contrasted with six peacefully desegregated southern cities as well as the attitude of its powerful economic elite. The concluding part of the book is a general consideration of the civil rights movement in the cities studied, and the author considers the implications of his findings, both for the future of school desegregation and for studies of community politics.Employing comparative techniques and concentrating upon the outputs of political systems, this is a highly innovative contribution to the study of community power structures and their relationship to educational systems. It remains an effective supplement to courses in sociology, political science, and education, as well as an important source of data for everyone concerned with the history of efforts for national integration.

"Busing, in which students were transported by school buses to achieve court-ordered or voluntary school desegregation, became one of the nation's most controversial civil rights issues in the decades after Brown v. Board of Education (1954). Examining battles over school desegregation in cities like Boston, Chicago, New York, and Pontiac, [this book posits that] school officials, politicians, courts, and the news media valued the desires of white parents more than the rights of black students, and how antibusing parents and politicians borrowed media strategies from the civil rights movement to thwart busing for school desegregation"--Provided by publisher.