Jason Shiroff's List: school integraton

Separate But Equal?: The Road to Brown
The issue: Does the Constitution allow states to segregate schools or other public facilities on the basis of race?

The Road to Brown v Board of Education

The Great PB & J Debate
4th‐5th Grade interactive, ranger‐led distance learning program discussing the importance of the 14th Amendment to the end of segregation laws.

Brown v. Board: Five Communities That Changed America

Separate Is Not Equal: Brown v. Board of Education

The U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Brown v. Board of Education marked a turning point in the history of race relations in the United States. On May 17, 1954, the Court stripped away constitutional sanctions for segregation by race, and made equal opportunity in education the law of the land.

Brown v. Board of Education reached the Supreme Court through the fearless efforts of lawyers, community activists, parents, and students. Their struggle to fulfill the American dream set in motion sweeping changes in American society, and redefined the nation’s ideals.

A dramatization of the American court case that destroyed the legal validity of racial segregation.

After the Supreme Court's decision in 1954 in Brown v. Board of Education, little progress had been made in desegregating public schools. One example was the Charlotte-Mecklenburg, North Carolina, system in which approximately 14,000 black students attended schools that were either totally black or more than 99 percent black. Lower courts had experimented with a number of possible solutions when the case reached the Supreme Court.

Does the segregation of children in public schools solely on the basis of race deprive the minority children of the equal protection of the laws guaranteed by the 14th Amendment?

Lesson 3: Ordinary people can change the world.
Exploring the Past: The "Little Rock Nine."
As a class, view the film clip about the African American students who integrated Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas. Tell students that together, you are going to create a play based on those students' experiences.
Start by asking the class if other people have ever been unfriendly to them, or deliberately ignored them, and how that made them feel. What would it be like to be mistreated not just by a few people but by society as a whole, and on the basis of something you couldn't control, such as the color of your skin? Tell students that the African American students had to deal with mistreatment every day at school in order to benefit from the better facilities at the segregated white public school.
Then ask how the African American students must have felt when they found someone at school — another student, or an adult — who treated them with kindness and respect. Finally, ask what the African American students might have said to their parents at the end of a long and difficult day at school — whether they might have wanted to give up and stop attending Central High. What might their parents have said in response?
Next, using what you have learned from these discussions, work together as a class to write several different scenes of your play. One scene could be a conversation among the African American students, meeting at the home of civil rights leader Daisy Bates, before their first day of school. Another scene could be a confrontation in which an unfriendly white student tells the African American students that they are not welcome and asks why they have come to this school. (The African American student might respond by explaining the difference in the educational facilities.) Another scene could be a conversation in which a white student and an African American student start to become friends. Another scene could be a conversation between one of the African American students and his or her parents regarding the stress the students were under and whether they should continue their fight.
After you have written these scenes, have groups of students act them out for the class, using a different group of students for each scene. Then ask the class: In the film clip, one of the African American students says that they represented something important to millions of Americans. What do you think these students represented, not just to African Americans, but to the world generally?
Connecting to the Present: Making a Difference in Your Community.
Have students brainstorm in small groups to come up with a list of problems in your community, or in the world. You might want to prompt them by asking if they ever see homeless people or other people who have trouble caring for themselves, or if they see litter around town, or if they have heard about environmental problems such as global warming, or heard about war and violence in other parts of the world. List these problems on the board. Then explain that we all have a responsibility to do what we can to address problems like these.
Select one of these problems for a class project and work with students to think of some positive response to it. For example, the class could clean litter from their playground or a vacant lot nearby, write a letter about a problem to their mayor or city council, attend a city government hearing on a local issue of concern, visit the residents of a nearby nursing home, send cards or emails to soldiers serving overseas, volunteer to do chores for elderly residents, hold a fund-raiser for children in a poor country, or look for ways to reduce their family's energy consumption. Involve other students and family members if possible.

Jefferson Thomas, one of the "Little Rock Nine," narrates the first set of clips, which show white mobs, paratroopers patrolling the streets, and soldiers escorting black students into Little Rock's Central High School.
Then Elizabeth Eckford, another of the nine pioneering students, describes the treatment she received, while footage of the crowds around her is shown.

With the words "separate educational facilities are inherently unequal," the U.S. Supreme Court reversed more than a half century of legalized segregation. The landmark case was Brown v. Board of Education, in 1954.

Melba Beals interview

In this televised address, delivered on September 13, 1962, Mississippi governor Ross Barnett defied the Supreme Court's order to admit James Meredith to the University of Mississippi. Barnett claimed the federal government was interfering in what was a state matter.

The third video, “Our Neighborhood Schools,” released in 2006, chronicles the desegregation movement in DPS in the 1960s and ‘70s and features interviews with many of the icons of Denver’s and Park Hill’s civil rights history. Speaking extensively and candidly about the school board’s role in keeping schools segregated, were Evie Dennis, Denver’s first female African-American school superintendent; Rachel Noel, the first African-American to serve on the Denver School Board and sponsor of the Noel Resolution, one of the first and most important steps in the movement; Omar Blair, who took Noel’s seat when she left the board; Marie Greenwood, Denver’s second African American teacher; Park Hill resident Wilfred Keyes who was the named plaintiff in the federal lawsuit that resulted in Denver’s busing plan; and Park Hill’s Dick Young and Art Branscombe, who as leaders of the Park Hill Action Committee (an organization that evolved into Greater Park Hill Community, Inc.) marshaled support in Park Hill for the desegregation movement, although as Jim Reynolds said, “the schools were desegregated but not integrated.” Reynolds was referring to tracking within the schools that resulted in segregated classrooms. Speaking very powerfully about the pains and fears experienced by African-American youngsters who were bused to previously all white schools, were educator and Park Hill resident Ann Jo Haynes and her daughters, Khadija, Mary and former City Councilwoman Happy.