tag:theconversation.com,2011:/ca/topics/segregation-14912/articlesSegregation – The Conversation2024-01-22T13:31:34Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2191622024-01-22T13:31:34Z2024-01-22T13:31:34ZA surprising history of the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals, once a leader in expanding civil rights and now a leader in limiting government power<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/569907/original/file-20240117-21-7w73t0.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=6%2C12%2C4235%2C2817&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/AbortionRestrictionsTexas/8ae444ca5e2540708d5a395dd9ee0264/photo?Query=U.S.%20Court%20of%20Appeals%20for%20the%205th%20Circuit&mediaType=photo&sortBy=&dateRange=Anytime&totalCount=979&digitizationType=Digitized&currentItemNo=1&vs=true&vs=true">AP Photo/Jonathan Bachman</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit has earned a <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/10/26/5th-circuit-supreme-court-reversals-decisions/">reputation for strikingly conservative rulings</a>. One of its recent decisions could put the <a href="https://www.ca5.uscourts.gov/opinions/pub/21/21-50826-CV0.pdf">Consumer Financial Protection Bureau out of business</a>, another could <a href="https://www.reuters.com/markets/us/secs-in-house-enforcement-powers-risk-us-supreme-court-case-2023-11-28/">hamstring the ability of federal agencies</a> to enforce regulations, and a third could <a href="https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.ca5.213145/gov.uscourts.ca5.213145.183.2_1.pdf">effectively outlaw medication abortions</a>. </p>
<p>The 5th Circuit today looks very different than it did half a century ago, when it was on the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1999/05/16/us/john-minor-wisdom-appeals-court-judge-who-helped-to-end-segregation-dies.html">front lines of enforcing civil rights</a>. The 5th Circuit currently handles cases in three states: Mississippi, Louisiana and Texas. <a href="https://www.ca5.uscourts.gov/about-the-court/circuit-history/brief-history">Until 1982, it also covered Alabama, Georgia and Florida</a> – the entire Deep South during the civil rights era.</p>
<p>Then as now, the 5th Circuit has had a complicated relationship with a Supreme Court that was ideologically sympathetic with the lower court. At times, the 5th Circuit was willing to go further than the Supreme Court on some issues. But the high court hesitated to rebuke the 5th Circuit.</p>
<p>Understanding the 5th Circuit’s work therefore can provide important insights into broader legal trends in the U.S.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/569923/original/file-20240117-29-868d4f.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Orange boxes of a drug called Mifepristone." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/569923/original/file-20240117-29-868d4f.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/569923/original/file-20240117-29-868d4f.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/569923/original/file-20240117-29-868d4f.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/569923/original/file-20240117-29-868d4f.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/569923/original/file-20240117-29-868d4f.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/569923/original/file-20240117-29-868d4f.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/569923/original/file-20240117-29-868d4f.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">If a 5th Circuit decision on the availability of the abortion drug mifepristone is upheld by the Supreme Court, it could severely curtail the ability to get an abortion.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/in-this-photo-illustration-packages-of-mifepristone-tablets-news-photo/1481957802?adppopup=true">Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Undercutting federal agency power</h2>
<p>The Supreme Court can handle only a limited number of cases each year, so it tries to establish general principles that lower courts can apply. </p>
<p>Federal appellate courts oversee the work of federal district courts that apply those general principles. Because the devil is in the details, an appellate court can interpret those principles broadly or narrowly, and in so doing can support or undermine Supreme Court rulings on a day-to-day basis.</p>
<p>Several recent 5th Circuit decisions threaten to undercut the power of federal agencies. </p>
<p>One notable example is the <a href="https://www.ca5.uscourts.gov/opinions/pub/23/23-10362-CV1.pdf">case of the abortion-inducing drug mifepristone</a>. The 5th Circuit in August 2023 rejected the Food and Drug Administration’s relaxation of the conditions under which that drug can be used. That decision, if upheld by the Supreme Court, could severely curtail the ability of a woman to get an abortion. It could also portend widespread challenges to FDA decisions about the safety and effectiveness of drugs and medical devices.</p>
<p>The 5th Circuit suggested an alternative basis for restricting access to mifepristone. It expressed some sympathy for the plaintiffs’ broad reading of the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/16/us/comstock-act-1978-abortion-pill.html">1873 Comstock Act</a>, an anti-vice law, as forbidding the shipment of any “<a href="https://theconversation.com/an-obscure-1800s-law-is-shaping-up-to-be-the-center-of-the-next-abortion-battle-legal-scholars-explain-whats-behind-the-victorian-era-comstock-act-204728">drug, medicine, article, or thing designed, adapted, or intended for producing abortion</a>.” But that interpretation might effectively outlaw all abortions, because not only pills but virtually everything used in surgical abortions gets shipped across state lines. </p>
<p>Other 5th Circuit rulings that went against the federal government are also pending before the Supreme Court this term. </p>
<p>Among those, one notable case could eviscerate the ability of agencies to enforce regulatory laws through traditional in-house hearings. The 5th Circuit ruled that <a href="https://www.ca5.uscourts.gov/opinions/pub/20/20-61007-CV0.pdf">the Securities and Exchange Commission must use jury trials in federal court</a> instead of those in-house hearings, that the statute giving the SEC discretion about using agency hearings was unconstitutional, and that the administrative law judges who preside at agency hearings were unlawfully appointed. That ruling, if it stands, could hamstring numerous agencies that enforce federal regulations via in-house hearings.</p>
<p>In a second case now before the U.S. Supreme Court, the 5th Circuit ruled that the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s <a href="https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/LSB/LSB10891">funding mechanism was unconstitutional</a>, because this agency gets its money from the Federal Reserve rather than from Congress.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/29/us/supreme-court-sec-tribunals.html?searchResultPosition=1">That ruling could invalidate</a> not only the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau but also the Federal Reserve itself and the <a href="https://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/22/22-448/266373/20230508190055738_22-448tsUnitedStates.pdf">entire Social Security program, including Medicare</a>, which also do not receive their funding from Congress.</p>
<p>The 5th Circuit has also expansively interpreted gun rights in cases that call many firearms regulations into question, rejecting a law that bars persons <a href="https://www.ca5.uscourts.gov/opinions/pub/21/21-11001-CR2.pdf">subject to domestic violence restraining orders from possessing firearms</a> and <a href="https://www.ca5.uscourts.gov/opinions/pub/23/23-10718-CV0.pdf">invalidating federal regulation of ghost guns</a>. </p>
<p>These rulings are part of a striking pattern of restricting federal authority that makes the 5th Circuit distinctive among federal appeals courts across the nation. </p>
<p>But this isn’t the first time the 5th Circuit has stood out.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/569846/original/file-20240117-17-509uce.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A group of well-dressed people on the sidewalk outside an office building, with picketers in the background." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/569846/original/file-20240117-17-509uce.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/569846/original/file-20240117-17-509uce.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=403&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/569846/original/file-20240117-17-509uce.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=403&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/569846/original/file-20240117-17-509uce.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=403&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/569846/original/file-20240117-17-509uce.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=506&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/569846/original/file-20240117-17-509uce.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=506&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/569846/original/file-20240117-17-509uce.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=506&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">James Meredith, center, and attorney Constance Motley, right, on Sept. 28, 1962, outside the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans, which that day ordered Mississippi Gov. Ross Barnett to facilitate Meredith’s admission to the University of Mississippi or face arrest and fine.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/james-meredith-and-his-attorney-constance-motley-were-news-photo/515030524?adppopup=true">Bettman/Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Furthering desegregation</h2>
<p>In the wake of the Supreme Court’s landmark 1954 ruling in <a href="https://www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/brown-v-board-of-education">Brown v. Board of Education</a>, which barred racial segregation in public schools, the old 5th Circuit compiled a courageous record in promoting civil rights.</p>
<p>The 5th Circuit judges wrote or upheld rulings that required the desegregation of <a href="https://digitalcommons.law.mercer.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2239&context=jour_mlr">public schools, universities and other public facilities</a> throughout the Deep South. </p>
<p>Those judges invalidated the segregation ordinance that was a key target of the 1955-56 <a href="https://www.nps.gov/articles/montgomery-bus-boycott.htm">Montgomery bus boycott</a>, which propelled Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. to prominence and helped to galvanize the Civil Rights Movement. The 5th Circuit even held the governor and lieutenant governor of Mississippi in <a href="https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/appellate-courts/F2/346/99/445527/">contempt of court for defying desegregation orders</a> in 1962.</p>
<p>The current 5th Circuit, in short, looks very different from its predecessor. That is no small irony, as the 5th Circuit sits in a courthouse named for <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1999/05/16/us/john-minor-wisdom-appeals-court-judge-who-helped-to-end-segregation-dies.html">John Minor Wisdom</a>, one of the heroic judges of the civil rights era.</p>
<h2>Limiting federal power</h2>
<p>But it’s not only the 5th Circuit that has changed. So has the Supreme Court, which is now dominated by conservative justices.</p>
<p>The Supreme Court that decided Brown v. Board of Education wanted public schools desegregated, but <a href="https://www.oyez.org/cases/1940-1955/349us294">the justices left implementation to federal district judges</a>, whose knowledge of local circumstances could make the process go more smoothly. That approach too often encouraged foot-dragging and massive resistance. Still, the 5th Circuit’s persistence furthered the Supreme Court’s ultimate goal of breaking down segregation.</p>
<p>Today’s Supreme Court has very different priorities. Now, the justices are more interested in limiting federal power than in promoting civil rights. </p>
<p>The current court has <a href="https://www.oyez.org/cases/2012/12-96">undermined the Voting Rights Act</a>, largely <a href="https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/22pdf/20-1199_hgdj.pdf">eliminated affirmative action</a> and <a href="https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/21pdf/19-1392_6j37.pdf">repudiated abortion rights</a>. </p>
<p>Through its <a href="https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/IF/IF12077">“major questions” doctrine</a>, which requires clear congressional authorization for agencies to address problems that have a significant economic impact, the court has made it harder for agencies to undertake new initiatives.</p>
<p>The 5th Circuit these days is still promoting larger Supreme Court goals. Sometimes the 5th Circuit has gotten ahead of the justices, which might explain why the Supreme Court has reversed or limited some of the appellate court’s decisions and might do so again this year.</p>
<p>Then, as now, the 5th Circuit has had a symbiotic relationship with the Supreme Court. This term’s rulings will further clarify the workings of that relationship.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/219162/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jonathan Entin does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>A court long known for its landmark decisions expanding civil rights is now known for highly conservative rulings reining in government power.Jonathan Entin, Professor Emeritus of Law and Adjunct Professor of Political Science, Case Western Reserve UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2196542024-01-05T13:47:06Z2024-01-05T13:47:06Z70 years after Brown vs. Board of Education, public schools still deeply segregated<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/566624/original/file-20231219-25-6bal1b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">How school attendance zones are drawn can affect segregation.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/mixed-race-student-studying-at-desk-in-classroom-royalty-free-image/135205439">Ariel Skelley/DigitalVision Collection/Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><a href="https://www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/brown-v-board-of-education">Brown vs. Board of Education</a>, the pivotal Supreme Court decision that made school segregation unconstitutional, turns 70 years old on May 17, 2024. </p>
<p>At the time of the 1954 ruling, 17 U.S. states had laws permitting or requiring racially segregated schools. The Brown decision declared that segregation in public schools was “inherently unequal.” This was, in part, because the court argued that access to equitable, nonsegregated education played a critical role in creating informed citizens – <a href="https://doi.org/10.2307/3659611">a paramount concern</a> for the political establishment amid the Cold War. With Brown, the justices overturned decades of <a href="https://www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/plessy-v-ferguson">legal precedent</a> that kept Black Americans in <a href="https://doi.org/10.3102/0013189X1560142">separate and unequal schools</a>. </p>
<p>As a professor of education and demography at Penn State University, I research <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=PPLOEBoAAAAJ&hl=en">racial desegregation and inequality in K-12 schools</a>. I’m aware that, after several decades of <a href="https://www.civilrightsproject.ucla.edu/research/k-12-education/integration-and-diversity/harming-our-common-future-americas-segregated-schools-65-years-after-brown/Brown-65-050919v4-final.pdf">unraveling of desegregation progress</a>, the upcoming Brown vs. Board of Education anniversary comes at an especially uncertain moment for public education and efforts to make America’s schools reflect the nation’s multiracial society. </p>
<h2>Recent setbacks</h2>
<p>In June 2023, the Supreme Court <a href="https://www.oyez.org/cases/2022/20-1199">ended most race-conscious college admissions</a> efforts. The decision followed the COVID-19 pandemic, which <a href="https://digitalcommons.wcl.american.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=3009&context=facsch_lawrev">exacerbated racial inequalities</a> in the U.S. </p>
<p>Meanwhile, politicians and school boards have banned or removed books by <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/southlake-texas-anti-racist-book-school-library-rcna2734">authors of color</a> from school libraries and restricted teaching about <a href="https://www.edweek.org/teaching-learning/many-states-are-limiting-how-schools-can-teach-about-race-most-voters-disagree/2023/10">racism in U.S. history</a>. I believe these legal setbacks amid the current political climate make finally realizing the full promise of Brown more urgent. </p>
<h2>Resistance to Brown ruling</h2>
<p>The Brown vs. Board of Education decision did not immediately change the nation’s public schools, especially in the completely segregated South, where there was <a href="https://www.naacpldf.org/brown-vs-board/southern-manifesto-massive-resistance-brown/">massive resistance to desegregation</a>. Resistance was so fierce in the first decade after Brown that compliance with desegregation orders at times required <a href="https://nmaahc.si.edu/explore/stories/little-rock-nine">federal troops</a> to escort <a href="https://calendar.eji.org/racial-injustice/nov/14">Black students</a> to enroll in formerly all-white schools.</p>
<p>It would be a decade after Brown before the federal courts, a newly enacted <a href="https://www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/civil-rights-act">Civil Rights Act</a> and expanded federal education funding spurred <a href="https://doi.org/10.7758/RSF.2015.1.3.02">greater compliance with desegregation requirements</a>. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/567603/original/file-20240102-29-tyhy67.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Archival photo of 9 Black high school students holding textbooks walking behind military" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/567603/original/file-20240102-29-tyhy67.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/567603/original/file-20240102-29-tyhy67.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=404&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/567603/original/file-20240102-29-tyhy67.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=404&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/567603/original/file-20240102-29-tyhy67.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=404&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/567603/original/file-20240102-29-tyhy67.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=508&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/567603/original/file-20240102-29-tyhy67.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=508&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/567603/original/file-20240102-29-tyhy67.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=508&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Little Rock Nine leave Little Rock Central High School in 1957 with a military escort after the governor of Arkansas tried to prevent them from attending the racially segregated school.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/little-rock-arkansas-the-nine-negro-students-leave-little-news-photo/515031416">Bettmann/Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>While only 2% of Southern Black K-12 students attended majority white schools in 1964 – 10 years after Brown – the number had <a href="https://civilrightsproject.ucla.edu/research/k-12-education/integration-and-diversity/brown-at-60-great-progress-a-long-retreat-and-an-uncertain-future/Brown-at-60-051814.pdf">grown to 33%</a> by 1970. The South surpassed all other regions in desegregation progress for Black students. </p>
<h2>Segregation persists</h2>
<p>Public school students today are the most racially diverse in U.S. history. At the time of Brown, about <a href="https://www.gao.gov/assets/gao-22-104737.pdf">90% of students were white</a> and most other students were Black. </p>
<p>Today, according to a <a href="https://www.gao.gov/assets/gao-22-104737.pdf">2022 federal report</a>, 46% of public school students are white, 28% are Hispanic, 15% are Black, 6% Asian, 4% multiracial and 1% American Indian. Based on my analysis of 2021 federal education data, public schools in 22 states and Washington, D.C., served majorities of students of color.</p>
<p>And yet, public schools are deeply segregated. In 2021, approximately 60% of Black and Hispanic public school students attended schools where <a href="https://nces.ed.gov/programs/equity/indicator_d8.asp">75% or more of students</a> were students of color. Black and Hispanic students who attend racially segregated schools also are overwhelmingly enrolled in <a href="https://www.gao.gov/assets/gao-22-104737.pdf">high-poverty schools</a>.</p>
<p>A <a href="https://edbuild.org/content/23-billion/full-report.pdf">2019 report by EdBuild</a>, a nonprofit that produced reports on school funding inequities, found that schools in predominantly nonwhite districts received $23 billion less in funding each year than schools in majority white districts. This equates to roughly $2,200 less per student per year. Unequal funding results in <a href="https://www.gao.gov/assets/gao-16-345.pdf">less student access to advanced, college-prep courses</a>, to name just one example.</p>
<h2>Benefits of diversity</h2>
<p>While Brown was an attempt to address the inequality that students experienced in segregated Black schools, the harms of segregation affect students of all races. </p>
<p>Racially integrated schools are associated with <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.90.5.751">reduced prejudice</a>, <a href="https://tcf.org/content/report/how-racially-diverse-schools-and-classrooms-can-benefit-all-students/">enhanced critical thinking</a> or simply building <a href="http://www.school-diversity.org/pdf/DiversityResearchBriefNo8.pdf">cross-racial friendships</a> that teach children how to work effectively with others. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Five students sit at a table doing work under as a teacher checks their work." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/566412/original/file-20231218-18-vem31h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/566412/original/file-20231218-18-vem31h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/566412/original/file-20231218-18-vem31h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/566412/original/file-20231218-18-vem31h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/566412/original/file-20231218-18-vem31h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/566412/original/file-20231218-18-vem31h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/566412/original/file-20231218-18-vem31h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Racially integrated schools are associated with building cross-racial relationships that teach children how to work effectively with others.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/teacher-looking-in-books-with-children-royalty-free-image/143560401?phrase=school+classroom+elementary&adppopup=true">Klaus Vedfelt/DigitalVision via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>White students are the <a href="https://www.civilrightsproject.ucla.edu/research/k-12-education/integration-and-diversity/harming-our-common-future-americas-segregated-schools-65-years-after-brown/Brown-65-050919v4-final.pdf">least exposed</a> to students of other races and ethnicities, and therefore they often miss out on the benefits of diversity. Nearly half of white public school students attend a school in which white students are 75% or more of the student body. </p>
<h2>Factors that exacerbate segregation</h2>
<p>Although residential segregation is <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/2378023121105398">slowly declining</a>, many U.S. communities remain both <a href="https://www.urban.org/urban-wire/residential-segregation-declining-how-can-we-continue-increase-inclusion">racially and economically segregated</a>. Segregated schools, therefore, often reflect segregated neighborhoods.</p>
<p>However, how students are assigned to schools and districts can play a key role in how segregated those schools are.</p>
<p>This is because school attendance boundaries often determine which local public school a student may attend. How those boundaries are drawn or redrawn can exacerbate or alleviate school segregation. More than <a href="https://www.gao.gov/assets/gao-22-104737.pdf">13,000 U.S. public schools</a> that are predominantly of one race are located within 10 miles of a school that is predominantly of another race. </p>
<p>Studies show that <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/0013161X211024720">redrawing school attendance zones</a> within school districts could make a substantial number of schools less segregated. </p>
<p>The same is true when it comes to school district boundaries. A high level of income and racial segregation also exists <a href="https://doi.org/10.3102/0002831216652722">between neighboring school districts</a>. And district secession – when schools leave an existing school district to <a href="https://www.gao.gov/assets/gao-22-104737.pdf">form a new district</a> – is <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/2332858419860152">linked to higher segregation</a>. Redrawing district boundaries or preventing the formation of new boundaries could affect segregation.</p>
<p>Another key factor is the rise of public school choice, which allows parents to send children to charter schools or other schools beyond their zoned school. One study found that areas with more students enrolled in charter schools were associated with <a href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33834227/">higher school segregation</a>.</p>
<h2>Potential solutions</h2>
<p>Several hundred <a href="https://www.gao.gov/products/gao-16-345">remedial court desegregation orders</a>, which require districts to eradicate segregation that existed prior to the Brown decision, still exist. These are largely concentrated in some Southern states. </p>
<p>For the rest of the country, <a href="https://kappanonline.org/voluntary-integration-in-uncertain-times-anderson-frankenberg/">voluntary integration</a> efforts are attempts to finally achieve the goals of the Brown decision. These include Berkeley, California’s <a href="https://www.berkeleyschools.net/admissions/elementary-assignment-plan/">elementary school assignment plan</a> and legal cases brought against states <a href="https://edlawcenter.org/news/archives/other-issues-national/minnesota-supreme-court-school-segregation-can-be-unconstitutional-whether-or-not-the-state-caused-it.html">including Minnesota</a> that challenge existing segregation under <a href="https://cca-ct.org/sheff/">state constitutions</a>. </p>
<p>Finally, since reducing residential segregation could also reduce school segregation, some efforts have combined <a href="https://www2.ed.gov/documents/press-releases/06032016-dear-colleagues-letter.pdf">school desegregation</a> and <a href="https://www.prrac.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/AFFH-comment-letter-housing-and-schools.pdf">housing integration</a> policies. Connecticut, for example, has piloted <a href="https://www.cga.ct.gov/2021/FN/PDF/2021HB-06436-R000120-FN.PDF">coordinating housing mobility vouchers</a> for eligible participants in its interdistrict school desegregation program. </p>
<p>Like 70 years ago when Brown was decided, addressing public school segregation remains important for a healthy democracy – one that today is more multiracial than ever before.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/219654/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Erica Frankenberg does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>As the nation approaches the 70-year anniversary of Brown vs. Board of Education, an education professor lays out the state of school segregation in America.Erica Frankenberg, Professor of Education and Demography, Penn StateLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2147162023-10-06T04:56:52Z2023-10-06T04:56:52ZWe don’t need a hydrotherapy pool in every school, but we do need quality public education for all kids<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/552442/original/file-20231006-23-t56795.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=19%2C19%2C2534%2C1668&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://educationhq.com/news/a-golden-window-educations-current-crisis-brings-chance-for-major-reform-127274/">Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>The Royal Commission into Violence, Abuse, Neglect and Exploitation of People with Disability has shared its final report. In this <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/disability-rc-2023-146083">series</a>, we unpack what the commission’s 222 recommendations could mean for a more inclusive Australia.</em></p>
<hr>
<p>The release of the disability royal commission’s final report ignited a public debate about the future of “<a href="https://theconversation.com/disability-royal-commissioners-disagreed-over-phasing-out-special-schools-that-leaves-segregation-on-the-table-214706">special schools</a>” and whether we can phase out segregation in education. During <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/listen/programs/melbourne-drive/drive/102910882">one radio discussion</a> this week, an irate parent asked me: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>But how can a mainstream school have a hydrotherapy pool like the one our local special school has? </p>
</blockquote>
<p>The future of special schools is important and discussed in the <a href="https://disability.royalcommission.gov.au/publications/final-report">report</a>. But it’s not the main story here. In fact, focusing on specialist schools for students with disability misunderstands the report’s point and misses its major implications for all schools. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/disability-royal-commissioners-disagreed-over-phasing-out-special-schools-that-leaves-segregation-on-the-table-214706">Disability royal commissioners disagreed over phasing out 'special schools' – that leaves segregation on the table</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>What the report says</h2>
<p>Most educational recommendations in the report aim to strengthen inclusion in mainstream “regular” schools and prevent them from undermining inclusion or dodging their legal responsibilities toward students with a disability. </p>
<p>The report recommends a “legal entitlement for students with disability to enrol in a local mainstream school”. Currently, some mainstream settings do not welcome such students and use <a href="https://lens.monash.edu/@education/2019/11/06/1378308/exclusive-education-parents-can-equip-themselves-to-combat-gatekeeping#:%7E:text=Gatekeeping%20is%20illegal%20under%20the,particularly%20problematic%20in%20some%20states.">gatekeeping practices</a>. These may include persuading parents the school cannot meet their’s child’s needs or to informally prevent enrolment. </p>
<p>Gatekeeping means mainstream school is not an option for many parents, and explains why the <a href="https://www.acara.edu.au/reporting/national-report-on-schooling-in-australia/school-numbers">number of special schools has risen</a> across Australia over the past decade. </p>
<p>The report also recommends mainstream schools take early, preventative actions before suspending or excluding students who have a disability. It urges transparent processes, so parents understand decisions and how to appeal. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/heres-why-we-need-a-disability-rights-act-not-just-a-disability-discrimination-one-214715">Here's why we need a disability rights act – not just a disability discrimination one</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Exclusion from the mainstream</h2>
<p>Rising numbers of students with disability enrolled in the mainstream sector have faced suspension and exclusion from school over the past decade, <a href="https://www.schoolexclusionsstudy.com.au/application/files/7016/0204/8669/Key_Issues_Paper_3_School_Exclusion_Study_Use_of_Exclusionary_Practices_30092020.pdf#:%7E:text=The%20use%20of%20exclusionary%20practices%20rose%20by%202.1%25%20between%202015,and%20971%20cancellations%20of%20enrolment.">typically due to “problem behaviour”</a>. </p>
<p>Expensive safety net programs known as <a href="https://researchnow-admin.flinders.edu.au/ws/portalfiles/portal/48547364/687290_It_s_Time_to_Act_Report_FINAL_WEB_VERSION.pdf">Flexible Learning Options</a> have become popular across Australia as an emergency policy reaction to this trend. They are <a href="https://www2.education.vic.gov.au/pal/flexible-learning-options/policy">intended</a> to support students at risk or already disengaged from education. </p>
<p>In our research, my colleagues and I found that, in 2019, more than 70,000 Australian high-school-aged students were enrolled in flexible learning programs. This number had almost <a href="https://www.sbs.com.au/news/insight/article/are-flexible-learning-options-giving-schools-a-convenient-way-out-of-taking-responsibility-for-difficult-students/tw4d3uw3k">tripled since 2016</a> and students with disability are <a href="https://www.sbs.com.au/news/insight/article/are-flexible-learning-options-giving-schools-a-convenient-way-out-of-taking-responsibility-for-difficult-students/tw4d3uw3k">over-represented</a>. Such programs exist outside the mainstream system and provide personalised learning using a variety of education providers. But concerns have been raised about the quality of provision. </p>
<p>A national organisation called School Can’t – a peer support community for parents and carers of students with school attendance difficulties – <a href="https://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Committees/Senate/Education_and_Employment/SchoolRefusal/Submissions">told</a> a recent senate inquiry into school refusal about the growing numbers of children with a disability being home schooled. The organisation reported its membership had grown tenfold since 2019 to almost 10,000 and it had been overwhelmed by the volume of parents seeking support.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/feduc.2022.929912/full">International research</a> consistently shows the devastating psychological impacts exclusion from school creates for affected students and their families. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/politics-with-michelle-grattan-greens-jordon-steele-john-on-the-disability-royal-commission-and-bill-shortens-ndis-reforms-215072">Politics with Michelle Grattan: Greens Jordon Steele-John on the disability royal commission and Bill Shorten's NDIS reforms</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>The bigger issue</h2>
<p>In its report, the disability royal commission acknowledges that inclusion is failing in many mainstream settings. </p>
<p>Although split on some aspects of strategy, the commissioners detail progressive plans to invest in the skills and knowledge of the education workforce and steps to deliver greater inclusion in mainstream schools. For example, the report recommends we: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>[…] strengthen initial teacher education in inclusive education and attract and retain people with disability and others with expertise in delivering inclusive education. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Establishing a national database to gather reliable information on “student experiences, school outcomes for students with disability and progress in addressing barriers to inclusive education practices” is another welcome recommendation. This will be vital to check whether the intended benefits are flowing down to more inclusion at classroom level. </p>
<p>But there has been scant public or media attention so far to the “elephant in the room”. That is the stressed state of today’s <a href="https://theconversation.com/school-principals-are-reaching-crisis-point-pushed-to-the-edge-by-mounting-workloads-teacher-shortages-and-abuse-201777">public education system</a>. </p>
<h2>Capacity is key</h2>
<p>The big issue here is the capacity of our disintegrating public education system to adopt the report’s vision for higher-quality, inclusive mainstream public education. Gatekeeping and excessive use of suspensions and exclusion can be understood as predictable responses by <a href="https://educationhq.com/news/a-golden-window-educations-current-crisis-brings-chance-for-major-reform-127274/">schools under pressure</a>. </p>
<p>That said, the report recommendations should be reframed as a powerful case for targeted educational reforms. With funding and investment, we can raise the quality of mainstream public education so it can include students with a disability. </p>
<p>In the name of greater inclusion, the disability royal commission’s proposed reforms represent a positive, visible investment in the whole of Australia’s public school system. The value of this contribution at this time of crisis cannot be underestimated. Well-funded inclusive education is better for everyone.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/214716/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>David Armstrong does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Focusing on specialist schools for students with disability misunderstands the royal commission report’s point and misses its major implications for all schools.David Armstrong, Senior Lecturer in Special and Inclusive Education, RMIT UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2147062023-10-02T06:03:18Z2023-10-02T06:03:18ZDisability royal commissioners disagreed over phasing out ‘special schools’ – that leaves segregation on the table<p><em>The Royal Commission into Violence, Abuse, Neglect and Exploitation of People with Disability has shared its final report. In this <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/disability-rc-2023-146083">series</a>, we unpack what the commission’s 222 recommendations could mean for a more inclusive Australia.</em></p>
<hr>
<p>The <a href="https://disability.royalcommission.gov.au">Royal Commission into Violence, Abuse, Neglect and Exploitation of People with Disability</a> delivered 222 recommendations on Friday after four and a half years of investigation and deliberation. In its 32 hearings and nearly 8,000 submissions, people with disability shared difficult stories of personal and systemic violence. The commission’s <a href="https://disability.royalcommission.gov.au/publications/final-report">final report</a> showed Australians of all ages with disability continue to experience injustice that must be addressed. </p>
<p>As signatories to the <a href="https://humanrights.gov.au/our-work/disability-rights/united-nations-convention-rights-persons-disabilities-uncrpd">Convention for the Rights of People with Disability</a> and the <a href="https://www.unicef.org.au/united-nations-convention-on-the-rights-of-the-child">Convention of the Rights of the Child</a>, the commission concluded children and young people have a right to inclusive education. </p>
<p>But the commissioners passed down divided recommendations that will continue education segregation for Australia’s young people for at least a generation and possibly longer.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-disability-royal-commission-recommendations-could-fix-some-of-the-worst-living-conditions-but-thats-just-the-start-213466">The disability royal commission recommendations could fix some of the worst living conditions – but that's just the start</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Split on segregation</h2>
<p>Many disability advocacy organisations <a href="https://www.dana.org.au/end-segregation/">hoped</a> the commission report would call for an end to segregation of people with disability across education, housing and employment. Yet the final report found the commissioners split on this issue. </p>
<p>Commissioners Barbara Bennett, Rhonda Galbally and Alastair McEwin <a href="https://disability.royalcommission.gov.au/system/files/2023-09/Final%20Report%20-%20Executive%20Summary%2C%20Our%20vision%20for%20an%20inclusive%20Australia%20and%20Recommendations.pdf">believe</a> “the deliberate and systematic separation of people based on disability constitutes segregation”. The remaining commissioners disagreed. </p>
<p>Two contrasting sets of education recommendations emerged from this split. </p>
<p>One seeks to phase out “special” or segregated education by 2051. Commissioners Galbally and <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-10-01/final-report-recommends-end-to-school-segregation/102922216">McEwin</a> – who are the only disabled commissioners and have close relationships with the disability community – support this approach, along with Bennett. </p>
<p>This proposal has still come under fire. West Australian senator Jordon Steele-John argues a 30-year phase out process is <a href="https://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/wildly-inadequate-senator-calls-out-australias-segregated-school-phase-out-plan/i3oanwgjw">too long</a>. He says it would mean disabled children entering school today would likely be separated from their age peers for the duration of their school life.</p>
<p>Organisations such as the Australian Coalition for Inclusive Education have previously set out <a href="https://acie105204494.files.wordpress.com/2021/02/acie-roadmap-final-11-feb-2021.pdf">roadmaps</a> to end segregated education within a decade. </p>
<p>The alternative recommendation proposed by commissioners Andrea Mason and John Ryan seeks to maintain special schools but, where practicable, locate these close to mainstream schools. This could create partnerships so students can participate in activities together. Critics of this approach <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-09-30/disability-community-responds-to-royal-commission-report/102917604?sf269343817=1">say</a> it does not suggest a time when segregated schooling might cease. </p>
<p>And bringing mainstream and special schools together would not necessarily achieve inclusion. The suggestion of scheduling in partial participation could send a message to students and teachers that not everyone belongs in all learning spaces. </p>
<p>The recommendations did not mention the private education sector, referring only to a future possibility of inclusion within state schooling. </p>
<h2>Why inclusive education is important</h2>
<p>Education is not just about academic outcomes and future employment. It is about creating tomorrow’s Australian communities, society and citizens. </p>
<p>The disability royal commission’s recommendations represent progress in terms of understanding diversity, listening to the voices of young people, capacity building, leadership and governance, and employment opportunities. But they lack insight into the importance of <a href="https://www.mdpi.com/2227-7102/11/1/16">inclusive education</a> in achieving all of these goals.</p>
<p>The very establishment of the commission was a commitment to addressing the violence and discrimination people with disability experience. But the lack of a firm commitment to a fully inclusive education system denies the opportunity for all young people to grow and understand their diversity of experiences.</p>
<p><a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797614538978">All children</a> and young people in a community need to play, grow and develop together. This means they can learn how to develop social-emotional skills and empathy for each other’s strengths and differences. </p>
<h2>Why some see segregated education as necessary</h2>
<p>Not everyone within the disability community sees segregated education as problematic. There are a number of reasons why special settings for students with disability have been established and chosen by families and students. </p>
<p>Schools are under-resourced and teachers in mainstream settings are often <a href="https://theconversation.com/70-of-australian-students-with-a-disability-are-excluded-at-school-the-next-round-of-education-reforms-can-fix-this-213369">under-trained</a> for working with students with disability in inclusive ways. </p>
<p>Many schools lack the facilities and adjustments required to keep some students with disability safe and included alongside their peers. There are concerns about bullying and meeting personal needs in some cases. Staff in specialist education settings may be more experienced with these needs. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-disability-royal-commission-delivers-its-findings-today-we-must-all-listen-to-end-violence-abuse-and-neglect-213253">The disability royal commission delivers its findings today. We must all listen to end violence, abuse and neglect</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>The royal commission recommendation that teaching standards should include inclusive education training across the careers of teachers is important. But teachers cannot achieve this without the time or resources to develop the meaningful meetings and planning of Individual Education Plans (IEP) with students, carers and other professionals, including classroom assistants. </p>
<p>Much of the expertise in meeting the needs of students with disability are located in specialist schools, with little opportunity for skill and strategy sharing with mainstream teachers. Continuing to segregate these skills will make inclusive education unachievable.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1708382283445776805"}"></div></p>
<h2>Where to next?</h2>
<p>The commission’s final report identifies the need for better data collection and analysis to make decisions. Existing mechanisms including the Disability Standards for Education, the Australian Curriculum, the Nationally Consistent Collection of Data on School Students with Disability, and an additional monitoring of progress through IEP reporting will be an important step in identifying where additional supports may be required at the school and student level. </p>
<p>Many within the disability community will not be heartened by the disability royal commission’s recommendations because they leave an option for segregation on the table. And this may set up the next generation of disabled children and young people for a life of being excluded from mainstream society. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/why-do-students-with-disability-go-to-special-schools-when-research-tells-us-they-do-better-in-the-mainstream-system-184652">Why do students with disability go to 'special schools' when research tells us they do better in the mainstream system?</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/214706/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Catherine Smith receives funding from CYDA and Down Syndrome Victoria. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Helen Dickinson receives funding from ARC, NHMRC and CYDA</span></em></p>Education segregation could continue for Australia’s young people for at least another generation – and possibly longer – in light of the disability royal commission recommendations.Catherine Smith, Senior lecturer, The University of MelbourneHelen Dickinson, Professor, Public Service Research, UNSW SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2102932023-08-01T14:46:56Z2023-08-01T14:46:56ZSudan needs to accept its cultural diversity: urban planning can help rebuild the country and prevent future conflict<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/539757/original/file-20230727-17-efhzbn.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Smoke rises above buildings in Sudan's capital Khartoum in June 2023.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AFP via Getty Images</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Sudan is rich in cultural, ethnic and racial diversity. The country’s <a href="https://www.unfpa.org/data/world-population/SD">48 million people</a> come from <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13698280500423908">56 ethnic groups, with over 595 sub-ethnic groups, speaking more than 115 languages</a>. </p>
<p>This plurality has shaped urban development patterns and the country’s socio-political landscape. </p>
<p>Take, for instance, <a href="https://theconversation.com/khartoum-the-creation-and-the-destruction-of-a-modern-african-city-205705">Khartoum</a>. The Sudanese capital <a href="https://www.cairn.info/revue-politique-africaine-2005-4-page-302.htm">historically</a> drew traders from different ethnic and cultural backgrounds. Each placed a <a href="https://jur.journals.ekb.eg/article_88400.html">distinctive stamp</a> on the cityscape. </p>
<p>These range from Ottoman-style Islamic architecture to the narrow alleys, small windows and colourful clothes peculiar to African ethnic groups. The city symbolises Sudan’s cultural mosaic in architecture and urban planning.</p>
<p>However, Khartoum is also a domain of <a href="https://www.altaghyeer.info/ar/2020/12/02/%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%A5%D9%86%D8%B3%D8%A7%D9%86-%D9%88%D8%A7%D9%84%D9%85%D9%8E%D8%AF%D9%8A%D9%86%D8%A9-%D9%88%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%AB%D9%88%D8%B1%D8%A9-%D9%82%D8%B1%D8%A7%D8%A1%D8%A7%D8%AA-%D9%81%D9%8A-%D9%8A/">ethnic and cultural division</a>.</p>
<p>This dates back to the period of the <a href="https://www.encyclopedia.com/religion/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/mahdist-state-mahdiyya">Mahdist state (Mahdiyya)</a>, which ruled Sudan from 1881 to 1898 and challenged the colonial ambitions of Britain and Egypt. The Mahdist state made <a href="https://www.britannica.com/place/Omdurman">Omdurman (Umm Durman)</a> its new capital on the western side of the River Nile, and developed the city around the <a href="https://archive.org/details/isbn_9781782821151">ethnic structure of its army</a>. </p>
<p>A colonial plan for <a href="https://repozytorium.biblos.pk.edu.pl/redo/resources/28522/file/suwFiles/HassanS_UrbanPlanning.pdf#page=3">Khartoum followed in 1910</a>, triggered by the governor-general of Sudan, <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Horatio-Herbert-Kitchener-1st-Earl-Kitchener">Horatio Kitchener</a>. It had <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/268280184_alywm_alalmy_ltkhtyt_almdn_althdyat_w_almalat_fy_almdn_alswdanyt">three segregated zones</a> to accommodate Europeans, elites and ordinary locals. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/khartoum-the-creation-and-the-destruction-of-a-modern-african-city-205705">Khartoum: the creation and the destruction of a modern African city</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>These decades of interplay between diversity and urban planning in Sudan fostered vibrant cityscapes. But spatial segregation has continued, creating <a href="https://docs.southsudanngoforum.org/sites/default/files/2020-11/Luka-Biong-Deng-Kuol-When-Ethnic-Diversity-Becomes-a-Curse-in-Africa-The-Tale-of-Two-Sudans.pdf">socio-cultural divisions and uneven urban growth</a>. </p>
<p>Drawing on my experiences as an <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Ibrahim-Bahreldin">educator, researcher and practitioner in urbanism in Sudan</a>, I argue that failure to use urban planning to manage diversity has worsened ethnic and racial divisions. It has fanned <a href="https://theconversation.com/darfur-how-historical-patterns-of-conflict-are-haunting-current-violence-144423">conflict and discontent</a> in Sudanese society.</p>
<h2>Embracing diversity</h2>
<p><a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/268280184_alywm_alalmy_ltkhtyt_almdn_althdyat_w_almalat_fy_almdn_alswdanyt">Urban planning</a> is supposed to improve residents’ quality of life. It strategically organises physical spaces and land use. It optimises resources and livelihoods, and promotes social equity. </p>
<p>It holds immense potential to manage diversity and reconstruct a resilient and prosperous Sudan. </p>
<p>This isn’t to say urban planning can single-handedly resolve <a href="https://theconversation.com/sudan-crisis-explained-whats-behind-the-latest-fighting-and-how-it-fits-nations-troubled-past-203985">Sudan’s conflict</a>. Peace requires a <a href="https://theconversation.com/what-makes-peace-talks-successful-the-4-factors-that-matter-206299">shared commitment</a> to silence the guns and build political stability and security. </p>
<p>Yet the way diversity is managed makes it either a virtue or a <a href="https://docs.southsudanngoforum.org/sites/default/files/2020-11/Luka-Biong-Deng-Kuol-When-Ethnic-Diversity-Becomes-a-Curse-in-Africa-The-Tale-of-Two-Sudans.pdf">curse</a>. </p>
<p>In my view, there are three avenues through which urban planning can positively manage diversity to help prevent conflict: </p>
<ul>
<li><p>by celebrating multiculturalism.</p></li>
<li><p>by boosting regional integration and resource management.</p></li>
<li><p>by ensuring effective governance and public participation in urban spaces.</p></li>
</ul>
<h2>What Sudan got wrong</h2>
<p>Colonial and post-independence planning practices in Sudan attempted to forge a <a href="https://www.saflii.org/za/journals/AHRLJ/2013/17.html">national identity</a>. However, this was done by <a href="https://docs.southsudanngoforum.org/sites/default/files/2020-11/Luka-Biong-Deng-Kuol-When-Ethnic-Diversity-Becomes-a-Curse-in-Africa-The-Tale-of-Two-Sudans.pdf">suppressing ethnic diversity</a>, and disintegrating cultural values and their spatial footprints. </p>
<p>After independence from Egypt and Britain in 1956, Sudan’s ruling elites rejected the demand from southern Sudan for <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/federalism">a federal system</a>. This would have created a united Sudan but allowed different regions to maintain their integrity, culture and traditions. The ruling elite instead adopted an “Arab Islamic” identity to create a <a href="https://docs.southsudanngoforum.org/sites/default/files/2020-11/Luka-Biong-Deng-Kuol-When-Ethnic-Diversity-Becomes-a-Curse-in-Africa-The-Tale-of-Two-Sudans.pdf">homogeneous society</a>. </p>
<p>This was among the reasons for the eruption of the <a href="https://www.encyclopedia.com/humanities/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/sudanese-civil-wars">first civil war in southern Sudan in 1955</a>.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/darfur-tracing-the-origins-of-the-regions-strife-and-suffering-131931">Darfur: tracing the origins of the region's strife and suffering</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>And in Darfur, infringements of communal land ownership rights <a href="https://metropolitics.org/Land-Insecurity-in-Khartoum-When-Land-Titles-Fail-to-Protect-Against-Public.html">fuelled violent conflict</a>. This extended to <a href="https://docs.southsudanngoforum.org/sites/default/files/2020-11/Luka-Biong-Deng-Kuol-When-Ethnic-Diversity-Becomes-a-Curse-in-Africa-The-Tale-of-Two-Sudans.pdf">southern Sudan</a> and <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/287221183_Urban_agriculture_facing_land_pressure_in_Greater_Khartoum_The_case_of_new_real_estate_projects_in_Tuti_and_Abu_Se'id">Khartoum</a>. </p>
<p>The Khartoum <a href="https://www.icnl.org/wp-content/uploads/Sudan_Khartoum1998.pdf">Public Order Act</a> of 1996 (<a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-50596805">repealed in 2019</a>) was another misjudgement. It <a href="https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/12/12/5194">discriminated against citizens</a> based on their cultural and gender identities. The public order rules were <a href="https://redress.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/report-Final.pdf#page=5">vague and open-ended</a>, leaving them open to exploitation for social control.</p>
<h2>Rebuilding a post-war Sudan</h2>
<p>Urban planning should follow the principles of economic, social and physical integration. </p>
<ul>
<li><p>Economic integration ensures equal access to employment, education and resources. </p></li>
<li><p>Social integration provides affordable housing, diverse neighbourhoods and accessible social infrastructure. </p></li>
<li><p>Physical integration encourages social interaction and breaks down barriers. </p></li>
</ul>
<p>These principles help create vibrant, harmonious cities that cater to the needs of diverse populations and future generations. They can be put into practice through three avenues.</p>
<p><strong>1. Celebrating multiculturalism and diversity</strong> </p>
<p>This requires <a href="https://www.cgscholar.com/bookstore/works/the-power-of-diversity?category_id=cgrn&path=cgrn%2F209%2F215">rethinking urban spaces to embrace inclusivity</a>, particularly where ethnocultural ties transcend national boundaries. Inclusive neighbourhoods, mixed-use developments and accessible public spaces promote interaction and foster belonging. Such developments help build understanding, empathy and trust among different communities, preventing community fracturing that <a href="https://theconversation.com/darfur-tracing-the-origins-of-the-regions-strife-and-suffering-131931">leads to unrest</a>. </p>
<p><strong>2. Regional integration and resource management</strong></p>
<p>Sudan has experienced <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/269336771_Khartoum_2030_Towards_An_Environmentally-Sensitive_Vision_for_the_Development_of_Greater_Khartoum_Sudan">unequal urban growth and the depopulation of rural areas</a>. To address this, the country’s long-term development visions and plans should aim for equitable development. These plans should take into account marginalised regions which may have ethnic populations that extend beyond national borders. A planning vision that transcends the scope of a single nation and seeks a regional approach is indispensable. Regional integration can restructure urban spaces, mobility systems and production patterns. This would foster self-sufficiency and integration. </p>
<p>Urban planning can also address resource management concerns – such as land ownership and economic opportunities – that trigger tension and conflict. Transparent mechanisms for resource allocation can help mitigate conflict arising from scarce resources. In Sudan, this would have helped improve regional employment prospects, reducing a <a href="https://theconversation.com/sudan-created-a-paramilitary-force-to-destroy-government-threats-but-it-became-a-major-threat-itself-203974">reliance on paramilitary activities</a> for income.</p>
<p><strong>3. Effective governance and public participation</strong></p>
<p><a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/261996322_A_Critical_Evaluation_of_Public_Participation_in_the_Sudanese_Planning_Mandates">Participatory urban planning</a> improves governance. It empowers historically marginalised groups like young people, women, rural communities, informal settlers and minorities through public engagement. This enables them to <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/262008475_Evaluation_of_Two_Types_of_Community_Participation_In_Development_Projects_A_Case_Study_of_The_Sudanese_Neighbourhood_of_Al-Shigla">address their grievances and secure opportunities for meaningful dialogue</a>. The process generates enthusiasm for shaping, financing and managing urban spaces. </p>
<p>Public engagement harnesses local knowledge and culture. It advocates for policy transformation to address systematic inequalities and safeguard rights. Transparent and accountable governance complements these arrangements, promoting equality and preventing tension.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/210293/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Ibrahim Bahreldin is a member of the Sudanese Institute of Architects and the City Planning Institute of Japan, and is registered as a professional architect and urban planner with the Sudanese Engineering Council and the Saudi Council of Engineers. He is also affiliated with the University of Khartoum in Sudan. Ibrahim does not work for, consult, own shares in, or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article.</span></em></p>The interplay between diversity and urban planning in Sudan has created vibrant cityscapes, but also led to segregation and division.Ibrahim Z. Bahreldin, Associate Professor of Urban & Environmental Design, King Abdulaziz University Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2076782023-06-16T20:30:13Z2023-06-16T20:30:13ZJuneteenth, Jim Crow and how the fight of one Black Texas family to make freedom real offers lessons for Texas lawmakers trying to erase history from the classroom<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/532238/original/file-20230615-15-utcvwa.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=2%2C166%2C1791%2C1011&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Joshua Houston leads a Juneteenth Parade in Huntsville, Texas, in a photo circa 1900.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.samhoustonmemorialmuseum.com/">Sam Houston Memorial Museum and Republic of Texas Presidential Library</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The news was startling. </p>
<p>On June 19, 1865, two months after the U.S. Civil War ended, <a href="https://www.archives.gov/news/articles/juneteenth-original-document">Union Gen. Gordon Granger</a> walked onto the balcony at Ashton Villa in Galveston, Texas, and announced to the people of the state that “all slaves are free.” </p>
<p>As local plantation owners lamented the loss of their most valuable property, <a href="https://www.galvestonhistory.org/news/juneteenth-and-general-order-no-3">Black Texans celebrated</a> Granger’s Juneteenth announcement with singing, dancing and feasting. The <a href="https://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/entries/slavery">182,566 enslaved African Americans in Texas</a> had finally won their freedom. </p>
<p>One of them was <a href="https://easttexashistory.org/items/show/10?tour=8&index=0">Joshua Houston</a>. </p>
<p>He had long served as the enslaved servant of <a href="https://apnews.com/article/business-race-and-ethnicity-houston-slavery-sam-houston-6ff3a0d8700841c58729bcaa0848c8b3">Gen. Sam Houston</a>, the most well-known military and political leader in Texas.</p>
<p>Joshua Houston lived about 120 miles north of Galveston when he learned of Granger’s proclamation. </p>
<p>It was read aloud at the local Methodist Church in Huntsville, Texas, by <a href="https://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/entries/gregory-edgar-m">Union Gen. Edgar M. Gregory</a>, the assistant commissioner for the <a href="https://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/entries/freedmens-bureau">Freedmen’s Bureau in Texas</a>.</p>
<p>If Juneteenth meant anything, it meant at least that Joshua Houston and his family were free.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A gray haired black man in the center wearing glasses is sitting down and surrounded by members of his family." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/532444/original/file-20230616-17-baca9c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/532444/original/file-20230616-17-baca9c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=480&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/532444/original/file-20230616-17-baca9c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=480&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/532444/original/file-20230616-17-baca9c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=480&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/532444/original/file-20230616-17-baca9c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=603&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/532444/original/file-20230616-17-baca9c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=603&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/532444/original/file-20230616-17-baca9c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=603&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Joshua Houston and his family in October 1898.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Courtesy of the Sam Houston Memorial Museum and Republic of Texas Presidential Library, Huntsville, Texas</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>But there was more too. </p>
<p>The promise of freedom meant that more work needed to be done. Families needed to be reunited. Land needed to be secured. Children needed to be educated. </p>
<p>Indeed, the radical promise of Juneteenth is embodied in the community activism of Joshua Houston and the educational career of his son Samuel Walker Houston. </p>
<h2>The violent white reaction to Black political power</h2>
<p>Within a year of Granger’s proclamation, Houston had established a blacksmith shop near the Huntsville town square and moved his family into a two-story house on the adjoining lot.</p>
<p>He helped found the Union Church, the first Black-owned institution in the city, as well as a freedmen’s school to begin educating African American children. </p>
<p>In 1878 and 1882, a Republican coalition of Black and white voters opposed to conservative Democratic rule elected Houston as the county’s first Black county commissioner, a powerful position in local governance. </p>
<p>Despite this dramatic turn of events, Houston’s political story was hardly unique. </p>
<p>In the two decades following emancipation, 52 Black men served in the state Legislature or the state’s constitutional conventions. </p>
<p>But that number had fallen to two by 1882. </p>
<p>Opposition to Black freedom had been a powerful force in the state’s political culture since emancipation. </p>
<p>Armstead Barrett, a former slave in Huntsville, recalled in 1937 that an enraged white man had reacted to Granger’s Juneteenth order by <a href="https://www.studythepast.com/walkercountyslavenarratives/Armstead%20Barrett.pdf">riding past a celebrating Black woman and murdering her with his sword</a>. </p>
<p>In 1871, the violence continued when the white citizens of Huntsville stormed the county courthouse and aided the escape of three men who had <a href="https://lynchingintexas.org/items/browse/">lynched freedman Sam Jenkins</a>.</p>
<p>Later, in the 1880s, <a href="https://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/entries/civil-rights#:%7E:text=In%20the%201880s%2C%20White%20men,experienced%20similar%20forms%20of%20brutality.">attacks on Black elected officials</a>, their white political allies and Black voters escalated dramatically.</p>
<p>In the early 1900s, changes in state election laws, including the introduction of the poll tax, effectively <a href="https://txwf.org/minority-voter-suppression-jim-crow-laws-in-texas/">disenfranchised most Black voters</a> and many poor whites as well. <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=w8QIEAAAQBAJ&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&lpg=PR1&dq=race%20and%20class%20in%20texas%20politics&pg=PA24#v=onepage&q&f=false">Voter participation dropped</a> from roughly 85% at the high tide of Texas populism in 1896 to roughly 35% when the poll tax became effective in 1904.</p>
<p>As a result, <a href="https://lrl.texas.gov/legeleaders/members/memberdisplay.cfm?memberID=3580">Robert Lloyd Smith</a> was the last Black legislator for nearly 70 years when he finished his term in 1897. </p>
<p>That wall of white supremacy at the state Capitol would not crack again until 1966, when <a href="https://www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/voting-rights-act#:%7E:text=This%20act%20was%20signed%20into,as%20a%20prerequisite%20to%20voting.">federal voting rights legislation</a> and <a href="https://www.democracydocket.com/analysis/ten-voting-rights-cases-that-shaped-history/">Supreme Court rulings</a> nullified <a href="https://www.tpr.org/podcast/texas-matters/2021-10-19/how-texas-used-multi-member-districts-to-weaken-minority-voting-power">schemes</a> to deny African Americans the ballot. </p>
<p>These changes enabled the election of Black officials such as <a href="https://www.humanitiestexas.org/programs/tx-originals/list/barbara-jordan">Barbara Jordan</a>, the first African American woman to serve in the Texas Senate. </p>
<h2>Like father, like son</h2>
<p>On an unknown date, a few years after Juneteenth, Joshua Houston’s son <a href="https://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/entries/houston-samuel-walker">Samuel Walker Houston</a> was born free in the bright light of <a href="https://www.britannica.com/event/Reconstruction-United-States-history">Reconstruction</a>.</p>
<p>Although he spent his adulthood in some of the darkest years of <a href="https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/freedom-riders-jim-crow-laws/">Jim Crow</a>, he continued his father’s work as an educator and community leader. Following a short stint at Atlanta University in Georgia and Howard University in Washington, D.C., Samuel Walker Houston returned to Huntsville and <a href="https://easttexashistory.org/items/show/2?tour=5&index=0">founded a school</a> in the nearby Galilee community. </p>
<p>Houston’s school was named for him and served as one of the first county training schools for African Americans in Texas. It enrolled students at every level, from first grade through high school, and provided a curriculum based on <a href="https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/garvey-washington/">Booker T. Washington’s Tuskegee model</a> of vocational training. </p>
<p>Young women at Houston’s school received training in homemaking, sewing and cooking, while young men learned carpentry, woodworking and mathematics. </p>
<p>By 1922, enrollment at the school had grown to 400 students, and it was recognized by contemporaries as the leading school of East Texas. In the 1930s, Houston’s school was absorbed into Huntsville’s school district, and he became the director of Black education in the county.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="In this black and white image, seven men stand outside a residential-style building with sawhorses and stacked lumber off to the side." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/532442/original/file-20230616-4884-pkw4fn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/532442/original/file-20230616-4884-pkw4fn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=352&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/532442/original/file-20230616-4884-pkw4fn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=352&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/532442/original/file-20230616-4884-pkw4fn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=352&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/532442/original/file-20230616-4884-pkw4fn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=442&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/532442/original/file-20230616-4884-pkw4fn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=442&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/532442/original/file-20230616-4884-pkw4fn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=442&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">This 1919 photograph shows officials laying the foundation for a new building at the Samuel Walker Houston Training School.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Jackson Davis Collection of African American Educational Photographs, Special Collections, University of Virginia Library</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Houston encouraged a practical education for Black Texans, but he also believed that young Texans of all races needed to learn an account of history that differed from the white supremacist narrative that dominated Southern history. </p>
<p>Toward this end, he joined with Joseph Clark and Ramsey Woods, two white professors who pioneered race relations courses at Sam Houston State Teachers College. Together, the group led the <a href="https://shsu-ir.tdl.org/handle/20.500.11875/3760">Texas Commission on Interracial Cooperation</a>’s effort to evaluate Texas public school textbooks during the 1930s. </p>
<p>In an analysis of racial attitudes in state-endorsed textbooks, they found that 74% of books presented a racist view of the past and of Black Americans. Most excluded the scientific, literary and civic contributions of Black people, while mentioning their economic contributions only in the period of slavery before the Civil War.</p>
<p>Instead, the group argued, books designed for both Black and white Texans needed to take the “opportunity … to do simple justice” by including Black history and the “struggle for the exercise” of equal civil, political and legal rights.</p>
<p>White Texans <a href="https://www.texasmonthly.com/being-texan/state-history-textbook-erases-the-stories-black-hispanic-texans/">refused to adopt a textbook</a> in the 1930s that taught the fundamental equality of the races, or portrayed Reconstruction, as it is now widely understood, as a missed opportunity to establish a more just and egalitarian Texas.</p>
<p>But Houston and his <a href="https://scholarworks.sfasu.edu/ethj/vol57/iss2/5/">white counterparts were motivated</a> by the conviction that progress, both for African Americans and for Texas, required a more honest and progressive account of the state and its history. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="In this black and white image, Black men and women are seen marching along a main street while others are watching." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/532443/original/file-20230616-27-qg7tn4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/532443/original/file-20230616-27-qg7tn4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=467&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/532443/original/file-20230616-27-qg7tn4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=467&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/532443/original/file-20230616-27-qg7tn4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=467&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/532443/original/file-20230616-27-qg7tn4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=587&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/532443/original/file-20230616-27-qg7tn4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=587&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/532443/original/file-20230616-27-qg7tn4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=587&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Juneteenth Parade in Huntsville, Texas, circa 1900.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Sam Houston Memorial Museum and Republic of Texas Presidential Library, Huntsville, Texas.</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>An ongoing battle for equality</h2>
<p>Today’s legislative efforts in Texas and elsewhere to <a href="https://www.texastribune.org/2021/06/15/abbott-critical-race-theory-law/">restrict the teaching</a> of systemic racism in public schools ignore the lessons and realities represented by Joshua and Samuel Walker Houston’s lives. </p>
<p>The argument used for supporting such restrictions is that “divisive concepts” like the history of racism may make some students feel uncomfortable or guilty. </p>
<p>That sort of thinking echoes the same justification provided by Texas lawmakers in 1873, when many argued that the state’s schools must be segregated to ensure “<a href="https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Dance_of_Freedom/hVLtkG8EA3sC?hl=en&gbpv=1&bsq=peace,%20harmony">the peace, harmony and success of the schools and the good of the whole</a>.” </p>
<p>But the opposite is true. </p>
<p>In reality, the prohibition on teaching the darker chapters of our past creates a segregated history. </p>
<p>Instead, as Samuel Walker Houston recognized, young Texans must have a more honest account of the past and of one another to progress into a unified and egalitarian society.</p>
<p>Texas history is both the story of people who dedicated their lives to the work of advancing freedom and the story of powerful people and forces that stood against it. </p>
<p>One cannot be understood without the other. </p>
<p>Americans cannot appreciate the accomplishments of Joshua and Samuel Walker Houston without examining the vicious realities of Jim Crow society. </p>
<p>The lesson of their lives, and of the Juneteenth holiday, is that freedom is a precious thing that requires constant work to make real.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/207678/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>For the formerly enslaved Black people in Texas, Juneteenth meant more than freedom. It meant reuniting families and building schools and developing political power.Jeffrey L. Littlejohn, Professor of History, Sam Houston State UniversityZachary Montz, Lecturer, History Department, Sam Houston State UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2046632023-04-28T12:46:25Z2023-04-28T12:46:25ZEmmett Till’s accuser, Carolyn Bryant Donham, has died – here’s how the 1955 murder case helped define civil rights history<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/523323/original/file-20230427-2476-sdo2si.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Carolyn Bryant Donham, left, reads newspaper accounts of the Emmett Till murder trial in 1955. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://media.gettyimages.com/id/1387675173/photo/emmett-till-murder-trial.jpg?s=1024x1024&w=gi&k=20&c=6AHNEtCZd-n8SzB4KlwtTrW6VqogGwjiZZGJQP187mk=">Bettmann Archive/Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Carolyn Bryant Donham, the white woman <a href="https://apnews.com/article/emmett-till-carolyn-bryant-donham-1bcfff1c5a29484270d66b224422f112">who accused Black teenager</a> Emmett Till of making inappropriate advances toward her in 1955, has died at the age of 88 in Louisiana, according to a coroner’s report.</p>
<p>Nearly 68 years after Till was kidnapped, brutally tortured, murdered and then dumped into the Tallahatchie River in Mississippi, the case continues to resonate with audiences around the world because it represents an egregious example of justice denied. </p>
<p>As a historian of the <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=fLC2Ei-VvuoC&lpg=PR7&ots=97G2d6B94B&dq=davis%20houck%20till&lr&pg=PR7#v=onepage&q=davis%20houck%20till&f=false">Mississippi civil rights movements</a>, I quickly learned that most Mississippi civil rights history leads back to the widespread outrage over the Till case in the summer of 1955.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/523324/original/file-20230427-961-uvz7nc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A young Black boy leans against his arm and reclines on a bed in a black and white photo." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/523324/original/file-20230427-961-uvz7nc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/523324/original/file-20230427-961-uvz7nc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=389&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/523324/original/file-20230427-961-uvz7nc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=389&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/523324/original/file-20230427-961-uvz7nc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=389&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/523324/original/file-20230427-961-uvz7nc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=489&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/523324/original/file-20230427-961-uvz7nc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=489&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/523324/original/file-20230427-961-uvz7nc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=489&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Emmett Till is shown lying on his bed in 1954, one year before his murder.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://media.gettyimages.com/id/514974304/photo/emmett-till.jpg?s=1024x1024&w=gi&k=20&c=H_59CkJeGX1ESuR52wL2c8X9aDnSxek6F17MCsU0L_E=">Bettmann/Contributor</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Emmett in Money, Mississippi</h2>
<p>Fourteen-year-old Emmett arrived in Mississippi on Aug. 20, 1955, from Chicago to visit his mother’s family, who sharecropped cotton in the tiny Delta community of Money. </p>
<p>On the evening of Aug. 24, Emmett and several cousins and neighbors drove the 2.8 miles into Money to buy candy at the Bryant Grocery and Meat Market. </p>
<p>Emmett entered the store alone. He bought 2 cents’ worth of bubble gum and left. At the door Emmett let out a loud, two-note wolf whistle directed at white 21-year-old Carolyn Bryant. His cousins were terrified: Emmett had just hit the trip wire of Southern racial fears by flirting with a white woman.</p>
<p>Early on Aug. 28, several men – white and Black – took Emmett from his family’s house. Emmett’s badly decomposed and battered body was discovered three days later in the Tallahatchie River. Emmett’s uncle could identify Emmett only by a ring he was wearing that once belonged to Emmett’s father, Louis Till.</p>
<p>Two white men, Roy Bryant and J. W. Milam, were quickly arrested and later charged with murder. During a five-day trial in September, the two men were found not guilty after a 67-minute deliberation by an all-white, all-male jury. </p>
<p>Several years later, members of the jury confessed to a Florida State University graduate student, <a href="https://fsu.digital.flvc.org/islandora/object/fsu%3A277427">Hugh Stephen Whitaker</a>, that they knew the men were guilty but simply wouldn’t convict a white man of crimes against a Black child.</p>
<p>In 1956, Milam and Bryant <a href="https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/till-killers-confession/">sold their</a> “shocking true story” of what happened to Till for US$3,150 to Look magazine. For nearly 50 years, celebrity journalist William Bradford Huie’s “confession” story in Look functioned as the final word on the case. </p>
<h2>Continued interest and coverage</h2>
<p>Southern newspapers wanted immediately to forget the Till story, ashamed of the backlash caused by Milam and Bryant’s “confession.” Many Northern and Western newspapers editorialized on the case long after its conclusion. America’s Black press never quit writing about the case; it was their work, after all, helping to track down Black eyewitnesses in September 1955 that helped us understand the truth of what actually happened to Emmett Till on Aug. 28, 1955.</p>
<p>Thanks to <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bvijYSJtkQk&t=10s">investigative work</a> by documentary filmmaker Keith Beauchamp and others, the public has since learned that Milam and Bryant were part of a much larger lynching party, none of whom were ever punished.</p>
<p>Today, all of the people directly involved in Till’s murder are dead. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/523359/original/file-20230428-30-kdf4gf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A woman stands with two young boys on the steps of a dilapidated looking wooden building." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/523359/original/file-20230428-30-kdf4gf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/523359/original/file-20230428-30-kdf4gf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=601&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/523359/original/file-20230428-30-kdf4gf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=601&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/523359/original/file-20230428-30-kdf4gf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=601&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/523359/original/file-20230428-30-kdf4gf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=755&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/523359/original/file-20230428-30-kdf4gf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=755&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/523359/original/file-20230428-30-kdf4gf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=755&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Carolyn Byant Donham stands with her sons outside the store where she first encountered Emmett Till.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://media.gettyimages.com/id/515021604/photo/mrs-roy-bryant-leaving-building-with-sons.jpg?s=1024x1024&w=gi&k=20&c=jxt9tRKAN3XqOxRFUF8GovCOblOFyeY6Xw0_Z3PoVhE=">Bettmann/Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>A case that aged with Carolyn Bryant Donham</h2>
<p>The last <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/27/us/carolyn-bryant-donham-dead.html">20 years of Bryant Donham’s life</a> were characterized by the attempt of private citizens and law enforcement to bring her to justice for the part she played in Till’s kidnapping and murder.</p>
<p>When Bryant Donham was in her 80s and living with family in Raleigh, North Carolina, FBI investigators and federal prosecutors revisited her case and the potential for prosecuting her for Till’s kidnapping and death. One question was whether Bryant Donham recanted her previous testimony about Till’s advances and said that it was false.</p>
<p>A historian said in 2017 that Bryant Donham told him in a rare interview that the most egregious parts of the story she and <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/27/us/carolyn-bryant-donham-dead.html">others told about Emmett Till were false</a>.</p>
<p>The Justice Department said in 2021, though, that it <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/emmett-till-carolyn-bryant-investigation/2021/12/06/8f5e8490-56d1-11ec-9a18-a506cf3aa31d_story.html">was unable to confirm</a> whether Bryant Donham actually went back on her previous testimony, and it closed the case. </p>
<p>Then, in 2022, a team of researchers – including two of Till’s relatives – <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/jun/29/emmett-till-warrant-carolyn-bryant-donham-family-arrest">discovered an unserved arrest warrant</a> for Bryant Donham in a courthouse basement. This led some legal experts to say that the 1955 document could support probable cause to prosecute Bryant Donham for her involvement in Till’s death. </p>
<p>Mississippi’s attorney general said in 2022 that the office <a href="https://apnews.com/article/arrests-mississippi-emmett-till-19176fe64ec8054188601d000ba569f2">did not plan to prosecute</a> Bryant Donham – though that didn’t stop activists from protesting outside her home that same year.</p>
<p>Recently unearthed documents also showed that <a href="https://www.mississippicir.org/perspective/carolyn-bryant-lied-about-emmett-till-did-author-tim-tyson-lie-too">Till did not put his hands</a> on her nor talk lewdly to her in the store. That was all fabricated as part of the defense’s strategy to argue that the lynching amounted to justifiable homicide. When the presiding judge, Curtis Swango, did not allow the jury to hear <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/27/us/carolyn-bryant-donham-dead.html">Bryant Donham’s testimony</a>, the defense pivoted to <a href="https://famous-trials.com/emmetttill/1763-nottills">the absurd claim that the body taken</a> from the Tallahatchie River wasn’t Till’s. </p>
<p>Over the past several decades, the Till case has continued to resonate, especially for a nation that still experiences the all-too-frequent and seemingly unprovoked deaths of young Black men. The Till family has had to live with an open wound for 68 years. As Devery Anderson, author of “Emmett Till: The Murder That Shocked the World and Propelled the Civil Rights Movement,” has noted, that <a href="https://www.thedailybeast.com/emmett-tills-accuser-carolyn-bryant-donham-dies-along-with-any-last-chance-of-justice">wound won’t suddenly go away</a> with Bryant Donham’s passing.</p>
<p><em>This is an updated version of an <a href="https://theconversation.com/emmett-tills-life-matters-99923">article originally published on July 13, 2018</a>.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/204663/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Davis W. Houck does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>While Bryant Donham was never charged for her involvement in Till’s death, the Justice Department continued to investigate the case and consider the potential for an arrest as recently as 2021.Davis W. Houck, Professor, Florida State UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2028142023-04-14T12:16:31Z2023-04-14T12:16:31ZParents tend to choose their children’s schools based on their own educational experience<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/519664/original/file-20230405-23-xkm35y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=8%2C17%2C5742%2C3811&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Patterns of segregation may repeat if parents continually choose schools like the ones they attended.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/family-enjoys-walk-home-from-neighborhood-school-royalty-free-image/1250064135?phrase=parents%2Btake%2Bkids%2Bto%2Bschool">SDI Productions via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>The <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/topics/research-brief-83231">Research Brief</a> is a short take about interesting academic work.</em> </p>
<h2>The big idea</h2>
<p>Faced with a <a href="https://nces.ed.gov/blogs/nces/post/new-report-on-school-choice-in-the-united-states">growing number of options</a> for where to enroll their children in school, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/23294965231159306">parents quickly narrow their choices</a> based on their own educational experience as students.</p>
<p>That’s what we found for a study published in March 2023 in Social Currents.</p>
<p>Historically, parents have turned to their <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/socf.12483">social networks</a> and <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/0042085914550414">materials produced by school districts</a> to help them choose a school for their children.</p>
<hr>
<iframe id="noa-web-audio-player" style="border: none" src="https://embed-player.newsoveraudio.com/v4?key=x84olp&id=https://theconversation.com/parents-tend-to-choose-their-childrens-schools-based-on-their-own-educational-experience-202814&bgColor=F5F5F5&color=D8352A&playColor=D8352A" width="100%" height="110px"></iframe>
<p><em>You can listen to more articles from The Conversation, narrated by Noa, <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/topics/audio-narrated-99682">here</a>.</em></p>
<hr>
<p>However, when we analyzed interviews with a diverse sample of 60 parents from the Dallas metropolitan area, we found that about one-third of them used their own experiences in school to narrow their options before they gathered other information about schools. </p>
<p>If parents had a positive educational experience as children, they frequently narrowed their options to the same type of school that they attended, whether that be a private, magnet or traditional public school. Their hope was to replicate this positive experience for their kids. For example, Janice, a Black mother of two, explained, “They’re in private school mainly because I went to private school.” </p>
<p>Although parents of all backgrounds and income levels used this strategy, it was most common among white parents, who typically enrolled their children in private or suburban public schools, which they attended themselves. We refer to this as “experience-motivated replication.”</p>
<p>Virginia, a white mother of two, explained that her husband, John, “just assumed our kids are going to public schools” because the suburban schools he attended were such “wonderful public schools.” To replicate John’s experience the couple was in the process of leaving the city to buy a home in the suburbs.</p>
<p>Similarly, Rachel, a white mother of three, quickly narrowed her school options to consider only private Catholic schools because of her own positive experience. Rachel’s husband told us: “The kids go to the same private Catholic school that she went to.” </p>
<p>In contrast, we find that when parents had negative educational experiences, they typically sought to avoid enrolling their children in the type of school they attended, eliminating those schools from consideration. This strategy, which we call “experience-motivated avoidance,” was common among Black parents in our sample who felt underserved in city public schools as children.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/519965/original/file-20230407-20-pmq94h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A Black mother looks at a book along with her two children, a girl and a boy, while seated on a couch in their home." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/519965/original/file-20230407-20-pmq94h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/519965/original/file-20230407-20-pmq94h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/519965/original/file-20230407-20-pmq94h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/519965/original/file-20230407-20-pmq94h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/519965/original/file-20230407-20-pmq94h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/519965/original/file-20230407-20-pmq94h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/519965/original/file-20230407-20-pmq94h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Black parents often seek to save their children from negative school experiences like the ones they may have had as children.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/african-american-mother-and-children-looking-at-royalty-free-image/77137484?phrase=black%20mother%20two%20kids%20school&adppopup=true">Jose Luis Pelaez Inc via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>For instance, Toni, a Black mother of three, shared: “I went to a public school and I don’t think that the teachers really care about the kids’ education. That’s me personally. I didn’t get that one on one.” Based on this negative experience, she did not consider their zoned Dallas public school. Instead, Toni focused on charter school options for her children. She ultimately enrolled them in a charter school near her home. </p>
<h2>Why it matters</h2>
<p>Where families decide to enroll their children in school not only influences the educational resources available to their child, but also shapes broader patterns of racial and socioeconomic segregation in America’s schools.</p>
<p>The school selection process plays a key role in how educational inequalities span generations, especially when white parents rely on their own experiences to inform the choices they make for their children.</p>
<p>For example, when white families move out of the city to enroll their children in suburban public schools, or consider only private schools like those they attended, these choices replicate historic patterns of white flight. It also helps explain why white families tend to be overrepresented in <a href="https://civilrightsproject.ucla.edu/research/k-12-education/integration-and-diversity/private-schools-in-american-education-a-small-sector-still-lagging-in-diversity">private schools</a> and suburban public schools.</p>
<p>Conversely, when we examine how parents’ negative experiences as students influence which schools they consider for their children, it may help us to better understand why, for instance, <a href="https://data.publiccharters.org/digest/charter-school-data-digest/who-attends-charter-schools/">Black and Latino families</a> increasingly choose charter schools. </p>
<h2>What still isn’t known</h2>
<p>While this study shines light on one key aspect of how parents choose schools for their children, we believe it is important to understand all of the ways parents choose schools. Examining the choice process for diverse populations of families in districts where school choice is available can reveal the full set of strategies parents rely on to select schools.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/202814/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Parents who had positive experiences in school often select schools for their children that are similar to the ones they attended – but if they had a bad experience they avoid those kinds of schools.Anna Rhodes, Assistant Professor of Sociology, Rice UniversityJulia Szabo, PhD Candidate in Sociology, Rice UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1972502023-01-30T13:13:56Z2023-01-30T13:13:56ZMeet Bayard Rustin, often-forgotten civil rights activist, gay rights advocate, union organizer, pacifist and man of compassion for all in trouble<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/505703/original/file-20230121-31574-irg6sz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=95%2C106%2C3647%2C5044&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption"> In this Feb. 2, 1964, image, Bayard Rustin talks on a telephone from a church in Brooklyn, New York.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/civil-rights-activist-bayard-rustin-spokesman-for-the-news-photo/3248636?phrase=bayard%20rustin&adppopup=true">Patrick A. Burns/New York Times Co./Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>As I began writing “Bayard Rustin: American Dreamer,” <a href="https://rowman.com/ISBN/9780742545137/Bayard-Rustin-American-Dreamer">my biography</a> of the 20th-century radical leader and activist, one of my colleagues cautioned me not to “fall in love.” </p>
<p>This, of course, is good advice for any biographer, and I tried to follow it.</p>
<p>But it wasn’t easy, because <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Bayard-Rustin">Bayard Rustin</a> was America’s signature radical voice during the 20th century, and yes, I believe those voices includes that of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., whom Rustin trained and mentored. </p>
<p>His <a href="https://www.npr.org/2021/03/08/974941349/bayard-rustin-an-architect-of-the-civil-rights-movement-you-may-have-never-heard">vision</a> of nonviolence was breathtakingly broad.</p>
<p>He was a civil rights activist, a labor unionist, a socialist, a pacifist and, later in life, a gay rights advocate. </p>
<p>Today, scholars would call Rustin an <a href="https://www.intersectionaljustice.org/what-is-intersectionality">intersectionalist</a>, a man who understood the complex effects of multiple forms of discrimination, including racism, sexism and classism. </p>
<h2>Early days and activism</h2>
<p>Born in West Chester, Pennsylvania, on March 17, 1912, Rustin was one of 12 children raised by their grandparents. It is believed that his devotion to civil rights was formed by his grandmother, whose <a href="https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/encyclopedia/rustin-bayard">work with the NAACP</a> resulted in leaders of the Black community, such as <a href="https://naacp.org/find-resources/history-explained/civil-rights-leaders/web-du-bois">W.E.B. Du Bois</a> and <a href="https://www.cookman.edu/history/our-founder.html">Mary McLeod Bethune</a>, visiting the Rustin home during his Quaker upbringing.</p>
<p>Rustin was present at the creation of a host of pivotal American liberation movements. He helped found the <a href="https://www.thecongressofracialequality.org/bayard-rustin.html">Congress of Racial Equality</a> and the <a href="https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/encyclopedia/southern-christian-leadership-conference-sclc">Southern Christian Leadership Conference</a>, two civil rights organizations that were focused on ending the Jim Crow era of racial segregation. </p>
<p>He worked with Black trade unionist <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/A-Philip-Randolph">A. Philip Randolph</a> on the <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5406/j.ctt6wr5b1">1941 March on Washington Movement</a>, which bore fruit in <a href="https://www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/executive-order-8802">an executive order</a> by President Franklin Roosevelt banning racial discrimination in the nation’s defense industries.</p>
<p>Rustin and Randolph worked again in 1948 on a successful campaign <a href="https://www.ncpedia.org/anchor/precursor-desegregating-armed-forces">to end segregation</a> in the U.S. military under President Harry Truman. </p>
<p>A pacifist, Rustin protested World War II by resisting the draft and, as a result, was imprisoned in 1944 as a conscientious objector.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Two head shots of the same black man -- a side view and a head-on view -- are seen in these photographs taken in federal prison." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/505701/original/file-20230121-20-h81yrj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/505701/original/file-20230121-20-h81yrj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=480&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/505701/original/file-20230121-20-h81yrj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=480&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/505701/original/file-20230121-20-h81yrj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=480&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/505701/original/file-20230121-20-h81yrj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=603&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/505701/original/file-20230121-20-h81yrj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=603&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/505701/original/file-20230121-20-h81yrj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=603&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">In these Aug. 3, 1945, images, Bayard Rustin is seen in federal prison after his conviction on draft evasion charges.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/bayard-rustin-one-of-the-organizers-of-the-1963-march-on-news-photo/644663420?phrase=bayard%20rustin&adppopup=true">Bureau of Prisons/Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>After his release in 1946, Rustin became a major figure for the next two decades in two prominent pacifist organizations, the <a href="https://forusa.org/the-fellowship-of-reconciliation-and-bayard-rustin-an-amends/">Fellowship of Reconciliation</a> and the <a href="https://www.warresisters.org/resources/remembering-bayard-rustin-100">War Resisters League</a>, both of which opposed the use of violence to settle disputes between individuals or nations. </p>
<p>In 1947, he and members of the Congress of Racial Equality planned the <a href="https://snccdigital.org/events/cores-journey-of-reconciliation/">Journey of Reconciliation</a>, the first organized effort to desegregate interstate bus transportation in the South. </p>
<h2>Role in Montgomery bus boycott</h2>
<p>Because of that work to integrate public transportation, Randolph suggested in 1956 that <a href="https://www.history.com/news/bayard-rustin-march-on-washington-openly-gay-mlk">Rustin meet with a young preacher</a> in Alabama who was organizing a bus boycott there.</p>
<p>That meeting with the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. during the <a href="https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/encyclopedia/rustin-bayard">Montgomery Bus Boycott of 1956</a> changed both men forever.</p>
<p>From then on Rustin advised King on the principles of Gandhi and nonviolent direct action that – when combined with lawsuits, voter registration drives and lobbying efforts – ultimately led to passage of both the <a href="https://www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/civil-rights-act">Civil Rights Act of 1964</a> and the <a href="https://www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/voting-rights-act">Voting Rights Act of 1965</a>. </p>
<p>For Rustin, Black progress depended on politics and economics. To that end, in 1966 <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v5bgmFTJ1FQ">Rustin proposed</a> the “<a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt9qg4r6">Freedom Budget for All Americans</a>” that promised every American employment, an income and access to health care. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A group of men are sitting around a large table with sheets of paper in front of them." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/505694/original/file-20230121-23029-ifczsc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/505694/original/file-20230121-23029-ifczsc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=404&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/505694/original/file-20230121-23029-ifczsc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=404&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/505694/original/file-20230121-23029-ifczsc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=404&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/505694/original/file-20230121-23029-ifczsc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=508&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/505694/original/file-20230121-23029-ifczsc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=508&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/505694/original/file-20230121-23029-ifczsc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=508&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Civil rights leaders, from left, Bayard Rustin, Jack Greenberg, Whitney M. Young Jr., James Farmer, Roy Wilkins, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., John Lewis, A. Philip Randolph and Courtland Cox attend NAACP meeting on July 29, 1964.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/new-york-ny-at-a-meeting-here-in-n-a-a-c-p-headquarters-news-photo/517350918?phrase=bayard%20rustin&adppopup=true">Bettmann/GettyImages</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>His proposal became the template for progressive political activists in the 21st century.</p>
<h2>Jobs and freedom</h2>
<p>Rustin is best remembered as <a href="https://www.pbs.org/wnet/african-americans-many-rivers-to-cross/history/100-amazing-facts/who-designed-the-march-on-washington/">the organizer and orchestrator</a> of arguably the seminal event in American civil rights history – <a href="https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2013/08/15/212338844/bayard-rustin-the-man-who-organized-the-march-on-washington">the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom</a>.</p>
<p>But it almost did not happen. </p>
<p>Rustin’s homosexuality had always been an issue, and not just to his opponents on the American right or to <a href="https://vault.fbi.gov/bayard-rustin/bayard-rustin-part-01-of-07">J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI</a>. </p>
<p>Many progressive activists who were open-minded on matters relating to civil and labor rights were much less so when it came to Rustin’s sexuality. </p>
<p>Rustin had been fired by the Fellowship of Reconciliation after <a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/bayard-rustin-civil-rights-icon-tarnished-arrest-homosexual-encounter-pardoned-california-180974143/">his 1953 conviction in Pasadena, California</a>, on what was then known as a “public indecency” offense, involving sex with two other men in a parked car.</p>
<p>A few years later, <a href="https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/encyclopedia/rustin-bayard">King forced him out</a> of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, fearful of the damage the issue of Rustin’s homosexuality could do to his organization.</p>
<p>It took the direct intervention of Randolph, Rustin’s lifelong friend and champion, to get King and other major civil rights leaders to agree to his selection as the organizer and orchestrator of the March on Washington in 1963. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Two Black men are standing next to a sign that says March on Washington for jobs and freedom." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/505702/original/file-20230121-15446-oomhc0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/505702/original/file-20230121-15446-oomhc0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=766&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/505702/original/file-20230121-15446-oomhc0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=766&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/505702/original/file-20230121-15446-oomhc0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=766&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/505702/original/file-20230121-15446-oomhc0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=963&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/505702/original/file-20230121-15446-oomhc0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=963&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/505702/original/file-20230121-15446-oomhc0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=963&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Bayard Rustin, left, is seen on Aug. 7, 1963, talking with Cleveland Robinson during the March on Washington.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/bayard-rustin-left-and-cleveland-robinson-shown-during-the-news-photo/639609323?phrase=bayard%20rustin&adppopup=true">Orlando Fernandez/Library of Congress via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Rustin then had to <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/aug/23/bayard-rustin-march-on-washington">survive a denunciation</a> by segregationist Sen. Strom Thurmond on the floor of Congress shortly before the march, during which the South Carolina lawmaker read from FBI reports on Rustin’s <a href="https://www.nps.gov/subjects/civilrights/bayard-rustin.htm">flirtation with communism</a> – he had belonged to the Communist Party briefly as a young man – and his homosexuality and <a href="https://www.pasadenanow.com/main/king-confidante-arrested-in-pasadena-receives-posthumous-pardon">arrest in Pasadena</a>. </p>
<p>But Rustin’s ability to organize was now too valuable to lose, and this time King stood by him. </p>
<p>As <a href="https://rowman.com/ISBN/9780742545137/Bayard-Rustin-American-Dreamer">my research shows</a>, King knew that only Rustin, who had spent the previous two decades leading demonstrations and walking picket lines, had the knowledge and experience to move 250,000 people in and out of Washington, D.C., on a hot summer day. </p>
<p>King also knew that Rustin could manage everything in between, including the order of the speakers.</p>
<p>By insisting that King be placed last on the program, Rustin ensured that King would have the final word and maximum dramatic effect. Though Rustin didn’t know it at the time, King’s “<a href="https://www.npr.org/2010/01/18/122701268/i-have-a-dream-speech-in-its-entirety">I Have a Dream</a>” remarks eventually constituted one of the greatest speeches ever delivered in American history. </p>
<h2>Rustin’s internal conflicts</h2>
<p>The constituent parts of Rustin’s radical vision were often at odds and difficult to achieve, forcing Rustin into wrenching choices, as I learned during my research. </p>
<p>During World War II, for instance, he chose pacifism over the cause of civil rights when he refused to bear arms against a racist Nazi regime.</p>
<p>During the Vietnam War, he chose socialism over pacifism when he muted his criticism of President Lyndon B. Johnson’s policies in the hope of enacting his <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/02/a-freedom-budget-for-all-americans-annotated/557024/">Freedom Budget for All Americans</a>.</p>
<p>And in 1968, as a white-led teachers union and Black activists struggled for control of New York City’s public education system during the bitter <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/17/opinion/teachers-strike-liberals-ocean-hill-brownsville.html">Ocean Hill-Brownsville crisis</a>, Rustin chose labor rights over civil rights and class over race as he lent his support to the union.</p>
<p>These choices <a href="https://jacobin.com/2018/05/the-tragedy-of-bayard-rustin">cost Rustin allies and friendships</a>, as former colleagues who afforded themselves the luxury of one-issue purity denounced him as an apostate, a hypocrite, a turncoat or worse.</p>
<p>But Rustin was none of those. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A Black man wearing sunglasses is sitting next to another Black man who is taking notes on a pad of paper." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/505707/original/file-20230121-8930-3w8ef2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/505707/original/file-20230121-8930-3w8ef2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=413&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/505707/original/file-20230121-8930-3w8ef2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=413&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/505707/original/file-20230121-8930-3w8ef2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=413&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/505707/original/file-20230121-8930-3w8ef2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=519&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/505707/original/file-20230121-8930-3w8ef2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=519&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/505707/original/file-20230121-8930-3w8ef2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=519&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Bayard Rustin, at right, sits next to acclaimed writer James Baldwin on the speakers’ platform in Montgomery, Ala., during the 1965 civil rights march from Selma.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/speakers-platform-1965-selma-to-montgomery-alabama-civil-news-photo/459534210?phrase=bayard%20rustin%20randolph&adppopup=true">Stephen F. Somerstein/Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>He dedicated his life to helping, as he put it, “people in trouble,” whomever and wherever they might be. </p>
<p>Accordingly, he put himself on the line for democracy advocates all over the world. They included African Americans, Latinos, working men and women, union members, the poor, war critics, anti-nuclear protesters, gays and lesbians, students, leftists, Soviet Jews, and Haitian, Hmong and Afghan refugees.</p>
<p>If those allegiances appear to be contradictions, in my view they were of the best kind. </p>
<h2>Love for Rustin?</h2>
<p>Above all else, Rustin chose to help people in trouble based on their condition, not their identity. </p>
<p>For that he has, if not my love, then my profound respect. </p>
<p>Of all the voices I’ve heard on my journeys through America’s 20th-century history, it is his that resonates most with me.</p>
<p>Rustin died in 1987, his radical vision unwavering until the end.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/197250/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jerald Podair does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Bayard Rustin led a long and complicated life dedicated to the fight for equal rights. Targeted by the FBI, Rustin became a close adviser to Martin Luther King Jr.Jerald Podair, Professor of History, Lawrence UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1936992022-11-04T16:21:21Z2022-11-04T16:21:21ZWhat’s at stake this Election Day – 7 essential reads<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/493337/original/file-20221103-13-5pz4zm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">People volunteer at a Native Alaskan voting station on Nov. 2, 2022 in Anchorage. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://media.gettyimages.com/photos/people-participate-in-voting-in-the-upcoming-midterm-elections-at-a-picture-id1244447058?s=612x612">Spencer Platt/Getty Images </a></span></figcaption></figure><p>As Election Day closes in, uncertainty and concern about potential chaos – from violence at polling sites to candidates refusing to accept defeat – <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-63494618">continue to rise</a>. </p>
<p>Problems that have historically plagued the U.S. electoral and political system – like voter intimidation – are cropping up ahead of the midterms. But so, too, are less familiar issues, like how previously run-of-the-mill state election positions are becoming opportunities for political activism.</p>
<p>Here are seven key issues that affect the midterm elections, drawn from stories in The Conversation’s archive.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/493338/original/file-20221103-19-xv0h1o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A white older man in a dark blue suit stands next to two American flags, and a third very large flag over a blue backdrop. A Black man in a suit stands on the other side of the American flag." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/493338/original/file-20221103-19-xv0h1o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/493338/original/file-20221103-19-xv0h1o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/493338/original/file-20221103-19-xv0h1o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/493338/original/file-20221103-19-xv0h1o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/493338/original/file-20221103-19-xv0h1o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/493338/original/file-20221103-19-xv0h1o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/493338/original/file-20221103-19-xv0h1o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">President Joe Biden spoke on Nov. 2, 2022, warning of the need to preserve and protect democracy.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://media.gettyimages.com/photos/president-joe-biden-arrives-to-deliver-remarks-on-preserving-and-as-picture-id1244440371?s=612x612">Kent Nishimura/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>1. Who is voting</h2>
<p>Voter participation during midterm elections is typically low – though <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2022/11/01/turnout-in-u-s-has-soared-in-recent-elections-but-by-some-measures-still-trails-that-of-many-other-countries/">some experts say</a> that there could be heavy turnout this year. But the question of who actually heads to the polls will also be critical, as races in key <a href="https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2022-election-forecast/">swing states tighten</a>. </p>
<p>Young voters are much less likely to vote during midterms than older people, as opposed to their higher turnouts during presidential elections, American University government scholar <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=1XMWY78AAAAJ&hl=en">Jan Leighley</a> wrote. Young voters are also more likely to identify as Democrats. </p>
<p>“So if younger voters are underrepresented in the November 2022 elections, more Republicans may be elected, as well as candidates less likely to reflect younger citizens’ views on key issues,” <a href="https://theconversation.com/young-voters-are-more-likely-to-skip-midterm-elections-than-presidential-races-192314">Leighley wrote.</a> </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/young-voters-are-more-likely-to-skip-midterm-elections-than-presidential-races-192314">Young voters are more likely to skip midterm elections than presidential races</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>This year, meanwhile, record numbers of Latinos are also expected to turn out to vote. In 2020, most Latinos voted for President Joe Biden – but increasing numbers of Latino voters are also supporting GOP candidates, including former president Donald Trump, <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-gop-made-gains-among-latino-voters-in-2020-but-democrats-remain-the-party-of-choice-for-upcoming-midterms-192679">wrote University of Tennessee social work</a> scholar <a href="https://experts.utk.edu/experts/mary-lehman-held/">Mary Lehman Held.</a></p>
<p>One reason is that Latino voters have different backgrounds, values and priorities. And not all would be turned off by Republican candidates’ restrictive immigration politics. </p>
<p>“Immigration policies only affect a subset of Latinos, most notably Mexicans, followed by Salvadorans, Guatemalans and Hondurans,” Lehman Held explained.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-gop-made-gains-among-latino-voters-in-2020-but-democrats-remain-the-party-of-choice-for-upcoming-midterms-192679">The GOP made gains among Latino voters in 2020 but Democrats remain the party of choice for upcoming midterms</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>2. What voters want</h2>
<p>It’s the economy, stupid, <a href="https://politicaldictionary.com/words/its-the-economy-stupid/">as the famous</a> 1992 political adage about voters’ top concern goes. </p>
<p>Soaring inflation <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-inflation-will-likely-stay-sky-high-regardless-of-which-party-wins-the-midterms-193416">rates top voters’</a> concerns this year, even though neither political party has been found particularly more effective at tackling the issue and bringing down inflation, as Texas State University finance scholar <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=eP0xZ1kAAAAJ&hl=en">William Chittenden wrote.</a></p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/why-inflation-will-likely-stay-sky-high-regardless-of-which-party-wins-the-midterms-193416">Why inflation will likely stay sky-high regardless of which party wins the midterms</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>There was a flurry of political activism around the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn <a href="https://www.oyez.org/cases/1971/70-18">Roe v. Wade</a> in June 2022, undoing the federal right to an abortion. But just four months later, men and women both say that abortion politics are not bringing them to the polls, according to Harvard Kennedy School and Northwestern University social science scholars <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=vUKLlG4AAAAJ&hl=en">Matthew A. Baum</a>, <a href="https://scholar.harvard.edu/alaunasafarpour/home">Alauna Safarpour</a>, <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=P_3neYQAAAAJ&hl=en">Jonathan Schulman</a> and <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=0JH3YoUAAAAJ&hl=en">Kristin Lunz Trujillo</a>. </p>
<p>“The Supreme Court’s Dobbs v. Jackson decision may have initially mobilized some voters in June and July, particularly women, but its effects appear to have diminished when we asked Americans about their intentions to vote again in August and October,” <a href="https://theconversation.com/abortion-is-not-influencing-most-voters-as-the-midterms-approach-economic-issues-are-predominating-in-new-survey-191836">they wrote.</a></p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/abortion-is-not-influencing-most-voters-as-the-midterms-approach-economic-issues-are-predominating-in-new-survey-191836">Abortion is not influencing most voters as the midterms approach – economic issues are predominating in new survey</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>3. Elections aren’t what they used to be</h2>
<p>Gone are the days when election administrators were considered low profile, conducting essential – but not flashy – work, like organizing voter lists, staffing polling places and counting election results. </p>
<p>Overall mistrust in elections is high in the U.S. following the 2020 elections – and former President Trump’s refusal to accept his defeat. It’s a new era in politics, where it is not necessarily a given that “elections happen, votes are counted, the winners are declared and democracy moves on,” wrote Arizona State University’s <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=FdltMX4AAAAJ&hl=en">Thom Reilly</a>, a public governance scholar and former state election official. </p>
<p>One complicating factor is that the U.S. is the only democracy that elects many of its election officials, and high-ranking members of the Republican or Democratic parties usually oversee elections at the state level. </p>
<p>“That partisan system largely worked until now because, in essence, each party checked the other party’s ability to influence election outcomes. As long as states were politically diverse, members of the two major parties acted in good faith, and this model functioned – albeit imperfectly,” <a href="https://theconversation.com/good-faith-and-the-honor-of-partisan-election-officials-used-to-be-enough-to-ensure-trust-in-voting-results-but-not-anymore-189510">wrote Reilly</a>. </p>
<p>But there’s already evidence that newly minted and highly partisan poll workers and election observers plan to disrupt the elections, potentially diminishing public faith in this essential democratic institution and weakening democracy itself. And a high number of candidates running for state election administration roles are election deniers. If they win, wrote Reilly, that will further erode public confidence in election integrity. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/493339/original/file-20221103-24-oya9b6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A large white sign says 'Vote!' People walk past the sign outside, in what appears to be a green campus with trees." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/493339/original/file-20221103-24-oya9b6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/493339/original/file-20221103-24-oya9b6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/493339/original/file-20221103-24-oya9b6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/493339/original/file-20221103-24-oya9b6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/493339/original/file-20221103-24-oya9b6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/493339/original/file-20221103-24-oya9b6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/493339/original/file-20221103-24-oya9b6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Young people pass a voting information sign on the Emory University campus in Atlanta on Oct. 14, 2022.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://media.gettyimages.com/photos/young-people-pass-a-voting-information-sign-on-the-emory-university-picture-id1244204492?s=612x612">Elijah Nouvelage/AFP via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/good-faith-and-the-honor-of-partisan-election-officials-used-to-be-enough-to-ensure-trust-in-voting-results-but-not-anymore-189510">Good faith and the honor of partisan election officials used to be enough to ensure trust in voting results – but not anymore</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>4. Black voters face possible intimidation</h2>
<p>Amid warnings from the Department of Homeland Security about political violence on Election Day – which University of Maryland, Baltimore County security researcher <a href="https://cybersecurity.umbc.edu/richard-forno/">Richard Forno</a> <a href="https://theconversation.com/political-violence-in-america-isnt-going-away-anytime-soon-193597">recently explored</a> – there’s an increased risk that polling sites will become yet another place for political violence. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/political-violence-in-america-isnt-going-away-anytime-soon-193597">Political violence in America isn't going away anytime soon</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>The threat brings to mind <a href="https://www.loc.gov/classroom-materials/elections/right-to-vote/voting-rights-for-african-americans/">long-standing efforts</a> by white supremacists to <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2020/10/27/voter-intimidation-surging-2020-protect-minority-voters-column/6043955002/">intimidate and</a> threaten Black voters. </p>
<p>Georgia is one place with a long history of voter intimidation that is rolling out election reform laws, making it actually harder for voters – especially people of color – to vote. One part of this new law, called SB 202, removes some voting drop boxes, which people of color predominantly use. This comes as Black voters gain number and power in Georgia – and the tightened voting rules are reminiscent of the 1940s and other times when white conservatives cracked down on voting rights in response to rising Black political strength.</p>
<p>“The almost immediate passage of new election laws at a time of growing Black political strength suggests the persistence of a white backlash in Georgia,” <a href="https://theconversation.com/georgias-gop-overhauled-the-states-election-laws-in-2021-and-critics-argue-the-target-was-black-voter-turnout-not-election-fraud-192000">wrote</a> Emory University <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Richard-Doner-2">political science scholar Richard Doner</a>. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/georgias-gop-overhauled-the-states-election-laws-in-2021-and-critics-argue-the-target-was-black-voter-turnout-not-election-fraud-192000">Georgia's GOP overhauled the state's election laws in 2021 – and critics argue the target was Black voter turnout, not election fraud</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p><em>Editor’s note: This story is a roundup of articles from The Conversation’s archives.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/193699/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
Voter demographics and policy priorities are two recurrent, big issues on Election Day – but shifts in election administration and voting laws are new challenges influencing the midterms.Amy Lieberman, Politics + Society Editor, The ConversationLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1923842022-10-31T12:34:34Z2022-10-31T12:34:34ZWhen the Supreme Court loses Americans’ loyalty, chaos – even violence – can follow<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/492336/original/file-20221028-41626-toraho.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=4%2C8%2C2691%2C2295&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Policemen keep a mob back as James Meredith, a Black student trying to enroll at the University of Mississippi, is driven away after being refused admittance to the all-white university in Oxford on Sept. 25, 1962. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/OLEMISSINTEGRATIONMEREDITH/c8f95636a0e5da11af9f0014c2589dfb/photo?Query=James%20Meredith&mediaType=photo&sortBy=arrivaldatetime:asc&dateRange=Anytime&totalCount=447&currentItemNo=30">AP Photo</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The Supreme Court’s <a href="https://news.gallup.com/poll/402044/supreme-court-trust-job-approval-historical-lows.aspx">historically low public standing</a> has prompted a national conversation about the court’s legitimacy. It’s even drawn rare <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/04/opinion/roberts-alito-kagan-barrett-thomas.html">public comment from three sitting Supreme Court justices</a>.
What’s referred to by experts as the problem of “judicial legitimacy” may seem abstract, but the court’s faltering public support is about more than popularity. </p>
<p>Eroding legitimacy means that government officials and ordinary people become increasingly unlikely to accept public policies with which they disagree. And Americans need only look to the relatively recent past to understand the stakes of the court’s growing legitimacy problem.</p>
<h2>Cost ‘paid in blood’</h2>
<p>The Supreme Court’s 1954 decision in <a href="https://www.oyez.org/cases/1940-1955/349us294">Brown v. Board of Education</a> shined a light on many white Americans’ tenuous loyalty to the authority of the federal judiciary. </p>
<p>In Brown, the court unanimously held that racial segregation in public education violates the <a href="https://constitutioncenter.org/the-constitution/amendments/amendment-xiv/clauses/702">equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment</a>. The justices were abundantly aware that their decision would evoke strong emotions. So Chief Justice Earl Warren worked tirelessly to ensure that the court <a href="https://doi.org/10.2307/2128278">issued a unanimous, short and readable opinion</a> designed to <a href="https://academic.oup.com/jpart/article/26/2/185/2886472">calm the anticipated popular opposition</a>. </p>
<p>Warren’s efforts were in vain. Rather than recognizing the court’s authoritative interpretation of the Constitution, many white Americans participated in an extended, violent campaign of resistance to the desegregation ruling.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/492341/original/file-20221028-40936-yzo27.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A highway with old cars on it and a billboard that says 'IMPEACH EARL WARREN' on the side." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/492341/original/file-20221028-40936-yzo27.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/492341/original/file-20221028-40936-yzo27.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/492341/original/file-20221028-40936-yzo27.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/492341/original/file-20221028-40936-yzo27.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/492341/original/file-20221028-40936-yzo27.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=500&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/492341/original/file-20221028-40936-yzo27.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=500&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/492341/original/file-20221028-40936-yzo27.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=500&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Resistance in the South to the Supreme Court’s school desegregation order was strong and often violent. This billboard urged impeachment of the court’s then-chief justice, Earl Warren.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/USIMPEACHWARRENBILLBOARD/9cd64cd66ae4da11af9f0014c2589dfb/photo?Query=Brown%20Board%20of%20education&mediaType=photo&sortBy=arrivaldatetime:asc&dateRange=Anytime&totalCount=73&currentItemNo=6">AP photo</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The <a href="https://www.colorlines.com/articles/tbt-us-court-ruling-enforces-james-merediths-desegregation-ole-miss">integration of the University of Mississippi in 1962</a> provides a pointed example of this resistance. </p>
<p>The Supreme Court had backed a lower federal court that ordered the university to admit <a href="https://50years.olemiss.edu/james-meredith/">James Meredith</a>, a Black Air Force veteran. But Mississippi Gov. Ross Barnett led a wide-ranging effort to stop Meredith from enrolling at Ole Miss, including deploying state and local police to prevent Meredith from entering campus.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.ohpcrm.org/this-day-in-civil-rights-history/september">On Sunday, Sept. 30, 1962</a>, Meredith nevertheless arrived on the university’s campus, guarded by dozens of federal marshals, to register and begin classes the next day. A crowd of 2,000 to 3,000 people gathered on campus and broke into a riot. Meredith and the marshals were attacked with Molotov cocktails and gunfire. The marshals fired tear gas in return. </p>
<p>In response, <a href="https://www.jfklibrary.org/learn/about-jfk/jfk-in-history/civil-rights-movement">President John F. Kennedy invoked the Insurrection Act</a> of 1807 and ordered the U.S. Army onto campus to restore order and protect Meredith. Overnight, thousands of troops arrived, battling rioters. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/492338/original/file-20221028-60919-4dcef0.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Armed troops along a sidewalk in the night, with fire in the background." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/492338/original/file-20221028-60919-4dcef0.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/492338/original/file-20221028-60919-4dcef0.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=409&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/492338/original/file-20221028-60919-4dcef0.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=409&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/492338/original/file-20221028-60919-4dcef0.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=409&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/492338/original/file-20221028-60919-4dcef0.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=514&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/492338/original/file-20221028-60919-4dcef0.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=514&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/492338/original/file-20221028-60919-4dcef0.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=514&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">President John F. Kennedy called in federal troops to quell the violence against James Meredith’s enrollment in the University of Mississippi in 1962.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/troops-patroling-streets-during-riots-vs-enrollment-of-news-photo/50678789?phrase=james%20meredith%20army&adppopup=true">Lynn Pelham/Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The violence finally ended after 15 hours, leaving two civilians dead – both killed by rioters – and dozens of wounded marshals and soldiers in addition to hundreds of injuries among the insurgent mob. </p>
<p>The next day, <a href="https://www.clarionledger.com/story/news/2022/09/27/60-years-since-james-meredith-enrolled-at-ole-miss/65450135007/">Oct. 1, Meredith enrolled in the university</a> and attended his first class, but thousands of troops remained in Mississippi for months afterward to preserve order.</p>
<p>What some call “the <a href="http://archive.wilsonquarterly.com/book-reviews/american-insurrection-battle-oxford-mississippi-1962">Battle of Oxford</a>” was fueled by white racism and segregation, but it played out against the backdrop of weak judicial legitimacy. Federal courts did not command enough respect among state officials or ordinary white Mississippians to protect the constitutional rights of Black Mississippians. Neither Gov. Barnett nor the thousands of Oxford rioters were willing to follow the court order for Meredith to enroll at the university. </p>
<p>In the end, the Constitution and the federal courts prevailed only because Kennedy backed them with the Army. But the cost of weak judicial legitimacy was paid in blood.</p>
<h2>Legitimacy leads to acceptance</h2>
<p>In contrast, when people believe in the legitimacy of their governing institutions, they are more likely to accept, respect and abide by the rules the government – including the courts – ask them to live under, even when the stakes are high and the consequences are far-reaching.</p>
<p>For example, two decades ago, the Supreme Court resolved a disputed presidential election in <a href="https://www.oyez.org/cases/2000/00-949">Bush v. Gore</a>, centered on the counting of ballots in Florida. This time, the court was deeply divided along ideological lines, and its long, complicated and fragmented opinion <a href="https://www.annualreviews.org/doi/10.1146/annurev.polisci.6.121901.085832">was based on questionable legal reasoning</a>. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/492339/original/file-20221028-61541-9cxnry.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Police in helmets with riot gear with smoke in the background." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/492339/original/file-20221028-61541-9cxnry.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/492339/original/file-20221028-61541-9cxnry.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/492339/original/file-20221028-61541-9cxnry.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/492339/original/file-20221028-61541-9cxnry.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/492339/original/file-20221028-61541-9cxnry.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/492339/original/file-20221028-61541-9cxnry.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/492339/original/file-20221028-61541-9cxnry.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Clashes between riot police and Donald Trump supporters near the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, in Washington.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/clashes-between-riot-police-and-trump-supporters-near-the-u-news-photo/1230477139?phrase=january%206%202021%20capitol&adppopup=true">Shay Horse/NurPhoto via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>But in 2000, the court enjoyed more robust <a href="https://news.gallup.com/poll/402044/supreme-court-trust-job-approval-historical-lows.aspx">legitimacy</a> <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/4092195">among the public</a> than it does today. As a consequence, Florida officials ceased recounting disputed ballots. <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/onpolitics/elections/goretext121300.htm">Vice President Al Gore conceded</a> the election to Texas Gov. George W. Bush, <a href="https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/story?id=122220&page=1">specifically accepting the Supreme Court’s pivotal ruling</a>. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/2001/01/07/gore-presides-as-congress-tallies-votes-electing-bush/0461e40f-3317-4a7e-a1ad-2232aae304db/">No Democratic senator</a> challenged the validity of Florida’s disputed Electoral College votes for Bush. <a href="https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2001-jan-07-mn-9426-story.html">Congress certified the Electoral College’s vote</a>, and <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2001/01/21/us/inauguration-president-bush-taking-office-calls-for-civility-compassion-nation.html">Bush was inaugurated</a>. </p>
<p>Democrats were surely disappointed, and <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2001/01/21/us/inauguration-demonstrations-protesters-thousands-sound-off-capital.html">some protested</a>. But the court was viewed as sufficiently legitimate to produce enough acceptance by enough people to ensure a peaceful transition of power. There was no violent riot; there was no open resistance. </p>
<p>Indeed, on the very night that Gore conceded, the chants of his supporters gathered outside tacitly accepted the outcome: “<a href="https://www.baltimoresun.com/bal-00election35-story.html">Gore in four!</a>” – as if to say, “We’ll get you next time, because we believe there will be a next time.”</p>
<h2>Risks ahead</h2>
<p>But what happens when institutions fail to retain citizens’ loyalty?</p>
<p><a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/us/politics/jan-6-timeline.html">The Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection</a> showcased the consequences of broken legitimacy. The rioters who stormed the Capitol had lost faith in systems that undergird American democracy: counting presidential votes in the states, tallying Electoral College ballots and <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/in-depth/news/politics/elections/2021/01/06/trumps-failed-efforts-overturn-election-numbers/4130307001/">settling disputes over election law in the courts</a>. </p>
<p>The rioters may well have believed their country was being stolen, even if such beliefs were baseless. So, they rebelled in the face of a result they didn’t like. </p>
<p>This threat is far from gone. In addition to numerous important questions about individual rights and the scope of government power, the Supreme Court may soon be asked to resolve disputes over the administration of elections and the power to certify election winners – particularly <a href="https://www.scotusblog.com/case-files/cases/moore-v-harper-2/">the authority to designate a slate of presidential electors</a>. </p>
<p>Nothing is certain in politics, but the specter of constitutional crisis looms over the United States. It’s dangerously unclear whether the Supreme Court retains enough legitimacy to authoritatively resolve such disputes. If it doesn’t, the court’s abstract legitimacy problem could once again end with blood in the streets.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/192384/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Joseph Daniel Ura has previously received research funding from the National Science Foundation and funding for academic programs from the Charles Koch Foundation.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Matthew E. K. Hall has previously received research funding from the National Science Foundation.</span></em></p>What’s at stake when Americans lose faith in the legitimacy of the Supreme Court?Joseph Daniel Ura, Professor of Political Science, Texas A&M UniversityMatthew Hall, University of Notre DameLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1908962022-09-20T12:35:23Z2022-09-20T12:35:23ZRon DeSantis and Greg Abbott pull from segregationists’ playbook with their anti-immigration stunts<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/485309/original/file-20220919-26-xhndoz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=31%2C6%2C4162%2C2684&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">An undocumented immigrant from Venezuela kisses the forehead of another immigrant on the island of Martha's Vineyard in Massachusetts.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.co.uk/detail/news-photo/edgartown-ma-september-15th-2022-rafael-eduardo-an-news-photo/1243270878?adppopup=true">Dominic Chavez for The Washington Post via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>As a <a href="https://academic.oup.com/jsh/article-abstract/52/2/535/4034676">historian of racism and white supremacy</a> in the United States, I’ve become accustomed to callous actions like those of Republican governors who <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/09/15/marthas-vineyard-desantis-migrants-venezuela/">organized transportation for Latin American migrants</a> to states run by their political opponents. </p>
<p>Governors Greg Abbott in Texas and Ron DeSantis in Florida are following the playbook of segregationists <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2022/09/16/reverse-freedom-rides-marthas-vineyard-desantis/">who provided one-way bus tickets</a> to Northern cities for Black Southerners in the 1960s. At that time, the fight for racial equality was attracting national attention and support from many white Americans, inspiring some to join interracial Freedom Rides organized by civil rights groups to challenge segregation on interstate bus lines. </p>
<p>Then, as now, the message Southern racists aimed to send with their “reverse freedom rides” was, “Here, you love them so much, you take care of them.”</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1570410627134529536"}"></div></p>
<p>But these acts were more than just political stunts designed to embarrass Northern political leaders who sympathized with the civil rights movement. They were part of a broader effort by white supremacists to remove Black Americans from their communities and avoid dealing with the social consequences of centuries of racial discrimination.</p>
<h2>Slavery, sharecropping and displacement</h2>
<p>In the slavery and Jim Crow eras, <a href="https://www.lawcha.org/wp-content/uploads/8-5-Murder-of-Frank-Hanes-1939-FINAL.pdf">racist policies backed by extreme violence</a> limited access to education and economic opportunities for Black people to ensure that they had few options other than working for white employers. </p>
<p>Black sharecropping families in the early 20th century depended on their landlords to provide food, clothing and housing throughout the year until harvest time, when the costs of these goods were deducted from their share of the money made from sales of the crop. Plantation owners controlled the process, frequently using it <a href="https://www.press.uillinois.edu/books/?id=p061462">to cheat workers out of their earnings</a> and keep them perpetually in debt.</p>
<p>By the 1960s, however, most of these workers were no longer needed. Mechanization eliminated millions of agricultural jobs and <a href="https://www.proquest.com/docview/117559999/F481917AAA0C42AEPQ/10">generated massive unemployment</a> in rural Southern communities. Rather than invest in job training programs or other initiatives to help displaced farm laborers, political leaders enacted policies designed to drive poor people out. </p>
<p>Strict eligibility requirements and arbitrary administration of state public assistance programs excluded many Black families from receiving aid. State legislators <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1966/01/02/archives/south-is-lagging-in-requests-for-federal-antipoverty-money.html">were slow to take advantage of federal funds</a> that were available to expand anti-poverty programs, arguing that these were ploys to force integration on the South. </p>
<p>Government inaction <a href="https://www.proquest.com/docview/118035743/DC4572A31BC449F6PQ/1">left thousands of people</a> without homes or income and exacerbated the suffering of the unemployed.</p>
<h2>Segregationists’ ‘final solution’</h2>
<p>Civil rights workers who came to the South to help local Black activists with desegregation and voter registration efforts <a href="https://content.wisconsinhistory.org/digital/collection/p15932coll2/id/9602/rec/9">were shocked by the economic deprivation</a> that existed in the communities they visited. They reported seeing widespread hunger, dilapidated housing, unsanitary conditions, high infant mortality rates and other adverse health effects. </p>
<p>Raymond Wheeler, a doctor who visited Mississippi in 1967, <a href="https://twitter.com/gretaprofessor/status/1566256712792739840">described the state</a> as “a vast concentration camp, in which live a great group of poor uneducated, semi-starving people, from whom all but token public support has been withdrawn.” </p>
<p>Others took the analogy to Nazi Germany further, <a href="https://content.wisconsinhistory.org/digital/collection/p15932coll2/id/10713/rec/1">arguing that</a> this was white supremacists’ “final solution to the race question.” By denying Black Americans access to the basic means of survival, they left them with no options but to migrate away. </p>
<h2>Political and economic motivations</h2>
<p>The motivations behind these policies <a href="https://uncpress.org/book/9781469654799/you-cant-eat-freedom/">were both political and economic</a>. White racists understood that providing assistance to displaced workers would encourage Black people to stay in the South. That posed a threat to their power, especially after passage of <a href="https://www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/voting-rights-act">the Voting Rights Act</a> in 1965 enabled more Black people to register to vote, participate in elections and run for office. </p>
<p>Moreover, the candidates Black Southerners supported <a href="https://content.wisconsinhistory.org/digital/collection/p15932coll2/id/49401/rec/32">ran on platforms</a> that advocated policies to ensure racial and economic justice: investment in schools and other public services, enhanced assistance for unemployed people, more affordable health care and a stronger social safety net for those who were unable to work.</p>
<p>These proposals were anathema to wealthy white people who would face higher tax rates to pay for them. Warning of the consequences should Black Southerners be allowed to vote, Mississippi Citizens’ Council leader Ellett Lawrence asserted that property owners <a href="https://egrove.olemiss.edu/citizens_corresp/7/">could see tax increases</a> of “100%, 200% or more” if Black people were elected to office. </p>
<p>In a study of Wilcox County, Alabama, the National Education Association <a href="https://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED018874">found that</a> many landowners were afraid “the Negro majority will obtain control and raise land taxes to finance education and other services.” It concluded that this group showed “little taste for the anti-poverty programs of the sixties because it is more anxious to solve its problems through outmigration than it is to improve all of its people.”</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Black and white photograph of people standing and sitting outside of a burning bus." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/485310/original/file-20220919-22-d0uchc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/485310/original/file-20220919-22-d0uchc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=436&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/485310/original/file-20220919-22-d0uchc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=436&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/485310/original/file-20220919-22-d0uchc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=436&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/485310/original/file-20220919-22-d0uchc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=548&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/485310/original/file-20220919-22-d0uchc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=548&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/485310/original/file-20220919-22-d0uchc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=548&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A group of Freedom Riders outside a bus that was set aflame by a group of white people in Alabama.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.co.uk/detail/news-photo/freedom-riders-on-a-greyhound-bus-sponsored-by-the-congress-news-photo/154784547?adppopup=true">Underwood Archives/Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>White supremacy then and now</h2>
<p>In many ways, Republicans like Abbott and DeSantis are the political descendants of Southern segregationists whose cruelty horrified other Americans in the 1960s.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2018/10/30/how-business-first-foreign-policy-triggered-migration-caravans/">Immigration scholars have noted</a> how U.S. foreign policies contributed to the poverty and violence in Central and South America that migrants are fleeing. Yet rather than acknowledge this – along with assuming the moral responsibilities it entails – some GOP leaders denigrate and dehumanize refugees to win support from voters drawn to xenophobic messaging.</p>
<p>Watching this resurgent nativism, racism and disregard for human rights gaining strength in the 21st century is an ominous sight for anyone familiar with where these ideas have led in the past.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/190896/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Greta de Jong does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>In the civil rights era, ‘Reverse Freedom Rides’ were more than just a political stunt. They were part of a systematic effort to deprive Black Americans of their livelihoods and force them out.Greta de Jong, Professor of History, University of Nevada, RenoLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1819172022-08-01T12:35:55Z2022-08-01T12:35:55ZCity residents who support neighborhood schools are often divided by race and purpose<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/473644/original/file-20220712-19-iupfn9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=27%2C54%2C4485%2C2949&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Local school support is fragmented by race and class.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/lonely-woman-royalty-free-image/488975197?adppopup=true">digitalskillet / Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>The <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/topics/research-brief-83231">Research Brief</a> is a short take about interesting academic work.</em> </p>
<h2>The big idea</h2>
<p>When community activists protest issues related to local schools, they do so through movements that are largely segregated by race and class. This is what I found through my <a href="https://www.worldcat.org/title/this-is-our-school-race-and-community-resistance-to-school-reform/oclc/1311404138&referer=brief_results">research on community activism and school reform in Denver</a> over a span of five years.</p>
<p>Both Black and white community activists had an interest in keeping local schools from being closed. They also wanted better quality schools and more of a voice in what happens at those schools. But they seldom joined each other in their efforts because their battles for neighborhood schools were rooted in different experiences of gentrification.</p>
<p>Gentrification is when more-affluent residents move into low-income neighborhoods, changing the character and makeup of those neighborhoods and forcing low-income residents to move elsewhere due to rising rents. Gentrification often involves <a href="https://www.worldcat.org/title/marketing-schools-marketing-cities-who-wins-and-who-loses-when-schools-become-urban-amenities/oclc/7391947585&referer=brief_results">turning around, reforming, closing and replacing neighborhood schools</a>.</p>
<p>Black community activists viewed gentrification as an elite-driven process of exclusion and displacement, while white community activists viewed gentrification as an inevitable and even beneficial process.</p>
<h2>Why it matters</h2>
<p>Community movements can help bring about educational reforms. These <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/986861637">reforms</a> include improvements like more college prep courses, school-based community centers and food programs.</p>
<p>These movements don’t always succeed. I found in my research that different experiences of gentrification produce segregated movements to preserve neighborhood schools. This split <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/00420859221086508">ultimately keeps activism fragmented</a> and prevents it from turning into a stronger, larger, more unified multiracial movement.</p>
<p>Although white, middle-class activists told me they valued diversity, none of them saw gentrification as problematic. They also felt their presence was beneficial to the neighborhood. They wanted schools to which their children could walk and with which they felt connected.</p>
<p>They also felt <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/0042085916636656">entitled</a> to have more say in how neighborhood schools operate. This in turn alienated Black and Latino activists.</p>
<p>Black, low-income activists, on the other hand, saw school closures as a part of gentrification. For them, fighting against school closures was simply one piece of a larger fight against being <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/07352166.2016.1245069">displaced by gentrification</a>.</p>
<p>These divergent views on gentrification as beneficial or destructive ensures that white, middle-class activists and Black, low-income activists will be unable to join forces. Consequently, they are unlikely to use each other’s strengths to fight for their common cause – which, in this case, is to sustain and provide resources to local neighborhood schools instead of closing them in favor of charter schools or moving them out of the neighborhood.</p>
<h2>What still isn’t known</h2>
<p>It remains to be seen how segregated school reform movements, produced through different experiences of gentrification, can work through their deep divides and unite for their shared interests. White, middle-class activists in particular would need to better recognize their own participation in gentrification and <a href="https://doi.org/10.1525/sp.2009.56.4.647">affirm the grievances</a> of the low-income Black and Latino activists who could be in their coalition.</p>
<p>Research suggests that money and political will are already <a href="https://theconversation.com/states-are-favoring-school-choice-at-a-steep-cost-to-public-education-95395">stacked against</a> the prospect of high-quality, public neighborhood schools in every community. If segregated school reform movements could find common ground, they might be better positioned to fight against these forces.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/181917/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Hava Rachel Gordon does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Different views of gentrification drive divisions that keep school activists separated by race.Hava Rachel Gordon, Associate Professor of Sociology, University of DenverLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1851142022-07-28T12:23:52Z2022-07-28T12:23:52ZWhat the US can learn from apartheid-era book bans in South Africa<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/476374/original/file-20220727-481-hcthcx.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=16%2C0%2C5590%2C3724&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Books are often targeted when they are sympathetic to the oppressed.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/high-angle-view-of-barbed-wire-with-blank-book-on-royalty-free-image/1158402405?adppopup=true">Eskay Lim / EyeEm via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>“<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/books/beloved-toni-morrison-virginia-governor-race/2021/10/27/e3774afa-3668-11ec-91dc-551d44733e2d_story.html">Beloved</a>.” “<a href="https://www.ala.org/advocacy/bbooks/frequentlychallengedbooks/top10.">The Hate U Give.</a>” “<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/04/us/maus-banned-books-tennessee.html">Maus</a>.” “<a href="https://www.radionetherlandsarchives.org/nadine-gordimer-on-the-ban-of-her-novel-burghers-daughter/">Burger’s Daughter</a>.”</p>
<p>Each of these books has been banned at some point in time, but one stands out. Instead of being banned in 21st-century America, Nadine Gordimer’s “Burger’s Daughter” was banned in 20th century South Africa during apartheid, that country’s period of official white supremacist rule.</p>
<p>So why include it in this list? Despite the decades and distance between bans on this book and the others, the <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/books/2022/06/09/rise-book-bans-explained/">rise in attempts to ban and censor books</a> in America in 2022 looks an awful lot like what South African censors did during apartheid. I make this observation as a scholar who specializes in studying literature to better understand the <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=sERfeVUAAAAJ&hl=en">intersections of race, oppression and resistance</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="Nadine Gordimer sitting." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/476124/original/file-20220726-14-n0k1hb.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=8%2C8%2C5365%2C3520&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/476124/original/file-20220726-14-n0k1hb.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=395&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/476124/original/file-20220726-14-n0k1hb.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=395&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/476124/original/file-20220726-14-n0k1hb.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=395&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/476124/original/file-20220726-14-n0k1hb.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=496&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/476124/original/file-20220726-14-n0k1hb.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=496&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/476124/original/file-20220726-14-n0k1hb.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=496&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">During apartheid, the South African government banned ‘Burger’s Daughter,’ a novel by Nadine Gordimer.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/south-african-author-nadine-gordimer-poses-while-in-paris-news-photo/74415501?adppopup=true">Ulf Andersen/Hulton Archive via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>When apartheid censors – who operated under the <a href="https://omalley.nelsonmandela.org/omalley/index.php/site/q/03lv01538/04lv01828/05lv01829/06lv01957.htm">Directorate of Publications</a> – sought to crack down on what they found offensive, they used terms like “sedition,” “blasphemy” and “obscenity” to justify their acts. In the 2020s in the U.S., people who’d like to censor books use labels like “<a href="https://www.wusa9.com/article/news/education/spotsylvania-school-book-ban-burning-33-snowfish-call-me-by-your-name/65-e38fc873-d85f-433e-9d16-3572682e4572">objectionable</a>,” “<a href="https://www.deseret.com/opinion/2022/5/18/23077850/opinion-utah-legislature-new-law-against-pornographic-books-schools-hb374">pornographic</a>” or “<a href="https://www.military.com/off-duty/2020/04/27/alaska-school-district-votes-ban-2-iconic-military-books.html">dangerous</a>.” Then as now, the criteria used to censor books are so broad and subjective that almost any book could be challenged on practically any grounds.</p>
<p>To my eye, it’s almost as though would-be American censors have taken a page directly from the South African censors’ playbook. And it’s not just that they look similar in their rationale. Rather, in my view, it’s that they set out to squash political dissent and silence social debate. Here are the similarities I see:</p>
<h2>1. Manufactured outrage</h2>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="Man running away from policeman and dogs" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/476128/original/file-20220726-24-ligjv4.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/476128/original/file-20220726-24-ligjv4.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=929&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/476128/original/file-20220726-24-ligjv4.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=929&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/476128/original/file-20220726-24-ligjv4.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=929&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/476128/original/file-20220726-24-ligjv4.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1167&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/476128/original/file-20220726-24-ligjv4.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1167&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/476128/original/file-20220726-24-ligjv4.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1167&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">‘In the Fog of the Seasons’ End’ by Alex La Guma.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.abebooks.co.uk/9780435901103/Fog-Seasons-End-Guma-Alex-0435901109/plp">AbeBooks</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Outrage about the content of books is often disingenuous, misplaced or manufactured. </p>
<p>In 1972, South African author Alex La Guma, who was officially categorized as “coloured” under the country’s racist regime, had already been <a href="https://acrobat.adobe.com/link/track?uri=urn:aaid:scds:US:420ff1b4-a4e1-3131-88eb-e38ce930c1bf">forced into exile</a>. As a person banned by the South African government, his writing already couldn’t legally be distributed inside the country. Yet, his novel “<a href="https://www.worldcat.org/title/in-the-fog-of-the-seasons-end/oclc/434081205?referer=br&ht=edition">In the Fog of the Seasons’ End</a>” was still banned for threatening state security and good order. This bureaucratic overkill speaks to the urge to censor even when it’s absurd – the authorities were banning a book that by their own rules no one could read.</p>
<p>La Guma’s book depicted the death and torture in detention of an anti-apartheid resistance fighter, causing the censors to complain about the book’s “<a href="https://acrobat.adobe.com/link/track?uri=urn:aaid:scds:US:420ff1b4-a4e1-3131-88eb-e38ce930c1bf">wild writing against the police</a>.” But another of his novels, “The Stone Country,” was banned even though the censors themselves acknowledged that there was nothing in the plot that merited it. This shows their willingness to manufacture a threat where none exists. </p>
<p>In the United States in 2022, there are reports of parents shouting at school board meetings or <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/education/2021/dec/23/us-book-bans-conservative-parents-reading">storming town halls</a>, upset about material their children are exposed to and demanding it be removed from school library shelves and <a href="https://www.audacy.com/kywnewsradio/news/local/central-bucks-school-district-passes-book-policy">classrooms</a>. Are these headline-grabbing moments spontaneous, grassroots and earnest efforts to protect innocent young minds? Or are they highly orchestrated, heavily funded and deliberately manufactured <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/jan/24/us-conservatives-campaign-books-ban-schools">schemes to advance an ultra-conservative agenda at the expense of free speech and expression</a>? It can be hard to tell.</p>
<p>While we cannot know anyone’s intent for certain, we do know that when people act to limit a society’s access to literature and libraries, and therefore to other worlds and possibilities, it makes it easier to limit its political imagination.</p>
<h2>2. White discomfort</h2>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="A brown and yellow book cover" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/476131/original/file-20220726-34052-i9tudv.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/476131/original/file-20220726-34052-i9tudv.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=925&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/476131/original/file-20220726-34052-i9tudv.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=925&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/476131/original/file-20220726-34052-i9tudv.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=925&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/476131/original/file-20220726-34052-i9tudv.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1162&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/476131/original/file-20220726-34052-i9tudv.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1162&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/476131/original/file-20220726-34052-i9tudv.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1162&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">‘Burger’s Daughter’ by Nadine Gordimer.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/321506/burgers-daughter-by-nadine-gordimer/">Penguin Random House</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>South African censors objected that “Burger’s Daughter” brought Afrikaners – that is, South Africans of Dutch descent – into “<a href="https://acrobat.adobe.com/link/track?uri=urn:aaid:scds:US:04f6fba4-83af-3889-aeec-a77dac1bcb5c">ridicule and contempt</a>,” fundamentally misunderstanding how the whites in the novel are depicted. The censors’ unimaginative defensiveness is much like the language of <a href="https://apnews.com/article/education-kristi-noem-south-dakota-sd-state-wire-52f5992fc6155d4d9c6f2681085bb4e6">white “discomfort”</a> we hear bandied about in current politics. </p>
<p>At the same time as South Dakota tried to pass <a href="https://sdlegislature.gov/Session/Bill/23434/233140">a bill</a> that forbade discussion of any history that causes white discomfort, Florida, in spring 2022, passed the <a href="https://www.flsenate.gov/Session/Bill/2022/148/BillText/Filed/HTML">“Individual Freedom”</a> law, which states that “an individual should not be made to feel discomfort, guilt, anguish, or any other form of psychological distress on account of his or her race.” State Senator Shevrin Jones <a href="https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2022/01/florida-sb-148-racism-discomfort">said, regarding the bill</a>, “This was directed to make whites not feel bad about what happened years ago.”</p>
<h2>3. Euphemism</h2>
<p>The <a href="https://omalley.nelsonmandela.org/omalley/index.php/site/q/03lv01538/04lv01828/05lv01829/06lv01957.htm">South African Publications Act</a> may sound supportive of publishing but in fact was intended to censor and control it.</p>
<p>Likewise, the various acts and bills being passed in America today often slide through legislatures with deceptively bland names. For instance, <a href="https://www.flsenate.gov/Session/Bill/2022/1467/BillText/er/PDF">Florida’s “K-12 Education” law</a> requires all school materials be posted and searchable.</p>
<p>Proponents of the law said it was meant to <a href="https://flgov.com/2022/03/28/governor-ron-desantis-signs-historic-bill-to-protect-parental-rights-in-education/">help parents make decisions regarding their children’s education</a>. But in reality, as pointed out by the National Coalition Against Censorship, the mechanism <a href="https://ncac.org/news/florida-censorship-education-laws">could discourage teachers and librarians</a> from taking risks with teaching material that might lead to complaints from parents.</p>
<p>New legislation also sneaks through in euphemistic disguise, such as the wave of so-called “<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2022/03/02/transparency-curriculum-teachers-parents-rights/">transparency bills</a>” which use the language of transparency to embolden public scrutiny. Moreover, <a href="https://pen.org/steep-rise-gag-orders-many-sloppily-drafted/">the bills themselves are not at all transparent</a>. </p>
<p>One bill prohibits the discussion of <a href="https://legiscan.com/IN/text/HB1231/id/2465267">“any controversial subject matter”</a>, and <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/14/us/virginia-lincoln-douglas-debates-bill.html">another mixed up two historical figures</a>. Vague wording, undefined terms, contradictory language and factual errors all make them more “sweeping” and “draconian,” as PEN America describes them.</p>
<h2>4. Proxy wars</h2>
<p>Hand-wringing over what’s <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2014/09/who-should-decide-what-high-school-kids-read/379609/">“age-appropriate”</a> is often a proxy today for suppressing other, potentially controversial conversations about subjects like sexuality.</p>
<p>In South Africa under apartheid, such a conversation was the mixing of races. “Burger’s Daughter,” for instance, was called <a href="https://acrobat.adobe.com/link/track?uri=urn:aaid:scds:US:04f6fba4-83af-3889-aeec-a77dac1bcb5c">“indecent”</a> partly because a Black child and a white child play together in it. </p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="Toni Morrison leaning on a rail" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/476143/original/file-20220726-34052-1x48wa.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/476143/original/file-20220726-34052-1x48wa.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=897&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/476143/original/file-20220726-34052-1x48wa.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=897&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/476143/original/file-20220726-34052-1x48wa.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=897&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/476143/original/file-20220726-34052-1x48wa.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1127&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/476143/original/file-20220726-34052-1x48wa.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1127&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/476143/original/file-20220726-34052-1x48wa.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1127&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Toni Morrison’s ‘Beloved’ is a popular book that has been the target of bans.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/nobel-laureate-toni-morrison-photographed-in-manhattan-on-news-photo/1166418809?adppopup=true">Newsday LLC/Newsday via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Here in the U.S., books are also called <a href="https://tn.chalkbeat.org/2022/1/28/22907090/school-library-book-ban-tennessee-legislation">“objectionable”</a> by lawmakers and parents for reasons other than the real ones. Toni Morrison’s “Beloved,” for example, gets an “NSC … not suitable material or conduct for minors per existing statute” rating for sections mentioning the “n word,” among other objections, from the Florida Citizen’s Alliance <a href="https://floridacitizensalliance.org/porn-in-schools-report/">2021 Porn in Schools report</a>. </p>
<p>Ironically, the report labels itself as “contain[ing] objectionable and potentially offensive material.”</p>
<p>In January, a school board in Tennessee removed “Maus” from the curriculum in the name of <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/27/us/maus-banned-holocaust-tennessee.html">“inappropriate words” and “objectionable language,”</a> including profanity. However, some people, including the graphic novel’s author, <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2022/01/27/opinions/maus-ban-holocaust-teaching-spiegelman-perry/index.html">Art Spiegelman</a>, believe the real reason it was removed was <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/04/us/maus-banned-books-tennessee.html">disinterest in or discomfort</a> with Holocaust education on the part of Tennessee lawmakers.</p>
<h2>5. Unbanning and other doublespeak</h2>
<p>“Burger’s Daughter” was first banned under the 1974 Publications Act and then unbanned. Gordimer, however, saw the lifting of the ban as a charade to make the apartheid regime look more <a href="https://acrobat.adobe.com/link/track?uri=urn:aaid:scds:US:04f6fba4-83af-3889-aeec-a77dac1bcb5c">fairminded</a>. </p>
<p>A Virginia court ruling also exposes the murky area between banning and unbanning. In May 2022, a Virginia Beach judge declared two books <a href="https://wjla.com/news/local/virginia-judge-books-obscene-banned-kids-school-district-ban-library-gender-queer-court-mist-fury-sexual-content-barnes-noble-fairfax">“obscene for unrestricted viewing by minors.”</a> Even though schools and bookstores might now be prohibited from distributing the books to young readers without parental consent, the attorney who won the case insists that, “It doesn’t mean the books are banned. It doesn’t mean we’re burning books or infringing on free speech.”</p>
<p>These rulings, in my view, are largely political theater. If proponents of censorship in the U.S. today are thumbing through the South African playbook, they might learn that it’s savvy to sound tolerant, if only for show. </p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="Two mice holding each other in front of a cat swastika" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/476137/original/file-20220726-17-f1fbjh.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/476137/original/file-20220726-17-f1fbjh.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=826&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/476137/original/file-20220726-17-f1fbjh.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=826&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/476137/original/file-20220726-17-f1fbjh.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=826&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/476137/original/file-20220726-17-f1fbjh.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1038&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/476137/original/file-20220726-17-f1fbjh.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1038&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/476137/original/file-20220726-17-f1fbjh.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1038&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">‘The Complete Maus’ by Art Spiegelman.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/171065/the-complete-maus-by-art-spiegelman/">Penguin Random House</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>After all, South African censors were devious enough to figure that banned books were of more use to the anti-apartheid movement because they they’d get notoriety. If the book were no longer banned, then they’d lose much of their appeal. They knew the threat of banning can actually backfire and <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/education/2021/dec/23/us-book-bans-conservative-parents-reading">generate more interest</a> in the books.</p>
<p>Our modern American censors may be cribbing from South Africa’s notes, but they should read to the end of the history book. Despite its repressive tactics, that white minority government could not stay in power, and it was apartheid itself that wound up banned. There’s a lesson for the books.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/185114/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Helen Kapstein does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>A scholar of literature sees striking parallels between contemporary book bans in the US and those that took place in South Africa during apartheid.Helen Kapstein, Professor of English, John Jay College of Criminal JusticeLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1861032022-07-05T18:02:37Z2022-07-05T18:02:37ZFred Gray, the ‘chief counsel for the protest movement,’ to get Medal of Freedom for his civil rights work<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/472549/original/file-20220705-18-7de5le.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=8%2C8%2C2986%2C1922&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr., left, and attorney Fred Gray, whom King called 'the brilliant young Negro who later became the chief counsel for the protest movement,' at a political rally in Tuskegee, Alabama, April 29, 1966.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/MLK/8737625471544085b6428c5a36f1cc6d/photo?Query=%22Fred%20Gray%22&mediaType=photo&sortBy=arrivaldatetime:asc&dateRange=Anytime&totalCount=34&currentItemNo=3">AP Photo/Jack Thornell</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Over the past seven decades, longtime Alabama civil rights lawyer <a href="https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/encyclopedia/gray-fred-david-sr">Fred Gray represented Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King Jr.</a> and the victims of the infamous <a href="https://www.tuskegee.edu/about-us/centers-of-excellence/bioethics-center/about-the-usphs-syphilis-study">Tuskegee syphilis experiment</a>, in which the U.S. Public Health Service refused for decades to provide readily available treatment to Black men who had the disease. </p>
<p>Gray played important roles in landmark Supreme Court decisions that outlawed segregated public transit and <a href="https://www.oyez.org/cases/1956/342">affirmed the strategy of the Montgomery bus boycott organizers</a>. He protected the freedom of association guaranteed by the First Amendment by <a href="https://www.oyez.org/cases/1957/91">preventing Alabama officials from obtaining the NAACP’s membership list</a>. He argued in the Supreme Court a case on racial gerrymandering that redefined the city boundaries to exclude 400 Black people – but no white people – from the city limits of Tuskegee, Alabama, which set the stage for the one-person, one-vote rule that <a href="https://www.oyez.org/cases/1960/32">governs redistricting after every census</a>. And when state and local segregationist leaders in Alabama sued the national press and local civil rights leaders, Gray’s legal efforts <a href="https://www.oyez.org/cases/1963/39">afforded strong constitutional protection</a> to critics of public officials and government policy. </p>
<p>As a scholar of constitutional law and civil rights, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ns5L4-lmZYs">I understand that Fred Gray has</a> <a href="https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/encyclopedia/gray-fred-david-sr#:%7E:text=During%20the%20Montgomery%20bus%20boycott,their%20seats%20to%20white%20passengers.">had an enormous impact</a> on American law and society. His cases are taught in every law school in the country, and his work has led to fundamental reforms in legal doctrine and helped to cement important changes in the lives of ordinary people all over the country.</p>
<p>I’m not the only person to recognize Gray’s enormous contributions: Martin Luther King Jr. called him “the brilliant young Negro who later became the chief counsel for the protest movement.” And on July 7, Gray <a href="https://www.al.com/news/2022/07/alabama-civil-rights-pioneer-fred-gray-to-receive-presidential-medal-of-freedom.html">will receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom</a>, the highest civilian honor in the nation, from President Joe Biden. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/472540/original/file-20220705-4393-40impz.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="An older woman in a red jacket whispers into the ear of an older man in a blue suit and red tie." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/472540/original/file-20220705-4393-40impz.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/472540/original/file-20220705-4393-40impz.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=436&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/472540/original/file-20220705-4393-40impz.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=436&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/472540/original/file-20220705-4393-40impz.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=436&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/472540/original/file-20220705-4393-40impz.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=548&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/472540/original/file-20220705-4393-40impz.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=548&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/472540/original/file-20220705-4393-40impz.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=548&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">At an October 2021 ceremony, the city of Montgomery, Alabama, changed the name of W. Jeff Davis Avenue – named after the Confederate leader – to Fred D. Gray Avenue; it was where Gray, right, listening to his wife, Carol, grew up.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/civil-rights-attorney-fred-gray-shares-a-moment-with-his-news-photo/1236142846?adppopup=true">Julie Bennett/Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>‘Destroy everything segregated’</h2>
<p>Remarkably, Fred Gray did not plan on becoming a lawyer. </p>
<p>The youngest of five children, whose father died just after his second birthday in December 1932, he <a href="https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/encyclopedia/gray-fred-david-sr">aimed for the ministry</a> as one of the few professions open to Black men at the time. He attended a church-sponsored high school in Nashville and traveled around the country with the school’s president <a href="http://newsouthbooks.com/archives-samples/busridetojustice.pdf">as a boy preacher</a>. </p>
<p>But that ambition changed during his junior year at what was then called Alabama State College for Negroes – now Alabama State University. Fed up with degrading treatment on Montgomery’s segregated buses, Gray <a href="http://newsouthbooks.com/archives-samples/busridetojustice.pdf">wrote in a memoir</a>: “I concluded that in addition to being a minister and trying to save souls for eternity, that in the here and now African Americans were entitled to all the rights provided by the Constitution of the United States of America. Therefore, I decided I would become a lawyer.”</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/472532/original/file-20220705-16-jm2ofp.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=14%2C10%2C2382%2C2453&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A small woman with a dark sweater, standing with two men, one holding his hat and the other standing in front of papers and a book." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/472532/original/file-20220705-16-jm2ofp.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=14%2C10%2C2382%2C2453&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/472532/original/file-20220705-16-jm2ofp.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=617&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/472532/original/file-20220705-16-jm2ofp.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=617&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/472532/original/file-20220705-16-jm2ofp.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=617&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/472532/original/file-20220705-16-jm2ofp.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=776&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/472532/original/file-20220705-16-jm2ofp.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=776&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/472532/original/file-20220705-16-jm2ofp.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=776&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Rosa Parks, left, who was fined for violating the bus segregation law in Montgomery, Alabama, with E.D. Nixon, center, former Alabama state president of the NAACP, and attorney Fred Gray.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/MONTGOMERYBUSBOYCOTT1955/b7a6bcdf44e1da11af9f0014c2589dfb/photo?Query=%22Fred%20Gray%22&mediaType=photo&sortBy=arrivaldatetime:asc&dateRange=Anytime&totalCount=34&currentItemNo=1">AP Photos</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>He would go to law school, he wrote, “<a href="http://www.newsouthbooks.com/bkpgs/detailtitle.php?isbn_solid=1588384519">determined to destroy everything segregated that I could find</a>.” And there were plenty of segregated things to destroy: rigid segregation of housing, education and jobs, and almost no Black people were allowed to vote anywhere in Alabama.</p>
<p>But fulfilling this ambition would be a real challenge. No law school in Alabama admitted Black students. Although he almost certainly could have won a lawsuit to force his admission to the University of Alabama, he realized that the authorities would find some excuse to prevent him from graduating or getting admitted to the bar.</p>
<p>So Gray enrolled in law school at what is now known as Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, mainly because he could work part time while going to school. “In September of 1951, with barely enough money to cover expenses, I took a segregated train to Cleveland to begin law studies,” <a href="http://newsouthbooks.com/archives-samples/busridetojustice.pdf">he wrote in his memoir</a>.</p>
<p>After getting his law degree in 1954, he moved back home to Montgomery. Then he faced the daunting task of obtaining character references from five experienced local lawyers before he could sit for the Alabama bar exam. The problem was that there were fewer than five experienced Black lawyers in the state at the time. But several white lawyers – notably <a href="http://encyclopediaofalabama.org/Article/h-1254">Clifford Durr</a>, a leading New Deal attorney and brother-in-law of Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black – supported his application.</p>
<p>But no white lawyer would employ him, and there was only one other Black lawyer in Montgomery. So he rented a small office from a Black minister who served as an adviser and helped refer clients to him. </p>
<p>More important, he became active in the NAACP, where he got to know Rosa Parks and other leading civil rights activists. This made him the go-to lawyer for the movement and set him on the path of fulfilling his ambition to destroy segregation.</p>
<h2>Protesting segregation from lunch counters to schools</h2>
<p>From his base in Montgomery, <a href="https://scholarlycommons.law.case.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=4717&context=caselrev">Gray represented</a> sit-in demonstrators arrested for protesting segregated lunch counters, and <a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/the-freedom-riders-then-and-now-45351758/">freedom riders</a>, the demonstrators – white and Black – who rode buses throughout the South to protest segregation on buses and in terminals. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/472585/original/file-20220705-7090-b8zpdm.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A man in a suit and tie, holding a seating diagram of a bus." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/472585/original/file-20220705-7090-b8zpdm.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/472585/original/file-20220705-7090-b8zpdm.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=898&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/472585/original/file-20220705-7090-b8zpdm.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=898&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/472585/original/file-20220705-7090-b8zpdm.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=898&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/472585/original/file-20220705-7090-b8zpdm.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1129&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/472585/original/file-20220705-7090-b8zpdm.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1129&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/472585/original/file-20220705-7090-b8zpdm.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1129&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Fred Gray shows a diagram of a bus to help illustrate the ultimately successful case he brought on behalf of Black people in Montgomery, Alabama, to desegregate the city’s bus system, in February 1956.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/american-attorney-fred-gray-rests-a-diagram-of-a-bus-on-his-news-photo/50326134?adppopup=true">Photo by Don Cravens/Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p><a href="http://encyclopediaofalabama.org/article/h-1510">Gray’s legal work</a> desegregated state universities and public schools throughout Alabama. He filed the lawsuit <a href="https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/encyclopedia/selma-montgomery-march">that allowed the Selma-to-Montgomery march</a> to proceed after the police violence against marchers on what became known as Bloody Sunday. That march led to the passage of the Voting Rights Act. Then, Gray won <a href="https://ala-lawyers.org/fred-gray-sr/">some of the most important early cases</a> testing the law’s promise that Black people could no longer be disenfranchised. </p>
<p>Gray knew that his efforts would incur the wrath of the white power structure. And that wrath was not long in coming. </p>
<p>For example, state authorities in 1956, at the height of the bus protest, indicted him for stirring up civil rights lawsuits, which could have resulted in his law license’s being lifted. The charges were dismissed almost immediately because it was clear that the state had no case on the merits and lacked jurisdiction to prosecute him. Later that year, the local draft board tried to induct him into the Army. The national director of selective service, Gen. Lewis Hershey, squashed that gambit.</p>
<p>At age 91, Gray is still practicing law full time – while the U.S. still faces enormous challenges tackling systemic racism. That’s a point not lost on Gray even after a lifetime of success in fighting segregation. </p>
<p>In <a href="https://www.ksl.com/article/133394/parks-not-seated-alone-in-history">an interview he gave to USA Today in 2005</a> to mark the opening of a Smithsonian exhibit on the Montgomery bus boycott, Gray said, “My interest and my concern is not so much to … commemorate what happened 50 years ago but to look at where we are now. We have to realize racism is not going to go away by itself.”</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/186103/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>I have known Fred Gray for nearly 40 years and have written extensively about his work and career.</span></em></p>When Rosa Parks was arrested for sitting in the front of a bus in Montgomery, Fred Gray was her lawyer. Now he’s being honored for a lifetime of civil rights advocacy.Jonathan Entin, Professor Emeritus of Law and Adjunct Professor of Political Science, Case Western Reserve UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1826452022-05-27T12:29:48Z2022-05-27T12:29:48ZDesegregating schools requires more than giving parents free choices – a scholar studies the choices parents of all races make<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/462572/original/file-20220511-11-l02abw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=19%2C3%2C2121%2C1400&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Racial bias may play a role both in the schools that families choose for their children and the experiences their children have.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/child-dressed-in-red-walking-across-red-and-blue-royalty-free-image/1083675448">Klaus Vedfelt/DigitalVision via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><em><a href="https://liberalarts.utexas.edu/sociology/faculty/ch48723">Chantal Hailey</a> is an assistant professor of sociology at the University of Texas at Austin College of Liberal Arts.Her work focuses on the role of race and racism in how people choose schools and the other spaces they inhabit, and how racism influences inequality. Below are highlights from an interview with The Conversation. Answers have been edited for brevity and clarity.</em></p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/iSOYn8SUfk4?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Chantal Hailey discusses her research about how race and racism influence school choice.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p><strong>What do you study?</strong></p>
<p>My research at this moment focuses on <a href="https://integratedschools.org/podcast/s7e14-unpacking-the-racial-hierarchy-in-school-choices/">school choice</a> in New York City, and particularly the role of race in how people choose high schools in New York City. This is important for a couple of reasons. One, New York City is the largest school district in the United States. Over a million kids attend school in this school district. </p>
<p>And in 2014, there was a <a href="https://escholarship.org/uc/item/5cx4b8pf">study</a> that came out that was completely surprising to me as someone who was new to New York City. It said that New York state’s schools were the most segregated in the country. And that was surprising for two reasons. One, we often think of New York and particularly New York City as this really racially diverse metropolitan area.</p>
<p>The other reason this is surprising is that, for high school in particular, there is school choice, which means students can choose to attend school anywhere across the city. A lot of the reasons we think about or talk about school segregation is that it’s tied to racially segregated housing and neighborhoods.</p>
<p>But in New York City, those two ties are broken up. People can technically choose to attend school anywhere across the city. But yet you still see these really stark patterns of segregation. </p>
<p>I ask in my work, why do we still see racial sorting patterns across schools and really stark racial segregation? I use both data from families’ actual applications to high schools and an experiment to understand why we see segregation in New York City schools.</p>
<p><strong>What’s one thing you want people to take away from your research?</strong></p>
<p>Even though we might think of school choice as a race-neutral policy, the ways in which families interact with school choice policies are very racialized. By that, I mean a couple of things: One, that means <a href="https://chantalahailey.com/working-papers/">families interpret information</a> about schools through what I call their racial prisms – that is, their racial biases toward groups, general cultural stereotypes around groups, other experiences and exposures to different racial groups.</p>
<p>So families are interpreting information about schools through race. They also have racial preferences for schools.</p>
<p>In the experiment and in the administrative data, I examine schools that are the exact same but differ only by their racial demographics. And <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/00380407211065179">what I find</a> is that families across different racial groups express racial preferences for schools. So in particular, I find that white and Asian families have had really stark desires to avoid Black and Latino spaces.</p>
<p>I find that Latino families also want to avoid majority Black schools, and I find that Black families often desire not to to attend majority-white schools. So again, I really want to emphasize that even though we might think of school choice as race neutral or even a racial equity policy, the ways in which people are interacting with that policy are <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/08959048221087211">very racialized </a>and based upon their own experiences and exposures and cultural stereotypes in our larger structure of racism.</p>
<p><strong>What inspired you to study the field that you’re in right now?</strong></p>
<p>My own schooling experiences. I experienced many different kinds of racialized school spaces, from a majority-Black elementary school to racially mixed middle schools to a private, all-girls majority-white school. Across all those spaces, I saw different resources that were available. I saw different racialized treatment of students across these different spaces. </p>
<p>I knew that race was central in both how I experienced those spaces and in my decisions and my mom’s decisions to move me across these spaces. So I wanted to understand the patterns of race and school choice from a larger context and how it influences students’ racialized outcomes and their experiences within school spaces.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/182645/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Chantal Hailey receives funding from the Population Research Center, awarded to the Population Research Center at the University of Texas at Austin by the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (P2CHD042849), the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship Program under Grant No. DGE1342536, the Institute of Education Sciences–funded Predoctoral Interdisciplinary Research Training (IES-PIRT) Program at New York University, and the Ford Foundation Dissertation Grant.</span></em></p>Inspired by her own experience with the education system, a professor of sociology explores how race and racism influence school choice and education.Chantal Hailey, Assistant Professor of Sociology, The University of Texas at AustinLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1774182022-05-16T12:14:30Z2022-05-16T12:14:30ZThe fight against school segregation began in South Carolina, long before it ended with Brown v. Board<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/462856/original/file-20220512-13-ci3zoh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C35%2C3402%2C1899&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Millicent Brown, left, was one of the first two Black students to integrate a South Carolina public school, in September 1963.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/USAMillicentBrown/deb2f7f4e4f1406aa001d2be2b246af6/photo">AP Photo</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>When it comes to the case of <a href="https://www.britannica.com/event/Brown-v-Board-of-Education-of-Topeka">Brown v. Board of Education</a>, the 1954 Supreme Court decision that outlawed school segregation, the focus is often on Topeka, Kansas, the home of the Brown family and the school board that it sued. But the story of the case actually had several starts, years before the case was decided and more than a thousand miles away.</p>
<p>In 1947, Black families in Clarendon County, South Carolina, <a href="https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv6wgg3p">asked the county to provide school buses</a> for Black children, just as it did for white children. The county refused, so with the help of the NAACP, the nation’s oldest civil rights organization, 20 Black parents <a href="https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv6wgg3p">prepared to sue</a>, led by Joseph A. De Laine, a local reverend and public school principal. </p>
<p>Even before the suit was filed, one of the parents, <a href="https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/blinding-isaac-woodard-briggs-v-elliott/">Harry Briggs, was fired from his job</a> at a local service station and had to <a href="https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv10tq3jn">leave the state</a> to find a new one to support his family. And De Laine himself was <a href="https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv6wgg3p">fired from his principal’s position</a></p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/462854/original/file-20220512-20-u2qaa1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A man in a clerical collar" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/462854/original/file-20220512-20-u2qaa1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/462854/original/file-20220512-20-u2qaa1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=693&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/462854/original/file-20220512-20-u2qaa1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=693&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/462854/original/file-20220512-20-u2qaa1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=693&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/462854/original/file-20220512-20-u2qaa1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=871&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/462854/original/file-20220512-20-u2qaa1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=871&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/462854/original/file-20220512-20-u2qaa1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=871&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Rev. Joseph A. De Laine, a key advocate for school equality and integration.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://columbiavoice.cic.sc.edu/the-fight-to-carry-on-the-legacy-of-rev-joseph-delaine/">Columbia Voice, University of South Carolina</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Various legal and procedural hurdles followed, during which the NAACP decided the best strategy for making a case would be based not on busing but overall educational equity. In 1951, the organization <a href="https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/district-courts/FSupp/98/529/1899720/">filed a federal lawsuit</a> demanding that Black students should get the same educational resources and facilities as white children. The suit pointed to Scott’s Branch High School, an all-Black school in Summerton, one of the towns in Clarendon County. Even the school district’s lawyers admitted that the town’s all-white Summerton High School had <a href="https://www.worldcat.org/title/brown-vs-board-of-education-of-topeka-a-brief-history-with-documents/oclc/1085175082&referer=brief_results">substantially better facilities, equipment and educational quality</a>. </p>
<p>During a pretrial hearing, federal Judge <a href="https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv10tq3jn">Julius Waties Waring</a> persuaded Thurgood Marshall, the attorney handling the case on behalf of the NAACP, to <a href="https://www.postandcourier.com/opinion/waring-bravely-moved-ahead-of-his-time-for-racial-justice/article_6da043e7-0623-549e-9941-7b6a4e223414.html">argue against school segregation itself</a>, saying, “Bring me a frontal attack on segregation. I don’t want another separate but equal case.” A month later, Marshall brought a new case, <a href="https://brownvboard.org/content/brown-case-briggs-v-elliott">Briggs v. Elliott</a>, named for one of the 20 petitioners, arguing that school segregation in South Carolina was unconstitutional. This was <a href="https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv6wgg3p">the first lawsuit in the country</a> to challenge school segregation as a violation of the U.S. Constitution. </p>
<p>The Brown v. Board case eventually grew out of that South Carolina case. As <a href="https://news.clemson.edu/our-experts/roy-jones/">someone who has been in close contact</a> with descendants of several family members who had direct involvement in the Briggs case, I believe the outcome of their struggle was a turning point in the fight for equality. </p>
<h2>Fighting the constitution</h2>
<p>The plaintiffs of the Briggs v. Elliot case sought to challenge the <a href="https://www.scstatehouse.gov/scconstitution/scconst.php">South Carolina state constitution</a>, which established its separate school system. According to the 1895 state constitution:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“Separate schools shall be provided for children of the white and colored races and no child of either race shall ever be permitted to attend a school provided for children of the other race.” </p>
</blockquote>
<p>The lawyers defending South Carolina’s school segregation system acknowledged the state’s Black and white schools were not equal. But they pointed out efforts by the new governor, James F. Byrnes, a former U.S. Supreme Court justice and devout segregationist, to raise the state sales tax to <a href="http://www.scequalizationschools.org/equalization-schools.html">fund new buildings</a> and improved programs. That should be enough, they argued, to solve the problem at the heart of the lawsuit. </p>
<p>Since it was a challenge to the state constitution, the Briggs case had to be heard by three judges in the federal District Court in Charleston, one of whom was Waring. The ruling was a split decision, with Judges John J. Parker and George B. Timmerman ruling that South Carolina’s segregation requirement did not violate <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/amendmentxiv">the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution</a>. But Waring <a href="https://catalog.archives.gov/id/279306">disagreed</a>, writing “<a href="https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/district-courts/FSupp/98/529/1899720/">segregation is per se inequality</a>.”</p>
<p>When the case was appealed to the Supreme Court, it was combined with four other very similar cases, including the Brown v. Board case from Kansas.</p>
<h2>Retaliations</h2>
<p>Before the Supreme Court ruling, De Laine moved about 50 miles away, seeking to escape the harassment he was experiencing from segregationists in Summerton. After he moved, they <a href="https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv6wgg3p">burned down his Summerton home</a>.</p>
<p>In his new town, De Laine also faced opposition, including from S.E. Rogers, the attorney for the defendants in the Briggs case, who <a href="https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv10tq3jn">organized a group of local segregationists</a> to rally against integration.</p>
<p>De Laine’s new home, next to the church to which he had been assigned, was vandalized multiple times, and the church was burned down on the night of Oct. 5, 1955. Five days later, De Laine fled South Carolina after learning he would face attempted murder charges for shooting back at a car filled with <a href="https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv6wgg3p">threatening segregationists</a>. He eventually made his way to New York. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/462855/original/file-20220512-13-1ulxfv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A one-story brick building with a flagpole out front." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/462855/original/file-20220512-13-1ulxfv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/462855/original/file-20220512-13-1ulxfv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=239&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/462855/original/file-20220512-13-1ulxfv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=239&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/462855/original/file-20220512-13-1ulxfv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=239&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/462855/original/file-20220512-13-1ulxfv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=301&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/462855/original/file-20220512-13-1ulxfv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=301&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/462855/original/file-20220512-13-1ulxfv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=301&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The building that was Summerton High School, the town’s all-white school, closed in 1966 to avoid integration. Years later, it became a school district administration office.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Summerton_High_School.jpg">Bill Fitzpatrick via Wikimedia Commons</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>The aftermath</h2>
<p>It took <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2020/09/firsts-school-segregation-south-carolina/616492/">years after the landmark Brown decision</a> for its effects to really be felt in South Carolina. The first K-12 district in the state to desegregate was Charleston County School District, in <a href="http://www.scequalizationschools.org/desegregation-at-last.html">September 1963</a>. </p>
<p>Clarendon County school officials decided to close Summerton High School in 1966 to avoid integration. Instead, white parents sent their children to <a href="https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv10tq3jn">the newly built private Clarendon Hall school</a>. Meanwhile, the Black students remained at Scott’s Branch High School. </p>
<p>Summerton High School stayed closed for over 20 years, only reopening in the late 1980s as an administrative office for the school district.</p>
<p>Although the outcome of the Brown decision arguably led to equal facilities, resources and bus transportation, it fell short of significantly integrating Black and white students in the district’s public schools. In 2022, Summerton public schools remained <a href="https://www.publicschoolreview.com/south-carolina/clarendon-01-school-district/4501740-school-district">95% Black</a>, while most white students in Summerton attended the private Clarendon Hall school.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/177418/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>I have met and interviewed descendants of the Joseph A. De Laine family, Pearson family, Briggs family and Elliott family mentioned in the article.
I am a tenured Professor in the Educational & Organizational Leadership Dept., College of Education, Clemson University. </span></em></p>The Brown v. Board of Education case, which resulted in the Supreme Court outlawing school segregation, originally started in Clarendon County, South Carolina.Roy Jones, Professor of Leadership, Counselor Education, Human and Organizational Development; Executive director, Call Me MISTER, Clemson UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1778492022-05-13T12:15:36Z2022-05-13T12:15:36ZUS schools are not racially integrated, despite decades of effort<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/461338/original/file-20220504-16-rl3u6o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=68%2C43%2C4091%2C3224&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Court-ordered desegregation has happened in the U.S. as recently as 2015, when a federal judge issued a desegregation order to the Cleveland, Miss., school district.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/DesegregationAfterBusing/8b893af637dc4f649c093e983c0d005f/photo">AP Photo/Rogelio V. Solis</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Nearly seven decades after the U.S. Supreme Court’s unanimous landmark <a href="https://www.history.com/topics/black-history/brown-v-board-of-education-of-topeka">Brown v. Board of Education decision</a> in 1954, the court’s declared goal of integrated education is still not yet achieved.</p>
<p>American society continues to <a href="https://www.brookings.edu/research/new-census-data-shows-the-nation-is-diversifying-even-faster-than-predicted/">grow more racially and ethnically diverse</a>. But many of the nation’s public K-12 <a href="https://nces.ed.gov/blogs/nces/post/new-report-shows-increased-diversity-in-u-s-schools-disparities-in-outcomes">schools are not well integrated</a> and are instead predominantly attended by students of one race or another.</p>
<p>As an <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=8z4YFq0AAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao">educational sociologist</a>, I fear that the nation has effectively decided that it’s simply not worth continuing to pursue the goals of Brown. I also fear that accepting failure could portend a return to the days of the case that Brown overturned, the <a href="https://supreme.findlaw.com/supreme-court-insights/plessy-v--ferguson-case-summary.html">1896 Plessy v. Ferguson decision</a>. That case set “<a href="https://www.history.com/topics/black-history/plessy-v-ferguson">separate but equal</a>” facilities for different races, including schools and universities, as the national priority. </p>
<p>The Brown decision was based upon a repudiation of that idea and the recognition that “separate but equal” was never achieved. I remain convinced it never will be.</p>
<h2>A historic push</h2>
<p>In many ways, it would be startling to declare the ideal of integrated schooling a lost cause. Integration was so important in 1957 that Republican President Dwight D. Eisenhower <a href="https://www.npr.org/2007/09/24/14654126/little-rock-remembers-troops-arrival">sent federal troops</a> to Little Rock, Arkansas, to ensure that nine Black students were safe when they enrolled in the city’s Central High School. </p>
<p>Despite the federal government’s intervention, in the 1960s and 1970s, many communities across the U.S. experienced <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-did-white-students-respond-to-school-integration-after-brown-v-board-of-education-164671">considerable conflict and even bloodshed</a>. Many white citizens actively and violently opposed school integration, which often came in the form of <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-supreme-court-decision-that-kept-suburban-schools-segregated-120478">court-mandated busing</a> of Black students to schools in predominantly white neighborhoods. </p>
<p>Despite the opposition, many Americans <a href="https://www.worldcat.org/title/children-of-the-dream-why-school-integration-works/oclc/1080251375">worked incredibly hard</a> to make integration happen, and its <a href="https://tcf.org/content/commentary/school-integration-is-popular-we-can-make-it-more-so/?session=1">benefits are clear</a>: Many American children have experienced enhanced educational opportunities and improved academic success as a result of these efforts.</p>
<h2>Separated, if not segregated</h2>
<p>However, in 2018-2019, the most recent school year for which data is available, <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2021/12/15/u-s-public-school-students-often-go-to-schools-where-at-least-half-of-their-peers-are-the-same-race-or-ethnicity/">42% of Black students attended majority-Black schools</a>, and 56% of Hispanic students attended majority-Hispanic schools. Even more striking, 79% of white students in America went to majority-white schools during the same period.</p>
<p>Those statistics signal the existence of what is, in fact, a racially separate educational system. But these statistics about race don’t show how common separation by socioeconomic status is in most urban schools throughout the U.S. Low-income Black and Hispanic students are most likely to attend schools where the <a href="https://www.civilrightsproject.ucla.edu/research/k-12-education/integration-and-diversity/segregating-california2019s-future-inequality-and-its-alternative-60-years-after-brown-v.-board-of-education/">majority of children are poor</a> and the <a href="https://www.usnews.com/news/blogs/data-mine/2015/01/28/us-education-still-separate-and-unequal">resources available to serve them are inadequate</a>.</p>
<p>Since 2001, education policymakers have made bold promises to close what has been called the “<a href="https://www.brookings.edu/articles/broken-promises-what-the-federal-government-can-do-to-improve-american-education/">racial achievement gap</a>.” Yet they have largely ignored the fact that throughout the nation, poor children of color are most likely to attend schools where they are not only separated by race and class, but where the <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2016/02/concentration-poverty-american-schools/471414/">quality of the education they receive is below</a> that of their white peers.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/461347/original/file-20220504-21-thv1g3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A young Black girl in a white dress walks through a crowd of white people" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/461347/original/file-20220504-21-thv1g3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/461347/original/file-20220504-21-thv1g3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=404&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/461347/original/file-20220504-21-thv1g3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=404&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/461347/original/file-20220504-21-thv1g3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=404&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/461347/original/file-20220504-21-thv1g3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=508&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/461347/original/file-20220504-21-thv1g3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=508&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/461347/original/file-20220504-21-thv1g3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=508&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">In 1962, Carolyn Roberson, at center in a white dress, was one of the first Black students to attend Pensacola High School in Pensacola, Fla.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/CivilRightsSchoolIntegration/6a403b857a864b65bb23a9ed2ce41ffb/photo">AP Photo/Jim Bourdier</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Housing and school choices</h2>
<p>Several factors help to explain the degree of race and class separation and educational inequality that is now pervasive in America. To begin with, many communities throughout the United States continue to be characterized by a high degree of racial and socioeconomic separation. However, while residential patterns pose an obstacle, a 2018 study by the Urban Institute found that <a href="https://www.urban.org/features/segregated-neighborhoods-segregated-schools">neighborhood segregation does not in itself explain</a> current patterns of school segregation. The study identified several cities and suburban communities where schools are significantly more segregated than the neighborhoods in which they are located. </p>
<p>Policies that allow parents to choose which of their district’s public schools their children attend have done little to alter these trends and, in fact, may contribute to the problem. Several studies have shown that <a href="https://doi.org/10.3390/educsci9030205">public charter schools</a> are <a href="https://www.educationnext.org/do-charter-schools-increase-segregation-first-national-analysis-reveals-modest-impact/">more likely to be intensely racially divided</a> than traditional public schools. </p>
<p>Furthermore, in most major American cities, affluent residents are <a href="https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator/cgc">more likely to enroll their children</a> in private schools than public schools. This includes many affluent parents of color, who often choose to enroll their children in predominantly white independent schools in search of a better education, even when their children <a href="https://www.brookings.edu/blog/how-we-rise/2021/11/24/growing-up-as-a-black-male-student-in-white-suburbia-what-i-learned/">experience race-related microaggressions and alienation</a>.</p>
<p>In the past 20 years, cities such as <a href="https://www.jchs.harvard.edu/sites/default/files/Harvard_JCHS_mapping_neighborhood_change_boston_january_2019.pdf">Boston</a>, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/17/realestate/black-homeowners-gentrification.html">New York</a>, <a href="https://303magazine.com/2022/02/denvers-neighborhoods-changing/">Denver</a>, <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2022/04/15/washington-dc-gentrification-black-political-power-00024515">Washington, D.C.</a>, and <a href="https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/data/as-south-seattle-gentrifies-white-people-become-largest-racial-group/">Seattle</a> have seen affluent <a href="https://www.brookings.edu/blog/the-avenue/2015/10/01/more-big-cities-are-gaining-white-population-census-data-show/">white populations increase</a> – but the overwhelming majority of students in those cities’ public schools are from <a href="https://www.cgcs.org/domain/360">low-income Black and Hispanic households</a>. Those sorts of racial imbalances have increasingly become the norm.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/461348/original/file-20220504-11-ixl8f6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A group of young Black people sit around tables in a classroom" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/461348/original/file-20220504-11-ixl8f6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/461348/original/file-20220504-11-ixl8f6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/461348/original/file-20220504-11-ixl8f6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/461348/original/file-20220504-11-ixl8f6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/461348/original/file-20220504-11-ixl8f6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/461348/original/file-20220504-11-ixl8f6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/461348/original/file-20220504-11-ixl8f6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">High school medical students at the King/Drew Magnet High School of Medicine and Science in Los Angeles await a visit from U.S. Surgeon General Vivek H. Murthy in 2021.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/SurgeonGeneralCalifornia/fdcb374b648c4d7e8ed9c211cf628bcd/photo">AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Integration can succeed</h2>
<p>When the poorest and most vulnerable children are concentrated into particular schools, it is even more difficult to achieve racial equality in educational opportunity, either through integration as called for by Brown or by pursuing “separate but equal” as called for by Plessy.</p>
<p>There is good reason to be concerned. For decades there has been <a href="https://www.urban.org/sites/default/files/publication/65766/2000369-Child-Poverty-and-Adult-Success.pdf">consistent evidence</a> that when schools serve a disproportionate number of children in poverty, they are <a href="https://doi.org/10.1001/jamapediatrics.2015.1475">less likely to improve students’ academic success</a>.</p>
<p>The evidence also shows that when Black and Hispanic children attend racially integrated schools, they tend to <a href="https://tcf.org/content/facts/the-benefits-of-socioeconomically-and-racially-integrated-schools-and-classrooms/?agreed=1">outperform their peers who do not</a>. For example, students who have participated in the <a href="https://metcoinc.org/">Metco program</a>, a voluntary desegregation effort that makes it possible for children of color from Boston to be bused to affluent schools in the suburbs, have <a href="https://pioneerinstitute.org/pioneer-research/education-pioneer-research/metco-merits-more/">fared better academically</a> than their counterparts who remained in Boston’s racially isolated schools. The research doesn’t show whether that is because of the superior resources available in predominantly white suburban schools or the fact that they have parents who are active enough to get them into suburban schools. It may be that both factors play a role.</p>
<p>A <a href="http://transformschools.ucla.edu/beyond-the-schoolhouse-digging-deeper/">2018 study</a> from UCLA found that all the schools that produce significant numbers of Black students who are eligible for admission to the University of California are racially integrated. Unfortunately, the study also found that most Black students in Los Angeles don’t attend integrated schools.</p>
<p>However, the study also found one notable exception: the <a href="https://www.kingdrew.net/">King/Drew Health Sciences Magnet High School of Medicine and Science</a> in the Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles. That school, which serves almost exclusively Black and Hispanic students, <a href="http://transformschools.ucla.edu/beyond-the-schoolhouse-digging-deeper/">sends more Black students to the University of California</a> than any other high school in the state of California. </p>
<p>At King/Drew, students have a <a href="https://www.kingdrew.net/apps/pages/index.jsp?uREC_ID=1526142&type=d&pREC_ID=1374191">rigorous, enriched education</a> that includes many honors and <a href="https://www.kingdrew.net/apps/pages/ap">Advanced Placement courses</a>. Those opportunities are the norm at many affluent suburban schools, but they are <a href="https://www.americanprogress.org/article/closing-advanced-coursework-equity-gaps-students/">rare at public schools in urban areas</a>.</p>
<p>The scarcity of schools like King/Drew – well-resourced and serving a low-income or majority-minority student body – should serve as a reminder that racially separate schools are rarely equal. When Thurgood Marshall and the NAACP took the Brown case, they knew that <a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/how-thurgood-marshall-paved-road-brown-v-board-education-180977197/">funding for education generally followed white students</a>.</p>
<p>That was true in 1954, and it is largely true today. A recent study found that nonwhite school districts in the U.S. receive <a href="https://edbuild.org/content/23-billion">US$23 billion less in funding</a> than predominantly white schools, though they serve the same number of students.</p>
<p>For this reason, on the occasion of the 68th anniversary of the Brown decision, I believe it is important to remember why and how civil rights and educational opportunity remain so deeply intertwined. Despite its flaws and limitations, the effort to racially integrate the nation’s schools has been and continues to be important given the type of <a href="https://www.census.gov/library/visualizations/2021/comm/a-more-diverse-nation.html">pluralistic and diverse nation</a> the U.S. is becoming. It also plays a central role in the ongoing pursuit of racial equality.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/177849/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Pedro A. Noguera does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Though the 1954 Brown v. Board ruling required the integration of public education, US schools remain separated by race.Pedro A. Noguera, Dean, USC Rossier School of Education, University of Southern CaliforniaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1812952022-05-05T14:58:01Z2022-05-05T14:58:01ZHow prisons are using COVID-19 containment measures as a guise for torture<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/461116/original/file-20220503-48736-8flicq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">An inmate can be seen inside a segregation cell at the Collins Bay Institution in Kingston, Ont., in 2016.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">THE CANADIAN PRESS/Lars Hagberg </span></span></figcaption></figure><p><a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/federal-inmates-solitary-confinement-enquete-1.6410882">Newly reported data</a> shows that torture continues in federal prison segregation units. It’s an ongoing feature of Ontario provincial jails too. </p>
<p>As critical criminology and policy scholars, we publish widely on issues of confinement and are active in community advocacy. We have heard about these practices from prisoners, recently released prisoners and via documents obtained through freedom-of-information requests. Despite changes to policy, lengthy segregation practices in prisons continue and have evolved amid the COVID-19 pandemic.</p>
<p>Our analysis shows that the frequency and length of isolation practices have increased during the pandemic and have received little critical oversight because they’re framed as containment measures. </p>
<h2>Long confinement is torture</h2>
<p>Solitary confinement that lasts longer than 15 days and/or without at least four hours out of cells and two hours of meaningful human contact per day, is defined as torture by the <a href="https://www.unodc.org/documents/justice-and-prison-reform/Nelson_Mandela_Rules-E-ebook.pdf">United Nations</a>. </p>
<p>In 2019, the federal government abolished solitary confinement, and replaced it with a new practice called “<a href="https://www.csc-scc.gc.ca/acts-and-regulations/005006-3000-en.shtml">structured intervention units</a>,” or SIUs. Among the changes, SIUs are supposed to limit segregation to 15 days. </p>
<p>That same year, the Ontario government amended <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/ontario-segregation-jail-human-rights-1.5325081">its regulations</a> limiting segregation to 15 days and requiring an assistant deputy minister to review segregation placements.</p>
<p>An amendment to the province’s <a href="https://news.ontario.ca/en/release/49411/ontario-passes-legislation-to-transform-adult-correctional-system">Correctional Services and Reintegration Act</a> with additional changes was passed by the Liberal government in 2018, but not acclaimed by the current Conservative government. </p>
<h2>Human rights concerns</h2>
<p><a href="https://www.ohrc.on.ca/en/report-conditions-confinement-toronto-south-detention-centre">The Ontario Human Rights Commission</a> raised concerns about segregation in a recent report following a tour of the Toronto South Detention Centre in 2020. </p>
<p>The report found routine use of isolation in ways that “raise serious human rights concerns.” In April 2020, Superior Court Justice Paul Perell awarded $30 million in damages, ruling the province had been “<a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/ont-segregation-1.5971689">systemically and routinely</a>” negligent in running solitary confinement. </p>
<p>In August 2020, the Ontario Human Rights Commission <a href="https://www.ohrc.on.ca/en/segregation-and-mental-health-ontario%E2%80%99s-prisons-jahn-v-ministry-community-safety-and-correctional">filed a motion</a> with the Human Rights Tribunal for an order to hold the province accountable for failing to meet its legal obligations to keep people with mental health disabilities out of segregation.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A small darkened cell with a small window, a narrow cot and a toilet." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/461120/original/file-20220503-19206-mf0kxr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/461120/original/file-20220503-19206-mf0kxr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=410&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/461120/original/file-20220503-19206-mf0kxr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=410&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/461120/original/file-20220503-19206-mf0kxr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=410&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/461120/original/file-20220503-19206-mf0kxr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=515&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/461120/original/file-20220503-19206-mf0kxr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=515&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/461120/original/file-20220503-19206-mf0kxr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=515&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A segregation cell at the Toronto South Detention Centre in 2013.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">THE CANADIAN PRESS/Nathan Denette</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Interviews with prisoners</h2>
<p><a href="https://ccla.org/press-release/prison-pandemic-papers-documenting-impact-of-covid-19-in-jails-prisons-penitentiaries-across-canada-launched/">The data we’ve collected through prisoner interviews and via freedom-of-information requests</a> show four forms of forced isolation are being abused in ways that approach or meet the UN definition of torture. </p>
<p>Primary among these are lockdowns (all prisoners isolating to cells), COVID-19 quarantines (14-day intake isolation), droplet precautions (isolating to cells/ranges due to a suspected COVID-19 infection) and structured intervention/segregation (isolation in a specialized unit).</p>
<p>Some interviewees reported spending 28 consecutive days in forced isolation, without daily time outside of their cells. People had their isolation clocks restarted when moved from a provincial to federal institution or if someone new was moved into their cell/unit. </p>
<p>In the words of one interviewee:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“Going for 14 days of quarantine in provincial and then immediately 14 days in federal … was pretty rough, you know. I’ve done a lot of hole [solitary] time before, but it seems that this was even harder.” </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Data shared by Ontario’s solicitor general following our freedom-of-information requests show there were 380 full and partial lockdowns in Ontario jails from January to August 2020. People were confined to cells with next to no time out for phone calls, showers or fresh air. </p>
<p>As of Nov. 30, 2020, there were 132 people in Ontario custody who had spent more than 60 days in segregation over the year. Of those in segregation, 30 had mental health alerts on their files. </p>
<p>Between July 2018 and June 2019, the <a href="https://www.ohrc.on.ca/en/news_centre/statement-ohrc-files-motion-address-ontario%E2%80%99s-breach-legal-obligation-keep-prisoners-mental-health">Ontario Human Rights Commission reported</a> more than 12,000 people were placed in segregation in Ontario, and 46 per cent of them had mental health issues.</p>
<h2>Risk management</h2>
<p>Our analysis shows that throughout the pandemic, tortuous segregation has been normalized as “risk management” in the absence of external accountability. </p>
<p>Risk assessment during the pandemic extends pre-existing institutional culture, including the use of 20 <a href="https://www.publicsafety.gc.ca/cnt/rsrcs/pblctns/2017-s015/index-en.aspx">risk assessment tools</a> that establish ratings such as <a href="https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-investigation-racial-bias-in-canadian-prison-risk-assessments/">security classifications and reintegration scores</a>, and experiences of <a href="https://utorontopress.com/9781487521387/also-serving-time/">occupational risk</a> among staff. Prisons are already seen as risky places by <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177%2F00328855211048166">management, staff and confined people</a>; COVID-19 has added to those perceptions.</p>
<p>Research suggests that solitary confinement is a <a href="https://pdxscholar.library.pdx.edu/ccj_fac/47/">prisoner management strategy</a> used to reduce threats to institutional order and safety. The <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/00223433211062389">COVID-19 crisis</a> has provided an opportunity for further repressive measures. </p>
<p>Risk management has meant continuously restricting prisoners rather than embracing community alternatives and discretionary release. This is despite health experts and scholars exposing the <a href="https://digitalcommons.schulichlaw.dal.ca/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2182&context=dlj">impossibility of physical distancing</a> in prisons. </p>
<p>Risk communication has been heavily restricted, with controlled messages aimed at establishing a crisis narrative.</p>
<p>But the public and stakeholders <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jaip.2020.04.012">can inform policy</a> through critique. Prisons are sensitive to criticisms given <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177%2F14624740222228509">the need to legitimize</a> practices of control. </p>
<h2>Dismantled oversight</h2>
<p>In 2021, the Ontario government quietly dismantled all 10 <a href="https://news.ontario.ca/en/release/26763/greater-transparency-in-correctional-facilities">Community Advisory Boards</a> established in 2013 to provide independent oversight of the province’s jails. Before that, board members were able to enter local jails at any time to provide immediate community oversight and transparency. </p>
<p>These boards <a href="https://www.ontario.ca/page/accountability-community-advisory-boards">were responsible</a> for producing annual reports and recommendations on jail conditions.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.torontoprisonersrightsproject.org/updates/nomoredeaths">Community advocates</a> <a href="https://www.ohrc.on.ca/en/news_centre/letter-solicitor-general-elimination-community-advisory-boards">and agencies</a>, along with opposition parties, have called for the reinstatement of these advisory boards. As the Ontario provincial election approaches, issues of segregation and torture in the province’s jails should become a campaign issue.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A small exercise yard with cinder wall and the sun shining from above through caging." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/461118/original/file-20220503-49620-in1z5w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/461118/original/file-20220503-49620-in1z5w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/461118/original/file-20220503-49620-in1z5w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/461118/original/file-20220503-49620-in1z5w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/461118/original/file-20220503-49620-in1z5w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/461118/original/file-20220503-49620-in1z5w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/461118/original/file-20220503-49620-in1z5w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">An exercise yard for the segregation unit at Collins Bay Institution in Kingston, Ont., in 2016.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">THE CANADIAN PRESS/Lars Hagberg</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Change is needed</h2>
<p>The normalization of torturous isolation is likely to continue without adequate external oversight and accountability.</p>
<p>We call for the reinstatement of Ontario community advisory boards and demand the Ontario government acclaim the <a href="https://news.ontario.ca/en/release/49411/ontario-passes-legislation-to-transform-adult-correctional-system">Correctional Services and Reintegration Act</a>. The act aligns the definition of segregation with international standards, phasing in time limits and barring segregation for pregnant or mentally ill people.</p>
<p>More than <a href="https://www.ohrc.on.ca/en/news_centre/ohrc-statement-calling-ontario%E2%80%99s-justice-sector-fight-covid-19-keeping-prison-custody-numbers-low">70 per cent</a> of people in prison have not even been convicted of any crimes. We call for a return to releasing prisoners as occurred in the <a href="https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-inmate-advocates-warn-jail-populations-rising-again-in-some-provinces/">early days of the pandemic</a>. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/coronavirus-in-prisons-how-and-why-to-release-inmates-in-a-pandemic-136676">Coronavirus in prisons: How and why to release inmates in a pandemic</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>The use of isolation inside Ontario prisons is either close to torture or amounts to torture and can have long-term effects.</p>
<p>Summing up the link between isolation and suffering, one person we interviewed noted:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“Even if you are only in there for the two weeks and make bail, you’re going to be coming out with some serious issues.”</p>
</blockquote><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/181295/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jessica Evans receives funding from SSHRC. She is affiliated with the Toronto Prisoners' Rights Project. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Linda Mussell receives funding from SSHRC. </span></em></p>Solitary confinement is still a common feature of prisons across Canada and in its most populous province, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic. It’s a practice that amounts to torture.Jessica Evans, Assistant Professor, Sociology, Toronto Metropolitan UniversityLinda Mussell, Postdoctoral fellow, Political Studies, L’Université d’Ottawa/University of OttawaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1810302022-04-15T12:12:14Z2022-04-15T12:12:14ZLegacy of Jim Crow still affects funding for public schools<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/458256/original/file-20220414-12-njujv9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C5%2C3404%2C2440&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">School funding inequities persist along racial and economic lines. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/freshman-students-walk-the-hallway-in-between-classes-news-photo/1231511735?adppopup=true">David L. Ryan/The Boston Globe via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Nearly 70 years ago – in its 1954 <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/347/483/USSC_PRO_347_483_1">Brown v. Board</a> decision – the Supreme Court framed racial segregation as the cause of educational inequality. It did not, however, challenge the lengths to which states went to ensure the unequal funding of Black schools.</p>
<p>Before Brown, Southern states were using segregation to signify and tangibly reinforce <a href="https://www.loc.gov/exhibits/brown/brown-segregation.html">second-class citizenship</a> for Black people in the United States. The court in Brown deemed that segregation was inherently unequal. Even if the schools were “equalized” on all “tangible factors,” segregation remained a problem and physical integration was the cure, the Court concluded.</p>
<p>That framing rightly focused on segregation’s immediate horror – excluding students from schools based on the color of their skin – but obscured an important fact. In addition to requiring school segregation, many states also had long segregated school funding. Some had used “<a href="https://uncpress.org/book/9781469638942/racial-taxation">racially distinct tax</a>” policies that reserved separate funds for white and Black schools. Other states had <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/1084950?seq=1">moved school funding responsibility and control</a> from state officials to local communities. Local officials could then <a href="https://www.law.ua.edu/pubs/lrarticles/Volume%2065/Issue%202/11%20Guyse%20519-538.pdf">ensure inequality without any specific law mandating it</a>.</p>
<p>Brown’s focus on physical segregation inadvertently left important and less obvious aspects of local funding inequality unchecked. Those practices still drive underfunding in predominantly poor and minority schools. Through the University of South Carolina School of Law’s <a href="https://sc.edu/study/colleges_schools/law/centers/constitutional_law/index.php">Constitutional Law Center</a>, since 2021 we have been documenting the <a href="https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4082368">historical connection</a> between segregation and states’ reliance on local school funding. In our view, until states stop relying so heavily on local school funding, the equal educational opportunities that Brown first sought will remain out of reach for K-12 students in the 21st century. </p>
<h2>What’s wrong with local funding</h2>
<p>A large body of evidence shows “<a href="https://learningpolicyinstitute.org/product/how-money-matters-report">money matters</a>.” </p>
<p>Increased spending <a href="https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w28517/w28517.pdf">improves</a> college attendance rates, graduation rates and test scores. But, as a 2018 report revealed, school districts enrolling “the most students of color receive <a href="https://edtrust.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/FundingGapReport_2018_FINAL.pdf">about $1,800, or 13%, less per student”</a> than districts serving the fewest students of color.</p>
<p>A more recent <a href="https://www.educationnext.org/costs-cutting-school-spending-lessons-from-great-recession/">analysis</a> further demonstrated that school funding cuts during the Great Recession disproportionately affected Black students and exacerbated achievement gaps. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/458257/original/file-20220414-24-yclruz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A Black man teaches a classroom full of students." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/458257/original/file-20220414-24-yclruz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/458257/original/file-20220414-24-yclruz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/458257/original/file-20220414-24-yclruz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/458257/original/file-20220414-24-yclruz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/458257/original/file-20220414-24-yclruz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/458257/original/file-20220414-24-yclruz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/458257/original/file-20220414-24-yclruz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">In most U.S. states, local school funding drives more resources toward middle-income students than poor students.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/kent-taylor-state-administrator-superintendent-for-the-news-photo/564003467?adppopup=true">Gary Friedman/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Most school funding gaps have a simple explanation: Public school budgets rely heavily on <a href="https://apps.urban.org/features/school-funding-do-poor-kids-get-fair-share/">local property taxes</a>. Communities with low property values can <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/411/1">tax themselves at much higher rates</a> than others but still fail to generate anywhere near the the same level of resources as other communities. </p>
<p>In fact, in <a href="https://apps.urban.org/features/school-funding-do-poor-kids-get-fair-share/">46 of 50 states</a>, local school funding schemes drive more resources to middle-income students than poor students. The local funding gap between districts mostly serving middle-income versus poor students in <a href="https://apps.urban.org/features/school-funding-do-poor-kids-get-fair-share/">New Jersey</a>, for example, is $3,460 per pupil. While state and federal programs often send additional funds to poor students, they are insufficient to fully meet the <a href="https://edtrust.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/FundingGapReport_2018_FINAL.pdf">additional needs of low-income students</a>.</p>
<h2>Missed opportunities to cure local funding</h2>
<p>In Brown v. Board, the court glossed over the history of school segregation and its nuances. The court said it was impossible to “turn the clock back to 1868,” when the nation adopted the Fourteenth Amendment, or “even 1896,” when the court authorized segregation. Instead, it <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/347/483/USSC_PRO_347_483_1">declared</a> that “we must consider public education in the light of its full development and its present place in American life throughout the Nation.”</p>
<p>This pivot let the court tackle segregation on a slate scrubbed clean of history’s mess. But it also deprived the court of any serious consideration of Southern states’ complex and racially motivated system of local school funding.</p>
<p>Later court decisions did not even recognize that a problem with local funding might exist. To the contrary, they put a preference on local funding over remedying inequality. In the 1973 case of San Antonio Independent School District v. Rodriguez, the court rejected a challenge to the inequality local school funding causes, reasoning that “local control” over school funding was <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/411/1">“vital to continued public support of the schools”</a> and “of overriding importance from an educational standpoint as well.”</p>
<p>A year later, in Milliken v. Bradley, the Supreme Court blocked a desegregation remedy that would have spanned multiple districts. Finances and local autonomy were at the heart of the court’s rationale. It <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/418/717">wrote</a>, “No single tradition in public education is more deeply rooted than local control over the operation of schools.” In its view, desegregation between districts would destroy that tradition and create a host of problems regarding local school funding.</p>
<p>To be sure, those decisions did not preclude desegregation within individual districts. But the Court declared desegregation and school funding inequality that occurs between school districts – as opposed to within school districts – as largely beyond the reach of federal judicial power.</p>
<h2>Funding, control and segregation</h2>
<p><a href="https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4082368">Our research</a> reveals that during <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-constitutional-right-to-education-is-long-overdue-88445">the South’s Reconstruction</a>, Black people and progressive whites saw <a href="https://www.ednc.org/deep-rooted-a-brief-history-of-race-and-education-in-north-carolina/">state control</a> as the solution to inadequate and unequal education. They adopted <a href="https://kansaspress.ku.edu/978-0-7006-2437-9.html">policies to that effect</a>, many of which were <a href="https://review.law.stanford.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2018/03/70-Stan.-L.-Rev.-735.pdf">enshrined in state constitutions</a> rather than laws reversible by the legislature. </p>
<p>Local communities were certainly important to the implementation of schools, but states like <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/40703363?seq=7">Texas</a> and <a href="https://encyclopediavirginia.org/entries/public-school-system-in-virginia-establishment-of-the/">Virginia</a> centralized school administration, school finance and a variety of other policies. Some states, such as <a href="https://www.zinnedproject.org/news/tdih/South-Carolina-Constitutional-Convention">South Carolina</a>, placed the core issue of physical segregation under state control and prohibited it outright. </p>
<p>Then, during the Jim Crow era, localism became the tool to <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/1084950?seq=1">reverse this progress and equality</a>. States <a href="https://www.ednc.org/deep-rooted-a-brief-history-of-race-and-education-in-north-carolina/">increased reliance on local taxation</a>, gave local <a href="https://www.johnmarshall.edu/lawreview/current-volume/volume-3-number-2/">white officials discretion</a> over state funds, and <a href="https://www.law.ua.edu/pubs/lrarticles/Volume%2065/Issue%202/11%20Guyse%20519-538.pdf">constitutionally secured segregation</a>. Some went so far as to craft <a href="https://uncpress.org/book/9781469638942/racial-taxation/">color-coded funding systems</a> where white taxes <a href="https://www.ednc.org/deep-rooted-a-brief-history-of-race-and-education-in-north-carolina/">funded white schools</a> exclusively. </p>
<p>Others, like <a href="https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=nyp.33433007186806&view=1up&seq=80&skin=2021&q1=%22thus%20designated%22">South Carolina</a>, achieved the same end by letting taxpayers select which of the segregated schools would receive their funds. Southern leaders openly linked local funding and control to the <a href="https://www.worldcat.org/title/journal-of-the-constitutional-convention-of-the-state-of-south-carolina/oclc/15184574">“wisdom” of segregation</a>. </p>
<p>The development of Northern local <a href="https://scholarlycommons.law.northwestern.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1282&context=nulr">school systems</a> was historically distinct. Yet, even in some Northern states, racial antagonism and concerns over segregation prompted pushes for <a href="https://www.worldcat.org/title/black-struggle-for-public-schooling-in-nineteenth-century-illinois/oclc/459793798">local decision-making</a>. More generally, some Northern states followed a trajectory similar to Southern states: Illinois, for example, imposed a <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/40194509?seq=41">statewide property tax</a> for <a href="https://www.worldcat.org/title/black-struggle-for-public-schooling-in-nineteenth-century-illinois/oclc/459793798">white education</a> with supplemental local funding before the Civil War. Ironically, though, it ultimately became one of the states <a href="https://nces.ed.gov/pubs2020/2020301.pdf">most dependent on local funding</a>.</p>
<h2>Toward a more fair system</h2>
<p>While Brown v. Board declared school segregation itself unconstitutional, other related aspects of segregated schools – particularly the decentralization of school funding – continued unchecked after it. The longer those aspects remained, the more courts accepted them as a neutral aspect of delivering public education. </p>
<p>[<em>Over 150,000 readers rely on The Conversation’s newsletters to understand the world.</em> <a href="https://memberservices.theconversation.com/newsletters/?source=inline-150ksignup">Sign up today</a>.]</p>
<p>An important step in remedying entrenched school funding inequalities is to first recognize that they are rooted in the history of Jim Crow segregation. Another potential step is to return to the more centralized approach of Reconstruction – an <a href="https://openyls.law.yale.edu/bitstream/handle/20.500.13051/8741/32_102YaleLJ805_1992_1993_.pdf?sequence=2&isAllowed=y">approach</a> that states during their progressive eras have long recognized. And this step makes good constitutional sense, too. After all, <a href="https://scholarlycommons.law.northwestern.edu/nulr/vol111/iss1/1/">every state constitution</a> places the ultimate obligation to fund and deliver public education on <a href="https://casetext.com/case/claremont-school-district-v-governor-3">states</a>, not local governments.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/181030/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Local control over school funding leads to uneven resources between districts, two legal scholars maintain.Derek W. Black, Professor of Law, University of South CarolinaAxton Crolley, Constitutional Law Fellow, University of South CarolinaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1777022022-03-30T12:40:07Z2022-03-30T12:40:07ZBlack college presidents had a tough balancing act during the civil rights era<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/450793/original/file-20220308-13-wpmmsm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C5442%2C3351&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Some Black college presidents stood at the forefront of the civil rights movement. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/portrait-of-7th-president-of-morgan-state-university-martin-news-photo/513374749?adppopup=true">Afro American Newspapers/Gado/Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>Historians have documented <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/civilities-and-civil-rights-9780195029192?cc=us&lang=en&">again</a> and <a href="https://uncpress.org/book/9780807856161/ella-baker-and-the-black-freedom-movement/">again</a> how college students contributed to the civil rights movement. Less attention has been paid to the role college presidents played in the fight for equality. Here, Eddie R. Cole, author of the book “<a href="https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691206745/the-campus-color-line">The Campus Color Line</a>,” discusses various ways these leaders contributed.</em></p>
<h2>1. What pressures did college leaders face in the civil rights era?</h2>
<p>College presidents between 1948 to 1968 had to deal with different segments of society that were at complete odds with one another.</p>
<p>On the one hand, they oversaw schools where students were increasingly protesting segregation. But they also had to deal with segregationist politicians who controlled state funding for their institutions. Some of those politicians were not shy about their opposition to the civil rights movement. For instance, on March 3, 1960, North Carolina Gov. <a href="https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691206745/the-campus-color-line">Luther H. Hodges urged</a> public college leaders to direct students not to participate in civil rights demonstrations.</p>
<p>For the most part, Black college presidents ignored such requests. </p>
<p>But not always. For instance, as president of Kentucky State College – which is now Kentucky State University - <a href="https://www.kentuckypress.com/9780813118567/a-black-educator-in-the-segregated-south/">Rufus B. Atwood</a> expelled 12 students for participating in a sit-in at a local lunch counter in Frankfort, Kentucky, in 1960.</p>
<h2>2. What was their position on boycotts and sit-ins?</h2>
<p>Most Black college presidents supported student sit-ins. </p>
<p>For example, Cornelius V. Troup, the president of Fort Valley State College - which is now Fort Valley State University - in Georgia, invited Martin D. Jenkins, president of Morgan State College - which is now Morgan State University - from Baltimore on Oct. 10, 1960 to be the keynote speaker at the university’s founders’ day celebration. During his speech, Jenkins expressed support of sit-ins at segregated lunch counters. </p>
<p>“We are witnessing in this country, and indeed throughout the world, an almost revolutionary movement against racial segregation and discrimination,” Jenkins said in his speech. “This movement has many facets. Certainly one of the most interesting of these, and one which may turn out to be of considerable long-term significance, is the so-called ‘sit-in’ or ‘sit-down’ developed by college students, chiefly Negro college students … This is a good movement, and it has surprisingly beneficial results.”</p>
<p>Other university presidents did more than just speak against segregation. Willa B. Player, the president of Bennett College in Greensboro, North Carolina, boycotted the <a href="http://libcdm1.uncg.edu/cdm/ref/collection/CivilRights/id/764">Meyer’s Tea Room</a>, a restaurant in 1960 that had prohibited Black people from sitting in the dining area.</p>
<h2>3. Did college presidents ever compromise?</h2>
<p>At the time, Southern states like Maryland were so opposed to integration that – rather than desegregate their all-white universities – they funded <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2021/02/08/biden-has-unique-opportunity-undo-years-education-inequality/">out-of-state scholarship programs</a> for Black residents to go to college somewhere else.</p>
<p>However, these scholarship programs were typically underfunded.</p>
<p>Despite the racist intent behind Southern states paying for programs for Black students to be educated in other states, some presidents of Black colleges and universities saw an opportunity to expand educational options for their students.</p>
<p>That’s why presidents of Black colleges, such as Jenkins, the Morgan State president, met with their respective state officials to increase funding to support these out-of-state scholarship programs. These programs helped students continue their education, especially at the graduate level, at desegregated schools.</p>
<p>Ultimately, not all Black college presidents were on the front lines of the civil rights movement. But many of those who weren’t still contributed to expanding educational opportunities for Black students from behind the scenes.</p>
<p>[<em>More than 150,000 readers get one of The Conversation’s informative newsletters.</em> <a href="https://memberservices.theconversation.com/newsletters/?source=inline-150K">Join the list today</a>.]`32</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/177702/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Eddie R. Cole has received research funding from fellowships with the Spencer Foundation, National Academy of Education, and Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation.</span></em></p>College presidents worked both at the forefront and behind the scenes in fighting for African Americans’ civil rights in the 1960s.Eddie R. Cole, Associate Professor of Higher Education and History, University of California, Los AngelesLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1759982022-03-07T14:29:54Z2022-03-07T14:29:54ZAfter Hollywood thwarted Anna May Wong, the actress took matters into her own hands<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/449913/original/file-20220303-8354-w5fuzs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=315%2C0%2C2766%2C1838&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Anna May Wong appears alongside Akim Tamiroff in a promotional poster for the 1939 film 'King of Chinatown.'</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/king-of-chinatown-us-lobbycard-from-left-anna-may-wong-akim-news-photo/1137271180?adppopup=true">LMPC/Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The U.S. Mint is issuing four years of quarters featuring the likenesses of American women who contributed to “the development and history of our country.”</p>
<p>The first batch of the <a href="https://www.usmint.gov/learn/coin-and-medal-programs/american-women-quarters">American Women Quarters Program</a>, announced in January 2022, included astronaut Sally Ride and poet Maya Angelou.</p>
<p>One name on the list might be less familiar to some Americans: Chinese American actress Anna May Wong.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/449908/original/file-20220303-27214-10c1ktg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Back of quarter featuring engraving of woman." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/449908/original/file-20220303-27214-10c1ktg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/449908/original/file-20220303-27214-10c1ktg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/449908/original/file-20220303-27214-10c1ktg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/449908/original/file-20220303-27214-10c1ktg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/449908/original/file-20220303-27214-10c1ktg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/449908/original/file-20220303-27214-10c1ktg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/449908/original/file-20220303-27214-10c1ktg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Anna May Wong appears on the back of a quarter.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/in-this-handout-photo-provided-by-the-u-s-mint-a-new-us-news-photo/1237814813?adppopup=true">U.S. Mint via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p><a href="https://tupress.temple.edu/book/20000000009807">As someone who has written a biography on Wong</a>, I was delighted to provide the U.S. Mint with Wong’s backstory.</p>
<p>The subject of renewed attention in recent years, Wong is often referred to as a Hollywood star – in fact, the U.S. Treasury describes her as “the first Chinese American film star in Hollywood.” And she certainly did dazzle in her roles. </p>
<p>But to me, this characterization diminishes her chief accomplishment: her capacity for reinvention. Hollywood continually stymied her ambitions. And yet out of the ashes of rejection, she persevered, becoming an Australian vaudeville chanteuse, a British theatrical luminary, a B-film pulp diva and an American television celebrity.</p>
<h2>A star is born</h2>
<p>Born just outside of Los Angeles’ Chinatown in 1905, Wong grew up witnessing movies being made all around her. She dreamed of one day becoming a leading lady. </p>
<p>Cutting classes in order to beg directors for roles, Wong began her career as an extra in Alla Nazimova’s 1919 classic film about China’s Boxer Rebellion, “<a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0010616/">The Red Lantern</a>.” In 1922, at the age of 17, Wong landed her first starring role in “<a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0013688/">The Toll of the Sea</a>,” playing a character based on <a href="https://www.metopera.org/discover/synopses/madama-butterfly/">Madame Butterfly</a>. Her performance was well received, and she went on to be cast as the Mongol slave in the 1924 hit film “<a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0015400/">The Thief of Bagdad</a>.”</p>
<p>However, she quickly hit a wall in an era when it was common <a href="https://digitalgallery.bgsu.edu/student/exhibits/show/race-in-us/asian-americans/yellowface-representations">to cast white actors in yellowface</a> – having them tape their eyes, wear makeup and assume exaggerated accents and gestures – to play Asian characters. (This practice would continue for decades: In 1961, director Blake Edwards egregiously cast Mickey Rooney as Mr. Yunioshi in “Breakfast at Tiffany’s,” and as recently as 2015, Emma Stone <a href="https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2015/06/02/411264817/heres-what-people-are-saying-about-racial-wierdness-in-aloha">was controversially cast</a> as a part-Chinese, part-Hawaiian character in “Aloha.”) Wong would go on to land roles playing unnamed minor characters in the 1927 film “<a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0018218/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0">Old San Francisco</a>” and “<a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0018618/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0">Across to Singapore</a>,” which premiered a year later. But anything outside of typecast roles seemed out of reach.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Woman and man hold hands." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/449915/original/file-20220303-23-rhcpnu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/449915/original/file-20220303-23-rhcpnu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=466&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/449915/original/file-20220303-23-rhcpnu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=466&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/449915/original/file-20220303-23-rhcpnu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=466&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/449915/original/file-20220303-23-rhcpnu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=586&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/449915/original/file-20220303-23-rhcpnu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=586&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/449915/original/file-20220303-23-rhcpnu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=586&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">In ‘Daughter of the Dragon,’ Anna May Wong starred alongside Warner Oland, a Swedish-American actor who often appeared in yellowface.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/daughter-of-the-dragon-lobbycard-from-left-sessue-hayakawa-news-photo/1137286739?adppopup=true">LMPC/Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In some ways, her career mirrored that of the great Japanese actor <a href="https://www.dukeupress.edu/sessue-hayakawa">Sessue Hayakawa</a>, who had forged a path for people of Asian Pacific descent in Hollywood. Hayakawa became a star through his headlining role in the 1915 Lasky-Famous Players film, “<a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0005078/">The Cheat</a>.” However, <a href="https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/ronald-takaki/strangers-from-a-different-shore/9780316831307/">as anti-Japanese sentiment increased in the U.S.</a>, his roles dried up. By 1922, he had left Hollywood. </p>
<h2>European fame</h2>
<p>Some actresses would have accepted their lot, grateful for the chance to simply appear in films.</p>
<p>Not Wong.</p>
<p>In 1928, fed up with a lack of opportunities in Hollywood, she packed her bags and sailed to Europe, where she became a global star.</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="Woman holding purse on sidewalk." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/449910/original/file-20220303-27391-1w0ouep.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/449910/original/file-20220303-27391-1w0ouep.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=851&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/449910/original/file-20220303-27391-1w0ouep.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=851&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/449910/original/file-20220303-27391-1w0ouep.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=851&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/449910/original/file-20220303-27391-1w0ouep.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1069&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/449910/original/file-20220303-27391-1w0ouep.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1069&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/449910/original/file-20220303-27391-1w0ouep.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1069&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Wong poses in front of the Hôtel de Crillon in Paris in 1935.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/anna-may-wong-popular-chinese-film-star-pictured-in-front-news-photo/515607792?adppopup=true">Bettmann/Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>From 1928 to 1934 she made a series of movies for Germany’s Universum-Film Aktiengeselleschaft, and found work with other leading studios such as France’s Gaumont and Associated Talking Pictures in the U.K. She impressed in her roles, attracting the attention of luminaries such as the German intellectual <a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/benjamin/">Walter Benjamin</a>, British actor <a href="https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000059/">Laurence Olivier</a>, German actress <a href="https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000017/">Marlene Dietrich</a> and African American actor <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Paul-Robeson">Paul Robeson</a>. In Europe, Wong joined the ranks of African American artists such as Robeson, <a href="https://historicmissourians.shsmo.org/josephine-baker">Josephine Baker</a> and <a href="https://theconversation.com/langston-hughes-domestic-pariah-international-superstar-133027">Langston Hughes</a>, who, frustrated by segregation in the U.S., had left the country and found adulation in Europe.</p>
<p>When film work wasn’t forthcoming, Wong turned to vaudeville. In 1934, she embarked on a European tour, where she sang, danced and acted before enthralled audiences in cities large and small, from Madrid to Göteborg, Sweden.</p>
<p>Wong’s revue showcased her chameleonlike powers to transform herself. In Göteborg, for example, she performed eight numbers that included the Chinese folk song “<a href="http://www.chinesefolksongs.com/m333-ligrave-hu257-jasmine-flower.html">Jasmine Flower</a>” and the contemporary French hit “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rIAQWr34De0">Parlez-moi d’Amour</a>.” Inhabiting a variety of roles and races, she seamlessly shifted from speaking Chinese to French, from portraying a folk singer to appearing as a tuxedo-clad nightclub siren. </p>
<h2>Wong decides to do it on her own</h2>
<p>What I love about Wong is that even as Hollywood thwarted her time and again, she continued creating her own opportunities. </p>
<p>Though she spent years in Europe, Wong continued to audition for American roles.</p>
<p>In 1937, she tried out for the leading role in Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer’s “<a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0028944/">The Good Earth</a>.” After she was rejected, she decided that if she couldn’t star in a movie, she would simply make one of her own. </p>
<p>She took her one and only trip to China, documenting the experience. Her charming short film showed numerous activities, including female impersonators teaching Wong how to enact Chinese female roles, a trip to the Western Hills, and a visit to the family’s ancestral village. At a time when the number of prominent female directors in Hollywood could be counted on one hand, it was a remarkable feat. </p>
<p>Two decades later, the film would air on ABC. By that time, Wong had established herself as a TV star by playing a gallery owner-cum-detective who traveled the globe solving crimes in “<a href="https://www.vulture.com/2017/09/the-search-for-the-gallery-of-madame-liu-tsong.html">The Gallery of Madame Liu-Tsong</a>.” It was the first television series to feature an Asian Pacific American lead. </p>
<p>By the time Wong died on February 3, 1961, she had left a legacy of more than 50 films, numerous Broadway and vaudeville shows, and a television series. Equally important is how she became a global celebrity despite being shut out from Hollywood’s A-list leading roles.</p>
<p>It’s a story of tenacity and determination that can inspire all who want to see images of people of color reflected back to them on screen.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/175998/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Shirley J. Lim does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The Asian American actress rose to fame in an era when white actors in yellowface were more likely to play Asian characters than Asian ones.Shirley J. Lim, Professor of History, Stony Brook University (The State University of New York)Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1752092022-01-20T13:45:31Z2022-01-20T13:45:31ZOverruling Roe may not be conservatives’ best strategy – Brown v. Board of Education shows how Supreme Court can uphold precedent while gutting its meaning<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/441615/original/file-20220119-27-120irna.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=7%2C29%2C4985%2C3330&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Overturn Roe? They might not have to.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/abortion-rights-advocates-and-anti-abortion-protesters-news-photo/1236932147?adppopup=true">Oliver Douliery/AFP via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Tens of thousands of anti-abortion protesters <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/01/18/march-for-life-2022/">are expected to descend</a> on Washington on Jan. 21, 2022, for the <a href="https://marchforlife.org/about-the-march-for-life/">March for Life</a> rally – as they have done annually since 1974 to protest the Roe v. Wade ruling of the previous year.</p>
<p>Whether they have reason to march against abortion in 12 months’ time is uncertain, though. It will likely depend on how the Supreme Court decides the case <a href="https://www.oyez.org/cases/2021/19-1392">Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization</a>, which deals with a Mississippi law that bans most abortions in the state after the 15th week of pregnancy. </p>
<p>Speculation about the justices’ anticipated decision, expected by June, seems to be less about whether they will eviscerate the Roe decision – which recognized a <a href="https://theconversation.com/will-roe-v-wade-be-overturned-and-what-would-this-mean-the-us-abortion-debate-explained-173156">constitutional right to abortion</a> without excessive government interference – and <a href="https://theconversation.com/supreme-court-signals-shift-on-abortion-but-will-it-strike-down-roe-or-leave-it-to-states-to-decide-when-personhood-occurs-172934">more about how</a> they might do it. </p>
<p>Prior to justices taking up Dobbs, much of the commentary on how the Court would deal with abortion was that it would kill Roe quietly, bit by bit, in a series of piecemeal rulings. But after <a href="https://www.supremecourt.gov/oral_arguments/argument_transcripts/2021/19-1392_4425.pdf">oral argument</a> on Dec. 1, 2021, a <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/the-supreme-court-looks-ready-to-overturn-roe">swift and unambiguous overturning</a> is now thought possible.</p>
<p>In that December hearing, lawyers arguing the case and several justices <a href="https://www.supremecourt.gov/oral_arguments/argument_transcripts/2021/19-1392_4425.pdf#page=13">discussed the criteria for overturning</a> established precedent, which is a rule of law created by an earlier case. They referenced some of the “<a href="https://www.supremecourt.gov/oral_arguments/argument_transcripts/2021/19-1392_4425.pdf#page=36">great overrulings</a>” in the Court’s history, citing 1954’s <a href="https://www.oyez.org/cases/1940-1955/347us483">Brown v. Board of Education</a> – which ended legal racial segregation in public schools – as the <a href="https://www.supremecourt.gov/oral_arguments/argument_transcripts/2021/19-1392_4425.pdf#page=113">greatest of them all</a>.</p>
<p>As a <a href="https://isearch.asu.edu/profile/275962">legal scholar</a>, I know that the Brown decision was of huge consequence. But it wasn’t the simple overruling that many see it as today. The care taken by the justices in 1954 in making that landmark ruling might have lessons for the current justices’ forthcoming decision in Dobbs. </p>
<h2>‘Dramatic shift’</h2>
<p>The precedent that Brown supposedly overruled was <a href="https://www.oyez.org/cases/1850-1900/163us537">Plessy v. Ferguson</a>, the 1896 Supreme Court ruling that created the “separate but equal” doctrine enforced throughout the Jim Crow era.</p>
<p>Plessy held that the <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/amendmentxiv">Fourteenth Amendment’s requirement of equal protection</a> was satisfied by providing facilities of equal quality – in Plessy, it was railroad cars – even when citizens were segregated by race.</p>
<p>In <a href="https://www.oyez.org/cases/1940-1955/347us483">Brown</a>, the Supreme Court came down unanimously in favor of ending public school segregation. But many have assumed that in so doing the justices ruled that Plessy had been wrongly decided and decisively overturned it.</p>
<p>Chief Justice John Roberts asserted as much in his <a href="https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/GPO-CHRG-ROBERTS/pdf/GPO-CHRG-ROBERTS.pdf">own confirmation hearings</a> in 2005. When asked if the Court broke new ground in Brown, he replied: “Of course it was a dramatic shift. And the overruling of Plessy v. Ferguson was exactly that.”</p>
<p>But I believe the Brown decision was actually far more subtle. A careful reading shows that it did not overrule Plessy. Rather, it followed and applied Plessy rigorously.</p>
<p>The Court determined that separating children in public schools on the basis of race in and of itself harmed minority children psychologically. </p>
<p>A <a href="https://scholarship.law.cornell.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2979&context=clr">famous footnote</a> in Brown cited social science studies in support of that factual finding.</p>
<p>And that finding of harm was crucial. It meant that racial segregation of public school children could never be “separate-but-equal,” as <a href="https://www.ourdocuments.gov/print_friendly.php?flash=false&page=transcript&doc=87&title=Transcript+of+Brown+v.+Board+of+Education+%281954%29">required by Plessy</a>:</p>
<p>“We conclude that in the field of public education the doctrine of ‘separate but equal’ has no place. Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal. Therefore, we hold that the plaintiffs and others similarly situated … are, by reason of the segregation complained of, deprived of the equal protection of the laws guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment.”</p>
<p>The Court ruled that the moment the government places those children into separate schools, no matter how equal the physical facilities and educational services, the minority children are being excluded, made to feel inferior, and thereby harmed. In short, it failed Plessy’s test.</p>
<p>The Brown ruling did not overturn Plessy. It did not even carve out an exception to Plessy. </p>
<p>Instead, it followed Plessy and its logic to arrive at the conclusion that segregated public schools flunked the separate-but-equal test. Nothing more. The day after Brown was announced, Plessy was still standing.</p>
<h2>Destroying precedent … by following it</h2>
<p>The justices in Brown were doubtless aware of the virulent racism that existed in parts of the U.S. and the controversy around segregation. They were aware that some Americans would <a href="https://www.naacpldf.org/ldf-celebrates-60th-anniversary-brown-v-board-education/southern-manifesto-massive-resistance-brown/">violently resist legally mandated desegregation</a>. </p>
<p>If they were going to begin the process of desegregating America, they knew they had to do it with a minimum of swagger and a maximum of respect for precedent.</p>
<p>But the lesson of Brown is not, or not only, to try to minimize violent reaction. More important for the Court and the law, it is that judges who set out to change the future might be more effective if they can avoid ripping up the past.</p>
<p>Narrow though the Brown ruling was, it provided what Constitutional law expert Justin Driver <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/19/books/review/justin-driver-schoolhouse-gate.html">described as</a> “a powerful rhetorical and moral weapon that helped to catalyze the nation toward the goal of racial equality.” Brown was cited in subsequent years to help advance the proposition that segregation of other kinds was also unconstitutional – even though Brown itself said no such thing – and its impact expanded and spread.</p>
<p>Brown eventually destroyed Plessy – not by overruling it, but by following it.</p>
<p>Could today’s justices be as ingenious as their predecessors in Brown, and find a subtle and deferential way to bring about the sweeping legal change they might have in mind, while still respecting well-established precedent? We soon shall see. </p>
<p>[<em>Understand key political developments, each week.</em> <a href="https://memberservices.theconversation.com/newsletters/?nl=politics&source=inline-politics-understand">Subscribe to The Conversation’s politics newsletter</a>.]</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/175209/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Michael J. Saks has donated to the American Civil Liberties Union and to candidates for various public offices. </span></em></p>Brown v. Board didn’t overrule ‘separate-but-equal’ but it had that end. A law scholar explains how there is a lesson there for conservatives on today’s Court looking to end abortion in the US.Michael J. Saks, Regents Professor, Arizona State UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1709182021-11-12T13:35:43Z2021-11-12T13:35:43ZHow 2 Jewish soldiers’ court-martials put a spotlight on antisemitism and racism<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/431078/original/file-20211109-19-10pi3t6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=47%2C10%2C3429%2C2190&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">French officer Alfred Dreyfus spent five years as a prisoner on Devil's Island, off the coast of South America.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/affair-dreyfus-about-1900-news-photo/55750427?adppopup=true">Roger Viollet Collection via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>In October 2021, a <a href="https://www.maisonzola-museedreyfus.com/">new museum</a> opened in Paris, dedicated to the famous “Dreyfus affair.”</p>
<p><a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Alfred-Dreyfus">Alfred Dreyfus</a> was a Jewish captain in the French army who was court-martialed and convicted of treason on flimsy evidence in 1894 – then exonerated in 1906, after years of high-profile court proceedings and public debate that divided the country. </p>
<p>His sensational case put deep-seated <a href="https://theconversation.com/with-anti-semitism-on-the-rise-again-there-are-steps-everyone-can-take-to-counter-it-122116">antisemitism</a> in the spotlight and <a href="https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/dreyfus-affair-9781608195084/">influenced French politics</a> for years to come. <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2009/09/28/trial-of-the-century">Even today</a>, it is a global symbol of discrimination and injustice.</p>
<p>Another high-profile example of a Jewish soldier being court-martialed happened here in the United States. Though less famous than the Dreyfus affair, the case of Al Levy also centered around discrimination, against both Jewish and African American members of the military – and helped bring lasting change.</p>
<h2>‘L'affaire’</h2>
<p>The Dreyfus scandal began with Alfred Dreyfus being accused of selling military secrets to the German government and sentenced to life in prison.</p>
<p>From the start, antisemitism surrounded the trial. Dreyfus’ loyalty to the French government was challenged in the media, with suggestions that he was part of an international Jewish conspiracy. Many newspapers ran <a href="https://collections.ushmm.org/search/catalog/irn544966">cartoons filled with antisemitic stereotypes</a>.</p>
<p>He was held for five years in a brutal penal colony called <a href="https://www.britannica.com/place/Devils-Island">Devil’s Island</a>, off the coast of South America. During that time, support for Dreyfus grew, as it became clear how thin the evidence against him was, and pressure mounted for his release.</p>
<p>The most famous person that brought attention to Dreyfus’ plight was a leading French thinker and writer, <a href="https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/life-and-times-of-emile-zola-9781448205202/">Emile Zola</a>. Zola published <a href="https://jean-max-guieu.facultysite.georgetown.edu/other-interests/english-translation-of-emile-zolas-jaccuse">an open letter</a> that accused the government and the military of systematic antisemitism. As Zola hoped, <a href="https://histoire-image.org/fr/etudes/j-accuse-zola">the letter</a> resulted in libel charges against him, bringing widespread attention to the case.</p>
<p>British writer <a href="https://www.faber.co.uk/product/9780571312016-the-disappearance-of-emile-zola/">Michael Rosen argues</a> Zola’s intervention made it legitimate to speak out against antisemitism for the first time in France, and brought public attention to how nationalism and antisemitism limited the legal system’s ability to deliver justice. The case became a critical moment that divided France, forcing the country to confront <a href="https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110855616.541">deeply ingrained antisemitism</a> and uphold impartial justice. </p>
<p>Dreyfus was convicted a second time after a retrial in 1899, but granted a pardon by the president and released from prison. He was not fully exonerated until 1906. Some of the documents used to convict him were later <a href="http://www.dreyfus.culture.fr/en/the-long-road-to-justice/from-the-first-review-to-the-amnesty/new-evidence-and-the-work-of-the-lawyers.htm">found to be forgeries</a>.</p>
<h2>An American court-martial</h2>
<p>As a scholar, I explore points of commonality and conflict between Jewish and African American communities and uncover unknown stories of marginalized groups. <a href="https://www.unomaha.edu/college-of-arts-and-sciences/schwalb-center/about-us/jeannette-gabriel.php">My research</a> examines how previous generations have challenged antisemitism and racism, and what we can learn to confront the same issues today.</p>
<p>My <a href="https://docs.lib.purdue.edu/sjc/12/">recent work</a> examines the court-martial of Al Levy, a Jewish American soldier who was stationed at the <a href="https://mynehistory.com/items/show/332">Lincoln, Nebraska airfield</a> during World War II. Levy was popular with his fellow soldiers for writing funny and romantic songs about life in the Army. In early 1943, he became upset over the way African American soldiers on the base were being mistreated and raised concerns with his fellow soldiers and commanding officers, as well as friends in New York City. </p>
<p>The U.S. military <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=9e0iEAAAQBAJ&pg=PT182&lpg=PT182&dq=jeannette+gabriel+alton+levy&source=bl&ots=pA-dxOWAbZ&sig=ACfU3U0CGVLtrVpEPAcSSRaTkv-jnbtLhA&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiXxt3LpYv0AhWzpXIEHeP1BDIQ6AF6BAgNEAM#v=onepage&q=jeannette%20gabriel%20alton%20levy&f=false">court-martialed him</a> in the summer of 1943. The military claimed that he was not being punished for his critiques of the military’s discriminatory policies towards African American soldiers, but for making negative statements about his commanding officer and engaging in conduct <a href="https://www.nli.org.il/he/newspapers/cgs/1943/09/30/01/article/137/?srpos=10&e=-------he-20--1--img-txIN%7ctxTI-Alton+Levy-------------1">unbecoming an officer</a>. He was assigned to hard labor, stripped of his rank and had his pay decreased. During his trial, the military prosecutors highlighted his Jewish identity and labor activism, and questioned his loyalty to the American government.</p>
<p>Several newspapers brought attention to Levy’s case, including a popular New York daily, “PM.” His supporters argued that he had been targeted because he was <a href="http://www.idaillinois.org/digital/collection/p16614coll14/id/68425/">Jewish, and demanded equal treatment within the military</a>.</p>
<p>His father sent a personal appeal to President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1944 asking him to review his son’s case. Morris Levy pointed out his son was suffering because he defended American citizens who were being mistreated and asked whether the U.S. military was different than the Nazis in Germany.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A Black man points to a sign about the G.I. Bill of Rights while speaking to a group of African American men." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/431232/original/file-20211110-25-lvbr9p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/431232/original/file-20211110-25-lvbr9p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=462&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/431232/original/file-20211110-25-lvbr9p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=462&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/431232/original/file-20211110-25-lvbr9p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=462&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/431232/original/file-20211110-25-lvbr9p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=581&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/431232/original/file-20211110-25-lvbr9p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=581&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/431232/original/file-20211110-25-lvbr9p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=581&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">During World War II, African American members of the military faced routine discrimination and segregation.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/staff-sergeant-herbert-ellison-explanes-the-g-i-bill-of-news-photo/640507521?adppopup=true">Library of Congress/Corbin Historian via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>A segregated military</h2>
<p>During World War II all of the U.S. military was segregated, even if bases were located outside of the <a href="https://onlinellm.usc.edu/a-brief-history-of-jim-crow-laws/">Jim Crow</a> South. African American soldiers at the Lincoln Airfield and other military bases faced routine discrimination and poor treatment.</p>
<p>As a result of the Levy court-martial, the Lincoln branch of the NAACP, the oldest civil rights organization in the U.S., conducted <a href="https://catalog.loc.gov/vwebv/search?searchCode=LCCN&searchArg=mm%2078034140&searchType=1&permalink=y">an investigation</a> of African American soldiers at the airfield. Their report documented inferior housing and recreation opportunities and pay inequality. The African American soldiers reported that they had been taken to help with the local harvest and, unlike white peers, were not paid. They were expected to “act as a worker slave for the white man.”</p>
<p><a href="https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/data/batches/nbu_fourtusker_ver01/data/sn93062828/00332899478/1943101601/0436.pdf">Levy’s supporters</a> critiqued the military’s response <a href="http://www.idaillinois.org/digital/collection/p16614coll14/id/68425/">as antisemitic</a> and demanded not just that he be released and his status restored, but also an end to segregation within the military. His case received national attention from African American and Jewish civil rights groups and labor unions. Thousands of protest letters and petitions were written and public meetings held to <a href="https://www.nli.org.il/he/newspapers/cgs/1943/10/28/01/article/86/?e=-------he-20--1--img-txIN%7ctxTI--------------1">demand Levy’s release</a> and exoneration.</p>
<p>The NAACP told Roosevelt that Levy’s court martial was negatively affecting African American morale within both the military and civilian population. The Congress of Industrial Organizations, <a href="https://www.nber.org/system/files/chapters/c1707/c1707.pdf">which represented 3.3 million workers</a>, brought up the Levy case at their national convention. They linked the military’s mistreatment of him directly to broader concerns over African American discrimination.</p>
<p>The government responded to this widespread public pressure campaign by <a href="https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1943/11/14/85133828.html?pageNumber=29">quietly releasing Levy</a> for good behavior and restoring his rank by the end of the war.</p>
<p>[<em>Get the best of The Conversation, every weekend.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters/weekly-highlights-61?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=weeklybest">Sign up for our weekly newsletter</a>.]cc</p>
<h2>Civil rights victory</h2>
<p>After the war, President Harry Truman responded to growing calls for civil rights by issuing <a href="https://www.archives.gov/historical-docs/todays-doc/index.html?dod-date=726">Executive Order 9981</a> in 1948, which set up a committee on Equality of Treatment and Opportunity in the Armed Services.</p>
<p>African American, Jewish and labor organizations were frustrated with the limited work of the committee, however, and set up <a href="https://archives.nypl.org/scm/20578">their own public hearings</a>. Veterans, including Levy, testified at these highly publicized meetings in cities across the country. This public activism contributed to the elimination of military segregation by the end of the <a href="https://koreanwarlegacy.org/chapters/african-americans-in-the-korean-war/">Korean War</a> in 1953.</p>
<p>Like Zola, Levy took personal risks to bring widespread public attention to antisemitism and racism – a reminder that individual acts of solidarity by people who are not directly affected by systemic racism themselves can have a powerful impact.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/170918/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jeannette Gabriel is a PI on the Omaha Spatial Justice Project, a UNO Strategic Investment on Social Justice, Inequality, Race and Class.</span></em></p>Alton Levy may not be a household name today, but his court-martial put a spotlight on unequal treatment in the military.Jeannette Gabriel, Director, Schwalb Center for Israel and Jewish Studies, University of Nebraska OmahaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1713382021-11-08T13:42:51Z2021-11-08T13:42:51ZBridges, bike lanes, electric car chargers and more: 5 essential reads on the infrastructure bill<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/430548/original/file-20211105-10492-rlxvll.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=23%2C9%2C3103%2C2180&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Aging U.S. infrastructure: Rust on the underside of the Norwalk River Railroad Bridge, built in 1896 in Norwalk, Conn., and scheduled for replacement starting in 2022. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/BridgeBattle/6ebcd88217bc4ea2b11d8e3d5e261fcf/photo">AP Photo/Susan Haigh</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>After months of debate and negotiation, Congress has passed a sweeping measure to <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2021/08/10/senate-infrastructure-bill-what-is-in-it/">upgrade many parts of the nation’s infrastructure</a>. The bill provides US$1.2 trillion in funding, including $550 billion in new federal spending; the rest renews and updates existing transportation programs, such as highway construction.</p>
<p>While the bill is smaller than President Joe Biden’s <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/07/28/upshot/infrastructure-breakdown.html">original $2.6 trillion request</a>, it still represents the largest federal investment in U.S. infrastructure in over a decade. A <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2021/11/06/fact-sheet-the-bipartisan-infrastructure-deal/">statement from the White House</a> asserts that the legislation will “drive the creation of good-paying union jobs and grow the economy sustainably and equitably.”</p>
<p>These five articles from our archives analyze some infrastructure needs that will receive new funding.</p>
<h2>1. Fixing crumbling bridges</h2>
<p>The infrastructure bill provides $110 billion to fix thousands of aging roads and bridges across the U.S. That money will be <a href="https://theconversation.com/rural-alaska-has-a-bridge-problem-as-permafrost-thaws-and-crossing-river-ice-gets-riskier-with-climate-change-169345">especially welcome in Alaska</a>, where climate change is thawing permafrost – accelerating corrosion of steel bridges – and melting river ice that many people used to cross by snowmobile. Fewer than half of the state’s bridges are deemed to be in good condition.</p>
<p>“When the ice is unstable or unpredictable, people who rely on crossing the river are stuck and the risk of snowmobile fatalities rises,” a team of <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=DB5ejLoAAAAJ&hl=en">engineers</a> <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=b9CMpQYAAAAJ&hl=en">and</a> <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=5HRNTzAAAAAJ&hl=en">social</a> <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=zFnNpNoAAAAJ&hl=en">scientists</a> from Penn State University and the <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=2JXMRX4AAAAJ&hl=en">University of Alaska Fairbanks</a> report. “Federal infrastructure investment could help direct funds to rural bridges that might otherwise continue to deteriorate.”</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/infrastructure-bill-passed-by-congress-promises-billions-for-bridge-repair-rural-alaska-shows-the-growing-need-as-temperatures-rise-169345">Infrastructure bill passed by Congress promises billions for bridge repair – rural Alaska shows the growing need as temperatures rise</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>2. Building a 21st-century power grid</h2>
<p>Energy experts widely agree that the U.S. needs to upgrade its electric grid so that it can deliver power more reliably over long distances and integrate more renewable electricity into the nation’s energy mix. The infrastructure bill contains $65 billion to update and expand the grid. </p>
<p>Connecting the fragmented U.S. power system into what’s known as a macrogrid – a network that can move electricity seamlessly from one end of the U.S. to the other – <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-us-needs-a-macrogrid-to-move-electricity-from-areas-that-make-it-to-areas-that-need-it-155938">could actually save money</a>, according to Iowa State University electrical and computer engineering professor <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=OL1VzgEAAAAJ&hl=en">James McCalley</a>. That’s true even though it would mean adding hundreds of megawatts of new generating capacity and new transmission lines to connect those power plants to customers. </p>
<p>“By making it possible to share power across regions and deliver high-quality renewable power from remote areas to load centers, the macrogrid would more than pay for itself,” McCalley writes. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-us-needs-a-macrogrid-to-move-electricity-from-areas-that-make-it-to-areas-that-need-it-155938">The US needs a macrogrid to move electricity from areas that make it to areas that need it</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/4KJE3POgWSc?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">The U.S. electric grid is an engineering marvel, but it’s also outdated.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>3. Making streets safer for walkers and bikers</h2>
<p>The infrastructure bill provides $11 billion for measures designed to make highways and streets safer. That includes investments to improve features that protect pedestrians and cyclists, like updated sidewalks, bike lanes and street crossings. </p>
<p><a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=oMPNYhQAAAAJ&hl=en">John Rennie Short</a>, an urban policy expert at the University of Maryland Baltimore County, <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-us-cities-are-becoming-more-dangerous-for-cyclists-and-pedestrians-111713">says these measures are overdue</a>. “In the 21st century, a new city ideal has emerged of a more bike-friendly, walking-oriented city. But piecemeal implementation of bike lanes, pedestrianized zones and traffic calming measures often just adds to the confusion,” he writes. “More people are being killed because cities are encouraging residents to walk and bike, but their roads are still dominated by fast-moving vehicular traffic.”</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/why-us-cities-are-becoming-more-dangerous-for-cyclists-and-pedestrians-111713">Why US cities are becoming more dangerous for cyclists and pedestrians</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>4. More EV charging stations</h2>
<p>Experts widely agree that slowing climate change requires a massive global shift from fossil fuels to low- and zero-carbon energy sources. That transition is underway in the auto industry, where carmakers are pouring billions of dollars into new electric vehicle designs.</p>
<p>But the EV revolution faces a critical speed bump: <a href="https://theconversation.com/climate-change-is-an-infrastructure-problem-map-of-electric-vehicle-chargers-shows-one-reason-why-166024">not enough public charging stations</a>. The infrastructure bill includes $7.5 billion to expand the existing U.S. network, which today exists mainly in coastal states.</p>
<p>Stanford University historian <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=IPQkThQAAAAJ&hl=en">Paul N. Edwards</a> calls this funding “a small but genuine down payment on a more climate-friendly transport sector and electric power grid, all of which will take years to build out.” While the upfront cost may seem high, Edwards notes that “over the long term, the potential savings from avoided climate risks like droughts, floods, wildfires, deadly heat waves and sea level rise would be far, far larger.”</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/climate-change-is-an-infrastructure-problem-map-of-electric-vehicle-chargers-shows-one-reason-why-166024">Climate change is an infrastructure problem – map of electric vehicle chargers shows one reason why</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1415702709051736067"}"></div></p>
<h2>5. Reconnecting divided neighborhoods</h2>
<p>Most funds in the infrastructure bill are for building new facilities or upgrading those that already exist. But the legislation also provides $1 billion for <a href="https://theconversation.com/removing-urban-highways-can-improve-neighborhoods-blighted-by-decades-of-racist-policies-166220">tearing down highways</a> that have cut off Black residents and other people of color from the cities around them, reducing their access to transportation, jobs and economic opportunity. </p>
<p>[<em>Over 115,000 readers rely on The Conversation’s newsletter to understand the world.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters/the-daily-newsletter-3?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=100Ksignup">Sign up today</a>.]</p>
<p>“As we see it, this funding represents a down payment on restorative justice: remedying deliberate discriminatory policies that created polluted and transit-poor neighborhoods like West Bellfort in Houston, Westside in San Antonio and West Oakland, California,” write urban policy scholars <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=_bXYlvoAAAAJ&hl=en">Joan Fitzgerald</a> at Northeastern University and <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=gibRYHMAAAAJ&hl=en">Julian Agyeman</a> at Tufts University.</p>
<p>As Fitzgerald and Agyeman see it, removing barrier highways alone won’t be enough to transform disadvantaged neighborhoods. But dismantling what they call “racist infrastructure” could catalyze other investments in housing, transportation and green spaces that would make these communities healthier and more prosperous.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/removing-urban-highways-can-improve-neighborhoods-blighted-by-decades-of-racist-policies-166220">Removing urban highways can improve neighborhoods blighted by decades of racist policies</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p><em>Editor’s note: This story is a roundup of articles from The Conversation’s archives.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/171338/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
What will the US$1.2 trillion infrastructure bill pay for? Here are some of the things it will help build, fix or remove.Jennifer Weeks, Senior Environment + Cities Editor, The ConversationLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.