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Articles on Brown v. Board of Education

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School boycott picketers march across the Brooklyn Bridge to the Board of Education in 1964. Bettmann Archive/Getty Images

Fighting school segregation didn’t take place just in the South

In the 1950s, Harlem mother Mae Mallory fought a school system that she saw as ‘just as Jim Crow’ as the one she had attended in the South.
Justice Neil Gorsuch, a Trump appointee, surprised many court watchers by authoring the decision to expand the Civil Rights Act. Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

When Supreme Court justices defy expectations

Justice Neil Gorsuch joined the Supreme Court as a conservative. But his ruling in a major civil rights case is part of a pattern of justices setting aside ideology to address historic injustices.
School segregation was the law of the land in the U.S. during much of the 19th and 20th centuries. Everett Historical/Shutterstock.com

Who was the first Black child to go to an integrated school?

School integration is often thought of as something that took place in the 1960s. But the first Black student to desegregate a school by court order was an Iowa girl named Susan Clark in 1868.
A 1974 Supreme Court decision found that school segregation was allowable if it wasn’t being done on purpose. AP

The Supreme Court decision that kept suburban schools segregated

When the Supreme Court exempted suburbs in the North from the kind of desegregation orders imposed in the South, it enabled the ‘de facto’ segregation that continues in America’s schools to this day.
Thurgood Marshall outside the Supreme Court in Washington in 1958. Marshall, the head of the NAACP’s legal arm who argued part of the case, went on to become the Supreme Court’s first African-American justice. AP

The Brown v. Board of Education case didn’t start how you think it did

While the Brown vs. Board of Education case is often celebrated for ordering school desegregation, history shows many black people in the city where the case began opposed integrated schools.
Jessie Dean Gipson Simmons, shown top center about age 37, c. 1961. [Clockwise: daughter Angela, sons Obadiah Jerone, Jr. and Carl, and husband Obadiah Jerone, Sr.; daughters Carolyn and Quendelyn are not pictured] Simmons family archives

Jessie Simmons: How a schoolteacher became an unsung hero of the civil rights movement

When Jessie Simmons applied for a teaching job in 1958, her application went to a separate file for “Negro teachers” and got rejected. An education scholar recounts how Simmons fought back and won.
Supporters and opponents of marriage equality demonstrating in front of the Supreme Court. Reuters/Joshua Roberts

Are you suddenly interested in the Supreme Court? You’re not alone

Americans have rediscovered the Supreme Court, as they do periodically when it’s at the center of controversy. With a president who attacks the legitimacy of courts, will their attention be benign?
Despite decades of attempts at integration, America’s school remain largely segregated. Monkey Business Images/Shutterstock

Why America needs a new approach to school desegregation

Better funding, integrated neighborhoods and a diverse teacher workforce are among the things needed to dismantle a long-standing racially segregated school system, a scholar argues.
Are single-sex schools better? Franklin Park Library

Single-sex schools: Could they harm your child?

Separating girls and boys takes away opportunities to learn from one another. It also encourages stereotyping and sexism.
People queue up outside the US Supreme Court in Washington, DC to hear the case of Fisher v University of Texas, Austin. Jose Luis Magaua/Reuters

How much diversity can the US Constitution stand?

As the affirmative action case comes up before the US Supreme Court again, the question being asked is how much diversity is enough?
Systems of oppression have much in common. Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade

Racial and caste oppression have many similarities

Racial inequality in America has its parallel in caste inequality in India. What can the world’s two largest democracies learn from each other?

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