50 Years After Brown
From the vantage point of 2004 it is obvious: Why educate children separately based on the color of their skin? And yet when the Supreme Court handed down its decision on May 17, 1954, what it had to say was shocking. In Brown v. the Board of Education of Topeka, the justices ruled that the principle of "separate but equal" schools would not stand. Suddenly, it seemed, the nation was facing an issue that had not been settled even by the Civil War. Was every American equal before the law?
The backlash was just as dramatic: White kids were pulled out of schools by parents who opposed (or just plain feared) integration; blacks were threatened and attacked. As so often happens, the classroom had become the proving ground for social change. Fifty years later, that change is unfinished. On the pages that follow, we look at the history of Brown, why schools still don't work for so many children--and why there's hope.
This story appears in the March 22, 2004 print edition of U.S. News & World Report.
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