Editor鈥檚 note: For additional perspectives on the 70th anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education, Education Week Opinion Contributor Bettina L. Love invited R. L鈥橦eureux Lewis-McCoy to contribute an essay for a brief series on the U.S. Supreme Court decision.
Ten years after the Brown v. Board of Education decision, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., while speaking at The New School in New York City, : 鈥淭he Negro had been deeply disappointed over the slow pace of school desegregation. 鈥� At the beginning of 1963, nine years after this historic decision, approximately 9 percent of Southern Negro students were attending integrated schools. If this pace were maintained, it would be the year 2054 before integration in Southern schools would be a reality.鈥�
While King鈥檚 insightful analysis primarily centers on the South, it would be incomplete not to mention that several Northern cities, including , , and viciously resisted school integration, oftentimes .
White America鈥檚 outright rejection of school integration from the onset is far from over, even as this year marks the 70-year anniversary of Brown. The case was intended to overturn the Plessy v. Ferguson doctrine known as 鈥渟eparate but equal,鈥� but what children of color have endured since the 1954 ruling is a resistance so powerful, so pervasive, and full of that it has created a public school system that is separate and unequal by design to not only appease white dissent but to ensure a racial caste. Seventy years after Brown, are .
Atlanta, the city that birthed and raised Rev. King, is also the city I have called home for over 20 years. Although it is known for its racial progress, Atlanta鈥檚 racial disparities are so repugnant that injustice is the norm. Public officials would like Atlantans to believe that these injustices are a special condition of circumstance, not structure.
According to the , Atlanta鈥檚 population was nearly 50 percent Black and 40 percent white; however, . In its 2022 working paper, the reported that the racial wealth gap in the United States in 2020 was 鈥渆ffectively the same value鈥� as it was in the 1950s.
In 2022, 7 of the 10 public high schools in Atlanta in attendance, according to Kamau Bobb, who served as an alternate on the city鈥檚 superintendent-search panel. In one of the that are integrated, white students are overrepresented in the International Baccalaureate program, essentially carving out private schools within public schools with public dollars. This level of segregation is cynically unsurprising in a city with a wealth gap akin to the days of the civil rights movement.
Moreover, nationwide from the fall of 2022 shows that 75 percent of white students in America went to majority-white public schools.
School integration is no longer moving at a slow pace, it is in reverse motion 鈥渨ith all deliberate speed鈥� because Brown continues to be gutted legislatively, locally, and at the school level. Immediately after the Brown ruling, were opened in the South and . In 1973, the U.S. Supreme Court decided in that funding schools based on local property taxes rather than equally distributing funding among all school districts did not violate the Fourteenth Amendment鈥檚 equal protection clause, effectively allowing unequal school funding to continue.
According to a 2019 report from for the 2015-16 school year, a $23 billion funding gap exists between white school districts and districts that serve Black and brown students even as 鈥渢hey serve the same number of children.鈥�
The 1974 U.S. Supreme Court decision in , in a major setback to Brown, rejected a desegregation plan that encompassed the Detroit school district and the neighboring suburban school districts, which were all-white. The Court exempted the suburban districts from the desegregation plan, holding that the district lines had not been drawn with a racist intent and therefore were not responsible for Detroit鈥檚 segregated schools. In his dissenting opinion, , joined by three other justices, wrote: 鈥淯nder such a plan, white and Negro students will not go to school together. Instead, Negro children will continue to attend all-Negro schools. The very evil that Brown 1 was aimed at will not be cured but will be perpetuated for the future.鈥�
Today, the last vestiges of Brown鈥檚 legacy are fading quickly. According to recent , intensely segregated public schools (with a zero percent to 10 percent white student population) nearly tripled over the last 30 years nationwide, rising from 7.4 percent to 20 percent.
We must take a critical look at the fundamental issue: If this nation is going to outright refuse integration through every possible personal, political, and legislative measure, then Black people must demand this country revisit the separate but equal doctrine. Centuries have taught us that we cannot force this country to live up to the promise of integration.
As we mark the 70-year anniversary of a decision this country has clearly shown it never intended to uphold beyond the window dressing of the rhetoric of integration, let us turn to the reality and not idealism. Our schools are separate, and most white Americans appear unwilling to integrate them based on the evidence. So, if separate is the reality for millions of Black and brown students for the foreseeable future, the demand needs to be for reparations.
