Stories by Sherry Posnick-Goodwin
Photos by Scott Buschman
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Divided by a cardboard fence, students in Ginger Curry's class at Harrison Elementary in Pomona experience a form of segregation for themselves.
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Some consider the landmark Brown v. Board of Education decision the single most important event ever to impact public education. Ultimately, it may also be remembered for what it did not accomplish - providing an equal education for all children.
"The decision meant opportunity for people who were denied opportunity," says Gloria Sanders, chair of CTA's
Brown v. Board of Education
Commemoration Committee and president of Associated Chaffey Teachers. "It meant that people finally had the opportunity to receive a better education. However, things are not where they should be. Things have improved somewhat, but there's still a lot of room for improvement."
May 17 will mark the 50th anniversary of the Supreme Court's decision to integrate public schools. In the Brown decision, a unanimous Supreme Court declared, "In the field of public education, the doctrine of 'separate but equal' has no place."
The 1954 ruling overturned an 1896 decision - Plessy v. Ferguson - that allowed separate but equal facilities for people of different races.
The case was filed in the name of Linda Brown, a young African American girl from Topeka, Kan., who rode a bus five miles to school each day while white children were allowed to attend a school just a few blocks away. Her parents sued in federal court on the basis that separate schools for black children were inherently unequal - and that segregation itself had a harmful effect on the education of minority children.
The subsequent ruling marked an end to legally mandated segregation of public places. It was followed in 1955 by Brown II, in which the Supreme Court ordered that states use "all deliberate speed" in carrying out desegregation.
While many greeted the Brown decision with joy and optimism, others reacted with fear, anger, resentment and resistance. In some states, federal marshals had to escort African American students through unruly mobs into newly integrated schools. Some officials chose to close schools rather than integrate them. Milwaukee and Texas subverted the law with "intact busing" - large numbers of black children were bused to white schools and kept intact as a group in classrooms, lunchrooms and on the playground.
President Dwight Eisenhower sent federal troops to protect nine black students enrolling in Little Rock's Central High School. In Alabama, Gov. George Wallace blocked a school entrance and declared, "Segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever."
The impact of the court's decision extended well beyond the schoolyard, notes Cliff Kusaba, a world history teacher at Long Beach Polytechnic High School. "It was significant for what it did, as well as for other things that followed, such as lunch counter sit-ins, freedom rides and protest marches. It was the impetus for the Civil Rights Act of 1964, Lyndon Johnson's Great Society and even the merger of the NEA and the black American Teachers Association."
"It was groundbreaking," says Jim Himelhoch, a San Dimas High School government teacher. "It was not an easy thing for the Supreme Court to make happen. Justice Earl Warren didn't want it settled 5-4 - he wanted all or nothing, and he got all nine justices to agree. No one expected this from him. He was a Republican."
"I think if the Brown decision had not happened, things would not be much different visually in our schools today," says Kusaba, a member of the Teachers Association of Long Beach who serves on the commemoration committee. "Schools would still be segregated in inner cities with ethnic minorities, and suburban schools would have mostly more affluent white children."
"It seems to me that for a minute, we as a nation made progress," says Lisa Buckner, a fifth-grade teacher at Noble Elementary School in Bakersfield and a member of the commemoration committee. "But 50 years later, it almost seems like we've made no progress and are back at the beginning. We're still separate - and we still don't have equal.
"As great as the Brown v. Board decision was at the time, it still hasn't worked. We're not living up to it. There is still a huge gap. I think it's time that we, as a nation, start having a discussion - an honest discussion - and move forward from there."
