Brown versus Board of Education Essay -- Race Segregation

Imagine that your walk to school lasts longer that sixty minutes even though a school is five minutes away. When you finally get there, you enter a shack with makeshift tables and a dirt floor. You do not get paper or writing utensils and you surely do not get good books. Your teacher, who did not even finish her education, hands you a book that another school determined outdated and tossed away. But on one glorious day, May 17, 1954, a promise of change is made. The Supreme Court gave you the right to attend that school at the end of your block, a previously designated white school (Rodgers 1). The next day you and your parents wear nice clothes and walk down the street to the school to enroll for the following school year. You get there and stand proud of yourself and of your new school as you move towards the Dean’s office. You are confronted with terrifying looks of disgust from your white counterparts as they deny you admission based on the color of your skin. Un fortunately, for many African Americans, this was a reality in the years following the Brown versus Board of Education decision (Stephan 19). Although we have made considerable progress since then, our job is far from finished. When examining statistics on testing scores, the quality of schools with African Americans making the majority, on housing segregation and white flight, it quickly becomes apparent that whites and blacks have different numbers. This is due primarily to the ongoing perspective that black people are inferior to them dating back to the pre-emancipation period. Even at the fiftieth anniversary of the infamous Brown versus Board of Education decision, discrepancies between the races remain prevalent. Oliver L. Brown painstakingly wat... ...earch/reseg04/brown50.pdf>. Orfield, Gary, Daniel Iosen, Johanna Wald, and Christopher B. Swanson. â€Å"Losing our Future: How Minority Youths are being Left Behind by the Graduation Rate Crisis.† The Civil Rights Project. 25 Feb. 2004 . Rogers, Frederick A. The Black High School and Its Community. Massachusetts: Lexington Books, 1975. Stephan, Walter G., and Joe R. Feagin, eds. School Desegregation: Past, Present, and Future. New York: Plenum Press, 1980. Toppo, Greg. â€Å"Integrated Schools Still a Dream 50 Years Later.† USA Today 28 Apr. 2004. United States. Bureau of the Census. Historical Income Tables. Washington: GPO, 2001. Yamasaki, Mitch. â€Å"Using Rock ‘N’ Roll to Teach the History of Post-World War II America.† The History Teacher 29.2 (1996): 179-193.