This week is a time to reflect on the legacy of one of the most influential U.S. Supreme Court cases, Brown v. Board of Education (1954). Also, yesterday (May 19) would have been Malcolm X’s 99th birthday—so an excellent time to reconsider his radical legacy. As always, we invite you to share this post with students, colleagues, and anyone else who is interested in the legacies of slavery. A link here does not imply agreement or endorsement by the Council of Independent Colleges.
- Marianna McMurdock, “Report: State by State, How Segregation Legally Continues 7 Decades Post Brown,” The 74 Million (May 13, 2024): LINK. “In the first of its kind state-by-state breakdown … researchers unveil troubling laws, loopholes and trends that undermine the legacy of Brown v. Board, in which the Supreme Court rules ‘separate educational facilities are inherently unequal’ and violate the Fourteenth Amendment.”
- Sarah Kuta, “This Map Lets You See How School Segregation Has Changed in Your Hometown,” Smithsonian Magazine (May 17, 2024): LINK. The “Segregation Explorer” breaks down demographic trends by state, county, metro area and school district. The researchers behind the tool suggest that different measures could be used by school districts to combat re-segregation, such as voluntary integration programs and socioeconomic-based student assignment policies.
- Diana D’Amico Pawlewicz, et al., “How Black teachers lost when civil rights won in Brown v. Board,” The Conversation (May 16, 2024): LINK. “The nation faces a massive teacher shortage, but there is no shortage of potential teachers of color. Seven decades after Brown, it is a lack of willingness to hire and retain them that is missing.”
- Abigail Henry, “What we leave out when we teach about Brown v. Board,” Chalkbeat (May 15, 2024): LINK. A Philadelphia educator argues that “to teach [the Brown decision] fully, it needs to be done [through the lens of] Black historical contention—the concept that not all Black people have the same ideas and approaches to Black liberation. … Learning about Black nationalism provides students the opportunity to engage with alternative strategies aimed at achieving Black freedom and self-determination [such as the Freedom Schools of the 1960s].”
- Luke Sprinkel, “Proposed law would require state to study reparations, issue formal apology for slavery,” Alpha News (May 10, 2024): LINK. In Minnesota, a proposed bill “[would] establish an advisory council that would examine a possible reparations program … [even though] a prohibition on slavery has existed in the State of Minnesota since the state was formally established and admitted to the Union in 1858.”
- “A Community Called Orange Mound,” PBS (May 15, 2024): LINK. “[T]he story of a southeast Memphis neighborhood with a surprising legacy. With roots going back to the time of plantations and slavery, Orange Mound grew at the end of the nineteenth century out of the remains of that defunct way of life. It was one of the first communities in the United States to be built entirely by and for African Americans.”
- Maria C. Hunt, “‘A history that’s been suppressed’: the Black cowboy story is 200 years old,” The Guardian (May 19, 2024): LINK. “Historians estimate that 20% to 25% of the people who settled the continental US west—a region from Washington state to Montana and New Mexico to California—were Black men and women. They moved cattle on horseback, settled towns, kept the peace and delivered the mail in the wild, wild west. … For nearly 200 years, two separate cowboy narratives, one Black and one white, have trotted side by side in the US. The two have rarely crossed paths.”
- Tyrone Beason, “California’s first Black land trust fights climate change, makes the outdoors more inclusive,” Los Angeles Times (May 19, 2024): LINK. African Americans were historically excluded from many national parks and other outdoor recreation areas. Looking to repair this damage, the 40 Acre Conservation League, California’s first Black-led land conservancy, has secured $3 million in funding to purchase 650 acres of a former logging area north of Lake Tahoe for recreation and preservation.
- Aliya Uteuova, “Can Chicago’s mayor tackle environmental racism in one of the most segregated US cities?,” The Guardian (May 19, 2024): LINK. “In one of the nation’s most segregated cities, communities of color face disproportionate exposure to air pollution, lead and climate risks such as flooding.” Chicago’s mayor, Brandon Johnson (an African American), is taking a strong approach to combat this environmental racism by suing Big Oil companies.
Update from the CIC network:
- “With The Hollins Living History Project China Moore ’24 Seeks to Help ‘Reconcile the Injustices of the Past and Present,’” Hollins University (May 16, 2024): LINK. A course taught at CIC member Hollins University (Roanoke, VA), “Unveiling the Past at Hollins,” inspired a student to create a walking tour and senior thesis/performance that blends historical narrative with theater.
Some recent academic research (subscriptions required):
- Dante Bernard, “Racism and the imposter phenomenon among African American students: A socioecological analysis,” in Kevin Cokley, ed., The Imposter Phenomenon: Psychological Research, Theory, and Interventions (American Psychological Association, 2024), pp. 181–201: https://doi.org/10.1037/0000397-009. From the abstract: “Over the past decade, there has been a surge of work that highlights the relevance of imposter phenomenon [IP] among African American college students and its association with racism-related experiences within the academy. Cultural frameworks building on this work highlight that IP among African American individuals does not exist in a vacuum but rather emanates as a product of racism and related stressors associated with one’s marginalized status.”
- Tyler Leeds, “The 1619 Project Moral Panic: The Role of Cable News,” Social Problems (May 15, 2024): https://doi.org/10.1093/socpro/spae026. From the abstract: “The U.S. right is in the throes of a moral panic over the study of race and racism in schools. This panic developed in part through the backlash to the 1619 Project, an effort by the New York Times to reframe American history around the legacy of slavery…. [A] key element is cable news coverage of the 1619 Project, which over a two-year period moved from explaining structural racism through references to the Project toward characterizing the Project as a threat to schoolchildren.”