What is the future of predominantly black urban schools? The politics of race in urban education policy

Phi Delta Kappan

Volumn 81, Issue 4, 1999, Pages 316-319

  Morris, Jerome E ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF GEORGIA   (United States)

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EID: 0042279721     PISSN: 00317217     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: None     Document Type: Article

References (11)

1. Phillips High School in Birmingham, Alabama, was named after John Herbert Phillips, the white superintendent of the Birmingham Public School System from 1883 to 1921. In 1957 Rev. Fred L. Shuttlesworth, a civil rights leader in Birmingham, and his wife were the first black parents to attempt to enroll their children at a white school - Phillips High School. Instead of protecting Shuttlesworth, the police allowed a mob of Klansmen to beat him with chains and brass knuckles; his wife was also beaten and stabbed. See the interview with Shuttlesworth in Howell Raines, My Soul Is Rested: The Story of the Civil Rights Movement in the Deep South (New York: Putnam, 1977).
2. For example, in a "voluntary" interdistrict transfer plan in St. Louis, which developed out of a 1972 lawsuit, Liddell et al. v. Board of Education of the City of St. Louis, Missouri, et al., participating county school districts receive funds from the state equal to the cost of attendance in the suburban schools. A settlement from this suit specified that the county schools were to desegregate by accepting black students from the city and achieving a 25% African American student population. In this court case, a desegregation settlement was reached in 1983 after the African American plaintiffs and the St. Louis Board of Education accused the suburban schools of contributing to the mass exodus to the suburbs of white middle-class families.
3. National Center for Education Statistics, The Condition of Education 1999 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Education), pp. 98-100.
4. "Schools and Staffing Survey, 1993-94," in Michael T. Nettles and Laura W. Perna, eds., The African-American Education Data Book, Volume 11: Preschool Through High School Education (Fairfax, Va.: Frederick D. Patterson Institute of The College Fund/UNCF, 1997).
5. In Boston during the early 19th century, African American children were allowed to attend the Boston public schools, but few parents enrolled their children because of prejudice on the part of white teachers. Separate schools were then established for the African American students. However, some African Americans protested the segregation of black children from white children. In 1849 a group of African American parents, in what became known as Roberts v. City of Boston, fought for integrated education because they felt that separate tax-supported schools were inferior in quality. The African American community was split on this issue.
6. W. E. B. Du Bois, "Does the Negro Need Separate Schools?," Journal of Negro Education, vol. 4, 1935, pp. 328-35.
7. See Amy Stuart Wells and Robert L. Crain, Stepping over the Color Line: African American Students in White Suburban Schools (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1997); and Gary Orfield, Susan E. Eaton, and the Harvard Project on School Desegregation, Dismantling Desegregation: The Quiet Reversal of Brown v. Board of Education (New York: New Press, 1996).
8. See Amy Stuart Wells and Robert L. Crain, Stepping over the Color Line: African American Students in White Suburban Schools (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1997); and Gary Orfield, Susan E. Eaton, and the Harvard Project on School Desegregation, Dismantling Desegregation: The Quiet Reversal of Brown v. Board of Education (New York: New Press, 1996).
9. See Missouri v. Jenkins (1995). In Kansas City, Missouri, desegregation funds focused on turning many inner-city black schools into magnet schools as a way to attract white students back to the city. The plan was eventually abandoned after so few white parents chose to send their children to the schools and there was no significant change in students' test scores.
10. This is not a totally new perspective. In 1980 Derrick Bell proposed that support (financial and political) be provided to schools in urban communities that enroll predominantly low-income African American students. See Derrick Bell, Shades of Brown: New Perspectives on School Desegregation (New York: Teachers College Press, 1980). Meanwhile, Judge Robert Carter, who as a lawyer was primarily responsible for conceptualizing the litigation and drafting the court documents in Brown, argued that "whatever is accomplished in isolated areas of the country, the metropolitan centers are where a majority of blacks now reside, and the schools in these centers must provide equal education for minority children." See Robert L. Carter, "The Unending Struggle for Equal Educational Opportunity," in Ellen Condliffe Lagemann and LaMar P. Miller, eds., Brown v. Board of Education: The Challenge for Today's Schools (New York: Teachers College Press, 1996), p. 23. See also Du Bois, op. cit.
11. This is not a totally new perspective. In 1980 Derrick Bell proposed that support (financial and political) be provided to schools in urban communities that enroll predominantly low-income African American students. See Derrick Bell, Shades of Brown: New Perspectives on School Desegregation (New York: Teachers College Press, 1980). Meanwhile, Judge Robert Carter, who as a lawyer was primarily responsible for conceptualizing the litigation and drafting the court documents in Brown, argued that "whatever is accomplished in isolated areas of the country, the metropolitan centers are where a majority of blacks now reside, and the schools in these centers must provide equal education for minority children." See Robert L. Carter, "The Unending Struggle for Equal Educational Opportunity," in Ellen Condliffe Lagemann and LaMar P. Miller, eds., Brown v. Board of Education: The Challenge for Today's Schools (New York: Teachers College Press, 1996), p. 23. See also Du Bois, op. cit.