Remembering Brown: Silence, Loss, Rage, and Hope

In this entry, James A. Banks recalls his school experiences in a rural community in the Arkansas Delta at the time that Brown v. Board Education was decided.

I was in the seventh grade at the Newsome Training School in Aubrey, Arkansas, when the Supreme Court handed down Brown v. Board of Education on May 17, 1954. My most powerful memory of the Brown decision is that I have no memory of it being rendered or mentioned by my parents, teachers, or preachers. In my rural southern Black community, there was a conspiracy of silence about Brown. It was completely invisible.