School Segregation

The history of school segregation in America has paralleled the history of exclusion and discrimination in American society. Unequal and separate schooling for African Americans, Native Americans, Asian Americans, Jewish Americans, Irish Americans, Italian Americans, Polish Americans, Hispanics, and other immigrants and the poor has been an ongoing struggle in American society. The dissension over segregated schooling has often been as much as or more about the role of education in a democratic society than it has been about separate and unequal facilities and resources.

Alexis de Tocqueville in Democracy in America described the stark inequalities of Native Americans and enslaved African Americans in education, rights, and citizenship that persisted even in the face of a newly established democratic republic. The Frenchman who visited America in 1831 to examine the roots of democracy described how prejudice and segregation in American life was present not only in the schoolhouse but in all aspects of American life. Even with the passage of the Fourteenth Amendment in 1868 that greatly expanded citizenship and equal protection under the law, school segregation managed to stay intact.

School segregation in the United States was fueled by a larger system of segregation by de jure (law) and by de facto (custom). Until Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas was decided by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1954, “separate but equal” was the law of the land in schooling as it was in access to all public facilities and transportation. [Page 1885]Therefore the history of school segregation mirrors the history of race, ethnicity, and democratic citizenship in the larger American society. Challenges to school segregation continue today as certain social, economic, and political forces exert powerful forces on education and equality.