Separate and Unequal (Reflection)

Part Three further depicts a greater overview of how US schools were constructed with which we live today. To put this chapter into one word, I feel desegregation ties this chapter all together. As the author states in the text “… the opportunity to achieve a good education and the right to attend school without discrimination are still valued… the issue of equal educational opportunity remains serious business, virtually no one today thinks of it as an issue that one might have to die for.” I was in complete awe when I read that people were risking their lives and futures for equal education opportunities. Had it not been for their extraordinary perseverance and courage, I wouldn’t be receiving the education I am today!

Joseph Delaine’s lawsuit, for example, against local white school officials for not providing schools buses for his three children had fatal consequences, not only to Mr. Delaine, but also his loved ones. Such consequences included: firing him from where he had taught for ten years, firing his wife and two of his sisters, burning his house down and the church at which he pastored at, and ultimately having him flee for his own safety. Soon after, in 1957 nine African American teenagers were chosen to integrate Little Rock’s Central High School. Had it not been for President Dwight David Eisenhower sending the 101^st Airborne Division, none of the African Americans would have completed a full day of classes. Their attempt to a better education were not followed with harsh consequences such as that of Mr. Delaine’s, however, daily insults and assaults were not any better. As I continued reading the chapter, I couldn’t help but wonder why some parents were willing to face injury and death themselves or allow their children to face such consequences in order to achieve educational opportunities!

 

“As ethnic minority groups [i.e. African Americans, Latinos, and Native Americans] and women sensed a growing gap in educational opportunities, campaigns to provide better educational opportunities for their children became a critical social issue and a central plan in the larger platform for civil and political equality” as stated in the text. Getting the best education possible for their children motivated parents to challenge legal forms of racial, ethnic, gender, and disability subordination! Soon after, strikes, boycotts, and protests expanded among different minority populations; they were a result from trying to get their (the people’s) point across and their voices heard.

 

Opening America’s schools to everyone took a great wave of education reform led by parents and students themselves. As a former Crystal City student leader and mayor at the time of Crystal City from 1995-1997, Severita Lara claims on the topic of education that, “We weren’t looking to grab or get things that didn’t belong to us, just what democracy had said was ours. And what our Bill of Rights and our Constitution had said belonged to us… We wanted equality, definitely.” Her statement really hit home for me. Why was a lot integrated, yet so much more segregated? Wasn’t everyone fit for equal educational opportunities, not just off of ethnicity and race? Another example that made me feel some type of way included Linda Brown Thompson, daughter of the lead plaintiff in the seminal Supreme Court case Brown v. Board of Education. From what she remembers, she lived in a neighborhood that was integrated, but once school started, her playmates she would play with would go in opposite directions.

All was changed on May 17, 1954 thanks to Chief Justice Earl Warren when he announced that “any child may reasonably be expected to succeed in life if he is denied the opportunity of an education… a right which must be made available to all on equal terms… separate educational facilities are inherently unequal.” Though this decision created uproars and mayhem, several parents and politicians vowed that their [white] children would never sit next to black children in class. Following desegregation, African American children who went to school felt as if they were going into an environment they were not welcome, knowing that teachers would be hostile towards them and they would not be able to make friends. However, Lyndon B. Johnson soon turned the tables by signing the Civil Rights Act of 1964 which banned discrimination on the basis of race in ALL federally funded programs, including schools. The rest was history...